Dominions 3 will be on Steam at some point but there are currently no plans for a Dominions 4.  If I remember correctly the developer doesn't have the time or interest to do a new version of Dominions any time in the forseeable future.

I loved playing dom3. Unlike most modern games (little content, lots of emergent gameplay) it is a pleasure just to jump into the vast worlds envisioned by the devs. Personally I think you have to be a little bit of a fantasy book lover to fully appreciate what they did in terms of content. Which is not to say that the game doesn't have good gameplay - it manages the very difficult task of having thousands of units and still somehow makes them balanced in a (very) complex way. The game was released in 2006 and people were still finding new, stronger strategies in 2012. The game managed to attract the kind of mind that would take an utterly useless faction or god and turn it into something workable - which is really what the game is about. Finding those really strong combinations out of millions of possibilities.

And it is really great that we have a game like Dom3 that shows that a vast wealth of content CAN WORK in a game. So when people like this come along we can honestly say that one solution isn't better than the next.

I would buy Dom 4 in a heartbeat. Dom 3 is fantastic!

Elysium isn't on sale anymore, unfortunately (I want one).

as to the Dominions - I think it is a sound idea for Stardock to approach them and ask if they want to let them do that?

The engines Stardock has, the competence of not making a flashy to the eyes, but not to the soul (like big studios do) game, the people capable of that.....

It would be a work of wonder.

Who knows, maybe they would be willing to part with it easily. Or be colaborators with someone who can push to conclusion.

Anyway, the name dominions has as well as the lore in fantasy gamers communities, even after 6 years - would be a great commercial....

I would buy it, for whatever the cost. as well as any DLCs coming out.

PS on a sidenote, how do you think about paying in advance for example 20$ for all DLCs or 30 for DLCs and expansions one game is going to have....I like the concept...This presently feels like gouging...

Just get it made Same game, better UI, better graphics. How hard can it be. Get it on kickstarter, give it to Stardock, just get it done!

Dominions 3 is an excellent and deep game and I have fantastic experiences playing it with human players. 

However COE 3 is an absolute disaster which I sadly bought on release, so I will be more cautious with future Illwinter games. 

I never tried to play COE3 in MP, it sucks for me royally as a single player game.

Interestingly enough, it suffers from the same problems as FE, namely problems of scale. It tries to be a kingdom/empire simulator without giving you the means to do so. You have to wait years to hire pitiful five ragtags with pointy sticks, yet the game constantly spams ridiculous monster stacks like rabbits, snakes, deers and whatnot that are capable of capturing villages, even castles. What rubbish. Combat is silly and obsolete, because the defender always strikes first, so with larger armies, attacker suffers insane losses without means to do anything about it. Men at arms have the same armor as naked madmen, namely 0. Magic is random and casters use nonsense spells in combat all the time. 

The game fails to abstract menial tasks, so most of the time you spend hours trudging through empty landscape with a band of underfed invalids, only to find out "OMG, dragon, not this way, run AWAYYYY".

You can't manage your kingdom in a meaningful way, you can't build defenses, you can't scout, you can't conduct diplomacy. You are constantly waiting for something. There are minimum amount of meaningful choices. Important events are very much dependent on random encounters. 

The AI is dumb as rock, it follows no strategic plan, and it cannot play without INSANE cheating bonuses even on moderate levels.

The game could be a hit, though. In 1985.

I would be inclined to forgive some of the above if only you could tell your villages and castle guards to lock the doors and do NOT let any frogs or deers in, but no:

"Hey, Cliffy, what a cute little rabbit, come here, fella, you must be hungry... NOOOO... help... he is gnawing at my shoe... run... RUN... run for the hills, the castle is lost..."

If villagers could not fend off a few deers or an occasional frog, I think humanity would be extinct by today. I know, bumblebees can fly over castle walls. Oh my.

And yes, I must mention the ugly graphics. No, I don't care about 3D, but having sprites so small they look like tiny flies in a vast sea of unused darkness of a FULLHD screen is a criminal offense. It hurts the game feedback. Compare the gfx to Wesnoth, actually, unlike COE3, a FREE game.

And the interface, recruiting, it sucks. 

Now to say something positive about it, it shares much of the lore and bestiary with Dominions 3 which was very cool. If you can remember the awesome flavor texts from Dominions 3, that is, because they did not make it to this sad torso of a game. 

I am hooked on Dom3 right now. Finally took the chance and bought it. Dom4 would be sooo sweet. They should NOT take away any functionality/micromanagement, BUT give us better tools to micromanage with. Better UI would help a lot. Like in Warlock: Master of the Arcane where I get buttons telling me what new research I have done, what units needs orders, messages from AI and so on. 

What is the code language for Dominions 3 (Dom 3)?  A rewrite could be fun.

Ask, and ye shall receive!!

http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/index.html

Dominions 4 is still under development and is expected to be completed in late August. It will soon be possible to preorder Dominions 4 on Desura. 

Dominions 4 improvements

Here's a short list with the most important changes compared to Dominions 3.

• Teamplay, one pretender and one or more disciples per team.
• Thrones of Ascension. Claim thrones to gain extra powers and to win the game eventually.
• Many sprites have been redrawn and the 3d terrain is also improved.
• Many user interface improvements.
• Formations like line formation or skirmish formation.
• Improved random map generation with wraparound maps, caves, rivers and mountain passes.
• Rivers that can only be passed when frozen, mountain passes that can only be passed by special units and when it's warm.
• Pierce, slash and blunt weapons have slightly different quirks. E.g. don't shoot arrows at skeletons.
• Darkness and dark vision plays a more important role. Notably in deep seas, caves and sometimes during assassinations.
• Range restrictions on magic rituals and items and spells that can be used to boost ritual ranges.
• Improved network support, turns can be resumed from any computer and turns can be marked as only half finished.
• Global random events
• Can build castle improvements like extra towers or extra supply storage
• Province Defence dependent on the local population and some nations have easier or harder to organize it.
• Improvements to AI and to modding.
• Many new monsters, spells, magic items, sites, random events and some nations too.

It's hard to tell from just the screenshots, but it doesn't look like there has been too many improvements. I do like that fact that they finally put the magic level of each commander on the main screen... will save me the trouble of constantly naming all of my guys "2E2F1S" and such.

Dominions 4!!!!  I just got a hard-on.  I see they also have a new patch for Dominions 3.  Great news!

Now I'm just waiting for someone to acquire the Master of Magic license from Atari now that they are going through bankruptcy.

Edit:  Looks like it's already available for pre-orders.  $30, half of what Dominions 3 was going for.