Dotville

By Patrick | March 20, 2007

Currently 4.5/5
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Rating: 4.5/5 (104 votes)

Platform: Flash

Categories: browser, citybuilding, finefin, flash, free, game, linux, mac, rating-g, simulation, strategy, turnbased, windows

Comments (83) | Views (12,863)

Dotville is a city-building Flash game along the lines of Civilization, but greatly simplified. You play the leader of a tribe of Dots (yeah, Dots) and must rise to the rank of Emperor in fifty turns, then defeat the evil empire of Squares. It was created by Finefin.

Each turn corresponds to a year in your character's life and allows you to spend money building food-producing farms, money-producing markets, as well as your military industrial complex in the form of smiths and mines. Your people also have a happiness meter that goes down due to random events and hunger, but can be raised by investing in public works and fortifying your castle. In order to raise in rank—from a humble citizen to a hero, prince, king and then emperor—you must raise your fortress and the happiness of your citizens. It's simple, and yet somehow very complex.

Intermittently, the Squares will try to raid you, but they can be beaten, even without an army, with a few deft moves in a Tic-Tac-Toe mini-game. The final battle, which occurs if you've become an emperor by the end of the game, is a Rock-Paper-Scissors mini-game where you wager troops to deduct from the enemy's total, or lose from your own. Random events occur throughout and can be frustrating, as a sudden punk demonstration can thwart your happiness level a few turns before the end causing you to lose the game for no apparent fault of your own. But, there's a way to play that lets you shrug off even the worst fortune. I don't want to ruin the experience, but reinvest your money in markets as often as possible, and you'll do ok.

Dotville is a flawed but fun attempt to bring city management gaming down to a ten minute experience. And if you've got a soft spot for basic geometric shapes with eyes, legs, and lives of their own, then you better play Dotville.

Play Dotville

Dotville Walkthrough now available!

Walkthrough Guide

(Please allow page to fully load for spoiler tags to be functional.)

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.

Tip #2:
Status symbols

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)

Walkthrough:

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?

Posted by: Slansing | March 20, 2007 4:58 PM

83 Comments

Hand-E-Food

• March 20, 2007 1:23 AM

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

cc • March 20, 2007 7:36 AM

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.

cc • March 20, 2007 7:49 AM

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

Shinyo • March 20, 2007 8:43 AM

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!

GreenPeace • March 20, 2007 8:50 AM

haven't you already reviewed that game?

• March 20, 2007 9:31 AM

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

Marcsin • March 20, 2007 10:30 AM

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.

urania R0X! • March 20, 2007 11:01 AM

hhahhaahha i lost! with a score of 58000 something lol

takushikun

• March 20, 2007 11:09 AM

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

cc • March 20, 2007 11:11 AM

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

Andy • March 20, 2007 11:24 AM

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.

hashimashadoo • March 20, 2007 11:29 AM

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.

Todd

• March 20, 2007 12:34 PM

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

Becca Boo

• March 20, 2007 1:13 PM

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.

torx • March 20, 2007 1:56 PM

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!

Becca Boo

• March 20, 2007 2:09 PM

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.

Kat

• March 20, 2007 2:18 PM

=^O_O^=

I have NO clue how to succeed at this game.

I'm terrible at resource management/strategy games.

DixiePixie

• March 20, 2007 2:41 PM

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.

Luca_Shoal

• March 20, 2007 2:47 PM

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

xadrian

• March 20, 2007 3:10 PM

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.

jay

• March 20, 2007 3:16 PM

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.

Todd

• March 20, 2007 3:22 PM

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.

Slansing

• March 20, 2007 4:58 PM

Tip #1:
In terms of resource production:

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

Tip #2:
Status symbols

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)

Walkthrough:

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?

Kat

• March 20, 2007 6:12 PM

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

balance happiness and productivity

, rather than do what is necessary to WIN (in this game, at least), which is

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

Kat

• March 20, 2007 7:50 PM

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*

Becca Boo

• March 20, 2007 8:05 PM

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.

Jaffa

• March 20, 2007 8:42 PM

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

jay

• March 20, 2007 8:51 PM

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.

Jaffa

• March 20, 2007 9:07 PM

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

Ben

• March 20, 2007 10:34 PM

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.....

Dan Fox • March 20, 2007 11:22 PM

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

Tsuken • March 21, 2007 4:48 AM

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

Cory • March 21, 2007 11:50 AM

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

Cory • March 21, 2007 12:08 PM

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

finefin • March 21, 2007 2:58 PM

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.

jay

• March 21, 2007 3:10 PM

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.) =)

Luna • March 21, 2007 4:05 PM

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

Luca_Shoal

• March 21, 2007 6:57 PM

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

Tati

• March 21, 2007 7:30 PM

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

OneTon • March 22, 2007 10:57 PM

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

Phateo • March 23, 2007 12:20 AM

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!

JonMW

• March 23, 2007 12:21 PM

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...

eiaboca • March 23, 2007 7:34 PM

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.

Monica • March 23, 2007 10:25 PM

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. :)

Nicholas B • March 25, 2007 12:31 PM

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.

PInkfizzypops • March 27, 2007 2:33 AM

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

JonMW

• March 28, 2007 11:56 PM

Here's something I found through experimentation:

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

JonMW

• March 29, 2007 1:05 AM

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!

david • April 2, 2007 5:41 AM

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.

