DomiNations Sitrep #1

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Greetings Leaders,

Welcome to our first Sitrep!

For the future of DomiNations, we wanted to be able to share the content you, as Leaders, can look forward to, all in one easy place. Our goal with Sitrep is to bring you up to speed on the state of DomiNations, including new features, updates, and opportunities for the community to get involved.

The team has been hard at work on upcoming features for Drone Age. We just released a teaser of things you can begin to think about regarding the Drone Command building. However, that doesn’t mean we have been leaving other aspects of DomiNations behind. We’re taking a look across the board at the economy of resources within the game and listening to player feedback that you’ve been sharing on the forum and social. We’re also looking at Troops across the ages, your experiences with features, and how players approach combat. Thanks to your generous feedback and passion, I’m happy to share that we have a few updates in the works!

85% Cap Update
In 11.2.5, we’re taking a look at how your modifiers from all sources impact your buffs and debuffs. We’re going to readjust how these stats interact before the battle. There were some instances in which High-Quality Artifacts that you built toward the Defensive end could create a scenario that didn’t feel great when focusing on these strategies. This gave advantages to offensive Museum Artifact builds and would sometimes create scenarios where Defensive Artifacts could lose their impact due to the level of buffs that Offense would have.

Before this update, the Debuff modifiers would be calculated as follows:

Player A: +200% Infantry Health VS. Player B: -200% Invading Infantry Health

200 + -200 (Caps at -85) = 115
Result: Player A’s Infantry will have 115% Health in battle as the Defensive Modifier cap would be applied before the final calculation.

Before the currently planned update, the Debuff cap would occur before the end result, meaning that anything higher than -85% would be lost.
The following is an example of what you could expect when these changes roll out:

Before your battle begins, we calculate the total of both the Buffs and Debuffs from the Attacking Army and the Defending Army. Once the result is calculated, the 85% cap is applied. The following example shows a standard matchup in which the stats negate each other, and no changes impact the Invading Infantry.

EX:
Player A: +200% Infantry Health VS. Player B: -200% Invading Infantry Health

200 + -200= 0
Result: Player A’s Infantry will receive No Change in stats, and the battle proceeds as normal.

But what if your Debuff greatly overshadows the opponent's Buff?

Player A: +100% Infantry Health VS. Player B: -200% Invading Infantry Health

100 + -200= -85
Result: Player A’s Infantry will have -85% Health in battle, which is the highest a Debuff can be valued!

The cap will apply to all Battle-Related debuff modifications affecting units and buildings. To be clear, the example here is just that and is subject to change. We’ll cover finalized details on the update to this modifier cap as we get closer to release.

Oil Economy Update
We also have a quick update on a resource in DomiNations. Based on feedback, we are re-evaluating the Oil Economy within DomiNations. These updates are planned to roll out in 11.2.5. We will have plenty more to share in the coming months, including a deep dive into the Drone Command Building.

Let us know what you think in the comments, and thank you again for your continued support for DomiNations!


Update
Greetings Leaders,

First, thank you all for your feedback. With such a big balance update, we wanted to be able to get it in front of the community ahead of time, and we’ve heard your suggestions and concerns regarding the upcoming changes.

Because of this, we have decided to hold off on implementing the 85% debuff cap for the time being. We feel that these changes are still very important to DomiNations, but we will be going over community feedback to take a look at the concerns we’ve heard from the community regarding the impact on more Defensive playstyles.

Thank you again for your dedication and passion for DomiNations! If you have any additional feedback or suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to let us know in this thread.
 
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I find it super annoying that you keep releasing new stuff without fixing issues caused by your previous "updates". One of the members of my team loses ALL his troops after every attack without getting a retrain. This has been going on for weeks! "Customer service" gives him no help or offers a fix. Are you trying to drive players away?
 
The problem with the Oil economy is all the Instant Retrain Blessings you've been chucking around like candy. Free money.
 
Greetings Leaders,

First, thank you all for your feedback. With such a big balance update, we wanted to be able to get it in front of the community ahead of time, and we’ve heard your suggestions and concerns regarding the upcoming changes.

Because of this, we have decided to hold off on implementing the 85% debuff cap for the time being. We feel that these changes are still very important to DomiNations, but we will be going over community feedback to take a look at the concerns we’ve heard from the community regarding the impact on more Defensive playstyles.

Thank you again for your dedication and passion for DomiNations! If you have any additional feedback or suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to let us know in this thread.
 
Greetings Leaders,

First, thank you all for your feedback. With such a big balance update, we wanted to be able to get it in front of the community ahead of time, and we’ve heard your suggestions and concerns regarding the upcoming changes.

