6 Key Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Hello Heroes!

Sick of having your base destroyed? Want to know the best troop compositiions for attacking? What are the most important tips and tricks for playing DomiNations? This post will help answer all these questions!

How to set up my Base

First off, in the first two ages, you can't realistically protect yourself. However, starting in Iron Age you have a chance! Things to keep in mind when designing your base!

1) Walls that don't end up forming a solid rectangle are useless! People will just deploy troops in the unenclosed area. As a result...

2) Don't try to protect all your buildings! Buildings like barracks or mercenary camp don't protect any resources so leave them outside of your walls. When you click on the info button for each building, check for the keyword "Storage Capacity." These buildings hold resources that can be stolen by enemy attackers. Specifically, try to protect your gold and food storages.

3) Your defenses are the key to protecting resources and not losing trophies. I will have a more in depth post detailing how defenses work and specific placements of them in the future! For now, understand that Ballistae are the most important. They take out heavy cavalry (Horseman, cataphract, knight) due to their high damage. Catapults are important for taking out infantry (spearman, warrior, hoplite). Stables and garrisons help slow down and distract enemies. Towers, are just an extra obstacle for enemies to destroy. My main tip here is that you should protect ballistae and c

atapults as best you can because they will dish out the most damage to enemy troops.

4) Lastly, think about putting your town center (TC) on the outside of your base. The town center is a large building and hard to protect with walls. While this can be done successfully starting at the Medieval Age, it is not worth your time before. While the TC is on the outside, it provides another distinct advantage. Enemies can attack your TC, but leave your storages untouched. You lose a few trophies, but gain a shield and hold on to your resources! It is very easy to gain trophies if you are low--think 0-1000 trophies-- so there really is no negative to leaving your TC on the outside!

You lose more loot from farms and caravans

You have two types of buildings that can be looted, farms and caravans (collectors), and markets and mills. (storages) If a farm and a mill both hold 10,000 food, the enemy can steal 5,000 food from the farm, but only 2,000 food from the storage. (I'm a little shake-y on storage percentage) However, storages can hold a LOT more than collectors. So when you are attacking, look for bases that don't have a lot of loot in their storages when raiding. These pictures help show a full vs. empty storage for both mills and markets. Since most people don't have their collectors well defended, you can easily steal resources!

Upgrade walls

Upgrading walls is so important! As you play the game, you'll come to learn that you want to be attacked as little as possible. One of the first things that attackers look at is walls. If the walls are a high level, they will skip over your base for an easier one with lower level walls. As an attacker, you know how stressful it is to watch your units attacking wall and being shot ruthlessly by the defenses. At the moment, the game has some glitches where units will stupidly attack walls so high level walls will distract enemy troops for long periods of time. You should upgrade your walls to the maximum level before moving onto the next age! Below is underleveled walls and me getting

The two types of attacks

Successful DomiNations players have two types of attacks. You either are going for as much loot as possible or easy bases to get trophies.

Key to loot attacks: Don't try to use this attack until the Classical Age since 50 troop space isn't enough to effectively raid. Use 1-2 wall miners, 3-5 heavy cavalry, and the rest horse raiders. You are not worried about earning trophies during these attacks! In general, if you destroy all food and gold buildings, you will be at 50% so you can keep your trophy count steady. I will detail this attack strategy in my In-depth Attack Strategy post so stay tuned. Simply put, use wall miners to break through one layer of walls to expose the storages. The heavy cavalry are there to tank for your horse raiders. Spread your troops over the base evenly to make sure that you can't be destroyed by ballistae.

Key to trophy pushing attacks: This attack has two small variations. The way widely used by players is a majority heavy cavalry and then a small number of cheap troops. This works perfectly in the iron, and to a lesser extent, the classical age, but will not work in the medieval age. Instead, try 2 wall miners, 6-7 heavy cavalry, 3-4 horse raiders, and the rest soldiers and slingers. The In-depth Attack Strategy post will go through this in more detail. In general, attack bases that have their ballistae in bad locations. (Not behind walls or towards the outside) Send a few soldiers to distract the ballista before dropping your heavy cavalry to take out the ballista. After those are destroyed, place your horse raiders near resource buildings and back them up with slingers. This attack normally destroys the whole enemy base so you will steal a lot of trade goods to use for blessings and mercenaries!

Maxing your base

For all you players just beginning, this is the most valuable piece of advice I can give you! While it is not necessary to have fun and do well, this will set you apart from the average player. Do not advance to the next age until every building can not be upgraded! Your defenses should be their highest level, same with walls, storages, and other special buildings like the library and mercenary camps. The exception is farms and caravans since you get a lot more resources from attacking enemy bases. You should also have your wonder created, all technologies researched (discussed later!), and units upgraded. Only once this is all done should you proceed to the next age.

Build all buildings as Fast as Possible

Once you enter into a new age build all of your buildings AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!!! By adding all buildings, you make it much harder for enemies to destroy your base completely. Start with a house so that you have more available workers to construct or upgrade buildings. After that, create fast buildings during the day and the longer ones before you go to sleep. You want to keep your workers as busy as possible!

Stay Tuned!

In the not too distant future, I plan on doing tips and tricks for intermediate and advanced players to help you really excel at DomiNations. If there is anything you think people should know leave it as a comment! (Once I figure out how to add comments...)

"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails."

-Unknown

#tips #tricks #beginner #howto #raiding #maxingyourbase