Dotville

This is fun! I completely forgot that happiness affected your rank and lost out when my 50 turns was up.

I lost out on turn 50 too with 61 happiness a full 200 army, and for no apparant reason?? score was 219795 a 600 something world rank BLAH!

Did not get to play RPS, but TTT is easy to beat, just wish the game would explain sudden the sudden loss before the end.

However I am a glutton for punishment...Death to all squares, wait is this an attack on Clack 2...Hmmmm.

Doh...I think my prob is not having 400 happy, cuz it happened again.

Don't forget your fortress affects your rank too!

I've found it's best to build a bunch of farms and a market place at first. Then mines, and when you can afford it, a smithy. You can sell the surplus iron and weapons at the end of your turn for a good profit, to buy more mines and smithys.
And getting at least one status symbol really helps get that happyness up!

haven't you already reviewed that game?

Nice little game, and good point about investing in markets, on my first go I managed to score well over 300000 at the end of the game.

For a flash game this is pretty complex and deep, well done to Finefin.

An if anyone is truly awful at Tic Tac Toe:

this is the win solution:

1. Centre square
2. Middle-right square
3. Lower-middle square
4. Upper-middle square

Got 420K points but only 162 happiness so lost unfortunately.
Had 100 farms, & 100 markets, ~6 mines, & ~5 smithy's. Not sure how to get to emperor level tho. The happiness token (that gives 5 :)/turn) keeps rising in cost every turn.

hhahhaahha i lost! with a score of 58000 something lol

600k points and won the final battle--

squares had around 1100 and i had around 1400 army

to become an emperor, you must have certain happiness and a level 10 fortress instead of investing in the +happiness thing, you should keep 20 food in order to have luxury status also invest in market as much as possible and at turn 50, buy everything and make an army and fight

Finally beat this thing earlier. Mine Mine Mine is the way to go for me. As Shinyo said splurge on the status symbols!!

This game was great, but I was really disappointed with the RPS at the end.
I had an army of 400, and still lost. Kinda lame to be undone by a randomly generated Rock Paper or Scissor.

Also, big key to obtaining the proper levels of happiness:

Focus on purchasing the Status Symbols early on, before investing in fortress upgrades.
Doing this allows the Happiness to accumulate over much more of the game, which lets you reach 400 quickly, and also protects you from the random disasters which can really screw you later on.
Furthermore, as each turn passes, the Status Symbols increase in price, and you'll want to purchase them early for that reason as well.
Getting upgrades on the Fortress is relatively cheap, and can be accomplished easily.
Finally, once you achieve Emperor status, a decrease in happiness below 400 does not matter, so once you get to that level immediately focus all expenditures on upgrading the fortress.

Completed it on my second try. Definately splurge on the status symbol (try to get 2, if not 3 of them). If you do that, you can keep taxes high, food low and sell off almost whatever you want as the poulation will be pretty low until much later and still keep people happy.

wow that game is hard on my second try i got to dot prince but then for like 5 turns bad stuff kept happening and i lost like 50 happy

Aw that is so cute! It reminds me of zombinies, of ant farms... seseme street. It's just so cute! And fleas. It reminds me of cartoon fleas.

Score: 351,047 with happiness of 1,100.

huge tip:

do NOT invest in the status symbols at all! instead, focus on building up marketplaces and farms. once you have enough farms, increase the food consumption to 20. This will give you a happiness boost every round that ended out giving me over 40 happiness per round towards the end. From there you can max out marketplaces and mines, and sell all of the iron you get per level (no money hit for selling and buying commodities.) Keep going and on turn 50 sell all buildings and commodities except weapons, then make your entire army on turn 50 by buying weapons and training soldiers until you are out of money, buildings and commodities. Mine was around 2,400 large.
have fun!

Gah, so frustrating! It is so hard with so few moves. When I really start raking money in, I don't want to stop playing. I wish the game lasted longer, or had an 'unlimited turn mode', just for fun. I hate being restricted.

=^O_O^=

I have NO clue how to succeed at this game.

I'm terrible at resource management/strategy games.

this game is so frustrating........ the highest I can get is Dot King. I try to buy the statuses, like everyone recommends, but it takes so long to be able to afford them, I can't do anything else.

30680 or so was my high score...huzzah :D

I'm with Kat, I don't like spending 30 minutes just so I can lose. Don't know that I'd play it again. I tried 4 times, the first three I was wiped out early by black holes, plagues and "sick of this system" things. If you suck early on, the game doesn't forgive you for it, it in fact hampers your progress. I notice the 4th time around, the more money I had, the more happy things would randomly show up instead.

