News, Notes, and Event Info

**This document will post information that is temporary in nature but may be of high interest:**

## How to Conquer the new Seasonal Leaderboards Competition

11-04-2021

Greetings Alliance Team Members,

BHG just released the new Seasonal Leaderboard competition.  This article is about first thoughts and observations on how to achieve rank 10 or higher, which has nice rewards (BHG calls them “buffs”).

**Framework:**

* You are Industrial Age or higher (there is a different approach for Enlightenment or younger, which is not being discussed here).
* You have developed your offensive capabilities well.
* You can 4-star an enemy base in a looting battle consistently WITHOUT any losses that take more than a few minutes to retrain. (If you don’t know how to do this, please read the respective articles on our fandom site, or ask your Alliance leader. It is not that difficult to get there. You just need the right development strategy and some practice)

**Approach to achieve top 10 rank or better:**

* Most importantly**, keep your medal count low**. “Low” is relative to your capabilities, but typically means below 800 medals and ideally below 400.  When you are below 400, you are not in a league, which has advantages in respect to the mix of opponents.
* When the season starts, you ideally should **get down to 200 medals** immediately.  That gives you a head start.  Losing a “1 infantry” battle, cost you 30 triumph points. Good news is that your point score cannot go below 0.  So you should take advantage of this fact.
* Since you gain 75 points every time you win 5 stars against an opponent that is one age younger than you are, and you lose 30 points when you lower your medal count, you have a **net gain of 45 points per battle pair**.
* The hypothesis is that most competitors for the Seasonal Leaderboard will gain medal count over time that makes them less and less likely to score the 75 points WITHOUT significant losses.  **Significant losses extend retraining time,** in which case you will have **fewer 45 points net gain battle pairs** for the time duration you dedicate to DomiNations game.  This disadvantage will significantly impact your ranking over the 30-day challenge.
* The Seasonal Challenge is an **endurance race and not a sprint**.  While you might not be in the top 10 at the beginning of the challenge with this strategy, you should climb ranks steadily over time.
* To fine-tune this approach, you should **seek “1 infantry” battles that deduct 20 medals or more** when you lower your medal count.  A way to look at the progress speed is that for every intentionally lost battle, you lose 30 points, and every won battle provides at least 75. That means 2 ½ to 1 battle equals zero net gain (flat progress curve).  On a one-to-one basis, you win 45 net points.  If you lose 20 medals or more and your wins equal 20 medals or less, you have an extra advantage that makes a significant difference over time.  I estimate this advantage being up to 20%. In other words, instead of a net 45 points gain, you are now looking at a steeper progression curve of **54 points net gain**. If you have on average 10 “1 infantry” losses, and 10 5-star winning battles, you **gain an extra 2,700 triumph points** over the duration of a Seasonal competition.
* **War Attacks:**  Having a well-developed base and attack capabilities should allow you to consistently **5-star an opponent base of the same age.**  This assumes well developed library, university, use of upgraded coalitions, and strong museum artifacts.  Since a 5-star victory of a same age opponent wins 100 points and war attacks have a 5x multiplier, you can easily earn between 500 and 1,000 triumph points in wars every two days.  Let’s assume that you participate in 12 wars during the duration of the Seasonal Challenge, and you earn 500 points per war (that should be the low end), you **gain a minimum of 6,000 triumph points** over the duration of the challenge.
* **Final days of the challenge before the ranking is locked down:** I expect that competitive players will use **instant retrain blessings** in the **last few days of the challenge**.  While the challenge is an endurance challenge, the last few days could turn into sprints. If you have the time and instant retrain blessings, plan to participate in that sprint to hold or improve your rank. During the **sprint**, keeping the medal count down is less important as it costs you time and retraining time is zero not matter what your losses are.

**Defending your base:** I don’t have enough understanding yet to assess what the best strategy is to manage attacks to your base.  Those attacks, if “1 infantry” attacks or attacks that result in a victory for you, will provide you with a nice extra amount of triumph points.  However, enemy victories will cost you.  I do not know yet what the net effect is, but my guess is that it may be beneficial to get rid of peace treaties as quickly as possible, since the net effect of being attacked could be positive.

I hope above article helps some with your thought process about the new Seasonal Challenge.  If you have different observations, experience, thoughts, please add to the article and let’s discuss changes to the article as we all gain more knowledge about how this new competition works.

One final word about looting attacks to bases that are one age below your age that yield 4 stars versus 5 stars WITHOUT significant losses.  With well-developed offensive capabilities you focused on getting your fighters upgraded to the maximum at every age since Industrial.  Especially at CWA and above, you should target defender spawning buildings around the City Center first, then deploy your commandos or part of your commandos, followed by Heavy Tanks, after the close vicinity anti-tank guns have been destroyed. Then you follow with the rest of your troops and air support.  You will get 5-stars more than 90% of the time without significant losses.  You won’t need troop tactics, tactics, alliance troops, or generals. That way you can loot non-stop.

Enjoy the Seasonal Challenge!