A Beginner's Guide to DomiNations

This will be the MOST important thing you read on my blog. Ever. (Well, maybe not) Each section will help explain a different gameplay mechanic for DomiNations. I will say this throughout the post, but remember that this is NOT a tips and tricks page. I will have one of those as well though, so don't worry.

Gathering Resources

In order to proceed in this game, you need resources or loot. Loot upgrades buildings, trains troops, and any other thing you can possibly imagine. There is gold which is primarily used for upgrading defensive buildings, walls, and the town center. (Town center pictured to the right)

You can acquire gold from gold mines, caravans, attacking enemy bases, and certain animals that spawn around your base. There is food which is primarily used for upgrading and unlocking new troops, training troops for battle, and certain buildings like the castle, war academy or blacksmith. You can find food from gold mines, farms, attacking enemy bases, and certain animals. The premium resource, crowns, allows you to speed up just about everything as well as change world wonders after completion, and instantly acquire other resources. Too good to be true? You're right... It cost REAL money to get crowns so I highly advise against it! WIth patience, you can acquire crowns by completing quests, achievements, and hunting stags. There are also trade goods, like fur, metal, and diamonds that are used to buy blessings or mercenaries. Around your base, there is one type of resource that will give you the resource. You can also steal them from enemies. (Destroying town centers, storehouses, or 5 star attacks grant you enemy trade goods). The most important resource of all is citizens! The number of houses you have directly contribute to how many citizens you have. Every defense, trap, and resource require citizens! So if you have 2 available workers, you can harvest fruit or upgrade a wall, but you can't build a catapult or upgrade the town center. So my advice here is to create houses as soon and fast as possible!

Getting Ready for an Attack

Probably the first thing you want to learn is how to attack. Keep in mind, this is not going to introduce any tips for attacking, just basics. (That will be for later!) In order to attack you need to have deployable troops. Troops are trained at the Barracks. In the barracks, you have your classic troops: weak and cheap melee unit, weak and cheep ranged unit, strong against resources unit, defense targeting unit, wallbreaking unit, etc. The level of your barracks determines how many troops you can have at any one time. In addition to these troops, you can enlist mercenaries at the mercenary camp using trade goods, a general from the castle, and alliance troops if you are in an Alliance. (For all these troops, you need to construct the buildings first!) The other advantage you can bring into a battle is tactics and blessings created at the War Academy and Temple, respectively. Now that you have your army, click on the "battle" icon in the bottom left corner of your phone and then again on the "find an opponent" icon smack-dab in the center of the screen.

How to Attack

Once you are shown a base, you can attack it. If the base looks to strong or doesn't have many resources you can skip it by clicking the "Next Match" icon. Otherwise, it's time to attack! There are 5 total stars available for any attack. You get one for each of the following: 50% destruction, 75% destruction, 100% destruction, town center destroyed, and quick victory (gain any one star in under a minute). Once again, I won't be providing tips here on how to star bases, grab resources, etc. in this post! Along the bottom of your screen, you will see all available troops you prepared. If you click on the units picture and then click on the map, (away from buildings) your unit will deploy on the map. If you hold down, multiple units will be deployed. Blessings automatically activate at the start of a battle and tactics can be deployed anywhere! The bottom left target icon allows you to send all deployed troops to that spot. This is one of the most important tricks to learn in order to win all battles. You can choose to end the battle at any time by simply clicking the end battle icon in the top left-hand corner. Otherwise, the attack will end once the time runs out (3 minutes or so?) or you have no more troops left to deploy and no troops on the battlefield. After your attack is finished, you will see the victory screen. Here you can find how much gold and food you stole, what trade goods you acquired, what troops you lost (if you destroy all defenses you can retain your troops!), and what bonuses you've earned. The bonuses are as follows: league bonus, all food buildings destroyed bonus, all gold buildings destroyed, and all defenses destroyed. With the execption of the all defenses destroyed bonus, they provide minimal loot (resources) at lower levels. Now let's take all of the resources and spend back at base!

Defending your Base

Enemies can attack you just like you can attack them as long as you have no active peace treaty (shield). While at base, the bottom left corner will show you if you have a shield. If it says "none," then you have no shield and anyone can attack you. Your goal on defense is to DEFEND YOUR RESOURCES!! At the lower levels you w​​ill see so many people with dreadful base designs that don't protect resources. Don't be like them! I will have a different post really explaining how to defend your base, but for now I will just explain what defenses you have. In Dominations, you will have the following type of defenses: weak, but ​​fast firing, strong, but slow​​ firing, weak, but splash damage, release infantry to slow down enemy, and generals to harass troops. Lastly, you have walls that have high hit points to slow down enemy. It is very important to be upgrading your defenses and have them in hard(ish) locations for enemies to reach. There is a lot of strategy that goes into base building so that will also be another post, sorry!

That's it Folks​​

I know I wrote a lot, but if you stayed to read it all, I hope it was helpful!

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

-Lao Tzu