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New Player Tutorial

Tutorial 1 of 3: Selecting units
Tutorial 2 of 3: Searching for cities
Tutorial 3 of 3: Setting production

Instructions

Overview
Moving Units
City Production
Military Units
Attacking
Bombers
Alliances
Starting Locations
Rules and Etiquette

Overview
The game is played on a grid-based game board consisting of land and water. The size of the map varies depending on the game settings, with most games played on an 85x85 or 100x100 grid. Scattered across the land are cities, which operate as production facilities, refueling centers, and repair stations. Cities are captured using tanks. To support the tanks, your cities can produce other military units, such as ships and aircraft. The object of the game is to hold the most cities by the end of the game. Games run for 10 days from start to finish, and the player (or alliance) with the most cities when the game ends is declared the winner.



Moving Units
To move a unit, first right-click on its location to select it. You will then see a flashing yellow box around the activated unit. If you right-click a sector containing more than one unit, a pop-up list will allow you select the one you want to move. With your unit selected, click the location on the map where you want to send it. Your unit will stop if it encounters impassable terrain, an enemy unit, or an unoccupied city.

Each unit is limited in the number of moves it can make. Every four hours, your units receive more moves, and up to 12 hours worth of moves can be accumulated. Therefore, it's advisable to log in at least twice a day to move your pieces.

City Production
Cities produce new military units. All cities can produce tanks, fighters, helicopters, and bombers. Port cities (ones that are adjacent to water) can also produce ships. To set what a city is building, right-click it and choose "change city production". This will bring up a list of production options along with the amount of time it takes to build each one. More powerful units take longer to build. The times listed are in real hours; it really does take nearly two full days to make a battleship.

For the city's currently selected production option, the time to build will indicate how much time is remaining before completion. Plan carefully though. If you change production to a different type of unit, all time spent working toward the previously selected unit will be lost. If you want to change a city's production without sacrificing time spent building the current unit, you can schedule the city to automatically change production as soon as the current unit is complete.

Cities also operate as repair facilities and refueling bases. Damaged units that spend time in a city will automatically be repaired at the rate of two HP every four hours. Aircraft that pass through a city will be refueled.



Military Units
Each unit has attributes such as attack strength, hit points, movement speed, sight range, and production time. Most units also have certain special abilities.

UnitAttackHPMovementSightProduction TimeSpecial Abilities
Tank252*18 hrscan capture cities
Fighter2420210 hrsincreased attack power against other air units and certain ships
Helicopter2612112 hrsreduced attack power against other air units; increased attack power against tanks
Transport0106112 hrscan transport up to 8 land units across water
Destroyer5148214 hrsincreased combat strength against submarines
Submarine5125116 hrsincreased strength against ships; slips out of view more quickly than other ships
Aircraft Carrier4246120 hrscan refuel and transport up to 8 fighters and helicopters
Battleship12406134 hrscan bombard units along coasts
Bomber0410**136 hrs***destroys all cities and units within its blast radius, including itself

* tanks are limited to a maximum of 2 accumulated moves while on a transport.
** bombers are limited to a maximum of 20 accumulated moves.
*** for each increase in blast radius, production time decreases by 10hrs.


Attacking
To attack an enemy, your unit must be adjacent to it. Then, with your attacking unit activated, click on the enemy. Attacking units always deal their damage first. If the defending unit survives the attack, it will automatically respond. The result of the attack will be indicated just below the map. Damage is determined as follows: Half the unit's attack power plus a random amount of half the unit's attack power.

For example, suppose a battleship (attack power 12) is attacking:
Damage inflicted = 6 + (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
This means the battleship will inflict at least 6 damage and at most 12. It's important to remember that the attacker always gets first strike. In other words, even if the attacking unit is destroyed, it will have still done damage to the defending unit (even though it won't have survived long enough to report how much).

