Our First Dson Challenge Event!

Dear Dson Family,

To celebrate the launch of the new #DS tag in Season 84, we will have a little event.

Starting Season 84, we will create a Hall of Fame for Dson.

Winners of the Event will go into the Hall of Fame.

Season 84's challenge is to have the most number of battle wins. The top 10 players will have their names recorded for bragging rights.

Rules:

1. Only players with #DS tags are eligible.
2. Cardinals are not eligible. (Cardinals will be the judges).
3. Battle wins will be counted from start of Season 84 till 8am GMT (1 hour before season end).
4. Top 10 players will go into Hall of Fame.
5. A mystery prize will go to the top 5 players (delivered by mail)!

So go out there next season and have some fun!

May the most aggressive player win!

Smorg

Season 83 instructions - for action

Dear Family,

There are some pretty significant changes for Season 83 and onwards. Please read and follow instructions (in red).

1. Firstly, every season we reinvite players with a [DS] tag. Over the past year or so, we amassed nearly 150 players with this [DS] tag. We have estimated that only 80 are currently active. This poses a major headache to the reinvite process as we either invite all 150 players or go through names one by one and check against our active / inactive list.

So we have decided on a refresh of our alliance tag to weed out all the inactives.

Our new Dson tag will be #DS. Please change your tag by the end of season 83. This will be a condition for reinvite for season 84.

LINE me if you have any difficulties.


2. We have nearly 70 players who have left the game or become inactive. They still have the [DS] tag. In order to reduce that happening to the new #DS tag, we want to be able to communicate with everyone out-of-game.

With out-of-game communication, if you want to leave the game, you could drop us a message and we could remind you to change your game name before leaving.

So we have decided to make our LINE group compulsory.

Join the Dson SinEspa LINE group if you have not. (Install LINE app and add the following ID: dssmorgasbord. I will add you to our group.) This will be a condition for reinvite for season 84.

Message me in game if you have any difficulties.

We hope that you have found being in Dson SinEspa a great experience and you would be willing to make a couple of changes to make it better for everyone!

Thanks in advance, see you with your new tags in-game and chat with you soon on LINE.

Smorg
Patriarch of Dson Family of Alliances

Paladins of the Inferno event

The Paladins of the Inferno event just ended after 10 days of brutal combat!

I'm very proud that our alliances have done well again. Both Dson Ignis and Dson Glacis made it into the Top 1% and walked away with the top prize, the titan Ignacia.

Ignis finished 40th world-wide

Glacis finished 55th world-wide

I would like to thank all the players and alliances who helped us achieve this by ping pong-ing with us. We really appreciate working together!

Enjoy your rewards especially Kukur and Ignacia everyone. You've earned them! 

Well done,

Smorg.

Rules of Engagement (Post Season 80)

We have adapted our game play to the new 1.9 update so there are changes to the ROE. Please Read.

Start of Season:

1) Remember that we are using a "ping pong" strategy with our other Dson SinEspa sub-alliances.

No capturing Dson lands, No raiding Dson garrisons. Unless permission is given by the player you are targetting.

UPDATE: The new 1.9 update gives VP+Gold+Food for raids on Mountains, Forests and Lakes. There is no need to raid any garrison.

1.1) No capturing of ANY lands, No raiding of ANY garrison. Unless permission is given by the player you are targetting.

Raiding lands (Gold Mines, Farms, Shard Lands, Mountains, Forests and Lakes) is okay.

We ask at the start of each season that other players do not cap us or raid our garrisons, so the right thing to do is not cap them or raid their garrisons either. 

If you need any lands, our senior Dson members can help you get some. Just ask them in LC, PM or LINE. 

2) We will warn alliances that capture of lands or attack our garrisons. If they continue, we will retaliate according to our plan here. Therefore, if our member does the same thing, we will warn our member to stop and kick him if he continues. ("3 strikes and you're out" principle)

Fighting in the Season:

1) If some player "throws the first punch" and attacks you first, let the alliance know on Alliance Chat or LINE.

2) Tell us the name of the player, his alliance and whether he raided you or captured your islands.

3) Our alliance will help you to retaliate if you need help.

4) Keep the retaliation commensurate with the attack. If they raid us, we raid them in return. If they capture our lands, we capture their lands in return.

5) Avoid capturing their lands if they only raided you.

6) Avoid starting fights with alliances with higher level players than ours.

End of Season:

1) When the season ends, the Cardinal leading the alliance will create a new alliance in Bronze league (or Silver) and invite you again.

This is done so both Ignis, Glacis and Academy sub-alliances will remain in the same league.

2) Collect your end of season reward then accept invite to the new alliance.