Robert • May 4, 2007 4:27 PM

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

Someone • May 8, 2007 7:52 AM

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

anon dude 2 • June 5, 2007 6:15 PM

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.

P.S.

make an army about 600+ to beat the square

jos • June 22, 2007 2:20 PM

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)

Mikearroon • July 14, 2007 6:12 PM

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

had 400 more army then told

4197 army

the other team had 3789 teams

135334 gold

a score of 2228267 points

I don't believe that 55% stuff.
(I put these just in case someone doesn't want to see.)

exagorazo • August 19, 2007 12:03 AM

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

Sethum • September 5, 2007 2:21 AM

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

My score in the game was:
dots: 33,883
happy: 1,224
Fort: 10x2500
Farm: 200x500
Market: 200x1000
Mine: 100x1500
Smith: 200x2000
King?: 516,750
Food: 17,558
Iron: 0
Weapons: 1,000
Army: 8,998 (started with 11,000)
Gold: 79,847
Total: 3,341,862
At the moment, this puts me at 21st place... Although I suspect that, unless there is something I'm missing about the scoring system, everyone over 4 million cheated. I believe that sending the right hexadecimal code to the scoring URL could trick it...
Anyway, I got 3.3 mil without cheating.
I used a similar strategy to Phateo's excellent walkthrough. However, it can be improved upon:

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).

For the Rock-Paper-Scissors fight:

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.

crazysk8er • September 8, 2007 12:13 AM

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

Anonymous • September 11, 2007 10:29 AM

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

Anonymous • September 11, 2007 10:31 AM

srry i ment more than 40k dots and 200 army

jasper • September 17, 2007 2:05 AM

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

Dana BoBana • September 17, 2007 7:38 PM

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.

Tolallik • November 3, 2007 7:25 PM

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

Jamie • November 14, 2007 6:18 AM

How good is Dotville for you?

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

Neonaxus • November 15, 2007 8:52 PM

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.

Zaku • November 21, 2007 11:18 AM

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

Anonymous • December 9, 2007 10:28 PM

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.

WooJuH • December 20, 2007 8:13 AM

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!!!

Ian

• December 25, 2007 4:53 AM

I got 156937.

justanothergoodplayer • January 13, 2008 1:58 AM

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

domieee • January 27, 2008 6:09 AM

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!!

Pro Player • February 2, 2008 8:49 PM

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

asdj • February 11, 2008 9:59 AM

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

jacob • March 14, 2008 5:28 PM

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

Me, Myself, and I • March 18, 2008 9:24 PM

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

Jasmine • April 5, 2008 7:03 PM

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:)

Jo • April 10, 2008 4:57 AM

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?

Hal • May 4, 2008 8:30 AM

Hey, my score is 781 898 .

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

Pete • June 15, 2008 8:26 AM

It's not too hard, and quite fun...
for the tic tac toe...

bottom left, top right, bottom right, middle right it works EVERYTIME (well it did for me)

also just a tip, after about 3 or 4 turns, dont buy anything and save up for a status symbol, and then agian soon after because the get very expensive quite quickly and they give invaluable happiness
LAST FEW TURNS to stop bad things losing you the game

if a random event like a bunch of rebels, or a black hole happens a few turns before the end, and you lose 100 happiness (it's happened), then in the last turn, spend all your money on farms (assuming you hav a Lvl 10 castle), crank the food rate right up and just floor the taxes. it worked a treat

jenny • July 16, 2008 2:19 AM

why did i suddenly lose?!

dots - 13306
happy - 385
68 farms
41 marketplaces
2 smiths
6 mines
13623 bucks

score 317546

it said something about the dots have lost their emporer or something?

TheHaberdasher • November 8, 2009 11:43 PM

I got to the end but only had 500 in my army. Here is my strategy:

Buy as many farms as possible in the early game and sell off the excess food for profit then get markets later. After I had enough I got rid of taxed and doubled food shares. This nets about 10 happiness and 10000 bucks per turn. I didn't buy a status symbol and left the fortress till the last 15 or so turns.

Fredrick • January 8, 2010 5:34 AM

YESSSS i beat the game finally!

MethanalCHO

• March 3, 2010 3:59 PM

If you're not afraid to cheat, then use the following method:

1. On the main menu, before clicking "Start Game", click on the word "Deluxe" in the title. On the right side, three buttons will show up.

2. Start a game of Dotville. Increase your food rate to 30 and decrease your tax rate to 0%. Whenever you need money, click on the yellow button.

3. Get money via the yellow button in your first turn. Buy as many farms, markets, mines, and smithies as possible. Upgrade your palace once and build all status symbols.

4. Start your next turn. Every turn, upgrade your palace and buy as many buildings as possible (until it says to increase your prestige to build more). Use up any weaponry you have to build your army. If you need more money, use the yellow button. Upgrade your palace until it finally reaches Level 10.

5. By turn 10, you are one-fifth into your reign and should have built everything possible. Devote as much as possible for your army. If food ever does run out (as it does later in the game), buy mass amounts of food in the market, using the yellow button to get the cash to do so.

6. In the final battle, you should have at LEAST a myriad men in your army. Wager some 100 troops per battle. Constantly switch between rock, paper, and scissors, change every time, and change irregularly. Soon, you'll win.

Lombax

• October 29, 2017 2:43 PM

Cool

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