Because of this, we have decided to hold off on implementing the 85% debuff cap for the time being. We feel that these changes are still very important to DomiNations, but we will be going over community feedback to take a look at the concerns we’ve heard from the community regarding the impact on more Defensive playstyles.

Thank you again for your dedication and passion for DomiNations! If you have any additional feedback or suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to let us know in this thread.
In fact some things need to be improved in the defensive sector.
I will list some of which I remember or believe can help.

- Houses: Return the generation of house defenders to the highest garrison level. You suddenly changed without any warning and that left a dent in the defense.

- Sniper Tower: Review any improvements regarding damage or attack speed. This defensive construction can in part resolve some imbalances.

- Mortar: This defensive construction needs to be adjusted for greater range. This change can occur on higher level Mortars. Maybe from level 11.

- Recon plane: Small reduction in duration and perhaps analysis damage.

- Sabotage: This war tactic needs a small duration reduction.

- Defender generation: Remove the 10 second minimum block for second wave generation and subsequent ones. It makes no sense to limit the generation if a player wants to invest in this strategy. If you can't remove the block due to technical issues, please make this clear to the community.

- Greater transparency for war stats: The player should somehow be able to check the stats of their troops, tactics and defensive buildings after receiving the buffs from research in general, museum, council and coalitions.

-Parliament: Fix the visual bug and definitively adjust the range for the defender spawn and cannon.
 
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Greetings Leaders,

First, thank you all for your feedback. With such a big balance update, we wanted to be able to get it in front of the community ahead of time, and we’ve heard your suggestions and concerns regarding the upcoming changes.

Because of this, we have decided to hold off on implementing the 85% debuff cap for the time being. We feel that these changes are still very important to DomiNations, but we will be going over community feedback to take a look at the concerns we’ve heard from the community regarding the impact on more Defensive playstyles.

Thank you again for your dedication and passion for DomiNations! If you have any additional feedback or suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to let us know in this thread.
Thanks for listening people who are helping you guys to make game even better.
You just listen players who are in game more than 5 years and with high VIP status and you will make this game better than now.

But job is not done with just cancelling this update.
I will add some things more on Rafar post.
In fact some things need to be improved in the defensive sector.
I will list some of which I remember or believe can help.

- Houses: Return the generation of house defenders to the highest garrison level. You suddenly changed without any warning and that left a dent in the defense.

- Sniper Tower: Review any improvements regarding damage or attack speed. This defensive construction can in part resolve some imbalances.

- Mortar: This defensive construction needs to be adjusted for greater range. This change can occur on higher level Mortars. Maybe from level 11.

- Recon plane: Small reduction in duration and perhaps analysis damage.

- Sabotage: This war tactic needs a small duration reduction.

- Defender generation: Remove the 10 second minimum block for second wave generation and subsequent ones. It makes no sense to limit the generation if a player wants to invest in this strategy. If you can't remove the block due to technical issues, please make this clear to the community.

- Greater transparency for war stats: The player should somehow be able to check the stats of their troops, tactics and defensive buildings after receiving the buffs from research in general, museum, council and coalitions.

-Parliament: Fix the visual bug and definitively adjust the range for the defender spawn and cannon.

- add defensive nation (all nation we have are offensive with very small percent of help on French Korean, Chinese or Japanese nation)

- add defensive coalition against barrack troops (offensive have Aztec and Cherokee for boosting damage and hitpoints with pretty high stats and defensive player have 0%, absolutely not fair)

- nerf recon and black hawk medics troops

- shortening building time can help a lot

- remove that stronghold troops have impact from museum

- definitely all defensive building need boost in hitpoints and damage, especially mortars, snipers and machine towers (it's funny that vault, market, mills and some more building have more hitpoints than defensive buildings)

Maybe I forget something to write but somebody will add on this.

Please listen voice of players who are with this game a long time and make this game to be challenge for attackers and defenders.
 
well done BHG!! That was the correct thing to do. And now that you are on a roll, @Tedi925 and @Rafar made a VERY GOOD list of all the things you need to evaluate and implement in order to make things interesting and balanced between offence and defence. Some of them are bugs that need to be fixed anyway like the parliament cannon and the shooters level from the houses.

Consider this as the best TO DO list you could have !!

and btw, have you seen this? The cannon stops when blitz is active but only the def spawning should stop, not the bombardment!!

PS why our signature does not show up?
 
