DomiNations

Gameplay

Dominations is a massively multiplayer online game. Players build a base with defensive, economic, workshop, and unit training buildings along with several wonders and a Town Centre. After training appropriate troops, players search for suitable opponents to attack and gain loots and medals.

Players can choose to play as any of the 8 different nations - Korean, British, Romans, Chinese, Germans, French, Japanese, or Greeks; and advance through 10 ages from Dawn age to Atomic age, expanding the base in each age.

There is also a single player campaign where players practice strategies by battling in a historical perspective. DomiNations introduced World War on December 2, 2015, where two alliances combat for victory.

Update 4.7 'The High Seas!' introduced Expeditions where players can send free villagers and a general on Exploration, which brings resources, mercenary armies, and new Troops and Blessings.

Nations

There are 8 nations to play as, with each nation having their own advantage. Currently, the following nations are available in the game:

Resources

Resources are used to upgrade buildings and troops, to research various enhancements, and train troops and tactics. The resources in the game are:

Except Crowns, all other resources are also obtained in huge amount from multiplayer battles. Crowns can be purchased for real money.

National Trade Goods

National Trade Goods were introduced in v4.1. These trade goods cannot be stolen from Storehouse, and can be used in the Embassy to form Coalitions.

Ages

Players start with Dawn Age, which signifies the dawn of civilization. Purpose of this age is to provide a tutorial of the game. After this age, players advance to next ages by upgrading the Town Center. Each age unlocks new buildings and troops. Currently, the players can reach Global Age, which is the highest available age in the game. Atomic Age has been announced as the next step and Space Age is the final age scheduled to be released.

From Dawn age to Stone age, players gather resources mainly in hunter-gatherer fashion. Starting from Bronze Age, players can loot from multiplayer battles. Similarly, every age correspond to a particular era of Human Civilization.

Buildings

The buildings are the basic building blocks of the game. The buildings resemble the architectural design of the civilization of the player, and their appearance change as the player advance through age. However, all players have same set of buildings. The most important building is the Town Center which defines the age of the gameplay. Other buildings are broadly classified into Economic, Defensive, and Military buildings. Players can choose to build a Wonder in Bronze, Classical, Gunpowder, and Industrial age to enhance individual style of gameplay.

The buildings are suitably arranged and enclosed inside walls, and are connected to the Town Center using roads.

There is also an Alliance Gate through which players can join alliances with other players.

Units

Players can train military units using food from barracks. The barracks provide 8 different troops, each with own strengths and weaknesses. Advanced military units can be trained from factory, and aerial units from Airstrip using oil. As of April 6, 2016 release of version 4.7, there are 5 kinds of factory units and 3 kinds of aerial units.

Players can train Generals from the castle and mercenaries from Mercenary camp. Unlike other units, surviving mercenary units cannot be reused. The Embassy allows coalitions to be formed with 8 different civilizations. These coalitions provide various bonuses during World War.

Alliance and World War

By rebuilding the Alliance Gate, players can join Alliances with other players. In Alliance, players can request and donate offensive troops. Update 3.0.x introduced World War, where two alliances can engage in war with each other.

Reception

As of March 2016, the game had been downloaded over 19 million times. In late 2016, game has released new update with Atomic Age, allowing players to further progress. At the same time, the game was seriously affected with server problems, causing often game crashes, hindering players from further progress. Other aspect of the game, World War, was also affected through alliance sandbagging, another problem left unsolved by developers. With customer services being completely non helpful, responding on each player submitted ticket with copy/paste answers that do not reflect nature of the players problem, number of active players has significantly declined in early 2017. Although new update is announced to be published, official game forum is voicing concerns of players that is will again, like all previous updates, create more problems than solve them.