Some units get bonuses when attacking other units. The following bonuses are applied after the above damage calculation has been computed:

Fighter x 1.5 vs. Fighter
Fighter x 2.0 vs. Helicopter
Fighter x 1.5 vs. Bomber
Fighter x 3.0 vs. Destroyer
Fighter x 2.0 vs. Submarine
Fighter x 2.0 vs. Battleship

Helicopter x 2.0* vs. Tank
Helicopter x .75 vs. Fighter

Destroyer x 3.0 vs. Submarine

Submarine x 4.0 vs. Transport
Submarine x 2.0 vs. Submarine
Submarine x 3.0 vs. Destroyer
Submarine x 4.0 vs. Carrier
Submarine x 4.0 vs. Battleship

* a helicopter has a 1 in 3 chance of receiving its bonus against a tank.

Ships in Port
Ships in cities will defend against enemy attacks, but while in port, they are extremely vulnerable. Enemy units will strike with 4 times their ordinary attack power when attacking a ship in a city.

Fuel
Air units, including fighters, helicopters, and bombers have limited fuel supplies. If an air unit runs out of fuel, it will crash and be destroyed. When an air units passes through a friendly city, it is automatically refueled. Fighters and helicopters can also refuel by landing on a carrier. Be aware, however, that bombers cannot refuel on carriers and your air units cannot refuel on allied carriers.

Repairs
In the course of battle, your units are likely to be damaged. Both your own cities and your ally's cities can conduct repairs. Cities repair units at the rate of two hit points for every four hours your unit remains in the city.

Bombers
Bombers operate unlike any other conventional unit. It takes great skill to use them effectively, but they are arguably the most powerful unit in the game. Bombers can be used against enemy military units and enemy cities. Bombing an enemy instantly destroys everything within its blast radius. The only drawback to this immense power is that the bomber itself is destroyed in the process. As more bombers are used throughout the game, they become increasing more powerful and cheaper to build.

Bombers UsedBlast RadiusBuild Time
0-2038 hrs
3-8128 hrs
9-15218 hrs
16-24312 hrs
>= 24412 hrs


Alliances
Depending on the game settings, you may form an alliance with one other player. As an alliance, you may declare victory together if your alliance has the highest combined city count. Alliances have a few other advantages as well. Allied cities can refuel your aircraft and repair your units, and allied units will be visible to you on the map.

Starting Locations
Each game uses a randomly generated map. Maps are not edited by hand or reviewed at any point. However, the generator will build each map within a rough set of guidelines. Even though there can be wide variability from game to game, each map will contain approximately the same amount of land, number of islands, and number of cities. When you join a game room, the game will attempt to assign you a starting city on an island with two port cities and two inland cities as far as possible from the next closest player. If there are none of these most preferable starting locations available, you'll be assigned any random port city. If there are no port cities left, you'll be assigned any random inland city. If there are no cities available at all, you won't be able to join the game even if seats are still open.

Despite the game's best efforts to give everyone an equal start, it's not entirely unusual to start on an island with less than four cities (or possibly more than four). Even if you're not satisfied with your starting location, overcoming geographic obstacles is part of the game. Our administrators will not be able to change your starting location or reset your game. Nevertheless, starting location is far from everything. There have been many games where a player starts with a one city continent only to eventually win the game. In other cases, players with tremendous early leads have fallen to smaller but more skilled players. Geography is one of a myriad variables that ought to factor into your overall strategy, and while it is an important one, it's not the most important.

Rules and Etiquette
We're all here to have fun, chat with a diverse community of players from the around the world, and improve our strategic thinking. To keep things running smoothly, we do have a few common-sense rules:
  • Only one account per person. This is common practice on all gaming sites and we enforce it very strictly. If you create more than one account, we will know (server log data is routinely reviewed), and we will permanently ban you from the site.
  • Proper spelling and grammar is expected. Accidental typographical errors are fine, or if English is not your first language, that's fine too. What we don't want to see is any intentional anti-intellectual perversion of language suggestive of a junior high kid typing on a cell phone. Strategic Domination is a smart game for smart people.
As far as etiquette goes, just remember that your reputation on the site will follow you from game to game. It's not against the rules, but it's certainly bad form to back-stab an ally. We've seen a few instances where a betrayed ally has taken such traitorous actions very personally. If you're branded as an untrustworthy ally, it can make forming strategic partnerships in future games much more difficult. On the other hand, if you're a loyal ally who is able to cooperate effectively, word will spread just as fast.




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