Strategy for 1.9.3 Update

Dearest Dson Family Members,

(Long post warning)

(Scroll to bottom for tldr)

By now, you would have noticed a huge change to the Dawn of Titans game play with the pushed 1.9.3 update.

I'm sure that there are tweaks to come but one thing is for certain, the days of easy gold are over. 

If we are fair about this, we have to admit that we have been exploiting the easy gold loophole for quite a while.

In a realistic game, a level 4 army should not be able to crush a level 23 gold mine. (Paul even demonstrated how a level 1 titan with level 1 archers could take down a level 23 Ragnar mine)

The 1.9.3 update actually brings some benefits. (The Cardinals are not saying it's a better update but we ARE saying that it ain't that bad and we can still very much enjoy the game with the plan that will be detailed below).

Firstly, the game is actually more realistic now. I firmly believe that if we keep the faith, we'll enjoy the increased realism more. After all,  we are wargamers and after a while, too easy becomes too boring.

Secondly, I feel the alliance aspect of the game has become more relevant.

In the last update, smaller players did not need an alliance.

They could raid or capture high level player lands. If high level players capped their lands, they could just shrug their shoulders and cap&discard the high level player's lands too.

Now players without alliances can only cap lands that are within their ability. This means that if any low level player messes with our family, our cap&discard punishment will hurt them much more. 

The idea of having an alliance as protection is far more obvious now.

So what is our plan? The Cardinals have discussed this and feel the best way forward is this:

Every player will change to a mix of land levels. Some level 20+, some level 17 to 19, some level 14 to 16, etc..

E.g. I can hold 16 lands.

I will carry 4 x level 20+

4 x level 17 to 19

4 x level 14 to 16

4 x level 10 to 13.

This means any Dson player can hit us. High level players hit our high level lands, mid level players hit our mid level lands, lower level players hit our lower level mines.

In this way, we can still do Ping Pong although a bit slower.

If we do this, no matter which Dson player you click on will have something that you can raid.  You just raid what fits your level . So instead of hitting the same guy over and over, you actually hit a Dson player once or twice then go on to next Dson player. If everyone does this, there will be plenty of targets to hit for Ping Pong.

Almost all Dson players (even low level ones) already have level 23 gold mines. This is good. They just need to get lands of other levels.

I know it will hurt to dump level 23 mines but you will get more gold through PP than just farming level 23s. E.g. 40000+k from a level 15 mine compared to farming 2600+ from a level 23 mine. We're wargamers right?

Yes, you will get less gold per raid. But there is no avoiding the fact that easy gold is now in the past. What I CAN say is because we are organised in the described way, you will still get more than other players of your level who are in other alliances or are working alone.

Consider also that low level upgrades also need less gold to achieve.

For us level 20+ guys, our upgrades cost millions of gold so naturally  we have to hit higher lands.. but for the teenagers their upgrades should cost less than a million. . So everyone's growth rate would be the same.

So, let's do this shit! The high level player's will need to cap low level lands from low level players and the low level guys will need to cap mid level lands from higher level players. Use league chat or LINE chat to coordinate until everyone has a good mix.

Happy gaming!

Smorgasbord 

Patriarch of Dson Family of Alliances

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Extra reading:

In the Cardinals' discussion, we also spoke of just mixing up the players so that each alliance will have a mix of players from all levels.

The proposal was to do banded Ping Pong. That is, level 10-12 players Ping Pong each other. Level 11-13 players Ping Pong each other and so on.

However, we felt that as cardinals we should help the juniors.. it felt a bit weird to have ping pong only among our own levels.. it made us feel like we were looking out for ourselves only.

Also if we only Ping Pong among our own "band" we may end up running out of targets. . Maybe a level 10 in our alliance finds that his band is all bubbled up.

But if everyone has a (more or less) equal mix then almost any Dson player that level 10 looks at should have something he can raid..

We also predicted that if we chose banded Ping Pong, our lower levels will want to keep as many level 23 GMs as possible (for farming gold). This would also lower the number of mines available for that band to PP with.

We also fear with the banded PP, lower level players will give up playing. We'll essentially be asking them to ditch their level 23s and get a bunch of mid/low level lands and play among themselves.

What then would our alliance be for?

The lower level guys are the ones who need the most support in this crisis n they would need to hold at least some level 23 lands. The big guys would need to hold some lower level lands for them to raid to help them grow..

We acknowledged that it would be more painful to convert so many of our lands but it would be better for our alliance overall.

------------ Too Long, Didn't Read Section -----------

Tldr: Don't give up! Change mindset about easy gold! Alliance play will be improved! Change your mines to a mix of levels. Hit lands +2/-2 of your castle level and continue to grow.

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