Or rather: how I got to GP in a breeze. Of course, there are many ways to play this game and I won’t claim I fully understand all the dynamics of the game yet. But I played COC very intensely for nearly two years, and the games obviously have a lot in common. Here’s a couple of points I adhered to that got me a fully maxed Medieval base (except walls, and few library projects) in just over a month of game play. I hope this guide will help some new players.
This guide will be targeted to fairly active players (like myself), who like to attack, and can spend a couple of half hours each day to progress their base.
Three basic rules
Rule #1: always prioritise offensive upgrades. You will be attacking much more than being attacked, so make sure your army and tactics are in top shape
Rule #2: don’t progress until the next Age until you have your current based maxed out. On COC forums, you can find 1000s of posts on this topic, and most players would agree that maxing is the way to go. In DomiNations, this is even more valid imo, as you can only attack Ages adjacent to your own. Even in late Medieval, my major source of loot are Classical Age bases. If I would have progressed to GP early, access to Classical would have disappeared, making raiding less effective. (UPDATE read some opposing views further down the thread. If you are a skilled and devoted player, you may decide to ignore this rule and rush to EA instead)
Rule #3: whenever possible, try to raid in stretches and spend your resources on (meaningful) upgrades before logging off. But I would recommend against just dumping all gold in walls, out of fear of being raided. You will keep most (about 80%) of your resources even after being 5-starred. With a decent base design, most people will have a hard time 5-starring you in Classical or Medieval, so resource losses will generally not be too bad. And the really big upgrades (1,2m extra garrison) cannot really be done in one stretch.
Nations
I picked Roman because of the 10% extra troop space and because all top players seem to have that. There is a lot written about Nations on the forum, and I won’t repeat that.
Wonders
Again you can find a lot on the forum. I did some reading before making my choice, and Acropolis/Colosseum seemed to make most sense. Not sure if it makes a big difference really.
Attack strategy & Troop composition
In Stone and Bronze Age: just use bowmen and warriors to empty exposed farms and caravans/roads. Use as few troops as you can, and don’t worry about not winning the battle. You will stay at 200 medals for a while.
In Iron Age the above strategy still works fine. You will mostly be raiding Classical Age bases, as these simply have higher level farms/caravans, and more of them. And since you are not worried about winning the battle, it does not matter that the opponent is much stronger.
In Classical & Medieval, I switched tactics. I used 3 raiders, a dozen archers, and the rest heavy cavalry. With maxed barracks (and the extra 10% troop space), this meant 8 Cataphracts in Classical, and 11 Knights in Medieval. I would deploy the Knights first, and let them clear all defences. Then send in the raiders to mop up the resources. The archers I would try to use to support the Knights against defending troops (forest, outside stables, Colosseum).
With this strategy, I would usually loose only very few troops. Often nothing. The obvious advantage is that one can raid very effectively in a short time. Ballista towers are the biggest threat. That is where you want to use your rally for. When faced with two ballistas, spawn the troops so that they will immediately target one ballista. Then use the rally for the second one.
I would happily skip bases where this strategy would not work (separated, buried and walled ballista towers). If the loot were exceptionally good however, I would still go for it and use a sabotage tactic to freeze a ballista (and maybe my Collosseum “rage spell”).
Only tactics I used so far are First Aid (healing) and Sabotage (freeze). I bring 2 of each.
The next button is your friend (at least at these early ages), and have some patience in finding a proper base to attack. With my medieval army I would not attack even weak bases with less than 50+50k loot.
Base layout
Base layout really makes a big difference. You will notice that quickly when attacking yourself. Still, the majority of Classical and even Medieval bases out there are noob bases. Many people just have one large rectangular wall around all their buildings. That makes no sense. Use walls to make sections, to stop troops from progressing. Upgrade those inner walls first.
You also find plenty of bases with Mills and Markets on the outside and the Town Center inside. While this makes it harder for the opponent to 5-star you, you will be an easy target for people looking for resources. And that is the majority of opponents!
Bottom line: Storages inside the walls, the big town center outside, most defensive buildings inside, use walls to create compartments.
Don’t focus on the road bonus too much. It is often quoted in base design, but a couple of 10% up or down makes little difference (eg 50% extra bonus on 70 pieces of lvl 4 road amounts to about 9k gold extra per day). Don’t compromise your base design for 9k gold per day.
Below I will attach the base layouts I used in Classical and Medieval. Both turned out to be excellent. The Classical base I took from Blackbrain here on the forum. The other one I adapted from a base I found on the internet, by someone called tip9. Copy them, or make a screen shot of a base that you come across and which looks hard to beat.
I attacked this same Classical age base with a full Medieval army. Just for fun because I would normally skip such bases. Indeed I failed miserably!
Medal count
An interesting topic, and you can read a lot about this on the forum.
