Anyone play Dominion? (in Off-topic)

Dominion

Round 60 will start in a few days, perhaps we could team up in a realm with 6 people (maximum)

What kind of game is it?

Bit like Risk. You have a realm, which contain maximum 20 dominions. You play with your dominion and explore for land or fight others to conquer their land.

You can perform magics and spy operations to get information about your opponents. Each round of playing takes 50 days.

Oh, and there are some 16 races with all different playing styles and pros / cons.

What is the daily time commitment to be competitive?

I play once in the morning and once in the evening. It takes 12 hours for your buildings to be built, 9 or 12 hours for troops to be trained and your army to return after a battle. Also most of your self spells have a 12 hour duration

If you play 2 times a day, roughly 12 hours apart from each other, you'll be just as competitive.

Can I be a casual participant?

I'll join you shade I think :)

just shout when its sign up time for the comming round :)

Oh, I thought you meant the board/card game.

It is a very good card game. I'll play a few round of that.

I did not mean the card or board game. I also did not mean the movie.

i am showing my age here, but the first thing i thought of was the sisters of mercy tune!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWvOHT0zfXY

I haven't played Dominion in a while, but I wouldn't mind giving it a go again.

So we have:

Shade,
Mythology,
Tyriel,
Andy?

Oh wow!! I remember that game in it's beta ;) used to play it all the time. back in the days of Utopia. hehehehe

I'll play, just give us a heads up on the start.

the round has just ended, it will take a few days before Round 60 starts. After that you will have 3 days until the round really begins.

So do we sign up now or?

Sign up will be active tonight or tomorrow. You will receive an email from me :)

We have 2 spare places I think!

Get Mian to play :)

Do we have a group or something? Or should I place my self randomly? Also what racE?

I think we are to wait for Shade, sign ups last 3 days I think before things start, when he signs up he gets a realm code that he sends to those of us wanting to be in the same realm

yeah it looks like you do a sign up as a group, and you have to input a password for the right group.

both Myth and Wraithlin are right, you will receive an email from me (on the email you use for CB) about the login and group.

Email has been sent to:

Myth,
Wraithlin,
Andy,
Tyriel.

this means we have 1 free spot.

Should we all pick evil races then or it doesnt really matter?

doesn't really matter, just read among the scribes which race you think is nice to play.

http://www.kamikazegames.com/dominion/scribes.htm

It does ! :/

Can't join the group unless we also pick evil race, dammit I wanted to try spirits too, evil shade!

Undead it is then :)

Oh, then we all have to be evil, sorry!

Give us some newb tips yo?

http://www.kamikazegames.com/dominion/scribes/celtillus/index.htm

read through this, it'll explain some things you need and need not do.

Still have one spot? If so, I'll play!

sent you details

I'm a goblin and I'll be focusing on growth and defense with a huge territory. I'm counting on people beating themselves up when they fight me and then I'll take their lands when they're weak! I hope it works that way ^.^

make sure to build 18% Smithies and train troops on the last day of protection.

Make sure to have ore mines to train your troops and to have some towers for spells as well as boats if you will attack (don't bother with boats if you'll explore).

I can give other pointers but I'd rather answer more specific questions.

I read the guide well, and I've already got my first constructions set. I'll be sure to ask you questions when they come up, thank you!

Seems to me, first three days focus everything on maxing production. Then switch focus to military power, no?

I firstly explored 25 acres, then built all the buildings I could.

I built Smithies, Towers, Diamond Mines, Schools, 5 Lumber, more homes.
I will keep 18% smithies, and then see what I'll do.

First time I'm playing Lycanthrope, last round I was Sylvan.

This thread made me smile, If I saw it sooner I would have joined you guys!! I won a round a Dominion several several years ago haha. I played from round 2 to round 46 or so... All through middle school to well past highschool. (coming top 5 many many other rounds)

I quit when all my friends left the game, and the playerbase shrunk below 1,000 (while pushing 10,000 at it's peak) and to be top 10 competitive it took hourly logins around 22 hours a day. I realized I had to move to a new game when I realized I was sleeping in 2 hours shifts for a GAME. :O

A Great game... Ross has been working on a re-write for the better part of a year now, that should be something to look forward to.