Interesting.

I agree that the end-phrasing should be a little more positive and optimistic, something like...

Hooray! You achieved the rank of Dot-Hero!! \o/
Still not an Emperor, though. Why not try to achieve at least the rank of Dot-Prince next time. ;)

I did well my first time through (at least by my own standards) but still only managed to be Dot-Hero. The ending should encourage a replay, not simply say "You LOST", which is discouraging.

hey jay great website im on almost everyday and i love all the escape games but for this game i finished with almost 700k and i did win the final battle. here is a tip for the final battle

use only rock and scissors for the last battle and you will hit him almost everytime.

Oddly, I've been playing this a lot - probably around 15 times now. I tweak the strategy just a bit each time and see what the outcome's like. I really enjoy mathematically analyzing games like this, so I figured I'd bring what I have and see if anyone can add to it.

Tip #1:
In terms of resource production:

farm > marketplace > mine > smithy.
The payoffs are as follows:
Farms cost 1000, produce 300ish, so payoff is in less than 4 turns
Markets cost 2000, produce 500, so payoff is in 4 turns.
Mines cost 3000, produce 500, so payoff is 6 turns.
Smithy cost 5000, produce 250, so payoff is 20 turns.
Does not include end-game points.

So never buy a smithy - always buy weapons from the market.

Status symbol prices are dependent on your population - yet they increase your population once you buy them... Therefore you want to buy all of them at about the same time. So what does this say about your population early on?

So this means population is your enemy in the early game - and therefore happiness is your enemy. Keep it as low as possible (I keep it around 3 so you don't lose when random events occur)

-Always feed min amount of food, and keep happiness at 3 by adjusting taxes.
-Build a single market and farms until around 25-30 (when it caps out).
-Upgrade your fortress (and temporarily bump your happiness to 20)
-Once you're a hero, build up to near 50 farms, upgrade your fort again (temp raise your happiness to 100).
-Somewhere around now, you want to upgrade your status symbols to 7, while adjusting your taxes to keep happiness as low as possible.
-Build fortress upgrades for the next 8 turns, using excess resources on farms, and markets when you cap out at 150 farms, then the max at 200. Keep the happiness requirement in mind when you want the next status level.
-Build the max 100 mines when you've maxed out of farms/markets. (I usually achieve this around turn 39)
-Save resources til turn 50
-I buy 2000 armymen - but I don't think it matters, the enemy always seems to have 55% of your army. So what's the min needed?
-Play RPS, and hopefully win!

Usually I end up with around 2-2.5 mil points at the end, if I don't lose in RPS.

Any other strategies? I'd be curious on what can be improved - some people end up with 5+ mil points, I wonder what they do?

<lolcat> Hay guys! </lolcat>

No wonder I suck at this game. My general philosophy about life is that it's better to

balance happiness and productivity

to sacrifice the happies until you have made a bunch of monies.

Following Slansing's walkthrough, I got:

Final score: over a million and a half points ... browser crashed before I could sign in on high score list, but I'd be somewhere around world rank #150ish

That rock/paper/scissors nonsense at the end is a buncha stealthpoop. Not random *at all*. I got 8 ties in a row, what are the odds of that? (Yeah, I'm sure someone can figure out the math.)

I had an army of 500, and the Squares had an army of 493. I don't think Slansing's formula of square army = 55% of dot army works ... at least not across the board. Maybe there are tiers ... the larger your army, the smaller the percentage of your army that the squares have? Dunno.

I am not "satisfied" with this game at all, and not just because it's difficult (in general, and moreso for those who are decidedly less than gifted in strategy/resource management games, such as myself). I don't like the game's way of suggesting values that are necessary to win. No, I will never be a politician. (: Perhaps I am naive, but I'd rather feel good about myself in the way I got something done and take longer to do it than get it done in a shorter period of time regardless of the methods I used. (i.e. ends not justifying means, in my view)

And before anyone says it, YES, I am taking the game too personally. I take *everything* personally. I'm a Leo, after all.

I'll play something that is fun for the sake of fun, next time. I wish The Flowering Nose worked on my computer -- the most violent thing I've seen in that game (to the limit that I was able to play it) was that you kill beasties by throwing flowers at them.

*scatters flowers around for beautification and amusement*

Yay! I finished it! Thanks for all the hints, guys!