I care very little about medals in the early phase of the game. I want to be in a range where my attack strategy is successful so I can get my resources more quickly and keep my villagers busy at all times. I have been hanging between 350 and 550 medals for most of my time in Classical and Medieval. Since I win most battles, that meant I had to frequently drop medals by spawning an archer or raider on a base, and then surrender. I would also abort an attack as soon as I claimed all food and gold. No need to get extra stars. Better to keep my medal count where I want it to be. The extra rewards for being in higher leagues are rather minor (for an active player).
If I would encounter a base with juicily filled Mills outside, I’d release a couple of raiders. Wait till they die (sometimes a rally can postpone that a little bit), and surrender. A lucrative way to drop medals.
Base upgrades
In compliance with rule #1: focus on offensive upgrades. In a new age, my first upgrade would be the blacksmith. And I kept that running as much as I could (only prioritising the troops I used, eg I have so far ignored all troops but raider, archer, knight and generals).
After that I’d prioritise barracks, then academy.
Meanwhile storage (required for the more expensive stuff like Castle).
And only when I had to make a gold upgrade, I’d do defense.
But one other guideline I used as well (both for base and library): do the most expensive upgrade that you can afford. If you sit on 750k gold, you choose the 700k catapult upgrade over the 400k tower.
Library projects
Which one to do first... As always, focus on technologies that help your troops! Here’s my priority list. (you need a level 3 Library to do them all).
If you come from COC, then Blessings are something new. If you played Boom Beach, you will notice they resemble statues. But Blessings are consumable products. I have not really used them a lot at all. With the exception of Fortification and Tower. I would get those when I needed to log off with appreciable amounts (several 100k) of resources. Fortification blessing is especially good value for money.
Caravans, Farms, Trees and Animals
I have upgraded Caravans and Farms to Lvl 6 or 7. Beyond that, I felt it was a waste of builder time. The extra gold or food is marginal compared to what you can raid, or what can be raided from you. So better spend villagers on offense and defense. Even if I had two villagers left, I would not upgrade a farm, unless overnight. I’d rather keep the option to upgrade walls, and hunt an animal.
I find hunting and gathering rather tedious, and the gold and food rewards are poor. But gold mines, trees and animals are a good source for trade goods. Don’t ignore them, but don’t go out of your way to hunt every animal.
Wow, that’s become a huge post... Again, I hope new players find this useful. Drop a comment if you did!
This guide will be targeted to fairly active players (like myself), who like to attack, and can spend a couple of half hours each day to progress their base.
Three basic rules
Rule #1: always prioritise offensive upgrades. You will be attacking much more than being attacked, so make sure your army and tactics are in top shape
Rule #2: don’t progress until the next Age until you have your current based maxed out. On COC forums, you can find 1000s of posts on this topic, and most players would agree that maxing is the way to go. In DomiNations, this is even more valid imo, as you can only attack Ages adjacent to your own. Even in late Medieval, my major source of loot are Classical Age bases. If I would have progressed to GP early, access to Classical would have disappeared, making raiding less effective. (UPDATE read some opposing views further down the thread. If you are a skilled and devoted player, you may decide to ignore this rule and rush to EA instead)
Rule #3: whenever possible, try to raid in stretches and spend your resources on (meaningful) upgrades before logging off. But I would recommend against just dumping all gold in walls, out of fear of being raided. You will keep most (about 80%) of your resources even after being 5-starred. With a decent base design, most people will have a hard time 5-starring you in Classical or Medieval, so resource losses will generally not be too bad. And the really big upgrades (1,2m extra garrison) cannot really be done in one stretch.
Nations
I picked Roman because of the 10% extra troop space and because all top players seem to have that. There is a lot written about Nations on the forum, and I won’t repeat that.
Wonders
Again you can find a lot on the forum. I did some reading before making my choice, and Acropolis/Colosseum seemed to make most sense. Not sure if it makes a big difference really.
Attack strategy & Troop composition
In Stone and Bronze Age: just use bowmen and warriors to empty exposed farms and caravans/roads. Use as few troops as you can, and don’t worry about not winning the battle. You will stay at 200 medals for a while.
In Iron Age the above strategy still works fine. You will mostly be raiding Classical Age bases, as these simply have higher level farms/caravans, and more of them. And since you are not worried about winning the battle, it does not matter that the opponent is much stronger.
In Classical & Medieval, I switched tactics. I used 3 raiders, a dozen archers, and the rest heavy cavalry. With maxed barracks (and the extra 10% troop space), this meant 8 Cataphracts in Classical, and 11 Knights in Medieval. I would deploy the Knights first, and let them clear all defences. Then send in the raiders to mop up the resources. The archers I would try to use to support the Knights against defending troops (forest, outside stables, Colosseum).
