World Domination Facts and Strategies

Four Levels of Strength

There are 4 levels of Strength that a World Domination Attack Force or Defense Force can fall in, depending on what the fielded force's total Strength is as a % of the maximum allowed Strength:

• High Strength (green): 80-100% of maximum allowed Strength
• Medium-High Strength (yellow): 60-80%
• Medium Strength (orange): 40-60%
• Low Strength (red): 0-40%

You can do a quick visual check of which level your Defense Force is in by nothing the color (green, orange, yellow, or red) of the Defense Force Strength in the WD main screen or the Defense Force set-up screen.  You can do the same visual check when picking your Attack Force.

I haven't tested the boundaries between levels; so, for instance, I'm not sure yet if exactly 40% is low or medium Strength.

Dominance Rewards and Penalties

Let's say you attack someone in World Domination.  You can win between 30-150 Dominance (in multiples of 10), depending on the difference between your Dominance Rank and your opponent's.

If you are taking Revenge, you can win bonus Dominance depending on how many times you and your opponent have fought:

• 30 Dominance if you've fought 1-2 times
• 20 Dominance if you've fought 3-4 times
• 10 Dominance if you've fought 5-6 times

You can retreat by forfeiting 50% of the Dominance Points that you could have earned if you won the battle.  If you lose the battle by losing all your units, then you lose 40% of the winnable Dominance ONLY if you used a Low Strength attacking force.  You will never lose enough Dominance for your Dominance Rank to decrease.

If you win the battle, the amount of Dominance that the defender loses depends on which Strength level their Defense Force lies in:

• High Strength (green): defender loses 20% of Dominance that you win
• Medium-High Strength (yellow): 40%
• Medium Strength (orange): 60%
• Low Strength (red): 100%

Therefore, anyone interested in minimizing the loss of Dominance should field a Defense Force with a Strength that's at least 80% of the maximum allowed.


Game Theory of World Domination

World Domination was designed to make cooperation and collusion between players more difficult.  The fact that it's possible to lose Dominance makes most players put up the strongest possible Defense Force they can.  Some hackers go beyond that.

If you have a very high Dominance Rank, then you probably win virtually every battle that you fight.  The same goes for most of your opponents when they attack you.  So why should all these players with high Dominance Rank make it difficult for each other to gain Dominance?  To out-complete one another?  Let's face it.  There isn't much skill involved in this game.  Devoting many hours each day to playing is the most important factor in advancing in the game.

If you've just leveled and decide to take a break, a nice thing to do would be to set up the weakest Defense Force you possibly can, such as one Cadet Soldier. Everyone who attacks you will easily win, not lose any units, and not spend much Energy or Element Z in attacking you.  Since you've just leveled, you might lose a bit of Dominance, but not enough to lower your Dominance Rank.

Due to the Dominance penalty for losing, you can't put up a weak Defense Force like that all the time if you actually want to level up in World Domination.  What you can do instead is put up a Defense Force that's barely High Strength but includes one weak unit.  Usually, that one weak unit will be the one attacking invaders.  For instance, you might put up 4 Mantis Infantry and 1 Cannon Artillery.

Another benefit of having an easy-to-beat Defense Force is that it encourages opponents you've beaten to take revenge on you, especially if you let let them know ahead of time via taunts.  If they take revenge on you quickly, then you can return the favor more quickly as well.  This can be a big deal when you're at a high Dominance Rank and there are few opponents to come by.

Such cooperative strategies work much better if many people employ them.  This calls for people to be unselfish and trusting.  Think of it as being unselfish (set up a friendly Defense Force) to ultimately be selfish (easier for you to beat others' friendly Defense Forces).

Do Enemy Units Have an Unfair Advantage?

Awhile back, I posted an article titled "Sweet Spot Theory Debunked."  It was an example of confirmation bias--people tending to find confirmation in beliefs they already hold.  General Dogsworth linked this theory of sweet spots with another popular players' theory: that enemy units have a better chance of scoring direct or critical hits than players do.  Here's a quote from the General:

I hope you ALSO bear this in mind the next time you run into someone who is insisting that the AI has a better chance of inflicting Direct or Critical Hits than you do.  

However, there has been no evidence offered up in support of this fair-play stance--in fact, just the opposite.  Many players are convinced from personal experience that enemy units have an unfair advantage in battle, and some have provided limited evidence of this.  Here is a thread on the official Zynga E&A forums where players are complaining about this unfairness.

