Sorry for the late reply, just got back from work.
I think, folks, I’m going to have to call it a day on Dominions 4, at least for the time being.
I was concerned initially with the sprawl of races, units and spells and while they’ve certainly remained intimidatingly vast, it’s mostly the UI and controls and visible information that have frustrated me and made almost everything feel like work rather than play. It seems that which ever way you cut it there’s a lot of micromanagement involved and coupled with all the other moving parts it’s a lot to process.
Certain hotkeys like Ctrl+1/2/3 etc. to copy orders were a god send (cheers @Strato!) but otherwise I found myself almost chasing my tail because I kept thinking I’d forgot to do something important before ending my turn.
And the thing is: I’d had a largely uneventful 40~ turns recruiting my sacreds and casters for research (at the expense of site searching). It was only when Ashdod rolled into town that I realised that despite (what I thought was) spamming Yogis and Gurus, I was behind on research so I didn’t have much choice but to stay in my hole and try and reach Antimagic to counter what I was told was going to be ‘Shadow Blast spam’, hahah. My god, did that hit hard in that last battle. I had to quit the replay it was so grim!
My potentially most active turn, where I was planning to attack Ashdod’s fort near White Waste, (some time ago now, back when psyanojim was playing I think) I staled my turn because I read the date/time wrong on the turn email. I was very annoyed with myself for that. I was amazed how that seemingly small mistake lost me/us a lot of ground because after that Ashdod’s fort was secure enough to force me to retreat back to Baccar–or BACKARGH as I chickened out. After that it was a bottleneck filled with ugly giants.
I’ve got to say a big thanks to @psyanojim, @Strato and @pyrhic for their help. I’m incredibly grateful for your patience and direction. Sorry I’ve not come out the other end of this with more enthusiasm or thirst for more, but I’m really glad I gave it a shot and that you folks have been more than willing to help a noob out so much. Oh, and thanks @Akaoni for arranging this, it’s much appreciated!
You never know, I may return, but considering how much time I spent playing this one game (and doing the map! Ooof, that was a weekend right there!), it’s time I think I’d rather pour into other strategy games.