Your First Five Minutes

Most matches in Dominion are won or lost before the ring starts closing. Here is how to win the opening.

Dominion is short. A match is ten to fourteen minutes and the ring of dead tiles starts advancing at the five-minute mark — tick six hundred in engine time. Everything before that tick is your opening, and the quality of your opening determines whether you have the army, economy, and map control to close the game once the ring forces contact.

Tick 0–100: scout immediately

You start with three Warriors on your Capital, six adjacent tiles already owned, and eight iron / four crystal / eight grain in the bank. That isn't enough to buy anything yet — a Barracks is twelve iron plus eight grain, and a Scout is five crystal plus three grain. You are four iron and one crystal short of your likely first purchase. The opening is about fixing that shortfall as fast as possible.

Send your starting Warriors out in the first few ticks. They move one tile per tick, and neutral tiles capture in four ticks with a Warrior (two with a Scout, once you have one). Pick a direction — ideally toward iron and a crystal cluster, because your first real purchase is almost certainly a Scout or a Barracks, and both need the non-grain resources you start short on.

Tick 100–300: pick a lane

By the one-minute mark (tick 120) you should see your first full production tick from the tiles you captured. By tick 300 — two and a half minutes in — the map has given you enough information to commit: you know where your neighbor is spawning, you know the terrain clusters you want to fight over, and you know whether you're ahead, behind, or even on tile count.

The two common lanes in this window:

• Barracks rush.Save for twelve iron / eight grain, build on a tile adjacent to the front line, and start auto-queuing Warriors. Good when you've captured two or three iron tiles already.
• Scout-first expansion. Buy one or two Scouts for crystal plus grain, use their 2 tiles/tick speed and 3-hex vision to race for contested resource clusters. Good when you have crystal adjacency and a greedy opponent who over-committed to one direction.

Tick 300–600: commit or pivot

The last two and a half minutes of the opening are about converting information into position. If you're ahead on tile count and your opponent hasn't matched your army, push the front and threaten capture. If you're behind, don't try to out-expand — consolidate around your Capital, get a Garrison or a Watchtower up on the choke leading to your spawn, and trade time for the ring.