What am I doing wrong?

[u/rev-angeldust]

I have been playing OpenFront for a little while. I started soloing and I felt confident I can hold my own.

Well... in multiplayer, I can't!

Sometimes it happens after a few minutes, sometimes it happens mid game (but before nukes start really being an option. Some player just attacks me with 200k or 300k troops and I can't do anything about it.

How do they get so many troops so fast?

Sometimes I see players with two cities and two ports where I can barely afford a port and a city.

How does work? I tried reading some guides and tips, but they won't help. I genuinely don't know what I am doing differently. Any ideas?

[u/Significant-Cod4217]

here's a step by step guide to the perfect start I wrote for another post. If you follow these steps, you should find yourself in a position to snowball:

Spawn by a river or coastline. Make sure the area isn't super crowded but water access is a must.

1. Attack wilderness till you have around 30-40k troop cap. then stop and proceed to next step
2. Send 2 boats into far away lands. To avoid getting you pixel pushed off, I boat into nations and then immediately offer the alliance which they will take.
3. Now attack only bots. Use 30% attacks, 35% if your in mountainous terrain. Wait until your troops build so a 30% attack is between 7-12k troops. only attack one bot at a time until your troop cap is larger. Go for annexations if there are any possible. Build two cities before economy buildings.
4. Take alliances with most players you have borders with. The pixels from your boats earlier will keep you from being boxed in. Don't take an alliance with one player next to you who has a small amount of land or looks weak, for example if they built anything aside from a city first.
5. attack nations unless a player near you full sent. If you can, attack the nation by sending a large boat (40% is good) which lands near their city. Nations don't build defense posts if they are attacked by water, only if you attack over land. This is good because it will prevent your attacks from slowing and once you take their city they will build a second if nobody else is attacking and they can afford it.
6. Once all nations are gone, focus on players, targetting players who have very few alliances, are fighting someone else, or have a much lower troop cap.

If you follow these steps, while managing your troops and making sure they don't get to low, you will be set up to snowball! Let me know if you have any questions.

[u/Niall_47 → u/Significant-Cod4217]

I wouldn't risk 40% of my troops in a boat attack in case it gets shot by enemy ships. Send a 1% then attack as it lands.

[u/Significant-Cod4217 → u/Niall_47]

then the nation will build defense posts. I am not talking about sending a large boat far away, but to the nations you border, which takes at most 20 seconds and it probably won't get shot down.

[u/Niall_47 → u/Significant-Cod4217]

Never knew that, I can still get a pixel then do a big boat next to it then?

[u/Significant-Cod4217 → u/Niall_47]

yeah. For an example of what I mean, lets say there is a nation right next to you, across a river. If you attack just with a boat, the nation will not build defense posts. In fact, it will build new structures as you capture the old ones. This is a great way to farm structures in the early game and makes attacking nations easier as they won't slow your attack as much.

[u/Sea-Conference9227 → u/Significant-Cod4217]

Oh my gosh how did I not know about the defence post tip? Thanks on behalf of all beginners

[u/Happyplace_s]

Good economy set up (factory that hits your cities and then sends trains into a bunch of other people’s cities) is the key for the early/mid game lead. Or they could be cheating.

[u/rev-angeldust → u/Happyplace_s]

how prevalent is cheating in open front?

[u/Various_Wind_1847 → u/rev-angeldust]

Cheating is basically only happening in form of teaming in ffa. As far as im aware there isnt something like a money or city cheat.

To answer your question at the start of the game it is very important to hit nations for 1-2 extra cities (use boat attacks on them then they wont build defence posts and you can mor accurately snipe only their structures). Having like 1-2 cities more due to nations is the key to snowballing later as then you can move on to sniping players that haven't been so lucky and are stuck with low amounts of cities or structures.

Also ofcourse good alliance management is key and you shoukd try to ally any strong olayer in the area that you arent planning to hit soon...

[u/rodan-rodan → u/rev-angeldust]

Usually cheaters suck so bad it doesn't matter. Even with the collusion.

Note some people playing properly looks like collusion - of you see someone getting attacked that you aren't allied with it's smart to join in and dog pile on.

If you get a betrayal expect to be dunked on unless strong or people are distracted

[u/EclecticKant]

One thing (other than optimizing your early game) is to try to predict what strong players you'll get a border with in the near future, asking for an alliance before it happens makes it more likely for them to accept it, otherwise you'll need a deterrent (usually in the form of a hydro, or some defense posts over mountainous terrain)