“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him”
-Jonathan Swift.



Dominions players love to yap. And one of the top yapping topics is the 2v1. Or 3v1. Dogpile, or coalition. Perps see them as justified coalitions against a snowballing game leader or clever diplomacy, while to the victim they’re unsportsmanlike dogpiles used by cowardly weasels. Fact is, this ♥♥♥♥ is endemic to any kind of FFA experience, so you’re gonna have to deal with them one way or another, Jack.

The most important thing is to actually fight your opponents. You might be confused, should go without saying that you fight, right? Should, but a stupefying number of players don’t, and will advise you not to either. Players will quit out, freeze up, hurl all their dudes at one player, burn down their cap (or alternatively stack everything in their cap to re-enact the battle of helm’s deep), go for “economic damage”, forge bane venom charms, write anime villain speeches, and do basically anything but actually fight for their property. The aforementioned are what I call “loser strats” regardless of the reams of text and multi-hour long youtubes people will churn out to justify it.



None of that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ keeps you in the game, and it won’t even damage or deter your opponents like a good fight will. First of all, Dominions is a game of asymmetries, so it is absolutely possible to beat superior resources. Players focus on casualty numbers and resources, but time is a valuable resource as well. Even if you’re just being beat down, your opps are wasting army time and mage turns to try to take you, which will cost them more than just the resources they expended. Also, nothing says “easy target” like a player who can’t close a 2+v1. The longer you drag on the war, the better chance you have of getting allies on your side.

Yes, you, not any of your opps. The biggest way I’ve seen players lose in dogpile situations is throwing, not actually having their resources ground down. Getting 2v1ed or worse is upsetting, and puts you in an immediate bad spot. Unfortunately, much like elfing this leads many players to make panic moves and dump their nation down the garbage can much faster than the opps could actually get them. Take a step back, take a deep breath, hell, take an extension. Come back to the turn with a clear mind and start making rational moves. Don’t give into despair or anger.

The most important in-game strat in an Xv1 is force preservation. Conserve as much of your troop and mage corps as you can, particularly limited rec units like sacreds. Take safe fights if at all possible, and avoid knife’s edge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. You can’t avoid all risks because of the bad position but remember that the resource calculations are now skewed. If you have to handle 3 players, then each of your troops has to handle 3 equivalent enemies. Things like buffblobs,turbocomms, gemburns, and army-wipe traps are your friend. Attritional strategies are your enemy. Above anything, retain your ability to continue fighting.

Getting intel and getting a “read” on your opps is a key to fighting off a combined assault. Which players can be dipploed and which can’t? Who’s timid and who’s aggressive? Once you know, you can act. To this end sometimes you should let enemies click into your provinces so you can see what they’re doing instead of defending right at the border.

Most dominions players don’t buy enough scouts so I should probably put “buy scouts” here. You need your scouts at least 2 deep into enemy territory (though this will contract) and preferably on their key forts and chokes that they need to travel through to reach your land. You should have a good idea of what your enemy will be bringing 2-3 turns out (excluding magic phase.

Now if you are one of the rare players who does make enough scouts, contract your net in towards your borders. You don’t need to monitor thrones you can’t defend or big players you can’t fight, so reel those in closer to your land. Remember that your land is about to become the enemy’s front, so you’ll need scouts to put there. You also want scouts to ping enemy armies besieging your forts.

To win you need to live and to live you need to know what’s gonna kill you. If you’re being choked on income, you need to solve the raid game. If there’s a big stack barrelling down on your cap, it needs to go. But you don’t need to relieve that unlabbed palisade holding down 500 enkidus in a swamp three states over. You also need to recognize the timetable you have to deal with threats instead of rushing from crisis to crisis. If it will take a big stack 3 turns to walk to a fort and another 3 to siege it down, then you have a comfortable six turns to get your solution together.

After you get ahold of your big threats and the timetable you have to work with, you can decide if you have the spare forces to go after your next target. Generally speaking this should be the weakest coalition member (or better the one you have the best matchup against). If you can actually gain land and gold off an opponent, that’s a huge advantage. However you should also pick targets from the “reads” you’ve gotten. There’s no real need to go after passives who want to take one province at a time with a doomstack until it actually threatens something relevant.