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This Game favors offence too much as is....BHG doesn't seem to understand that wars atm are dominated by attackers and most wars in the top 300 are all time wars which means all Defensive bases are failing.
Alliance are dominated by attackers and real defenders are hard to come by as it's so hard to make a Defender account in this game as it's so one sided atm and BHG constantly just adds more and more to the attackers advantages.
What most Attackers don't seem to realize is they have an ENORMOUS ADVANTAGE, because as an attacker they are able to specialize in one style of Attack (Com/zook....para/Ht....Fighter/HT....Para/heli.....etc etc) and concentrate their entire museum towards that style, where as the Defender has NO CHOICE but to weaken itself and DEFEND AGAINST ALL STYLES OF ATTACK, this alone is a major difference.
On top of that we all know there are so many TTs for attackers and few for defenders.
Then there are the buildings,Nations,coalitions etc etc......i understand that BHG wants to make this game an attacking game and a big point of difference compared to other games out there.....but it's far too one sided ATM.......already most players in a war are attackers....if the game was struggling with attackers and was predominately defenders than i would understand something like this.

if anything you need to give Defenders more of a chance....i would think most players would be happy to see wars not go to time and see the defender able to do their job.
 
Greetings Leaders,

First, thank you all for your feedback. With such a big balance update, we wanted to be able to get it in front of the community ahead of time, and we’ve heard your suggestions and concerns regarding the upcoming changes.

Because of this, we have decided to hold off on implementing the 85% debuff cap for the time being. We feel that these changes are still very important to DomiNations, but we will be going over community feedback to take a look at the concerns we’ve heard from the community regarding the impact on more Defensive playstyles.

Thank you again for your dedication and passion for DomiNations! If you have any additional feedback or suggestions on what you would like to see, feel free to let us know in this thread.
That was the right decision. Now continue this way by listening to all sides, don’t do the same mistake as months ago as you just taken every suggestion to nerf attack helicopters. Collect ideas and bring them together to a concept. Don’t nerf single troops or TT in combination with boosting defense like hell. Find a balanced way.
 
Fact is, the massive defensive suggestions must be limited by Age (e.g., Drone+) else it'll kill the game. The majority of vocal players on this issue are massive Drone Age players in top alliances that focus on War, and seemingly stare at this topic from that single perspective.

Is it feasible/reasonable to have a single defensive base design defend against all attack styles? A base that defends against fighters, bombers, and paratroopers; defends against heavy tanks, commandos, attack helicopters, mortars, ..., everything. And do so despite the troop tactics used. I'd think not.

But let's assume for a moment that the ultimate defender dream comes true; that all defensive buildings are more powerful, offense is restricted, and time wars are dead. A skilled attacker getting 4 stars is a good win. This is certainly reasonable. But now imagine the 99% of players not in these top alliances/ages, what happens to them? They now struggle in multiplayer and barely gain a star in war. They use free troop tactics, use war tactics like demolition, non-maxed coalitions, odd wonder choices, and so on. Yes, this is the large majority of players.

Now let's say defensive improvements are instead limited to Drone+ or Information+, and focus on War. This would mean the majority of players will be unaffected and continue upgrading to Cold War with their Industrial fighters, continue to use 8 different troops per battle, continue to do their not-so-ideal thing yet somehow still gain resources and Triumph. This while big defenders can defend again in top Wars.

That said, here are additional rough ideas related to this Age-specific defensive idea:
  • Limit it to War; or at least focus changes on War (e.g., in new bookcase / drone library)
  • Make Drone Command a way for defenders to make major buffs; for example, a drone option to disallow sabotage in an area, or disallow recon -- something along these lines, maybe disallow x for first y seconds, or simply reduce their impact percentage
  • Add Drone Age defensive building upgrades (especially Air), and to traps; add GCI/SAM
  • Make Sniper Towers shoot Paratroopers (same as the former idea having them shoot Commandos; guess them shooting both is okay) -- probably fine to make this standard but maybe library instead
  • Make Claymore useful; add fun functionality that matters
  • Deal with Recon; which is the elephant in the room and central to the balance issue (and complicated)
  • Deal with Sabotage; the other key component here, but mind that all Ages use it so don't simply kill it for everyone
More on the Age-centric idea to everyone; go play as a Gunpowder or Industrial and see how hard it is to take down defensive bases of the same Age; it's difficult even with max everything. It's important to not change that to impossible. Remember the big great rebalance a few years ago? The sharpened pitchforks from attackers?

Fact is, the current museum cap calculation is confusing and difficult to document; it's simply not logical. Fixing it (as suggested) is certainly the right move but ideally done in addition to changes that balance it out.
 
