The Complete Newbie Guide

Introduction

Welcome to the The Complete Newbie Guide! This guide is intended for the complete newbie to OpenDominion. Absolutely no prior knowledge is necessary. While there are links to other articles in this text, you will most likely not understand what they say until you have read this entire guide, so please read the whole guide as some things are clarified further below from where they are first mentioned. Dominion is a difficult and challenging game so it will take a while for everything to sink in. However, to use the words of the late Douglas Adams: Don't panic!

Structure

The game is structured into rounds with each round lasting 50 days. When a round is over, the final rankings for that round are entered into Valhalla, the game is reset and a new round begins.

When you register, you are assigned a dominion (comparable to a nation). Your dominion starts 250 acres large and with a minute army. The 250 acres are in turn split into different landtypes, whose purpose is to build buildings upon. Different buildings can only be built on a certain landtype. You defend your land with your military. What you build and what army you train depend on your play style and race.

Your dominion is placed in a realm (comparable to a region). Realms typically contain 10 or 15 dominions (including yourself) but may contain less. Realms are numbered from 1 and up. You interact with your realm mates (realmies) using the Council, which is a simple messageboard only accessible within your realm.

The game is based on an hour-system, which means that everything moves forward every hour. It, for instance, takes 12 hours to construct a building, meaning that if you construct a building at 7 AM, it will be complete at 7 PM. Every hour, you gain new resources from your production.

Getting Started

So you just signed up and someone was kind enough to throw you this link (or maybe they did it before you even signed up)? Excellent! Let's Begin by Picking a Style.

Style

Before picking a race, you must know what style you will be playing. Style is the most fundamental part of a strategy. There are three basic styles of playing:

1. Exploring 
2. Attacking 
3. Converting

There is a fourth style called 'atteching' which is most definitely not recommended for new players. It will not be discussed here.

Exploring

Exploring is the act of growing by simply exploring for land. To play as explorer means that you will not train any offensive army and solely train enough military to defend your land.

This is a very easy and simple way to get to know the game but you will not get the thrills of attacking. It is also good if you will not be able to be very active in your playing.

Attacking

Attacking is the act of growing by invading other dominions. When you invade another dominion, a portion of their land will become yours (they lose some and you gain some). This is by most considered much more difficult than to explore. You have to train a military capable of both defending your own land while also having an offensive military strong enough to break other, less fortunate, dominions' defenses.

This is recommended if you want to have fun and will be able to be active during the round.

Converting

Converting is the act of first exploring and then converting into an attacker. A converter will normally explore the first half or so of the round, training only a defensive army. When they have reached their converting point, they will cease to explore and instead of it, train an offensive army and invade other dominions for the rest of the round.

This is recommended if you want to try out both exploring and attacking. It will give you the benefit of learning and studying the game as an explorer and then the thrills as an attacker.

Race

Once you have decided what style to play, it's time to pick a race. In theory, you can play any style with any race but chances are it will be a terrible experience. To make it easy for you as a newbie, here are lists of suitable races for the three play styles.

The races described here are the only ones that will be discussed in this guide.

Exploring

• Human / Nomad
• Icekin
• Merfolk
• Nox
• Sylvan
• Wood Elf

Humans, Nomads and Merfolks have the advantage of not being dependent on a landtype. Icekin, Nox*, Sylvan and Wood Elf have defensive units whose strength depends on what percentage of a certain landtype your dominions consists of (mountain, swamp, forest and forest respectively). Keep this mind and remember that different buildings can only be built on certain landtypes and you will realize that you will be able to have a more diverse build layout with Human, Nomad or Merfolk than with the other races. However, the other races' defensive units are really good. In the end, it's entirely up to you what race you pick. * Nox Nightshades actually depend on built/constructed acres of swamp.

Attacking

• Human / Nomad
• Lizardfolk
• Merfolk

Humans and Nomads have very strong units but their offensive units are on the expensive side but while other attack units take 12 hours to return home from an invasion, the Human and Nomad units will return in 9 hours. This is a great advantage.

Lizardfolks however have cheap offensive units, but bothersome defense. Their main advantage is that their defensive units act as partial spies which will help you greatly. Their units swim and do not require boats to be sent out on invasion.

Merfolks are similar to Lizardfolks in that they have expensive defense, cheap offense and do not need boats. They do however not have the espionage advantage but they have more efficient DP, which means that you have to train fewer (but more expensive) units which pay off in the long run.

Converting

• Human / Nomad
• Wood Elf

Surprise, surprise - Humans and Nomads are on this list too. They are excellent explorers and fine attackers so they naturally make for great converters.

Wood Elves are among the strongest converters in the game and thankfully also one of the easiest. Their defensive units are, as mentioned above, landtype dependent but unlike any other race, their offensive unit too depends on a landtype (forest). This means that the more forest you have, the stronger your entire army becomes. Their units are however too expensive to attack with, but for converting they are superb.

