War replay finally

Maximizing loot without mercenaries or tactics

Bonus if you guess the music in the background. Didn't realize I was recording microphone as well 🤔

Peter Walking Around

Just a random attack to see if I could record and post it. 

War rules: how to get in wars, how to stay in them

Rules:

1. Do both attacks, miss one attack without good reason, sit out next war 
2. Try to do first attack in the first 12 hours so we can organize the clean up
3. Aim at enemies that you are almost certain that you can 5 star them, specially on the first attack
4. The use of mercenaries is a must
5. Coalitions are Coalitions are much encouraged

Strategy:

Unless the leaders say otherwise, the strategy will be:

1. Top 10 clears 1-20 (Peter, i think this is too much, top 10 normally misses a few attacks, maybe we should say 1-5 or 1-7 clears 1-10, 1-14. I'm afraid ppl outside the 10 will attack too low and we'll end up with 3-4 starred enemies on the 10-20 margin)
2. Bottom 10 attack highest possible with almost certain 5 star

Criteria for including ppl: who gets in?

1. Follow the rules and strategy
2. The better you perform the more chance to be in the next war
3. Communicating in chat earns bonus points

A short video showing how destructive can donated cannons be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J21lwZWDS3w

Tactics Tutorial: how they work, when to use them

I recommend you watch this video, I think it's very important for beginners but more advanced players will probably learn some stuff from it too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-DRZxfC1Ys

How distance is calculated: range of defense buildings. When will TC's units spawn?

When you're studying an opponent in War many times you are not sure if you can rally to a certain point because you don't know if mortars or cannons will attack you there. Or you may not be sure if TC's troops will come out or when will they come out.

If you zoom in a tower, you will see it is a 3x3 matrix, TC is 6x6, ballistas are 2x2, and so on. The whole map is a matrix and thus you can always calculate who's gonna attack what.

Distances are calculated different for units and buildings:

1. Units:  To know how far a unit can hit u can just count. Think of the unit's position as distance 0 and count the spaces towards the building. If the distance is < than range you can hit it, if its > or equal, then u can't. Let's see a couple examples:
1. To say that a Fusilier has a 1.5 range means that he can attack a building  (next to the wall) from behind a wall because walls are 1x1 buildings. Since the building is 1 unit, you can hit it. In earlier ages soldiers have a range of 1, and since 1 is just the same as the distance you have to cover (walls are 1x1) they can't hit buildings that are right behind walls
2. Archers: normal archers have a range of 4. Castles are 4x4. If you want to atack a building that is behind a castle, you won't be able to unless you surround the castle from the sides (range 4 = distance 4 --> cant attack it). But if you're British you will have range 5 and thus will be able to attack that building.
2. Buildings: Building's range is calculated from the center of the building, instead of the side of it. Examples:
1. Tower: range of 7, but since it is a 3x3 building, the center is 1.5 units away from the side of the tower, so 7-1.5 = 5.5 range. A tower will attack anything that is <5.5 units away from the center of any of its sides. Its important to notice that all defensive buildings have less range from their corners than from the sides. When you click on them you see the circle around them, well, the maximum distance from the circle to the buildings is the line from the circle to the center of any of its sides.
2. Catapult: range of 10, but its 3x3, so it attacks 8.5 units away from its sides.
3. Town Center: IMPORTANT!! This is an exception, the TC has a range of 5 units, but thats counting from the center of its sides, not from the center of the building. So if you stay further than or just 5 units away from its sides units won't spawn, the second you move to 4.9 units away, they will. 
1. IMPORTANT: normal defenders from the TC spawn in a few seconds, but troops donated from allies spawn almost immediately, in about 1-2 secs. 

How World War works: matchmaking and glory system

Summary:

1. Alliances are matched based only on the strength of combatants 
1. strength is calculated as the sum of average strengths of each player. Player strength comes from all offensive and defensive upgrades and research. Walls do count, base layout does not. This means both Alliances will be equally powerful in paper, what matters then is attack skills, base layout (cause it's not taken into account) and organization. 
2. The amount of glory earned or lost depends on three factors:
1. The difference of Alliances glory, like in an ELO system. If they have more glory than you then you will win more glory and loose less, and viceversa.
2. The size of the war. The above step gives a number which is multiplied by a factor which is bigger the bigger the war. 
3. The average strength of Alliances. A war with all Iron Age players will give and take less glory than a war with all Global Age players (Age doesnt really matter, only strength, but they're normally very correlated)

Here you have the original post in reddit from Mike Engle, a Senior Game Designer here at Big Huge Games, and below I copied the text from it: 

Hi everyone, I’m Mike Engle, a Senior Game Designer here at Big Huge Games! I’ve worked on most of the games BHG has released over the years, starting way back on 2003’s Rise of Nations as part of the balance team. On DomiNations I work on combat, game balance, and planning new features. Today I get to tell you all about an exciting new feature we’re adding to Alliances and World Wars.

