DomiNations Update 12.18 - Combat Rebalance pt.1

Greetings Leaders,

DomiNations Update 12.18 shapes up to be a massive release with the first wave of our Combat Rebalance initiative highlighted in our Road Ahead 2025 Post. We’re also implementing a second set of updates in our Replay rework! Both of these quality of life updates have a special write-up from the folks working directly on these projects to give insight into the process!
In that same vein of ‘Quality of Life’, we’re adding a faster way to utilize Speed Ups to complete your upgrades. Update 12.18 also introduces the next Councilor, and the Manufactory now allows you to purchase Materials. Then, finally, minor UI and Graphical fixes.

Replay Reliability pt. 2
If you missed our write-up on the current status of the Replay work that went into this update, catch up on the full details ‘here’. To highlight, Replays have been undergoing a massive overhaul to correct and implement the many changes that have arrived in DomiNations. While the current state of Replays with update 12.18 offers markedly improved results, there is still more to be done before we’re ready to say we’re 100% complete. Be sure to check out the post to see what improvements were made, how replays got to where they were, and what we’ll be doing for the future!

Combat Rebalance Initiative - Fighters & Defenders
In our Road Ahead 2025 post, we discussed our plans to introduce incremental steps for rebalancing combat within DomiNations. 12.18 releases some changes to Fighters and Defenders, and to share some insight on this process, we have our Game Designer, RAH-66, to talk about the upcoming changes!

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Hello Leaders!

Today, we’re going to talk about the new series of updates we are working on called the Combat Rebalance Initiative. We want the DomiNations battle experience to be what YOU make it. Do you love setting up a Museum loadout for several different army compositions? We want you to feel empowered to try multiple strategies and remove any gates that prohibit you from doing so. Do you love watching attackers fall to your horde of defenders and insatiable Air Defense? We want to see you thrive and be an asset to your Alliance in World War. Do you just think Assault Vehicles are neat? We want you to have an avenue to succeed with them.

Here are our goals for the Combat Rebalance Initiative as a whole:

1. Ensure there is a wide array of viable strategies that can be used to win battles.
2. Ensure defensive play is just as viable as offensive play.
3. Ensure that every unit, tactic, and building has a distinct reason to be invested in and brought to battle.

So, without further ado, let's talk about the problem areas tackled in the first wave of Combat Rebalances.

Fighters are the first Airstrip Troop players unlock. Their presence on the battlefield is felt the instant a player unlocks them. In earlier ages, the Fighter performed its role as a Defender Destroyer quite well. It is a moderately strong unit, with the best Population to Hitpoint ratio in the entire Airstrip and, with a bit of library research, even provides suppression on Defensive Buildings it strikes. It isn’t until later ages in the game that Fighters become a problem. Its role as a Defender Destroyer loosens as it gains levels and players unlock a second Airstrip. The Fighter becomes nigh unbeatable at very high levels of play, and can easily destroy Buildings and Defenders alike, leaving little room for defensive players to actually interact with the attacking strategy, especially when the attacker concentrates all of their Fighters on destroying the building that is meant to counter it - the Air Defense.

Defenders themselves also perform more desirably in earlier ages than later ages, but to a lesser degree. In later ages, they often clump together, resulting in one of two situations: either the entire defending Army gets destroyed immediately, or they form a completely impenetrable wall with no way to press forward as an attacker. There isn’t currently enough difference between the types of Defenders to force attackers to prioritize where they send their Defender Destroyers.

The following changes are being implemented to address these problems and better align the units with their intended roles.

1. Fighter
   • Changed “DPS vs Defenders” bonus text to say “DPS vs Cavalry and Heavy Tanks”
     • Fighters have always functioned this way in-game; we simply updated the text here to be more accurate.
   • Marginally increased Movement Speed
   • Slightly increased Turn Speed
   • Reduced base damage by 50%
   • Increased Damage vs Cavalry and Heavy Tanks by 100%
     • This neutralizes the 50% base damage reduction when damaging Cavalry and Heavy Tanks
   • Increased Damage vs Infantry by 100%
     • This neutralizes the 50% base damage reduction when damaging Infantry
   • Reduced Damage to Air Defense, Town Center, and Drone Command by 40%
2. Heavy Infantry Defender
   • Dramatically increased Movement Speed
3. Ranged Infantry Defender
   • Dramatically increased Movement Speed to match Heavy Infantry Defender
4. Bazooka Defender
   • Marginally increased Movement Speed
5. Machinegun Defender
   • Very slightly decreased Movement Speed to match Bazooka Defender
6. Heavy Tank Defender
   • Slightly decreased Movement Speed
7. Garrison and Tank Depot
   • All upgrades now require 4 Citizens instead of some requiring 6 Citizens
     

To highlight a few things, these changes accomplish:

• Allows the Fighter to flourish as the on-demand Defender Destroyer, evading more S.A.M. Batteries and G.C.I. Radars with tighter turns and reach their target and redeployment zone faster.
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• Increases the viability of defensive strategies against Fighter-only army compositions.
• Allows defenders to spread out on the battlefield, resulting in a more complex defensive strategy.
• Increases the lethality of Heavy and Ranged Infantry Defenders, resulting in both more useful foot-troop defenders as well as more opportunities for attackers to exploit less-defended areas of the map.

