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.