Beginner's Guide to Dominion Event

Note: A newer version of this guide is now available. Click here to read the April 2017 Beginner's Guide to Dominion.

Dominion is an event that relies heavily on teamwork within your troop.  One hour matches occur every four hours throughout the event.  For each match your troop will be matched against a troop with similar troop trophies - power ratings are not taken into account.

How Dominion Works

When you enter the Dominion match, you'll notice that event area contains five towers, one for each element, and a Ranger down at the bottom of the screen.

You have the choice of which tower you wish to battle and how many energy you want to use.

For each tower that your troop has done more damage than the other troop, your troop is considered to have "claimed" that tower.  A blue flag will appear above the towers that your troop has claimed and a red flag appears above those that the enemy troop has claimed.  You can keep attacking a tower claimed by the enemy troop to try to beat their damage and claim the tower back for your troop.  Keep an eye on the towers as the changes are dynamic!

When your troop has claimed 3 towers, your troop will receive double trophies for each attack while you hold these towers.  Trophies are normally earned at 1 trophy per 1000 attack, but this will double after 3 towers are claimed.

For each tower that your troop has claimed, you'll earn 1 point per second.  The tally of points won by each troop can be seen by clicking on the Ranger at the bottom of the event screen.  Whichever troop has the most points (not collective damage!) at the end of the match will be declared the winner.  The winning troop will receive troop trophies equal to 2x the individually earned trophies.  The losing troop receives a 30% reduction in the individually earned trophies.  (Troop trophies count towards the troop tier rankings and prizes).

 Clicking on the Ranger will show you the points earned by both troops

General Troop Strategies

As points accumulate as soon as damage has been made on each tower, the key to success in Dominion is to have as many active players at the start of each match as possible.  Ideally, arrange to have different players attack a different tower each with 1 energy to claim as many towers as possible as soon as the match begins.  With luck, you may have claimed 3+ towers so that your troop begins earning double trophies for the rest of their energy.  Keep an eye on the other troop's activity and concentrate on claiming three towers as early as possible.  These three towers will win you the match as you'll gain the majority of points available, and your troop will gain double trophies for each attack.

Achieving a quick solid claim on three towers often deters the enemy troop from using saved energy or spending as it may "cost" them too much to win double trophies (claim 3 towers) for themselves, and they may wait for an easier match.  Early energy use by as many troop members as possible is the key to winning matches.

Having high power ratings or event monsters to increase your attacks makes claiming towers easier.


Which tower should I attack?

There are two factors to take into account in determining where you'll achieve the highest damage: element and zodiac.

Each tower takes on the element of the tower. For example, the leaf tower will behave as a leaf monster, giving fire monsters an attack boost and water monsters will do reduced damage.  If you have a fire mono team, you'll achieve the highest attacks against the leaf tower.

Every tower, except rock, also has a zodiac boost of 25%.  These zodiac boosts are static and remain constant between Dominion events.  Any monster in your team with the same zodiac as the tower will receive a 25% attack bonus.

Leaf Tower - Autumn: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius
Fire Tower - Spring: Aries, Taurus, Gemini
Water Tower - Winter: Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces
Wind Tower - Summer: Cancer, Leo, Virgo
Rock Tower: No zodiac bonus

An ideal team matches the element bonus with the zodiac bonus. e.g. Sagittarius fire team against the leaf tower.

If the zodiac(s) or element(s) of your team don't match a specific tower, try a single energy against the towers that are likely to be good for your team and compare the damage that you can achieve.


What monsters should I have on my team?

Aside from taking into account the element and zodiacs of the tower you want to attack, the next consideration is the actives of your team's monsters.  The towers do not attack your team, so no healers or defensive monsters are needed.  The tower is also a single target, making actives like snipe (single target attack) more effective than something like blast (multi-target attack).