My best finish::
Top 100 Largest Dominions
Back to Rankings
Rank Dominion Race Realm Land
1 Evangelion Spirit 432 15,107 <---- Me =)

Although Spuds were REALLY broken that round, I still came out on top! :D.

Sigh

I'm all nostalgic about dominion now, I miss being a Planeswalker / Dragon, those few rounds were soooo much fun >)

Also, Shade if you need any help, feel free to ask, I'm not up to date with the recent balance changes, but I can tell you 18% smithies is too much for a lyc. You should be running homes/max barracks, you'll be ROLLING in plat and not have anything to spend it on. 10% smithies should be fine, but run enough barracks to house all your troops and leave enough of a margin that you can continue training without fear of not having enough housing. (each unit of barracks houses 36﾿ troops)

Barracks if you're attacking, Homes if you're exploring.

You should be focusing on as many ALCs as you can until you hit 800 or so, some players will argue that 1100 or even 1200 is enough, but you will get diminished rewards passed the 800 mark, making homes far superior to alcs for plat production (remember that every peasant that you have makes you plat)

Also, keep a high DPA (defense per acre, if you are exploring. There are different levels of DPA required based on your landsize. If you are in the top 10-25 (unlikely with 2 log-ins a day, but this could apply to someone else) you risk attention by Top-Op (or top offensive power) usually this isn't hard to find. Rax/CS the strongest attackers and you'll soon find it. The in realm forums are a good place where the realm can collectively track this number. Basically you'll want to stay above it :)

In the middle to lower ranks, the DPA is going to SKYROCKET. You're going to get hit by people much much larger than you, (usually you'll be withing 75% of their land, but sometimes as low as 40%. ouch.) These are the toughest places to be, because growth will become very hard to come by. Your DPA will just continue to grow, and you're land will just slowly come to a standstill.

This applies from 1,000 acres to 6,000 acres.

Oh man... ZzZz just msg me if you have any questions, I could put the largest wall of text ever here when talking about dominion, I played it for 8﾿+ years... Lots of inside information haha.

Again I'm not up to date, so these might not apply exactly, *shrug*

Can you do anything with excess food?

you can't myth.

But why would I want to build barracks which have a fixed troops amount while homes will have much more population growth?

Royal guard =)

Also, the 18% smithies are basically to get the most cheap units OOP (out of protection). After that I could tone them down to around 10%.

Dammit, they should make it if you start as undead you start with less farms built with such large food consumption reduction.

Well, you can destroy a few but you can just not build any for a long long time. Last round I was playing with 5.5% farms on a Sylvan...


Anyway:

Last round, you finished with the following rankings:

Largest Dominions: 88th
Strongest Dominions: 156th
Most Victorious: 399th
Most Prestigious: 252nd
Largest Sylvans: 13th
Strongest Sylvans: 13th
Platinum Thieves: 82th
Lumber Thieves: 2nd (beaten by a nasty small wood elf)
Mana Thieves: 11th

As Undead you will usually destroy farms early in favor of homes/rax.

Shade:::
iv) A Note on Barracks vs. Homes

This is a very common question new players ask. Both barracks and homes increase your population, so which should you build?

* Homes: House 30 people. These are affected by any population bonuses you have.
* Barracks: House 36 military units. These, however, are NOT affected by population bonuses.

If your population bonuses are an even 20%, homes and barracks are equally effective (30 x 1.2 = 36). If your bonuses are less than that, then barracks give a greater benefit; if more then homes are better. Your population bonuses are:

* Race specific, if applicable
* Bonus from the keep improvement
* 1% for every 250 prestige

A Goblin has 20% population bonuses by default, and Kobold has 40%, so these races should never build barracks. A Troll, with -5% population by default, would do great with barracks. Keep improvement has a maximum bonus of 30%, however, so most races can make a transition to homes if they get their keep high enough.

Lastly, homes vs. barracks is largely irrelevant for races with terrain dependencies such as Icekin/Gnome (mountains) WoodElf/Sylvan (forest), and Nox (swamp). These races need homes to keep their dependent terrain high, and should rarely build barracks.