At its core, DomiNations is a game about competition. You begin with a small tribe in the Dawn Age, and in the course of advancing through history you end up attacking and being attacked. You’re constantly competing for the resources you need.

In these individual attacks you also earn Medals, which rank you against all other players individually. World Wars represent our first step in expanding these individual battles into team play, where your Alliance fights an enemy Alliance for even more resources. However, there has not been a system to rank Alliances’ performance in World Wars, similar to ranking individual players with Medals.

The Glory System

Glory is a new system that ranks your Alliance’s skill at winning World Wars against other Alliances. Your Alliance’s Glory increases when you win a World War, and decreases when you lose one. Several things affect how much Glory you’re fighting for in each World War:

• Glory of Opposing Alliance: You’ll gain more Glory winning against an Alliance that has higher Glory than yours (and lose less from defeat)
• Number of Combatants: Up to 2.5x more Glory is at stake depending on the number of combatants in the War. More combatants, more Glory.
• Alliance Average Rating: Up to 2.7x more Glory is at stake based on all combat-related upgrades its members have made. More details later.

If you want to gain Glory, keep winning Wars with your Alliance. Even if you’re in a small Alliance, you’re going to steadily gain Glory if you just keep winning. If you’re in a larger Alliance, you can advance considerably faster up the leaderboard by fighting bigger Wars (a 50v50 War has 2.5x as much Glory at stake as a 10v10 War.) Lastly, you can advance faster by going to War with members who have advanced to later Ages, like the Industrial or Global Ages.

Keep in mind that the players you go to war with with determine who you’re matched against in World War, so you’re always better off bringing your most skilled, most active players. Those players will help you win the War and bring Glory to your Alliance!

Also remember that those increased stakes go both ways: in a 50v50 war you’ll gain 2.5x more Glory if you win the War, but you’ll lose 2.5x more Glory if you lose it. The fastest way to the top of the leaderboard is to fight in the largest wars possible!

We’ve been thrilled that players have embraced War competition, even going so far as to organize their own tournaments! (Until Glory launches you might want to check them out for yourself.) Even while working on the launch for World War we knew we wanted a feature that ranked Alliances against each other. It was great to see players taking initiative to fill in the gap while we worked on the feature.

When Glory goes live, all Alliances will start on even footing with 12,000 Glory, which is also the lowest Glory an Alliance can have. Any Wars started after that point will award Glory to the winning Alliance, so if you want the best chance to be on the top of the leaderboard, you should make sure that you are not in a war when this change goes live!

The Alliance leaderboard will switch to ranking Alliances by Glory, since it will be a more accurate measure of an Alliance’s ability to fight together as a team. An Alliance’s Medal score will still be displayed and is the tie-breaker on the leaderboard when two Alliances have the same Glory.

So far we’ve covered the basics, which should be enough to get you started. Stick around if you want the fine details on how Glory works.

The Nitty Gritty Glory is based on the Elo rating system, which was originally created to rank chess players. Here’s how we use it to determine how much your Alliance’s Glory changes after a War ends.

First, we take the standard Elo change, which is based on the relative Glory levels of each Alliance (you win a lot more for beating a higher-ranked Alliance than a lower-ranked one). Then we apply a multiplier based on the number of participating Alliance members per side:

War size	Multiplier
10	89%
15	100%
20	111%
25	133%
30	156%
35	178%
40	200%
45	211%
50	222%

Player Rating is the sum total of a hidden value assigned to every combat-related upgrade (buildings, techs, unit upgrades, everything.) The final multiplier we apply to Elo is based on the average player rating of your Alliance’s War participants. The table below shows the multipliers we would apply based on expected player ratings in each Age:

Age	Multiplier
Iron	67%
Classical	83%
Medieval	100%
Gunpowder	117%
Enlightenment	133%
Industrial	150%
Global	167%

It’s worth pointing out that your Age doesn’t directly affect your player rating. This table is just based on what we would expect for an average player in that Age. This means even if all your players are the same age, you might qualify for a higher or lower multiplier depending on how many upgrades each individual player had.

As a side note, we also use player ratings in World War matchmaking. We sum up the player ratings of your Alliance’s warring members to get your alliance rating, and we match you up with another Alliance that has a similar alliance rating.

That brings our latest Design Spotlight to a close. Hope to see you all in-game in the next World War!