With this strategy, I would usually loose only very few troops. Often nothing. The obvious advantage is that one can raid very effectively in a short time. Ballista towers are the biggest threat. That is where you want to use your rally for. When faced with two ballistas, spawn the troops so that they will immediately target one ballista. Then use the rally for the second one.
I would happily skip bases where this strategy would not work (separated, buried and walled ballista towers). If the loot were exceptionally good however, I would still go for it and use a sabotage tactic to freeze a ballista (and maybe my Collosseum “rage spell”).
Only tactics I used so far are First Aid (healing) and Sabotage (freeze). I bring 2 of each.
The next button is your friend (at least at these early ages), and have some patience in finding a proper base to attack. With my medieval army I would not attack even weak bases with less than 50+50k loot.
Base layout
Base layout really makes a big difference. You will notice that quickly when attacking yourself. Still, the majority of Classical and even Medieval bases out there are noob bases. Many people just have one large rectangular wall around all their buildings. That makes no sense. Use walls to make sections, to stop troops from progressing. Upgrade those inner walls first.
You also find plenty of bases with Mills and Markets on the outside and the Town Center inside. While this makes it harder for the opponent to 5-star you, you will be an easy target for people looking for resources. And that is the majority of opponents!
Bottom line: Storages inside the walls, the big town center outside, most defensive buildings inside, use walls to create compartments.
Don’t focus on the road bonus too much. It is often quoted in base design, but a couple of 10% up or down makes little difference (eg 50% extra bonus on 70 pieces of lvl 4 road amounts to about 9k gold extra per day). Don’t compromise your base design for 9k gold per day.
Below I will attach the base layouts I used in Classical and Medieval. Both turned out to be excellent. The Classical base I took from Blackbrain here on the forum. The other one I adapted from a base I found on the internet, by someone called tip9. Copy them, or make a screen shot of a base that you come across and which looks hard to beat.
I attacked this same Classical age base with a full Medieval army. Just for fun because I would normally skip such bases. Indeed I failed miserably!
Medal count
An interesting topic, and you can read a lot about this on the forum.
I care very little about medals in the early phase of the game. I want to be in a range where my attack strategy is successful so I can get my resources more quickly and keep my villagers busy at all times. I have been hanging between 350 and 550 medals for most of my time in Classical and Medieval. Since I win most battles, that meant I had to frequently drop medals by spawning an archer or raider on a base, and then surrender. I would also abort an attack as soon as I claimed all food and gold. No need to get extra stars. Better to keep my medal count where I want it to be. The extra rewards for being in higher leagues are rather minor (for an active player).
If I would encounter a base with juicily filled Mills outside, I’d release a couple of raiders. Wait till they die (sometimes a rally can postpone that a little bit), and surrender. A lucrative way to drop medals.
Base upgrades
In compliance with rule #1: focus on offensive upgrades. In a new age, my first upgrade would be the blacksmith. And I kept that running as much as I could (only prioritising the troops I used, eg I have so far ignored all troops but raider, archer, knight and generals).
After that I’d prioritise barracks, then academy.
Meanwhile storage (required for the more expensive stuff like Castle).
And only when I had to make a gold upgrade, I’d do defense.
But one other guideline I used as well (both for base and library): do the most expensive upgrade that you can afford. If you sit on 750k gold, you choose the 700k catapult upgrade over the 400k tower.
Library projects
Which one to do first... As always, focus on technologies that help your troops! Here’s my priority list. (you need a level 3 Library to do them all).
- Chivalry – chapter 1 – knights need all the health they can get
- Cast Iron – all chapters – extra offensive power
- Battle tactics – all chapters
- Reinforcements – all 3 chapters – these are tough defenders
- Watch Towers – 1st chapter
- Machinery – all chapters – get that extra Catapult
- Free companies – two chapters suffice.
- Fortification – all chapters – very expensive, but extra defensive building is worth a lot
- Zeal – chapter 1
If you come from COC, then Blessings are something new. If you played Boom Beach, you will notice they resemble statues. But Blessings are consumable products. I have not really used them a lot at all. With the exception of Fortification and Tower. I would get those when I needed to log off with appreciable amounts (several 100k) of resources. Fortification blessing is especially good value for money.
Caravans, Farms, Trees and Animals
I have upgraded Caravans and Farms to Lvl 6 or 7. Beyond that, I felt it was a waste of builder time. The extra gold or food is marginal compared to what you can raid, or what can be raided from you. So better spend villagers on offense and defense. Even if I had two villagers left, I would not upgrade a farm, unless overnight. I’d rather keep the option to upgrade walls, and hunt an animal.
I find hunting and gathering rather tedious, and the gold and food rewards are poor. But gold mines, trees and animals are a good source for trade goods. Don’t ignore them, but don’t go out of your way to hunt every animal.
Wow, that’s become a huge post... Again, I hope new players find this useful. Drop a comment if you did!
Attachments
Last edited:
Keep up the great work!