Registration

• The fields First Name, Last Name and Age are completely unimportant and can be anything you want (although age has to be a number and if you are under 13, you will be told to ask your parents' permission and have them send an email to the game administrator). Email is important and must be a working one since you will receive a verification mail. Be sure it's correct.
• Username is the username with which you log in. It is not visible to anyone else and is not important. You can vary this from round to round if you wish. The same goes for password. If you specify a password with special characters (other than A-Z and 0-9), the game will strip these without letting you know. The final password will be in the verification mail.
• Dominion Name is the name of your dominion and it will be what other players see you as. A-Z, 0-9, !, -, . and : can be used to form a Dominion Name.
• Ruler's Name is the name of the ruler of your dominion. It is suggested to not use your Username as Ruler's Name, nor is it recommended to use the alias or nick you use otherwise. The latter is to avoid people from finding out who you are. What title(Lord, General, Duchess) you use has no significance at all other than determining gender of your ruler (see titles).
• Race should be a piece of cake to pick by now.
• The next and final option is Realm. Here you can pick if you want to be randomly put in a realm, if you have a pack that you are going to join or if you are going to create a pack for you and a group of friends. Since this is a newbie guide, you probably should stick to the default selection.
• Click Submit.
• Confirm the information.
• Click Submit this Information.
• Log in and specify your authentication code. Click Verify.
• Done!

The Menu

So you have now signed up and are looking at something you may not be able to quite understand. This is normal and you will be guided through it. Again: Don't panic!

Let's begin by exploring the menu.

Almost all menu items contain links called About... and Help for x. Click these to read the game's own description of something, called the Scribes.

Status

Here is an overview of your dominion. It will say how long is left of protection (more about that later), how much of the different resources you have and how great your army is.

Advisors

Under the various advisors you can see how your dominion is doing and what is going on.

• Production Advisor tells you about your dominion's production and employment.
• Military Advisor shows your military in detail. (This is not where you train.)
• Land Advisor shows how your land is broken down into different landtypes and it shows any incoming land.
• Construction Advisor shows what buildings you have, what percentage they make up and any incoming buildings. Barren land is land that is not yet built or does not have buildings in progress.
• Magic Advisor shows spells currently affecting your dominion.
• Rankings Advisor (also linked to on the Status page) shows how you are fairing compared to the rest of the game.
• Statistics Advisor shows unreliable information about offensive power, defensive power and defense/acre. Wizard and Spy Ratios are interesting numbers. The rest are solely trivia.

Daily Bonuses

Every day, your dominion is given two bonuses.

   Platinum bonus: you gain 4*peasants platinum.
   Daily bonus: you can 20 acres of your home landtype. 

Explore

Here is where you explore for land. You will also see a simplified version of your Land Advisor.

Construction

Here is where you build on your land. It is broken down into landtypes and you will see what buildings go where. Incoming buildings are shown here, but not in as much detail as in the Construction Advisor.

Re-zone Land

Rezoning is mostly something attackers do. They may have conquered landtypes that do not entirely suit their needs and will hence want to rezone. Rezoning comes at a cost depending solely on your landsize and you can rezone any landtype into another landtype.

Improvements

This page serves two purposes. The main one is to manage your Castle Improvements (see the linked article). If you are teching (not recommended for newbies though) it will say here if your dominion has enough research points to obtain (take) a new technological advancement. If you click View Your Dominion's Technological Advancements you will see more details about your teching status.

Wonders

Below your castle, there may or may not be a wonder, depending on whether your realm has taken one. See wonders for more details.

National Bank

The national bank is used scarcely and only in emergencies (such as when in dire need of food). Races (aside from Nox) that depend on a certain landtype will be producing a lot of lumber or ore, which they initially will be using for Improvements. But later into the round, it will typically pay off more to exchange the excessive ore and lumber into platinum using the National Bank.

Military

Here is where you maintain your army. You will see what percentage of your total population your army is and how many peasants you have. This is also where you set draft rate (see linked article).

All units cost 1 draftee except ArchMages which cost 1 wizard.

Invade

This is where attackers go to have fun. Here is also where you accurately can calculate your own offense and defense (unlike the unreliable numbers found in the Statistics Advisor). To do so, click Calculate your Attack with the Battle Calculator.

Battle Calculator

Target Race does not matter for any of the recommended attacking races, nor does Target Land Total. War Status only matters if your realm is at war with another realm.

Below, you will see a list of two or three units. If you see two or three depends on if your elite defender (Human: Knight, Nomad: Blademaster, Lizardfolk: Chameleon, Merfolk: Leviathan) has any offensive power. These units should however extremely rarely be used for offense.

To calculate your offensive power (shortened OP) and at the same time defensive power (shortened DP), specify how many offensive units you want to send and click Calculate. You will see a table with two columns; one showing OP and one showing DP and all bonuses applying to them.

Defense Calculator

There is also a Defense Calculator which is only available to players with premium account. It is however rarely used.

Magic

Here is where you cast spells.

Espionage

Here is where you perform espionage.

Messages

On this page you can read messages you have received as well as send messages to other dominions. Messages are deleted after 7 days if not deleted manually.

Council

A mini-messageboard for your realm only.

Op Center

Informative operations (spells and espionage) are stored here. See Op Center.

Government

Here you vote for the monarch of the realm, usually agreed upon in the council. This is also the place where you can apply for or leave the Royal Guard / Elite Guard

Diplomacy

Monarchs can declare war or peace here. Other dominions can see current relations with other realms. See Diplomacy.

The Realm

This page is sometimes referred to realm view or realm browser. Clicking the menu item will bring up an overview of your realm and all dominions in it. You can either click Previous or Next to see an overview of other realms, or specify a certain realm's number to see it.

Rankings

A page containing all current rankings of the game.

Town Crier

The town crier (usually called TC) shows you what is happening in your realm. If someone in your realm attacks or is attacked, this will show up in the Town Crier. When new wonders are discovered or when a wonder is taken by a realm, this will be shown in the Town Crier.

Logout

Pathway to RL.

However, see Activity.