You’ll also notice the Garrison and Tank Depot upgrades will no longer increase their Citizen requirement after a certain level. While not directly combat-related, we believe this change ungates defender-focused strategies and resolves a frustrating inconsistency in the game. Please note that this change only affects upgrades that start after downloading the latest update.

We will be carefully monitoring the results of these changes, and if need be, tweaking things in the future to ensure these units land in the right place. These are just the first steps to tackling our goals in making combat in DomiNations the best it can be, with more updates to come in future releases!

What would you like to see in future combat-based updates? We value your feedback. Thank you for reading, Leaders!

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Speed Up Auto Fill
We’re adding a new button for players to easily use their stores of Speed Ups. In Update 12.18, when speeding up an upgrade, you’ll now see the ‘Autofill Speed Ups’ option. Tapping this will use the Speed Ups you own to complete the Upgrade. The Speed Ups used will start with your highest (ex. 5d Speed Up) and use the minimum amount of Speed Ups possible to finish the upgrade or get as close to finishing it with the amount of Speed Ups available.

New Councilor - Charlemagne (Leader)

Charlemagne’s vision as the exclusive ruler of the Franks was to unite all Germanic people under Christianity. He pursued this goal by waging a three-decade long war against the Saxtons, eventually winning the conflict and putting in place extreme laws against all non-Christian people. At the same time as his conquest against the Saxtons, he conquered the kingdom of Lombards in northern Italy, as well as the Moors in northern Spain, instilling Christianity and supporting the Church anywhere he and his army went. Later, he would be crowned the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Leo III, thus creating a new empire that would remain in power for over 800 years. While Charlemagne did not gain any additional authority from this title, it did formalize his rule over his conquered territory, and allowed him to lay the foundations for the newly established Holy Roman Empire.

Charlemagne’s legacy lives on in many forms, not the least of which is through his sword he wielded in battle. His Joyeuse Sword has been on display in the Louvre Museum, and has also been used in numerous coronation ceremonies of French Kings since his death in 814 AD. His arm has also been preserved in a reliquary upon his canonization long after his death in 1481, however the modern catholic church does not formally recognize Charlemagne as a saint.

In DomiNations, his stats will increase the damage output of your Paratroopers and increase the HP of your Heavy Cavalry in both Primary and War Hall versions. You can start recruiting Charlemagne on 6/9!

Common	Uncommon	Rare	Epic	Legendary
Heavy Cavalry HP +6%	Heavy Cavalry HP +8%	Heavy Cavalry HP +11%	Heavy Cavalry HP +14%	Heavy Cavalry HP +18%
	Paratrooper DMG +6%	Paratrooper DMG +8%	Paratrooper DMG +10%	Paratrooper DMG +12%
		Enemy Tower DMG -15%	Enemy Tower DMG -18%	Enemy Tower DMG -24%
			Heavy Cavalry HP +14%	Heavy Cavalry HP +18%
				Paratrooper DMG +12%

Manufactory - Rush Materials
You’ll now be able to speed up your Manufactory Material production by spending Crowns. In the Manufactory Production screen, you’ll now see a button that will allow you to purchase 10 of a Material.

Material	Cost (Crowns)
Carbon	15
Titanium	30
Iron	40
Thermic Brass	75
Plastic	25
Glass	45
Polycarbonate	20
Fiber Mesh	80
Siliconite	50
Biofoil	70
Platinum	250

Additional Updates

• Multiple Localization updates
• Minor UI Graphical tweaks
• Changed Library Tech level based Troop names to generic Troop Names
  • EX. Spearhead Machine Gun II DMG should now read as Machine Gun Infantry DMG
    • Plans are underway to also do the same to University. We’re hoping to create consistency with descriptions throughout the game.
• Fixed a crash caused by upgrading the Alliance Gate with reduced citizen requirements researched.
• Updated Tournament of Glory Encyclopedia entry for better understanding with the Glory Decay system.