- add defensive nation (all nation we have are offensive with very small percent of help on French Korean, Chinese or Japanese nation)

I agree with this, but rather than adding a new nation how about just boosting defense from the digital age onwards to nations that are heavily underused after the digital age, like the Greeks, English, Japanese and Korean? And maybe give some offense benefits to the rest of the nations (other than Germany), for greater balance and better distribution of players among the different nations.
 
Fact is, the massive defensive suggestions must be limited by Age (e.g., Drone+) else it'll kill the game. The majority of vocal players on this issue are massive Drone Age players in top alliances that focus on War, and seemingly stare at this topic from that single perspective.

Is it feasible/reasonable to have a single defensive base design defend against all attack styles? A base that defends against fighters, bombers, and paratroopers; defends against heavy tanks, commandos, attack helicopters, mortars, ..., everything. And do so despite the troop tactics used. I'd think not.

But let's assume for a moment that the ultimate defender dream comes true; that all defensive buildings are more powerful, offense is restricted, and time wars are dead. A skilled attacker getting 4 stars is a good win. This is certainly reasonable. But now imagine the 99% of players not in these top alliances/ages, what happens to them? They now struggle in multiplayer and barely gain a star in war. They use free troop tactics, use war tactics like demolition, non-maxed coalitions, odd wonder choices, and so on. Yes, this is the large majority of players.

Now let's say defensive improvements are instead limited to Drone+ or Information+, and focus on War. This would mean the majority of players will be unaffected and continue upgrading to Cold War with their Industrial fighters, continue to use 8 different troops per battle, continue to do their not-so-ideal thing yet somehow still gain resources and Triumph. This while big defenders can defend again in top Wars.

That said, here are additional rough ideas related to this Age-specific defensive idea:
  • Limit it to War; or at least focus changes on War (e.g., in new bookcase / drone library)
  • Make Drone Command a way for defenders to make major buffs; for example, a drone option to disallow sabotage in an area, or disallow recon -- something along these lines, maybe disallow x for first y seconds, or simply reduce their impact percentage
  • Add Drone Age defensive building upgrades (especially Air), and to traps; add GCI/SAM
  • Make Sniper Towers shoot Paratroopers (same as the former idea having them shoot Commandos; guess them shooting both is okay) -- probably fine to make this standard but maybe library instead
  • Make Claymore useful; add fun functionality that matters
  • Deal with Recon; which is the elephant in the room and central to the balance issue (and complicated)
  • Deal with Sabotage; the other key component here, but mind that all Ages use it so don't simply kill it for everyone
More on the Age-centric idea to everyone; go play as a Gunpowder or Industrial and see how hard it is to take down defensive bases of the same Age; it's difficult even with max everything. It's important to not change that to impossible. Remember the big great rebalance a few years ago? The sharpened pitchforks from attackers?

Fact is, the current museum cap calculation is confusing and difficult to document; it's simply not logical. Fixing it (as suggested) is certainly the right move but ideally done in addition to changes that balance it out.
Liked this one. Honestly yes the defensive buff should be war focused and that at the later ages. If it makes me everything to attack and beat a multiplayer base, then I'll go down to 3-5 attacks per day. I'll probably need a lot of time to upgrade a single library or university research or a building. Rn Im atomic and all 7 war tactics takes me 4 hours to train. So yeah I think you get what I mean.
 
I agree with this, but rather than adding a new nation how about just boosting defense from the digital age onwards to nations that are heavily underused after the digital age, like the Greeks, English, Japanese and Korean? And maybe give some offense benefits to the rest of the nations (other than Germany), for greater balance and better distribution of players among the different nations.
Also liked this one, yes give war bonuses to nations. Offensive and defensive things. People have been screaming for ideas and innovations like these to be implemented to the game for a long time.
 
@SomeRandomPlayer You summarized the situation correctly and all your proposals I find them to be super good.

What BHG needs to understand is that these people (that do not have a clue about this game) will keep playing casually and they would never get interested to know the game in depth or just a bit more. It's all the same to them if they get 3 stars or no stars in WW or in mp loot. So BHG should decide not based upon the needs of that kind of players.

