Imperial Dominion

Welcome to Maddog Productions Online Dominion

The old empire is broken and its provinces lie open. Claim an empire, settle the wilderness, raise farmsteads and fortifications on it, and turn your peasants into an army. Then decide what to do about your neighbours, who are doing exactly the same thing a few acres away.

You get 10 turns a day. Every order costs turns, and every turn you spend pays out your income at once, so the game rewards showing up rather than grinding. A round lasts 45 days; at the end, the richest empire is champion, everything is wiped, and a new round opens for everyone.

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Who leads Maddog Productions Online Dominion

#	Empire	Ruler	Title	Acres	Net worth	Victories
1	MadMarker	maddog	Baron	818	768,541	0

The goal

You rule one empire in Maddog Productions Online Dominion, among every other empire on this site. A round runs 45 days. When it ends, the empire with the highest net worth is champion, the standings are carved into the Hall of Fame, and everyone begins again on equal ground.

Net worth counts everything you hold: land, buildings, peasants, your army and your treasury. There is no way to win by hiding. A large, rich, undefended empire is simply a target, and the ranking that makes you proud is the same ranking that tells your neighbours what you are worth taking.

What you are trying to do

• Claim land. Send settlers into the wilderness. Every acre is somewhere to build.
• Build on it. Buildings are the only things that produce anything. Bare land is worth little.
• Feed your people. Peasants pay your taxes and become your soldiers. Starve them and you lose both.
• Raise an army. Troops to hold what is yours, and troops to take what is not.
• Trade. Other rulers sell what you are short of, at prices they set themselves.
• Make war. Past a certain size, taking a neighbour's acres is cheaper than settling your own.
• Climb. Rise through the titles, from Freeholder to Emperor.

Turns: the thing you actually spend

Everything costs turns. You are granted 10 turns a day and can store up to 30.

Here is the part that catches new rulers out: a turn pays you the moment you spend it. Your gold, grain and iron arrive as income when you give an order, not while you sit idle. Turns left unspent earn you nothing at all. A ruler who logs in daily and spends everything will out-produce one who hoards, every time.

Order	Turns
Settle new land	1
Order buildings (any quantity)	1
Train troops (any quantity)	1
March on an empire	2
Send an agent	1
Post or buy on the market	0

Because an order of any size costs one turn, ordering 200 buildings at once costs exactly what ordering one does. Place large orders.

Your first day, step by step

1. Claim your empire. You start with 250 acres, 75,000 gold, and a crown truce of 72 hours that nobody can break.
2. Open Lands and look at your wilderness: acres with nothing on them, earning nothing.
3. Build farmsteads and homesteads first. Food and people come before everything. Check the Empire screen afterwards: if grain per turn is negative, you are heading for starvation.
4. Spend a turn or two settling more land, then build on that too.
5. Open Muster and train defenders. Your truce ends, and an undefended empire with a good net worth is the most attractive target on the board.
6. Spend every remaining turn. Come back tomorrow.

A reasonable opening is roughly a quarter of your land in farmsteads, a quarter in homesteads, and the rest split between mints, foundries and defence. There is no correct answer, which is the point.

Land and buildings

Each building occupies one acre. Ordering costs 300 gold and 15 iron per acre, and the work finishes on the daily tick, 1 day later. What you order today defends you tomorrow, never tonight.

Building	What it does
Homesteads	Houses 30 peasants. Peasants pay your taxes, so homesteads set the ceiling on every other income.
Farmsteads	Produces 85 grain a turn. Grain feeds your peasants and your army; run out and both start to desert.
Mints	Produces 60 gold a turn on top of the taxes your peasants pay.
Foundries	Produces 25 iron a turn. Iron is needed for construction and for every soldier you train.
Barracks	Each barracks trims the gold price of training by 0.5%, to a maximum of 35%.
Fortifications	Each fortification adds 0.6% to your defence, to a maximum of 50%. Ballistae legions are built to break them.

Settling gets harder as you grow: a scouting party finds fewer acres and charges more for each one. Demolishing a building returns 20% of its cost and hands the acre back to wilderness.

The siege yards

Siege weapons are the third thing an empire can own, and they behave like neither of the other two. They are built rather than trained, so no peasant leaves the fields for one, and they stand on no acre, so they cost you nothing in land. An order costs one turn and finishes on the daily tick, the same as a building does.

What a weapon is not is an army. A catapult goes nowhere and does nothing until men haul it and work it, and the men who do that are legionnaires. Every weapon says how many it needs, and the rule bites in both directions: a catapult with nobody on it adds nothing to your walls, and a siege train you have not sent crews with is refused before it leaves.