This is my point exactly. Lycans have 5% innate bonus and I don't think it is hard to get the other 15% from the keep. I'd rather build some more GN's having me need less units to send ;)

*shrug* Just trying to help :) You don't want to build any GNs or GTs until the last leg of the round, maybe a week or two left.

A Dominion round plays out like this:

Fast attacker Doms race ahead.
Efficient attacker Doms catch up around day 30.
Then A or B happens.

A being; A Gobbo, Kobbold, Lycan (lycan being the more rare) or other speedy race... Is so far ahead that they can run an inefficient build and bottom feed the converters (day 30 converters usually vie for top op and are amazingly efficient usually running high improvements (40%DMS) and 100% elite troops. Then said (we call em runners) win the round if they have the realm support to keep a top wonder, like lair of the dragon.

B: The Converters (A Converter is someone who explores usually using perfect efficiency and until about day 23-24 then spends a week or so switching to an attacker). The Best players are usually full round attackers or converters. Gnomes, Trolls, and Merfolk/Lizzy are usually the best races for this. Anyways, the converters will turn up swinging HUGE offensive power, and race for the top. USually a runner will be a good 2,000 - 3,000 acres above the converters, but when the converters are making 300+ acres every 12 hours, it's tough for them to sustain that lead.

Getting nostalgic, there was a few notable rounds through the years that were pretty awesome. Round 18﾿﾿, we had an 8 pack of Trolls, 4 of us all pushed inefficient strategies (ran suicidal op) and slowed the entire game down while our other trolls explored to convert. It was GROSS. We had the top 3 OPs in our realm, and we ran very little defense, instead relying on the notion that if you hit one of us, a triple tap was coming, so no one would hit us even though they could. Our counterparts converted and went on to win the round.

(we got an 8 pack of trolls because 3 of us (the limit) randomed into a realm with another 3 pack of trolls who happened to be good friends of ours, and there was also 2 other good players who randomed on their own, and we all restarted before the round started to all have a similar name haha. >_<

Another round three of us converted as merfolk and wrecked face, no one saw that coming because no one was player merfolk at the top for like 3 rounds, let alone a merfolk attacker, we converted with something sick like 250,000 OP each on like day 27. Lets just say the runners stood no chance :)

So, I'm curious, Jir.

Do the runners get all their land from attacking? Do they explore a bunch while in protection? Do they explore while they attack, or just attack for as much land as possible?

I mean, I'm not really trying to be the best, I'm just wondering because I've never really been at or even near the top in a game like this. I'm curious as to how they do it.

Usually a top all round attacker will look like this.

OOP @ 700-800 Acres, depending on Race, usually around 6,000 Raw Op and 5,000 raw DP (I've seen extremes over the years, with Kobbo with a 72 hour OOP (meaning 72 out of 72/h logins) come oop with 850 Acres, 9,000 raw OP, and 7,000 raw DP... (I know silly cheaters)

But usually anywhere in the range of 650-750 is just fine, some people go above and beyond though. Which can make ALL the difference...

Anyways, after the initial exploring, they will attack every 12 hours attacking for the highest possible landgain possible.

http://www.igalaxie.com/dominion/attack_calc.php <---- Attack Calculator <3 that is an attacker's 2ed best friend.

Competing at the top in that game, is purely activity meets experience meets active realm. It's a lot easier to play when you have a network of friends to help with target searching and getting info on other people.

To put it into perspective, I once saw the top attacker hit someone 10 seconds before the hour change (if you're attacking you always attack seconds before the hourchange so that you essentially get an 11 hour return time (or 6 respectively, silly calvs!) Sometimes the windows to get hit are small, say for example Dominion A can hit Dominion B, but only this hour, as both dominions have defense coming in the next hour, but dominion C can hit Dominion A if he sends.

So Dominion A will attack as close to the hour change as possible to try to "get away with it".

Anyways my story:: Dom A, hits Dom B 10 seconds before the hourchange, and in part is retaliated against by Dom C, 4 seconds later. Also before the hour change.

So sick.

Most top attackers will attack right at 59/59.

Most top attackers also catalog the entire game. Might seem weird but there are tools where you copy paste the entire realm into it, and it will tell you every time there is a networth change. Networth changes from 3 things. Starvation... Not enough food, so troops are dying. Training, they have units that were training that are now finished. Or attacking.