“My haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success”
-Eric Adams, NYC Mayor (subsequently indicted)

Dominions favors the offense, or so sayeth some forgotten dominions 4 guide I read a long time ago. But being on the defense has some unique advantages. Use your forts to tie up large numbers of sieging troops so you don’t have to worry about them, then break siege/relieve them at the last moment, once you’ve gathered up your resources. You’re fighting near your infrastructure, so you can deploy all your mages (and yes, I mean all of them) for a big fight, then send them right back to researching the next turn. Gems are similar, an attacker needs to gem up their army in advance, but the defender only needs enough gems for the current battle, on the turn of that battle. PD dumps stay in a province without needing upkeep, so catch out raiders with a mage-backed PD dump and let it sit there as a land mine for later enemies.

Generally speaking, shallow raiding is much better than deep raiding, and the same is more true in Xv1s. However, the one exception is deep raiding with a small stealthy force along your opponents’ shared border. With this you can make both players separately deploy counter-raiders, distracting far more troops than you committed.

Dipplo is one of the most talked about ways of solving an Xv1 situation. After all, isn’t the best way to get out of a 2v1 to turn it into a 1v1? Or a 2v2? However, since dominions players are weird nerds highly prone to socially maladaptive neurodivergence, this don’t always work so good.

To start, you need to ask the opps two questions;

1) What are you trying to get from this war?
And
2) What would it take to get you to make peace?

This will help you get a read on your opponents, and sometimes people are just angling for a throne or key province you can easily afford to shed. If your opponent isn’t being reasonable, just note it (it will inform your actions later) and move on. DO NOT attempt to argue with them about their reasoning or motives. Nothing will entrench someone in a course of action more than getting in a fight over it. Do not roll up with your super persuasive game theories about who they “should” fight instead, if you were actually a super-persuader then you’d be in the coalition and not its victim.



It also pays to wait a bit for the dipplo, rather than panik-dipploing people immediately. One of the best openers for peace is “I don’t think either of us is getting much out of this war”, which only works after you’ve been fighting several turns. Also, immediately offering concessions for peace right out the gate reeks of weakness, which will make players want to attack you more.

As for getting allies, the best allies come naturally when they notice your opps are out of position. If you absolutely must go fishing for friends, just pm players bordering your foes with “I’m fighting (one of your opponents), want to cooperate against them?” and see if you get any bites. Big malds in the game channel or desperate calls for help make it look like you’re losing bad, and players won’t want to go out on a limb to rescue someone who can’t fend for themselves

Maybe not worth a whole section but part of the game is feelings (called “ irl morale” or “player psychology” by people too sensitive to talk about their feelings). Having to match against several other people is mentally taxing even if each player isn’t particularly good. Sadly the best advice here is to be self-centered. If you don’t feel up to taking a turn or enjoy playing, come up with an excuse to extend until you do. Other players will complain, but ♥♥♥♥ ‘em, they coalitioned you. Talk your position over with a buddy or player who isn’t in the game.

Players love using spite strats because they make losing fun, but they are mostly less effective than actually using the gems in combat. It doesn’t matter if you damage someone’s land if they get your land in return. So I’ll look at the rare exceptions. Leprosy is one of the most underrated spells in the game, doing way more damage than it costs long-term. Bane venom charms aren’t very good in enemy territory, but using 2 or 3 BVC scouts to “shadow” an enemy army can inflict more casualties than the cost. Pillaging your own land is bad, but chaos power armies can use it. Attacking players often neglect supplies, so very rarely you can torch one of your own proves to get the enemy into starvation faster.

“Defensive Globals” get a lot of play as a concept, but in practice once you’re at the global stage of the game, actual resources matter more than player numbers. So I’ll keep this short. Wrath of God won’t save you from anything. Dark skies is excellent if you’re using morale plays. Fata Morgana is probably the best purely “defensive” global running, absolutely cast it. Vengeful waters is but a pale shadow of its former power, but probably still worth casting. Looming hell does nothing. Mechanical militia is worth casting but probably not worth researching up to.