Open Dominion (text based online war game)

[sweetandcool]

I also tried OpenDominion and had a slightly worse experience. I tried a more conservative approach than sweet, exploring and playing it like an idle game rather than attacking (which is supposed to be more newbie-friendly). I got attacked early on and more or less knocked out of the game. There were also cool mechanics like a research tree and a variety of buildings and spells, but the game was too short for me to get far in the research tree, and they were off meta and weak anyways. It's extremely meta-dominated and hard to play as a casual.

Did your team help you at all?

It's not helpful that the wiki is kinda not great.

I think the general strategy is not hard to grasp:

Build alchemy during the protection phase, and smithies to reduce unit recruitment costs and whatever the building is to reduce construction costs.

Then if you are going for attacking strategy, you sacrifice some of your economic base to build offensive units and maybe make a few more smithies.

Then, throughout the game, as you grow, you transition slowly away from those buildings and more towards other buildings that support your chosen strategy.

Since the effects of buildings (other than homes and production buildings) scale with the percentage of the total buildings you own, this is why the wiki says never to build alchemy buildings outside of protection. It's actually rotten advice for a newcomer because while it generally is true, if you get invaded and lose half of your alchemy buildings, and you are an explorer, there is no way to recover your economy other than building some more alchemy buildings.

So I actually think the strategy is easy to pick up after a game or two, the experience of knowing the "meta" of knowing when to build or recruit and how much, definitely is not easy to pick up.

I also realized late game there is a handy tool to see who all is in range and can attack you. But there are tons of people in range generally, so if you want to use that info to get a feel for how much DP you need then you will have to run a ton of info ops, I suppose.

But at least then, in regards to knowing how much DP you "should" have, you don't need to rely on meta except in the early game right out of protection.

This is all stuff I figured out on my own, because the community is poor at teaching new players and their advice is more a matter of telling new players what to do. But I don't really hold that against them since I've realized that the skill of teaching is actually not a very common skill at all, and most communities rely on telling.

[DiplomacyandWarfare]

I also tried OpenDominion and had a slightly worse experience. I tried a more conservative approach than sweet, exploring and playing it like an idle game rather than attacking (which is supposed to be more newbie-friendly). I got attacked early on and more or less knocked out of the game. There were also cool mechanics like a research tree and a variety of buildings and spells, but the game was too short for me to get far in the research tree, and they were off meta and weak anyways. It's extremely meta-dominated and hard to play as a casual.

Did your team help you at all?

It's not helpful that the wiki is kinda not great.

I think the general strategy is not hard to grasp:

Build alchemy during the protection phase, and smithies to reduce unit recruitment costs and whatever the building is to reduce construction costs.

Then if you are going for attacking strategy, you sacrifice some of your economic base to build offensive units and maybe make a few more smithies.

Then, throughout the game, as you grow, you transition slowly away from those buildings and more towards other buildings that support your chosen strategy.

Since the effects of buildings (other than homes and production buildings) scale with the percentage of the total buildings you own, this is why the wiki says never to build alchemy buildings outside of protection. It's actually rotten advice for a newcomer because while it generally is true, if you get invaded and lose half of your alchemy buildings, and you are an explorer, there is no way to recover your economy other than building some more alchemy buildings.

So I actually think the strategy is easy to pick up after a game or two, the experience of knowing the "meta" of knowing when to build or recruit and how much, definitely is not easy to pick up.

I also realized late game there is a handy tool to see who all is in range and can attack you. But there are tons of people in range generally, so if you want to use that info to get a feel for how much DP you need then you will have to run a ton of info ops, I suppose.

But at least then, in regards to knowing how much DP you "should" have, you don't need to rely on meta except in the early game right out of protection.

This is all stuff I figured out on my own, because the community is poor at teaching new players and their advice is more a matter of telling new players what to do. But I don't really hold that against them since I've realized that the skill of teaching is actually not a very common skill at all, and most communities rely on telling.

I, in fact, spent an hour reading the wiki and talked to a bunch of people in the discord, then used an excel sheet someone made for the protection phase. I'm not saying the game is too complicated (in fact it is, in principal, pretty simple). It's just meta-dominated.