 

So you claim that the lines in the museums at Velord and ASDIC on Damage to airfield troops affect Tupolev? And how does the size of the building affect its damage?

ASDIC provides -19% Tup damage nerf. Without recon and Welrod, Tups sometimes can even take out 180+ adth Filipino base’s tower if the defender doesn’t use ASDIC. (Also suppose the defender has around 20 adth in museum) Bomber-type aircraft damage to buildings is variable, depending on the size of the building and where you click on it. That’s why I use sometimes not always.

 

I'm still reading everyone's comments and feedback, and I wanted to tackle this at least, which may also answer some other responses here.

I completely understand the frustration with the adjustments mainly made to fighters. For what it's worth, we do have data that backs up the need to adjust fighters in some way. They became too potent an offensive strategy and strayed from their intended use (Defender Clearing). That being said, this also means that a key anti-defender is losing some potency. If there is confusion around the DMG output, to clarify, the base DMG reduction essentially doesn't apply to the bonus DMG for HTs and Defending Infantry. Also, please keep in mind the fighter will be moving faster, allowing for more strikes.

That said, this is only part one of the rebalance adjustments. We have more to come—I can't say how soon—but this is only an incremental adjustment we're making as we continue to make balance adjustments. I'm taking down the feedback here and sharing it with the design team to help inform how they might improve this experience in the future.

This is the core issue many players are concerned about—fighters are currently used primarily to target defensive structures and buildings, not just defenders. While this may differ from their original design, players have adapted and found an effective way to use them within the current game mechanics. Changing that now throws a wrench into the attacking dynamic and risks making fighters effectively useless in high-level play.

 

risks making fighters effectively useless in high-level play.

'useless' is a term lots of people are using without even waiting for the change. It might just make things challenging but lots of players don't want to be challenged, they just want things easy.

 

So you claim that the lines in the museums at Velord and ASDIC on Damage to airfield troops affect Tupolev? And how does the size of the building affect its damage?

The larger the building, the more damage (very slight) a single bomber can do to it. And yes, not only ASDIC and Welrod but also a few legendary artifacts can affect Tup damage like Elephant Archer Quiver. That’s why some top fighter attackers use Welrod more often than Raven Rattle, especially against Filipino ASDIC bases.

 

Thanks for the info. Another question. Does anything in the Council influence Tupolev and the Citadel Reconnaissance Aircraft?

The larger the building, the more damage (very slight) a single bomber can do to it. And yes, not only ASDIC and Welrod but also a few legendary artifacts can affect Tup damage like Elephant Archer Quiver. That’s why some top fighter attackers use Welrod more often than Raven Rattle, especially against Filipino ASDIC bases.

 

Thanks for the info. Another question. Does anything in the Council influence Tupolev and the Citadel Reconnaissance Aircraft?

Only Churchill’s committee bonus will affect them (-28 hp)

 

Only Churchill’s committee bonus will affect them (-28 hp)

Do the lines Bonus to Scout Aircraft damage for Morse, Washington, Nobel affect the Scout Aircraft troop Tactics?

 

Do the lines Bonus to Scout Aircraft damage for Morse, Washington, Nobel affect the Scout Aircraft troop Tactics?

Yes. This can be proved through MP legendary councilors like Joan of Arc.

 

The thing is, I did tests. I beat the World War base with and without these advisers. There was no noticeable difference. But many say that these lines work on World War.

 

The thing is, I did tests. I beat the World War base with and without these advisers. There was no noticeable difference. But many say that these lines work on World War.

It’s a bit more obvious on fighters, with and without 30%.

 

Those 2 comments are the most spot on concerning the rebalance:






We can all agree that dominations is stagnant now. Up to digital age, players can use many troop combos with varying degrees of success. From info and drone age and up, things are VERY tough. Defence is strong and the waves of defenders are coming non stop. No problem so far. The problem is that there is no way to kill those defenders unless you either:
- play Lego with 3 weapons and drum/caesar/gemini legendary artifacts and you are evading all bastions through the constant use of assault rally and normal rally.
- play bombers. This is unstoppable now because strikers use commandos to take down all air defences prior to the first bomber run. Even bases with strong bomber debuffs are falling to this strategy. This needs rebalance
- play fighters. As @witCat already said, it is a viable strategy but only for the best out there.
So, to sum up, with this rebalance, you are making defenders faster thus making things for Lego tougher, while at the same time you are eliminating one attacking strategy - fighters!! So how are you achieving diversity?