Two Scenarios

Here's a scenario: a player pits 5 Talon Tanks versus 5 Kodiak EXO Infantry.  Who wins?  At first thought, Talon Tanks should win because tanks are "great" versus infantry, while infantry are "poor" versus tanks.  However, Talon Tanks are only tier 6 while Kodiaks are tier 7, giving a tier edge to the Kodiaks.  Furthermore, Kodiaks have base strength of 650, while Talon Tanks have base strength of 550.  Thus, the battle is not as clear cut as first thought.  Which factors are more important here: being "great" versus another unit type or having tier and strength advantages?

An easier scenario: 5 Talon Tanks versus 5 Advanced Soldiers.  Here, both unit types are tier 6, and Talon Tanks have a strength advantage over Advanced Soldiers by 550 to 350.  Surely, the Talon Tanks should demolish the Advanced Soldiers without taking much damage in return.  Try it yourself and see what happens.

Here's an example of how one player, Tamiyah, fared when she invaded a neighbor.  When she pitted 5 Talons versus 5 Kodiaks, she destroyed all Kodiaks but lost 3 Talons.  Is that reasonable?

Fairness

These scenarios don't really address fairness.  The first scenario concerns what factors are more important in battle, while the second concerns whether the game battle logic makes sense and to what degree.

For fairness, the key question is: What happens if we reverse the units for player and computer AI?  If I pitted my own Kodiaks or Advanced Soldiers versus the computer AI's Talons, would the results of the battle be flipped?  As a side note, does it matter whether the computer AI is controlling another player's units (like in PVP or World Domination) or other units (like in quests and Campaign Mastery)?

Back to Tamiyah's example above.  When the player reversed the situation, she failed to destroy any Talons and lost all her Kodiaks.  Not quite the same result as before, huh?  Of course, this is just one example.

I'll follow my own battles more closely to see whether the General's fair-play stance holds and report my results.

Unfairness

Suppose things really are unfair.  It would be an outrage to players, some of whom presumably fork over real hard-earned cash for Empire Points.  Why would Zynga do this?

If you've played Empires & Allies for long and have a mind for business, technology, and conspiracies, perhaps you've contemplated whether some of the puzzling things going on in the game are due to plain incompetence or planned profit maximization.  Most likely a blend of both, I believe--this is a topic I'll expand upon greatly in the future.

You might call it Zynga's Planned Incompetence for Profit Maximization, PIPM.  That sounds like one of those many acronyms for U.S. government bailout programs (TAF, TARP, PPIP, anyone?).  A simpler acronym is PIPs, Planned Incompetence for Profits.  A somewhat "inappropriate" but yet-so-appropriate acronym is PIMPs, Planned Incompetence for Making Profits.

Why would Zynga do this?  The company must think the vast majority of players are too oblivious, distracted, or stupid to notice the unfairness.  They must think that enough players--especially the "whales"--develop feelings of frustration and military inadequacy enough to the point of spending more Empire Points to get better fighting units and upgrades.

Sweet Spot Theory Debunked

There has been a theory going around that enemy units have sweet spots that you can aim at to get a higher chance of critical hits.  For instance, the sweet spot for soldiers would be their heads.  Many players believe in and practice applying this theory in their games.  

Long, heated discussions on the Sweet Spot Theory have taken place, including on the official Zynga Empires & Allies forum.  In a recent post in one such discussion, a poster by the name of Zu Nim delivered the coup de grâce to the theory:

Nothing wrong with telling folks to "put up or shut up" if they're going to make a claim. They never could. No surprise, really, because it was all in their heads. (Confirmation Bias says Hello!)
I don't want to get into the technical here in case it violates some of Zynga's terms. But long after this topic had run its course, I learned much about the game works as part of adding information to the wiki. And:

• No information is passed from the client about the location of a hit, only which player unit strikes which enemy unit

• The client relies on Zynga's servers to tell it how much damage was done to an enemy unit

• The client is told all kinds of minute information about the units, but no information about hit boxes (sweet spots)

There are no sweet spots.
The folks at Zynga must laugh hard when they see what people can convince themselves of. Laugh all the way to the bank... 

Original post: Sweet Spot Theory Debunked - Zu Nim

Assuming Zu Nim's technical investigation was thorough, no evidence can be more convincing than this against the Sweet Spot Theory.  Another possible piece of evidence would be a statistical analysis pitting combat using sweet spots versus combat using random aiming.  It would be difficult, however, to gather the data manually for such an analysis due to the enemy units constantly moving around.

On the same thread, General Dogsworth had this response:

I hope you ALSO bear this in mind the next time you run into someone who is insisting that the AI has a better chance of inflicting Direct or Critical Hits than you do. 

The General was referencing Enemy AI Hit Rates, another theory by players that exemplifies confirmation bias.

How to gain experience quickly

Does it seem to take forever to gain a level?  If you’re already at a high level—say, mid 50’s and on—part of the problem is the exponential growth in experience points (XP) needed to level.  At the higher levels, there’s around a 15% growth rate in the additional XP needed to gain a level.