In addition, there is no reason to have new nations as long as there is a nice rebalance of nations.
My proposal is to give more incentive to players to switch to Greeks / Japanese / Korean- they are after all the rarest to find -:

1. There are many players that like to build and not play WW. Make them switch to Greeks by changing the following bonuses:
- Refunds part of upgrade costs 15%
- Instantly finish upgrades and general recovery under 6h for Free + 6h per age (in upgrades of 15+ days, a few hours is still almost nothing but coupled with Parliamentary Speedups will be a real help to builder type of players)

2. Japanese is a defensive nation so adding the following would help:
- Defender spawn time of 25% (this would be a nice advantage in wars too)
- town center shoots at invaders (make it like petroleum reserve )
- Increase length of peace treaties +25%

3. Koreans is a mixed thing with interesting buffs but could be better:
- 15% looted resource refund.
- +1 war tactic capacity (+1 war tactic capacity in IA).
- 15% armory research upgrade time reduction

So it becomes meaningful if you are a builder to rush the ages as a Greek, get Burj later on for even more building reduction and become a defender at higher age as a Japanese.

Additional ideas here by @TTPranto :

Lets also not forget the NTG problem. We had a failed rebalance and it is not yet solved!! DOUBLE the marketplace capacity and change nothing else. That alone would help us tremendously.
 
All the above changes can happen without modifying the code from scratch but rather playing around with the already existing numbers... therefore are easy to implement.

Most important of all we want to see BHG take true interest in the balance of this game and the bug fixing. This is paramount for us
 
I am in absolute agreement that the defense should be gradually improved for Info and Drone Age.
Remember that no drastic changes are necessary. Changes should occur in a subtle way in specific areas, as the sum of small changes and corrections can turn the defense into a monster.
I think it's interesting to point out the good ideas.

- Houses: Provide defenders according to highest level garrison OR provide new command post upgrade in Drone Age.

- Sniper Tower: Add a higher percentage of damage from the Digital Age and be able to hit Saboteurs and Paratroopers.

- Mortar: Add +1 range to Mortar starting at level 11.

- Parliament: Fix range visual bug for cannon and Defender Spawn. Fix the bug where blitzkrieg prevents the cannon from working.

- Town Center: Fix so troops can leave Town Center with attack helicopters approaching. Currently for some unknown reason this does not occur.

- Claymore: Make it somehow useful, fun or efficient.

- Recon Plane: Small reduction in effect duration and analysis bonus.

- Sabotage: Small reduction in base duration time.

- Buildings that spawn defenders: Remove the 10 second minimum threshold for the second and subsequent waves.

- Nations: Some adaptations designed to provide gradual defensive gains in advanced Ages.

- Paratroopers: Small reduction in health points.

- Signal Flare: Add 1 more Signal Flare trap and increase its range a little.

- War stats visualization: Somehow provide that troop, tactics and building stats for WW can be observed after general research buffs, museum, council and coalitions.

**Some of these changes may only occur for WW through specific searches.
 
Many great ideas above.

BHG, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the shortcomings of defense in the higher ages. In these ages war is the most important element of the game to players. In wars the primary issue is the overpowered airborne attacks. These air attacks need better ways to defend. Another primary issue is the Recon. It probably throws the balance off more than any thing in the game. It does need some nerfing and a shorter duration.
Defense needs better air defense all the way around. Air defense structures and Towers both need a boost, but most of all, they both need the range expanded. GCI’s and Sams can’t kill anything as is. Either boost them or add more GCI’s and Sams.

Sniper Towers should definitely be able to shoot at paratroopers and saboteurs. Presently, paratroopers are invisible and overpowered.
Sabotages duration must be shortened and cost 2 spaces. Mortars need range expanded.
We also need some new defense legendary‘s to counter those air attacks. Specifically the attack helicopters.
Black Hawks need to be eliminated or nerfed. They are the primary reason for those ridiculous attack helicopter attacks. Filipinos coalition needs to be able to also work against ALL helicopter attacks also.

The game needs to eliminate the many time wars in the higher ages. These type of wars are boring and cause players to lose interest in the game. A five star attack should be the exception not the norm. This would bring the challenge back into the wars.

Keep one thing in mind when you make balance changes. In the higher ages Wars are most important. We live for Wars.
 
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One more thing….

Please do not take months to implement defense changes. Wars are presently boring in the higher ages and the game needs changes ASAP. Do this and you will see more player activity and more spending. Its in the best interest for your revenue generation to eliminute the boring nature of the game.
 
BHG, let me show one example. Our current war the opponent had abase on 3D with100plus on ADTD and ADTHP. I attacked this base two times, first with my account with HT focused museum and second with my account focused on attack helicopters. I five starred the base both times, BUT: the attack with helicopters was TWO (2) minutes faster.

Even assuming I known the placement of traps, etc. already as attacking with helicopters, it is ridiculous that one attack style is around 100% faster as the other.
 
Im loving how everyone is laying out ideas to improve the game and balance it. BHG should check their ideas and suggestion section of this forum. Lots of amazing ideas are lying there.
 
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