Weapon	Offence	Defence	Crew	Cost each	What it does
Catapults	5	3	5 legionnaires	5,000g + 500 iron	Built, not trained: no peasants leave the fields for it and it stands on no acre. It needs legionnaires to work it, so send them with it, and risk handing both to the enemy if the day goes badly.

What a weapon costs you is risk. Catapults are the only part of your strength an enemy can take away and keep: everything else they destroy, these they drag home. The winner of a battle carries off 30% of whatever the loser had at stake, and a further 10% is smashed on the field, so losing a fight costs 40% of what was committed to it.

• When you attack, your stake is the train you haul out and nothing else. Weapons left at home are not in the wager, and every weapon you do send has to have its crew in the same force.
• When you are attacked, your stake is every weapon you have men to work. One you cannot crew takes no part in the battle, so it is neither a prize nor a casualty.
• So a large train wins fights you would otherwise lose, and hands a rival a siege park if it does not. That is the whole decision, and there is no safe answer to it.
• It also gives legionnaires somewhere to be on an attack. On their own they carry almost nothing; working catapults they are the difference between a siege train and a woodpile.

Scrapping a weapon returns 20% of its cost, the same as demolishing a building.

People and food

Peasants pay your taxes, and every soldier you train is a peasant taken out of the fields. Homesteads set how many you can house; your population grows toward that ceiling on its own.

If your grain runs out, peasants flee and troops desert, every single turn you spend. Watch the grain line in the Empire screen. If it is negative, build farmsteads or buy grain on the market before you spend anything else.

The army

Offence counts only when you attack. Defence counts only when you are attacked. An army built for one job is nearly useless at the other, and that trade-off is the whole war game.

Troops	Offence	Defence	Gold	Iron	Notes
Pawns	0	3	120	5	Cheap conscripts. They hold a wall and nothing more.
Legionnaires	1	9	340	25	Professional defenders, and the backbone of any empire that expects to be hit.
Centurions	9	1	380	30	Officers who lead from the front. At home they are little better than pawns.
Ballistae Legions	18	4	1,400	180	Slow, ruinously expensive, and the only thing that reliably breaks fortifications.

War

A march costs 2 turns and resolves the instant you commit, against whatever the defender has standing at that moment. There is no waiting and no warning. Both sides receive a written report.

Kind of attack	What it takes
Conquest	Seize acres. The costliest fight and the only one that grows your empire.
Raid	Strip the treasury and granaries. No land changes hands and your losses are lighter.
Siege	Throw down buildings, fortifications first. Softens an empire you mean to conquer later.

The rules of engagement

• You may only attack empires worth between 40% and 250% of your own net worth. Nobody can farm a beginner, and nobody is safe purely by being large.
• You may strike the same empire at most 3 times a day.
• New empires hold a crown truce for 72 hours. It ends the moment they march on somebody, so you cannot raid from behind it.
• Losses are permanent on both sides. Winning a battle still costs you soldiers.
• Fortifications lift your defence; ballistae legions are built to break through them.
• Catapults are lost to the winner rather than merely killed. Whatever kind of attack it was, the weapons at stake change hands on the result.

The spy court

An agent costs 500,000 gold, and no ruler may keep more than 1. That price is deliberate: knowing what a rival actually holds before you commit an army should be a serious investment, not a habit. Missions can fail, and a failed mission often ends with your agent hanged, which means paying the full price again.

Mission	Gold	Success	Risk	What it does
Reconnaissance	15,000	85%	8%	Count a rival army, stores and buildings before you commit to a march.
Burn the granaries	45,000	65%	25%	Puts a torch to a share of a rival grain store. A starving empire loses troops on its own.
Sabotage the forges	45,000	65%	25%	Wrecks foundry stock, slowing construction and training.
Incite revolt	70,000	55%	35%	Turns peasants against their lord. The tax base falls with them.

The market

Rulers set their own prices. Post grain, iron or troops for sale and name what you want for them; the goods leave your stores at once and come back if the lot expires or you withdraw it. Buying and selling cost no turns, so the market is the one place you can act freely when your turns are gone.

The crown takes 5% of every sale. Lots expire after 3 days, and you may keep 10 open at a time. An empire that farms grain well and sells the surplus can fund an army it could never have trained on its own.

Titles

Your title follows your net worth. It is worth nothing in itself, and everything to look at.

Title	Net worth
Freeholder	0
Thane	250,000
Baron	750,000
Viscount	1,500,000
Earl	3,000,000
Marquess	6,000,000
Duke	36,000,000
Archduke	75,000,000
Prince	150,000,000
High King	300,000,000
Emperor	600,000,000

Rounds

A round lasts 45 days. Round 1 is running now, with 40 days left. When the clock runs out the standings are archived to the Hall of Fame, every empire is retired, and a new round opens. Nobody carries an advantage across, so arriving late in a round costs you nothing but this round.

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