The thing you need to focus on is energy use.  How are you using your energy?--farming, harvesting resources, collecting from houses and government buildings, clearing terrain, or fighting?  Each type of activity has certain rewards, but each costs energy.  Depending on your goals at the moment, you may want to emphasize use of your energy on certain activities.

It turns out that fighting is the most energy-efficient way to gain experience.  So if your goal is to level up quickly, but you’re spending lots of energy farming and collecting rent from your real estate empire, then you’re doing it wrong!  Get your neighbors to help tend your empire while you focus on waging war. 

There are 2 reasons why fighting is a good way of converting energy into XP: critical kills and Campaign Mastery.

Critical Hits

Critical hits that result in the kill (“critical kills”) of an enemy unit will usually earn you 3 XP.  Also, critical hits usually give back energy, thus helping to make fighting more energy-efficient.  You score critical hits randomly, but there are some factors that increase the probability of getting them. 

For any battle, you should always use the fighting units that are “great” versus the enemy units.  For example, if you select to use your land army versus the enemy’s land army, you should use tanks versus soldiers, artillery versus tanks, and soldiers versus artillery.  Obviously, you should use the highest tier of units you can (Talon Tanks, not Vintage Tanks), not just because it’s common sense but because it affects the rate of critical hits.  Make sure your units have the “Increase Damage” and “Increase Accuracy” upgrades.  It seems that the final upgrade, “Increase Strength,” also helps with critical hits. 

Accuracy power-ups will almost guarantee critical hits, so use them often but wisely.  Note that with an Accuracy power-up active, even units “poor” versus an enemy unit will score critical hits (however, I’ve seen it not happen a few times).  Make it a habit to constantly build (or buy) Accuracy power-ups.  Ask for Hand-held Gas Detectors and Laser Sights from neighbors at a steady pace.  You can post to your Wall to request a total of five Power Supplies and C4 Detonators every 4 hours.  Don’t rely on the kindness of strangers to click on your requests; coordinate with allies to click each other’s links.  You can also get parts by clicking on others’ links.

Accuracy I, II, and III last 3, 7, and 11 rounds; require 7, 14, and 24 parts to build; and are unlocked at levels 10, 25, and 40, respectively.  Stockpile the ones you use the most.  Choose the one(s) that fit your battles, keeping in mind that you’re after critical kills, not just critical hits.  Personally, I prefer Accuracy I’s.

Campaign Mastery

If you play Campaign Mastery and fight for the third star of any battle (or repeat them), you gain double XP for every blow plus one extra XP at the end of each battle.  Combining this with the tips above will give you the most bang for your buck!  Note, however, that these third-star battles don’t give energy rewards from critical hits or liberty bonds at the end of battle.  Despite the lack of energy rewards, third-star battles are still better for gaining XP than other battles.  This is because you’re usually more constrained by your rate of critical hits and how many Accuracy power-ups you have rather than by your energy.

There are many good battles in Campaign Mastery to choose from that you can repeat over and over.  For low-level players, the very first battle of the very first island, Cape Pleasant I, is a nice choice.  Here, you choose two land units to fight a single air unit.  On the third gold star, that air unit is an A-10 Warthog, an airship with only 100 hitpoints.  Bring your best, upgraded soldiers to battle.  You don’t get to choose allies in this battle, so there won’t be any free power-ups; on the other hand, you won’t be limited in how frequently you can fight this battle by the number of neighbors you have.  Because there’s only one enemy unit, it’s not wise to use Accuracy power-ups of your own. 

If you can one-hit kill the A-10 Warthog, you’ll get a total of 3 XP or 7 XP for the cost of 1 energy (ignoring use of power-ups to make the kill).  Two-hit kills earn you 5-9 XP and cost 2 energy (2.5-4.5 XP/energy).  Three-hit kills earn you 7-11 XP and cost 3 energy (2.33-3.67 XP/energy).

There are, of course, many other battles in Campaign Mastery to choose from.  Choose battles with more enemy units to make use of Accuracy power-ups.  This is slightly counterbalanced by the fact that it will take more energy to earn that single XP reward at the end of battles.  Choose battles with allies to get free power-ups (hopefully Accuracy ones!).  Look for battles that help you fulfill quests at the same time.  Fight more advanced units to earn more Coins and ores from hits, especially critical hits.  Don’t be too greedy or ambitious, however—you don’t want to lose units or waste too much energy.

At a high-enough level, this strategy can help you earn over 1000 XP/day easily, if fueled by enough energy.  Optimally, you can earn near 2000 XP/day and even more...

More to come later...  I'll also write up a guide on how to level up quickly for new players.