1,652,103. I wonder how the final scoring works? What is worth more, etc? I DO know that the soldiers that you have left alive count, beause the more citizns lost to war the less you have, therefore you get less points in the end.

i DO NOT get this game. I have attempted it more than 5 times and i lose on the second or third turn. I GIVE UP. lol

Jaffa - I was failing the first couple of tries until I watched the "Getting Started" helper in the instructions, then it all made sense what I was supposed to do.

Ahhh... Got it. Still did not win but at least my dots didnt abandon me after 3 turns. lol

I'm going to second the "Could have sworn this has been reviewed before" comment. Search didn't come up with anything, but I didn't try too hard.....

Weird Game

Final Stats
Dots: 22199
Happy: 717
Fortresses: 10 -> 95860
Farms: 200 -> 25900 food
Marketplace: 200
Mines: 100 -> 0 Ore
Smithy: 200 -> 1000 weapons
-> 5880 surviving soldiers (8000 went into battle)

Coin: 452396
Final Score: 2666072

I didn't like the rock-paper-scissors in the end at all :)

136 on all time best. pretty good I guess. 1.7 million.

whew, then I got #32. 2.8 mil. that's good enough.

Thanks for this nice review. It's funny to see how my game gets around in the interwebs. I know it's not perfect and there are some logic errors and frustrating random events, also city management is not everyone's cup of tea - but I'm thrilled about every review and comment given from all around the world, even the negative ones.

I epecially want to thank S.Lansing for stripping down the game mechanics... this will help me to do better next time :)

uhm - did you notice the "cheat"?

well, it's just something that survived the testing phase.
click on "deluxe" in the main menu logo and three buttons will appear on the right.
red - jump to final battle
yellow - +100.000 bucks
green - you loose ;)
you won't be able to submit your score when using cheats.

Thanks for stopping by, finefin. And sorry about the background color. It's fixed now (though I did like the contrast of the inverted sky colors as in the screenshot.) =)

Hey, that spoiler's great! Cute game, I loved the cute blobbies <3

3548578... epic ^^... tho that's with cheating ONCE.

with cheating i got 4620215...
and i didnt even get to fight my battle!
im gonna try that again

Seems like some of the variables aren't getting cleared when starting over. (ex: 4 smithies create 20 weapons on round one).

Here is a walk-Through to max out on everything:

1 - Set food rate to 5, bring taxes up to 52. Until you max out all of the status symbols, you will leave food rate as is and adjust taxes to get happiness to 3.
Buy one market so you can trade food as it accumulates.
Buy one farm.
2 - From here on out, the key is trading food each turn so that you can buy the max number of farms each turn. Once you have maxed out farms for the first tier at 30, continue to trade food in each turn and buy markets until you have 30.
At this point, you should save money/food until you have around 75,000-80,000. If you have kept happiness down, this should be enough to buy all status symbols.
Buy all status symbols on one turn (this will likely be around turn 24).
24 - Next, buy the first fortress upgrade. Continue the process of maxing out farms first and upgrade fortress pretty much every turn. If you have money left over after fortress and farm upgrade, buy markets with the excess. If you do this right, you should be able to reach emperor status by the 34th turn or so.
34 - At this point, I buy 2 smithys for every mine and begin trading weapons for gold when I do the food trade each turn. This process of building up smithys and mines should take eight to ten turns or so.
44 - At this point, you can basically end each turn until turn 50 and just let your stuff accumulate.
50 - Buy armies (you should easily be able to get 6000-7000 depending on when you maxed out and began accumulating). At this point, bring taxes down to zero and bring food rate up to 30.
Then, good luck with paper rock scissors!

Ugh, how irritating.

First game: I messed when I tried selling my markets in favour of mines and smithies. Big mistake.
Killed this game partway through.

Second game: Went for exponential growth with markets. Did quite well - had four status symbols (or whatever they're called) and entered the final battle.
I had 1777 soldiers. They had about 1000.
I lost.

That is very annoying!

Couldn't someone (in-game) have warned me that the endgame was decided by pure luck?

I think I had an end score of about 76000...

I found it opposite to some people, because status symbols bring you up in happiness quite quickly. I just bought marketplace after marketplace, until I could afford a status symbol almost every other turn. I ended up with over a thousand happy and a million points.

And Kat, I don't know if the rock paper scissors is supposed to be truly random...you can kind of watch the hand on the other side and time it to "land" when you want it to.

Hummm ... winning it really wasn't as fun as just playing it. I agree with those people who said it would be fun just to play this game without end. Cute though. :)

delightful game! very straight forward.
but...regarding iron and weapons....