Event monsters have a significant bonus against their opposite element.  A fire event monster will only have a bonus against the leaf tower, for example.  Event monsters can be spun from within the Event tab (click the "E" on the top left corner of your screen and then click "Event Spin") for 50 gold/spin.  After attacking within the event screen you may be randomly offered a "lucky spin" that will have 3x the drop rate of event epics, again at a cost of 50 gold/spin.  Dominion monsters have a high value among traders.

The damage of this event epic will be multiplied by 12 against the leaf tower only

How to read tower information

Example 1: A tower claimed by your troop

The first indication that your troop is holding this tower is the damage bar between the two troop flags above the tower itself.  Your troop's damage is shown as a percentage in blue and the enemy troop's damage percentage is red.  Our troop claimed this tower (more blue damage than red) and this is indicated by the blue castle showing on the left of this bar.

Clicking on the tower brings up the information shown above.  The actual damage is now shown above the damage bar.  The tower is listed as "Claimed" below the damage bar, and the blue castle icon now appears on our flag.

Both shields are off in the example above, as seen by the shield button below each troop's flag.

The zodiacs that receive the 25% bonus attack are displayed here.

At the bottom of this screen, you can choose how many energy to use against the tower - your regular damage will be multiplied by this factor.



Example 2: A tower claimed by the enemy troop

This screen can be read as per the previous example.  The enemy troop has more damage against this tower, indicated by the significant red percentage of the bar and the red castle icon shown on both damage bars.

Advanced troop strategy option

When you click on a tower, an option exists for your troop to donate 10 specials of the same element as the tower in order to activate a shield.  This shield will reduce the enemy's attacks on that tower by 25%, making it harder for them to claim the tower.  The shield also appears to add in an extra animation delay, further reducing the damage capabilities slightly for your enemy troop.

Unless the match is particularly significant to win, most troops don't use specials in this manner.  To donate specials, click on the tower of interest, then the shield button below your troop's flag. A special donation screen will open up.

 Click on the Shield button below your troop's flag to donate specials

Advanced team/gem-matching strategy

For players working on teams that only contain Dominion event monsters, the general consensus (from Battle Camp Global on Facebook) on team building is to either play with 5 snipes, or 4 snipes and one swap/eswap.  In both cases, the aim is to rely on the damage of your actives (snipes) alone.  Each turn, make one 3 gem match in an element you don't have - no combinations and no actual attacks.  This single match is enough to bring your actives closer to activating without taking up any time animating an attack.  The idea is that most damage will come from the high powered snipes with the event bonus, and if you try attacking in between the snipes you'll lose time and will reduce the number of snipes you can fit into your minute.  

In the last few seconds of either method, aim for one really long turn (generally going into overtime) using up as many attack combinations as you can.  If you're using a 5 snipe team, match the attack element gems that you need which have accumulated within your minute. If you're using the 4 snipe and 1 swap/eswap method, manually activate the swap only in these last few seconds so that you can have a really big attack turn at the end (to make up for the missing snipe monster).

The reason for avoiding using both a swap and an eswap is that you're aiming to only have a single long turn at the end.  Activating both at once is likely to fill your board with interconnecting patterns of gems reducing the individual combos and damage done.  Activating them over 2 separate turns takes too much time away from the snipe activations that you're aiming for.

Official Pennypop Guide:

Extra Information: Event Monsters, Damage Calculations & Boosters
(Thank you to our anonymous commenter below for suggesting this addition)

The bonuses applied to the base attack (or health/recovery) stat are all additive, not multiplicative as most of us intuitively assume.

Using Dominion as an example: An event super may have 600% bonus, 55% bonus from lethal, 15% bonus from your zodiac leveling, 25% bonus from the zodiac boost on a tower and 100% if you activate a booster. The total bonus applied to the base attack stat then becomes 795%.

The booster doesn't double all the other bonuses unfortunately.

More details are available below in the screenshot taken from the game's official help page at pennypop.com/help .

Source: pennypop.com/help