Dominion 3 is one of the worse strategy games I ever played.
In fact, it is more a wargame than strategy game...
Simply doing a quick post to say that I of course meant there was more good games in the 90's than the 2000s. I don't know if what I said made it sound like otherwise but anyways.
I think you hit the nail on several key factors. I consider clones to be utter crap. Repetition of same games to be utter crap. Originality have a lot to do in ranking a game... And if you have 30 games which offer you the exact same gameplay then it's not original at all and thus boring.