3000 for a mine, which creates 10 units worth 50 each,
5000 for a forge, this creates 5 units worth 100 each,
also using sellable resources..
So, due to offshoring policies resulting from outsourcing of government contracts, I am fighting the squares with weapons marked "made in Square-Landia" or "made in Strong-Badia" on the cheaper ones.

Grrr, I kept trying to buy the status symbol! I had enough money but it wouldn't let me click the button!

Here's something I found through experimentation:

Increase food rate to about 20. I'll let you find out what it does for yourself.

Woo, finally won a game.

During the end turn, I had 1000 happy (and no status symbols, beat THAT) and an army of 3000.
However, at the end of the last turn a big black hole killed about 1000 dots and reduced happy by about 100. So I'm a bit annoyed there.

For the end battle, the squares had 1637 army. Bu this time... I WON.
Final score of 592331. Much better than my first game!

its a funny game, but very flawed. since everything can be baught and sold without any penalty, there is no difference between your stocks, as they are completely interchangable once you have a market. thus, you can easely calculate which building is most benificial, making others buildings obsolete.

hint: never, never build a smithy.

I just beat it with the final score of... *Drumroll* 861456 Awesome!

I got bored so i used that cheat/bug finefin pointed out. My army of 193000 vs 95000. My end score: 60m xD

Beat the game after about 1 hr.
If you need help then

all you have to do is look at the instruction page. (where it says to decrease food rate and tax) That should be your first turn. Then you need to build up lots and I mean LOTS of marketplaces. When you have a bad year or your poulation grows too high you should build up more farms. Try and get 3 or 4 Statues but don't let it impede your progress. dont waste time on mines or smithies till you have 100+ marketplaces. keep all iron and weapons, this is for the final battle with the square emporor. Also remember you need ALL 10 fortress upgrades to become emporer.

make an army about 600+ to beat the square

really easy game

1.8M without cheating or something like that
i wonder how the score is being counted at the end (that would really help me increasing my score)

While following Slansing's walkthrough I got:

all upgrade's as you are suppose to get

200 farms with a total of 220375 food left

200 market

100 mines with a total of 4795 iron

100560 villagers

200 smith

3205 weapons and armor

4197 army

the other team had 3789 teams

135334 gold

a score of 2228267 points

The formula for the final score puzzled me. It didn't seem all that rational. After recording results of a few games, I think it's something like this...


Final score =

Dots x 1
+ Happiness x 1
+ Fortresses x 2500
+ Farms x 500
+ Markets x 1000
+ Mines x 1500
+ Smithies x 2000
+ Bonus x 1
+ Food x 1
+ Iron x 1
+ Weapons x 1
+ Armies x 200
+ Bucks x 1
+ Symbols x 1000
+ 10000 points for winning RPS

Yeah, I think this was a great game. I'm a huge fan of Civilization-type games. Although I agree that the requirement of reaching Emperor and then fighting via RPS is kind of lame.

I get the sense that the army advantage you have over the enemy may be related to how many Tic-Tac-Toe boards you win. As Ti pointed out, you can always beat the computer in Tic-Tac-Toe (in this game) by always marking:

1. Centre square
2. Middle-right square
3. Lower-middle square
4. Upper-middle square

Day 1) Buy Market, sell all Food, buy 2 Farms. Reduce Food Rate to 5, and increase Tax to 54%. This only leaves you with one happiness, which you will try to maintain for 20 rounds. The point is to hope you can avoid the two events that lower your happiness (clogged drains and the spectre) for 20 rounds... if not, start over.
Day 2) Hope that you earned enough Food so you can purchase a new Farm right away. Otherwise start over. Continue investing all your Food as cash for Farms until the cap at 30.
Remember to raise your Taxes if happiness goes up for any reason. You want to keep it at 1 so you get more money and the population stays low. It's even better if you get hit by the plague, black hole, or strange death.
Day 12) Hopefully you've built 30 Farms by this point. Now build up 30 Markets, and then save up 75,000-80,000 gold. With luck, your population will be below 900 due to "catastrophes"
Day 21) Buy all the Status Symbols at the same time. Ideally, you will also have enough to buy your first Fort upgrade. Increase Taxes to 100%. You're now safe from dying. If after you've purchased the Fort upgrade you still have spare gold, spend it on a Mine/Smith combo. Always try to keep 2 Smiths for every Mine, and never sell your Iron, since it can be converted into Weapons shortly (just let any surplus build up, and make sure to buy extra Smiths in the future).
From now on, keep buying Fort upgrades each day and spend the rest of your gold on keeping your Farms at maximum, followed by your Markets.
Day 32) You should be an Emperor by now, with almost 200 Farms. Work on getting your Markets to 200, followed by Mine/Smith/Smith sets.
Day 40) You'll probably be completely maxed out now. At this point, I'd recommend increasing your Food Rate to 20 to help your happiness grow - but keep an eye on your Food surplus, and buy food if you will not have enough for the next round. Make as many Armies with all your remaining cash, buying Weapons when needed. Each Army you make is one less mouth to feed (you may need to change the Food Rate briefly to make sure the game knows you have less people).
Day 50) Finish making your Armies. Set your Tax to 0%. I think you can leave the Food Rate at 20. Make sure you have enough Food surplus so your dots won't go hungry (a full round does occur when you end this day).