I am playing both as a striker and a defender at various stages of the game. In my opinion, rebalance in dominations means:

- Reduce base fighter damage by 15%. Increase the damage done to defenders by 50% if they are under protect status, otherwise no change. Why it should be -50% and +100%? That's way too much of a change. Try for a more conservative change of stats.
- make factory troops relevant again. Buff them, give them new abilities, do something... A little brainstorming:
* Make HTs fire over walls, change their firing rate.
* Make bazookas have splash damage of 1
* Give MRLs 2 more rockets and the ability to have an untargeted status for 10 secs (like HTs are unbetrayable)
- change the Attack heli range to 6 for main weapon and 5 for supression weapon so that they are somewhat viable and have one more strategy in offence
- change the coding of bastions that act as magnets to land armies. Even engineers prefer to blow up bastions instead of wall segments. It is ridiculous that we have to micromanage our armies to this extent...
- reduce base bomber hp by 10-15% to make it harder to stay alive till end of battle.
- increase the Air capacity by 1 or even 2. That way strikers will prefer to take a few planes to deal with defenders and thus make land armies viable.
- increase overall army capacity by 40
- extend Quick Victory time by 15%. The bases are way bigger now than 5 years ago. We still have the same timings.
- extend battle time to 3:50
- Assault vehicles will never become viable unless you incorporate them in museum and cut their Troop space by 30-40%. They will act as part of an army and not on their own.

Additional improvements

1. NTGs. This system is obsolete. It worked fine before the museum came out. Nobody had a specific role back then. The national goods were cycling every week to have a variety. But now, going forward, dominations requires players to be either defenders or strikers. This means that we need the same NTGs every damn war and we are all depleted!! It is impossible to target specific bases for their NTG and get it. Everything is random now. So fix this at a high priority pls.
I
2. Council. Fusion and probability of getting your preferred councilor even in blue or purple is almost close to zero with that many of them. Change the odds, introduce "council only" events like you do for museum.

3. Museum crafting. This is maybe the biggest (and less rewarding) time waster. The easiest solution is to give us the option to reroll a second line and be done with it. The other solution is to create a search tool that the player will setup with his own parameters and the tool will search only for the specified artifacts with the specified lines, as long as the player has the game running i.e. WW equipment with 2 lines of ADTD and 2 lines of ADTH.

sorry for the long post

Agree for heli range
- bastions are good if you are deploying wall miner means mostly it's in start nd u can rally or make damage bonus to bastion . New drone has negotiated bastion and caltrops.
- agree with bomber thing
- increasing air capacity by 2 will be too much , we can increase it by one most of times , I have 40+ such building. 2 fighters can all the damage from 5 GCi and 7 sams.
- quick victory time can be increased by many artifacts , but yeah +10 sec would be nice as most of those artifacts don't offer much great buffs.
- battle timer is good enough , few times we r like 96-97% done and have army alive and time ended. Then again 10 sec would be enough.
- yeah things like machine gun infantry , armored car and assault vehicle will be only for utility purposes and should be strengthened more.

Additional stuff you said
1.) the problem is that ntg chest gives random things even if you have them. If you have your storehouse full of them then too it gets add up which is annoying. So I think if capacity is full that national trade good should not come at all out o chest and it will be convenient.
2.) yeah council fusion odds are too low , should be atleast 10-20% at final stage .
I would like to tell that I have opened over 200 chests of artifacts etc having 1% chance and haven't got anything, first my gf ran off and this shit makes me feel very unlucky, please introduce mercy system in chests too like council , if we open 99 chest and haven't got anything if 1% chance at 100th we should get it guaranteed and if we get it before the mercy thing resets to 0/100.

3.) I crafted a lot burned 500000 fragments and didn't got anything better , I must say that old players have mostly good artifacts now getting something good is rareity. Earlier troops were few and lines were also few but now there are tons of lines so getting 3 or 4 good simultaneously lines is very improbable. 2 rerolls should be there .

It was great reading you thanks for insights bro

 

super godo changes! thank you

 

I'm still reading everyone's comments and feedback, and I wanted to tackle this at least, which may also answer some other responses here.

I completely understand the frustration with the adjustments mainly made to fighters. For what it's worth, we do have data that backs up the need to adjust fighters in some way. They became too potent an offensive strategy and strayed from their intended use (Defender Clearing). That being said, this also means that a key anti-defender is losing some potency. If there is confusion around the DMG output, to clarify, the base DMG reduction essentially doesn't apply to the bonus DMG for HTs and Defending Infantry. Also, please keep in mind the fighter will be moving faster, allowing for more strikes.

That said, this is only part one of the rebalance adjustments. We have more to come—I can't say how soon—but this is only an incremental adjustment we're making as we continue to make balance adjustments. I'm taking down the feedback here and sharing it with the design team to help inform how they might improve this experience in the future.

