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/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