It's not random. I believe there is some guessing program. It seems to like throwing the same choice several times in a row. Your best bet is to use one choice a few times, and then switch with a second choice, but stay mainly with just 2 of three options.

I ended up with

26623 dots
818 happy
200 farms
200 markets
100 mines
1807450 gold

my final score was 3,011,099 and I didn't even win the RPS

521 markets 523 farms 324 mines 110 blackmiths and 99 food rate and zero tax rate and amry of 4k yet i didnt get to emperor lol

srry i ment more than 40k dots and 200 army

ha 50k score and I had 63453 food and I sell them and the I earned 12457 food again then my fortress is at the max level and im a dot king but I REACHED TURN 50 when I was a dot king and just poof my dots are gone in the turn 50

I beat this game after the 5th try, i thought i had to get both the fortress AND the sybols, but i soon figued out you need an army of 2000+ to win the game

I won the game with the score of 1,577,634 and like 2500 troops

I had 200 markets, and 80 farms. dont bother with the smithy, or mines (its a waste of time and money)

dont buy the symbols either, just buy the farms till you run out of money, reapet till about year 39 (at that time i have over 600,00) ajust the foot rations the 21, so you get happiness.now get the fortress up at lvl 39. at lvl 50 sell EVERYTHING, and buy weapons (you need 1 market for that). buy buy buy till you have 2000+ men. then at the last part only use rock and scissors.

I got 122399 points and still have the square empire laugh at me how do you win this game??

How good is Dotville for you?

A. Uber!
B. Fine.
C. Not much.
D. Garbage!

Hah, I was finally winning once, I had tons of money and buildings, the food rate was up, and taxes were at 0. My castle was at maximum, too.

As it turned out, everything was going TOO good. I wasn’t really paying all that much attention, but I think my population exploded and I got WAY too many people, and they all starved, giving me an end happiness of about -60. Oops.

I have one question about point how is calkulete king(?) points i mean points near this doot with crown

You know what i would like in this game is the option, of choosing whether to have 50 rounds, or unlimited rounds. i mean i have like a billion resources then after i win the war they have no point.

I got 2000 army and the enemy had just 1200 or 1300..
I just bet 1000 I lost...
But in the second time i did it they lost 1000..
and I bet 200 and i woN it

YEHEY!!!

I got 156937.

i found out something kool for the final battle (only works on mozilla firefox though)

right click on the screen and left click "play" things will fast-forward kind of and you will automatically win. the other kool thing is that this makes it so you can submit your score if you cheated, i think

Yes! i did it!
my final score was...
dots-90941
happy-2406
uptades-all 10
farms-200
foods-6238085
supermarkets-200
mines-100
smithies-200
armies-27000
opponents army destroyed-19761
total money at the end-98453780
total score-23617780
EMPEROR

i lovee this game!!

If you are having problems beating the game read the info!
Everything is there but if you want a clue get farms and Supermarkets then Smithies and don't upgrade the castle before you have upgraded the status.
Oh yea and you don't need so many farms that u get 8000more food then u need as long u get 500-1000more food that should go fine.

Good luck to ya if ya still cant win:P

Lol.I lost in every round against the army =)Can't believe my luck.

i got 28909180 for cheating with 1030 dots 2558 and 141188 army left after battle.

For those of you who like this game should play the Civilization Series.

Final Score
752,286
Very happy about this.. cause this game kicked my butt like 10 times before i could even get to final Dottle:)

I need help with buying status symbols. When I click on the button to buy them, nothing happens. Everything else works just fine, but I cannot buy status symbols. I play the game on a Mac with Safari. Any ideas?

Hey, my score is 781 898 .

How. Max Farms, Irons, Market, Tax to 0, 2 status symbols, 10/10 castle, 30 army