With all due respect . You are completely 100% wrong about this ! I wonder if you folks actually play the game . And I am not trying to be insulting or a wise ass, I really feel the folks at BHG aren’t playing , because if they did they wouldn’t be making such horrible changes .
‘FIGHTERS ARE NOT OVER POWERED . Only a handful of players can take down tough defensive bases with fighters. I am not one of them , I have top museums set up for all primary attack strategies , fighters being one, but I am unable to take down tough bases despite having all stats MAXED in museum and council and using tups, recon TT and a hangar . It is hard! This will ruin fighters as a viable strategy! We only have 3 viable attack Strats now…fighter, bomber, mortar…you will now make this only 2 left! And with the boosted defenders now, really you will render mortars (which are also struggling now) useless too, so we will be left with 1 viable attack strategy! This is gaming suicide! Please reconsider this change. I know many fighter oriented players who will quit the game over this! Pepole who are long time players , who spend money! You will lose customers ! People spend years crafting to build a museum (it takes a very very long time to craft a good museum…years!) and much money buying the best leggie artifacts …to only have all the effort and money rendered useless is quite a slap in the face to your most loyal players. DONT DO THIS! CHANGE COURSE, IT IS NOT TOO LATE !

 

money or server... but anyways money. the second option is not legal.

Ive been playing for years, and I have never seen any kind of building that can increase air spaces by more than 1, and that only for 7 days, so I'm very interested to learn exactly which building(s) can increase it by 2. There is nothing like that in the store.

 

I will just leave this here as proof that bombers are unstoppable. Watch till the end where museums are being shown.
For those that do not see it, the striker has ZERO OFFENSIVE COALITIONS

I usually agree with you Oddin, but I disagree here. Bombers are NOT OP. It requires a lot of skill to carry out successful bomber attacks on tough defensive bases either. Most of the time our top bomber guys get 3-4* and only occasionally and usually these are weaker bases .there have to be some attack strategies that are successful in 5 staring bases . I have a top bomber museum and I can tell you it is HARD! As it is defense that’s the problem it is so OP that almost nothing works for the vast majority of us . They need to get rid of the protect for spawn units imo. And increase army size .
leave fighters, LEGO and bombers alone, they are not the problem , there are only 3 viable Strats as is, they are ruining fighters , and with boosted defenders will ruin Lego too…Don’t ruin bombers as well, there will be no killing 3D bases at all anymore , ever.

 

however the poor administration in improving the overall bugs that have lasted for years, there is to say that the guys are trying hard enough. fighters can't shoot down the city center with a scout on top of it. as they did years ago for bombers they should have done it before... fighters are made to shoot down defenders and preserve ground troops. though i feel sorry for the guys who invested all these years to orient museum board for fighters. we would see how the impact on the game will be.

 

Ive been playing for years, and I have never seen any kind of building that can increase air spaces by more than 1, and that only for 7 days, so I'm very interested to learn exactly which building(s) can increase it by 2. There is nothing like that in the store.

 

@Harlems369th
Ok , with this rebalance you trying
to turn fighters to a more "defender cleaning" role so you decided to reduce by a huge amount their damage on buildings and especially on TC, Air defences and drone command.

So, why you don't boost their damage against defending tanks /troops/generals more so fighters will get that specific role for real??
* Fighters at this moment STRUGGLING to kill those hyper buffed defenders with protection applied on them from munitions.

So they won't get that " defender cleaning" role if you don't give them a decent boost against defenders.

With a damage boost against defenders,New offensive strategies may be found and fighters will objectively have their true role.

 

I just tested this base (Hp 144%, -34% invading bomber damage + interference directive + Filipino) both with and without coalitions. In both cases, the air defense was taken out using only two bombers. Either coalitions have no effect in both offense/defense or there’s something wrong with the game. One of our attackers loaded 3D coals and 5* both opponents 3D defenders.

Thank you for testing it. I do not know what is wrong but one thing is certain, BHG needs to find the root cause. This is very important if defensive coalitions are not taking effect during WWs.

 

This is the core issue many players are concerned about—fighters are currently used primarily to target defensive structures and buildings, not just defenders. While this may differ from their original design, players have adapted and found an effective way to use them within the current game mechanics. Changing that now throws a wrench into the attacking dynamic and risks making fighters effectively useless in high-level play.

I'm hoping for an alternative for our fighter focused players sooner rather than later. I've expressed as much that the play around fighters are highly invested, and that this doesn't feel great. But rest assured that this is an incremental update with more to come. I'm encouraging that we share our future plans for rebalance changes, not necessarily concrete numbers right away, but at the very least units we're looking to target for changes.