As an MMO strategy game, DomiNations combines several aspects – such as resource management and battle tactics – towards the development of a successful nation. Perhaps the most important of the latter, however, is the way you build and defend your base.

Throughout the ages, your village is where you keep everything that matters, from gold to food, troops, generals, and more. You need all of the above in order to advance in the game, organize attacks on other bases, and help your alliance in World Wars, which is why it is essential to put up a good defense against any attack.

Defensive Buildings in DomiNations

The backbone of your defense in DomiNations is the wall. A fairly self-explanatory building, the wall prevents enemy units from just walking into your base and plundering your resources. To advance beyond a protected perimeter, a piece of wall must be destroyed by the attacker. The wall can, therefore, buy you some time – more or less – depending on its level and the strength of enemy units.

There are two essential things to remember about the wall. First, you have a limited number of pieces to work with. Second, it is one of the most expensive buildings to upgrade in the game. Given the circumstances, you’ll need a decent defense strategy to make full use of your wall structure.

Several other buildings serve a defensive purpose in your village. One of the more common is the tower, which fires arrows (or other missiles) at attacking units until it is destroyed. The garrison and the horse stable summon defending units in waves (roughly once every 20 seconds), while the stronghold, the catapult, and the ballista tower deal splash damage to multiple attackers at a time.

As you advance beyond the Classical Age, additional buildings become available to keep your village in step with technological developments. The basic functions of these new buildings are relatively unchanged, however, and their common denominator remains that they must survive long enough to deal actual damage to the invaders.

Decide What You Are Defending

In DomiNations, all defensive resources are limited. You have a restricted number of wall pieces to work with and the same applies to your towers, garrisons, and other defensive buildings. Especially when it comes to the wall, you’ll quickly notice that there is nowhere near enough of it to go around. As such, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to protect everything in case of an attack. You must, therefore, establish viable priorities in order to plan a successful defense.

Two strategies are most common in this respect and they both revolve around the positioning of the town hall. In short, you can either defend your town hall and leave several resources on the outs or you can place the town hall outside of the walls and protect more resources instead. Choosing one or the other is a matter of your current goal in the game.

Play DomiNations on BlueStacks 4

If you are engaged in regular multiplayer and want to develop your city, resources are your topmost priority, while the town hall is more than expendable. In this case scenario and particularly during the Early Ages you’ll likely want to exclude the town hall from your walls and place your most valuable resource storage buildings (the markets and the mills) inside. This will ensure that, while the opponent might earn a victory against you by destroying the town hall, the loss will cost you close to nothing in terms of stolen food or gold.

If, on the other hand, you are participating in a World War with your alliance, your aim is to ensure that attackers earn as few victory stars as possible while raiding your base. Resource buildings are completely expendable in this context, while the town hall must be protected at all costs.

The Best Defensive Layouts

Once you decide what you wish to protect in your village, you’ll know which buildings should be placed at the center of your defensive perimeter and which should be on the outs. Regardless of this, however, the rest of your layout can follow more or less the same basic principles.

For one, you might be tempted to surround your entire base or a group of important buildings with a single, large perimeter of wall. This type of layout is very common among players and you will see it a lot while attacking others.

One problem here is that trying to surround everything with wall will inevitably leave you with an unfinished rectangle due to the fact that wall pieces are limited. More importantly, even if you do manage to close in the perimeter, it is enough for enemy units to break through one piece of wall in order to have unfettered access to all of your buildings.

The best thing you can do with your wall is to restrict it to a smaller surface and create multiple chambers for different buildings.

In the layout above, for example, enemy units must break through at least two walls in order to get to the town hall. Meanwhile, surrounding towers and garrisons will definitively cripple their ranks. Even if the attacker prioritizes the latter, the defensive buildings are also separated in chambers, which means that units will still need a long time to clear them all.

This brings us to the second essential aspect of base defense – the buildings that are worth protecting. Aside from choosing between the town hall and resource storage, there are some buildings that should always be inside/outside the walls. For example, barracks, mercenary camps, temples, blacksmiths, and a few others are useless during attacks and should be placed on the outskirts or used as a decoy for enemy troops. Conversely, all defensive buildings are more effective the longer they survive and should, as such, be surrounded by walls.

Learning by Trial and Error

A couple of final considerations in terms of base defense include the nation you choose since some options come with defensive bonuses, as well as the wonders you build and where you place them. All in all, creating the perfect base takes practice and quite a bit of tinkering with the position of your buildings and walls.

As you attack other players and try to topple their defenses, you’ll get a better idea of the things that work and those that do not. Meanwhile, you can also challenge guild members to invade your village and test your current layouts. To accurately assess the weaknesses of your base and make the right adjustments, follow the replays of your battles on an actual PC screen by playing DomiNations with BlueStacks.

Download BlueStacks 4 Now!