This is true for every single dominion in the game.

When ANYONE attacks, their NW drops to reflect their losses, or increases to reflect their gains (spuds/lycans) respectively.

90% of dominion is social interaction. If you have the friends across the board, you have the information from all those different sources...

"Wow that Merfolk in 72 has some sick op"
"Yeah but look at the Orc in 35, he will take top op in 12"

etc.

Dominion is SUCH a team game it's sick.

If you want to start making friends, just log into the forums and trash talk any of the following things.

Rio/Tetre/Derenged... Everyone hates Rio. Even his friends, so people will auto like you. Tetre and Derenged are pretty awesome, so you have to lip them out of principal. Derenged more so than Tetre (Tetre has a history of running 3-4 dominions a round, and feeding out to himself, only to get caught and reset)

Pinoys. Pinoys have a long standing tradition of getting caught cheating in Dominion, there is a large group of "them" that play from a cafe together and just flat out cheat. Even the Pinoys hate Pinoys in dominion, this won't make you seem AS cool as making fun of Rio and co, but more like a person who has played enough to know about the pinoys, so all in all, worth it.
Example: GeneralRommel... Him and everyone associated with him are very very known cheaters. He is kind of like the head cheater lol >_<

Or you can playfully jab at Lorian. He is the longstanding Dominion No life, Super Nerd. I mean that with all due respect. He's been known to play entire rounds missing maybe an hour a day the whole time. He's widely recognized as the best player, having won 3﾿ rounds? Maybe 4? and been close at least a dozen.

Anyways ZzZ I could talk all day about dominion haha (and silly dominion politics)

My last round played was 55, I stopped in just to play more or less inactive with some old friends; :P

55 I Survived the Swine 09 Lizardfolk 4,084 628,000

I will for sure be checking out the rewrite though, I just hope I have more than an hour or two a day for it :).

Man reading through that you can tell I just woke up :)

Calvs? 6 Hours? /facepalm 9 and 8 respectively.

i remember dominion from way back in the day. I played for around 10 rounds. pretty fun time killer.

Set myself up as a goblin. Went random on group so we'll see what happens.

Beginning move's:
Scouted 25 lands
Sold gems and 1/3 of lumber for plat
Built on all but 31 of before i ran out of funds..

see you in about 30 hours. :P

that was supposed to say "All but 31 of my lands".. sorry for the spam.

Also, on the military page, you want to put your draft % on 90 (the max) unless you're doing something really clever.

i set mine to 30% for now..since draftee production depends on population size and my military started at just over 12% ive got a few before i'll need to adjust it higher.

Don't know who would want to be king in our realm, but with our group of 6 (out of 20) we might have to choose one. :)

I'm the Kobolds, going a defensive build style till late round.

I think you all just have to vote me king of nothing will be done ;)

The round has begun!

so how does employment work? :D

How long does a round last? I might join the next one

each round is 50 days. might as well join now :P

too much work at the moment... I'll see what life looks like in a month and a half :)

Optimal employment would be 100%.
Lower than 100% and you will have unemployed peasants, higher and you lack peasants. (though it does not display above 100%)

Another tip for very early in the round (or all round long) is to release the draftees you don't need into the peasants.

Early in the round, especially during protection, this increases the amount of peasants and thus the amount of population growth.

aye, I guessed its best to try and get 100% employment :P

I'm meaning how is that achieved?

http://www.kamikazegames.com/dominion/scribes/land.htm


So if you have 500 land, with 100 homes and the rest non-homes (no bonuses assumed):
(100 * 30) + (400 * 15) = 9000 population
400 * 20 = 8000 jobs total
draftrate = 20% =} 1800 draftees / military units

9000 - 1800 = 7200 peasants
7200 / 8000 (*100%) = 90% employment

Correct Shade. :)

Are you attacking or exploring shade?

Either way this Is what I need from you.

Copy paste your income, status page, your building adviser, and your military adviser.