[sweetandcool]

I also tried OpenDominion and had a slightly worse experience. I tried a more conservative approach than sweet, exploring and playing it like an idle game rather than attacking (which is supposed to be more newbie-friendly). I got attacked early on and more or less knocked out of the game. There were also cool mechanics like a research tree and a variety of buildings and spells, but the game was too short for me to get far in the research tree, and they were off meta and weak anyways. It's extremely meta-dominated and hard to play as a casual.

Did your team help you at all?

It's not helpful that the wiki is kinda not great.

I think the general strategy is not hard to grasp:

Build alchemy during the protection phase, and smithies to reduce unit recruitment costs and whatever the building is to reduce construction costs.

Then if you are going for attacking strategy, you sacrifice some of your economic base to build offensive units and maybe make a few more smithies.

Then, throughout the game, as you grow, you transition slowly away from those buildings and more towards other buildings that support your chosen strategy.

Since the effects of buildings (other than homes and production buildings) scale with the percentage of the total buildings you own, this is why the wiki says never to build alchemy buildings outside of protection. It's actually rotten advice for a newcomer because while it generally is true, if you get invaded and lose half of your alchemy buildings, and you are an explorer, there is no way to recover your economy other than building some more alchemy buildings.

So I actually think the strategy is easy to pick up after a game or two, the experience of knowing the "meta" of knowing when to build or recruit and how much, definitely is not easy to pick up.

I also realized late game there is a handy tool to see who all is in range and can attack you. But there are tons of people in range generally, so if you want to use that info to get a feel for how much DP you need then you will have to run a ton of info ops, I suppose.

But at least then, in regards to knowing how much DP you "should" have, you don't need to rely on meta except in the early game right out of protection.

This is all stuff I figured out on my own, because the community is poor at teaching new players and their advice is more a matter of telling new players what to do. But I don't really hold that against them since I've realized that the skill of teaching is actually not a very common skill at all, and most communities rely on telling.

I, in fact, spent an hour reading the wiki and talked to a bunch of people in the discord, then used an excel sheet someone made for the protection phase. I'm not saying the game is too complicated (in fact it is, in principal, pretty simple). It's just meta-dominated.

I think I was agreeing with you

But it's easy for me to get carried away.

[Erix]

Those are both fair assessments, to be honest. It’s kind of a running joke in the community that the primary communication (in the main discord server) is gifs. If, for no other reason, than because a lot of game-specific content can be very sensitive, as it’s against game policy to post about info of peoples dominions.

Also, as for the realm-response to requests, that’s a very fair take. But you have to keep in mind that the last round was a sprint/testing round and the majority of players either don’t play, or don’t play very actively. You were actually in my realm, and I know for a fact the majority of the realm was pretty inactive, as those rounds are best for learning basics or testing out new features/changes for bugs, before it gets rolled into a real round.

I’m sorry you guys didn’t have an enjoyable experience, but thanks for trying it out! It’s a game that you’re either really in-to, or not at all (kind of diplomacy).

[Erix]

But also— a new (real round) is starting in a week or two. 47 day rounds play much differently than sprints and realms are typically much more active and available to teach.

Hopefully you’re willing to give it another shot!

[Jmerc]

For sure a full (real) round is almost arguably a different game. And as was stated a lot of players aren't as invested in the shorter test rounds, some don't even participate in them. But glad to see at least some interest being shown in OpenDominion. We have a good few players that we have gotten to play Diplomacy (myself included, I was not even aware of Diplomacy at all). But hopefully we can get a few more interested players to at least give it a whirl! But for sure, at least in my opinion, you would feel like you are playing a slightly different game in a full round.

[Chairpusher]

What happened to this game ?

[Chairpusher]

Can I still get to play ?

[learnedSloth]

I guess that all that could answer your questions have fallen down that rabbit hole.

[Chairpusher]

Oh well my paws and whiskers time to go.

[Erix]

It’s still going! There’s a new round starting this weekend—In approx 54 hours.

[kingofthepirates]

It’s still going! There’s a new round starting this weekend—In approx 54 hours.

Call you a necromancer for just reviving a dead chat lol

[Erix]

Because sometimes I go a couple months between checking this forum (depends if I’ve been in a diplomacy game recently or not). Happy to report that I did just finish one not that long ago though :)

Also, for anyone that asked- yes, Open Doninion is still alive a well. There’s a new round about to kick off this weekend, so it’s a great time to join!