What does it mean when people's names are in blue in realm screen?

blue = protection
white = normal
green = royal guard (limits attack size)
yellow = elite guard (limits attack size even more)

I'm undead and I just got out of protection and I'm getting owned.. Kinda started late and forgot to go on in the mornings! How do I save my self?

Overview
Ruler: Lord Dusk
Race: Undead
Land: 337
Peasants: 4,768
Employment: 69.63%
Networth: 9,360
Prestige: 216
Resources
Platinum: 16
Food: 155,352
Lumber: 15,936
Mana: 0
Ore: 0
Gems: 0
Research Points: 1,185
Boats: 75
Military
Morale: 100%
Draftees: 457
Skeletons: 0
Ghouls: 170
Progeny: 40
Vampires: 0
Spies: 25
Wizards: 25
ArchMages: 0

train much more troops, especially Progeny and Ghouls. Also use the ingame Realm forum :)

Focus 100% on progeny and explore, you'll need lots more troops. I wouldn't train skeleton/ghoul at all. I'll assume you're not attacking but as a spud it's best to train 100% elites. Some people untrain the spec (not elites // skeleton/ghoul) troops they get from conversions (Spuds (spirit / Undead) "recruit" a % of enemy fatalities into their lower ranked troops) and some people just use them, but never train them unless you're doing something clever for protection.

I think I played this game a few years back...

I used to play a lot of browser based strategy games like this when I was still in college.

Woops I've been training those ones.. So I'll just train progeny from now on?

yup

How often do I get new draftees?

Hourly

Okay, so green and orange names, what exactly does being those do?

<Shade
<Mythology
<Mythology

As in if it limits your attack size, whats the advantage, if attackers then does that mean we can only use certain %?

It's been at least 3 hours but my draftees haven't come in?

did you set your draftrate higher than your current draft rate?
Did you get more peasants the last hour? (if not, then you need to build more)

When you log on how much resources do you devote to each thing? I've not been invading I don't know if my army is large enough..

I seem to get attacked and even though I have like 19 DPA can't repel them? How high should I get it because each invasion is so devastating to my land..

my DPA is 38, yours should be 25 at least at this moment. Increase your draft rate and train more units.

Shade how do I up employment? It's only 50% atm!

build more buildings which are not homes. (aka jobs)

_or_ increase your draft rate to decrease the amount of peasants

I like to just leave my draft rate high, and toss the draftees i don't want to train into my peasant population.

It gives me extra defense while they are draftees, and there is no way to make peasants draftees, just the other way around.

I hate how each invasion takes 40 acres of my land and this happens daily and I can only explore like 20 acres every time I log on! Why do my progeny not do anything ='(

I have this:

The Dominion of Land of Dawn and Dusk (# 17)
Overview
Ruler: Lord Dusk
Race: Undead
Land: 742
Peasants: 12,208
Employment: 49.97%
Networth: 58,595
Prestige: 106
Resources
Platinum: 1,669
Food: 143,386
Lumber: 135
Mana: 17,553
Ore: 0
Gems: 0
Research Points: 4,680
Boats: 216
Military
Morale: 100%
Draftees: 195
Skeletons: 0
Ghouls: 830
Progeny: 3,210
Vampires: 1,040


He has this:
The Dominion of Thailandbaby (# 49)
Overview
Ruler: Count my nuts
Race: Troll
Land: 664
Peasants: 7,153
Employment: 100%
Networth: 73,315
Prestige: 285
Resources
Platinum: 338
Food: 84,584
Lumber: 17,409
Mana: 18,935
Ore: 15,026
Gems: 0
Research Points: 1,710
Boats: 144
Military
Morale: 100%
Draftees: 137
Brutes: 421
Ogres: 1,687
Bashers: 0
Smashers: 3,309


What do you guys see and how do I decide whether or not it is good to attack him?

First of all, if you are losing battles, stop exploring.

Spend your money on military until you stop losing battles.

Then increase your land and your military together so you don't lose.

Completely off topic, but I love your portrait Mythology :P

Andy, use this calculator. Gather the information needed (Clear Sight, Barracks Spy, Survey Dominion etc) and paste them in

http://www.igalaxie.com/dominion/attack_calc.php

Oh another tip: please use the Dominion Council. If we use this more often, we'll be much more efficient... :)