Game Stage

A traditional OpenFront match can be roughly broken down into three stages, depending on player number and size, gold amounts, and structure amounts.

What generally happens during each stage depends on the type of match.

Free for All (FFA)

Early-Game

Players begin by choosing their spawn spot depending on terrain, water access, and number of players, Nations, and Bots.

Afterwards, players rush to get as much unclaimed territory from the wilderness as possible, as this land is easiest to get. After no more land is available, players will start to target the bots around them, especially small bots, and bots that allow for the Annexation of other bots after being conquered. This will hopefully give players enough money to build their first city or two.

At this point, after most of the bots have been conquered, players should have a few Alliances, and a few weaker nations or players around them, which they may seek to target. They will likely build Ports or Factories in order to get more income for more expansion.

Mid-Game

Once the match stabilizes from the initial rush against bots and weak players, it is extremely important to keep expansion possibilities open, as alliance timers may start to run out, their former friends can turn on them if they do not keep growing. Players at this stage focus on balancing building economy buildings and cities, while trying to keep their Troop gain as high as possible. Depending on the players they are fighting, and the structures they are gaining from conquered territory, they may need to build more cities to keep up.

During this time, the first Missile Silos will start to be built. Player with small territory, but excess Gold may choose to invest in a missile silo and Hydrogen Bomb in order to practice Nuclear Deterrence.

Players not in the top 5 on the leaderboard should keep an eye out for the top players, as they may Snowball if they have large amounts of structures, and trying to fight amongst similarly sized players may automatically give the match win to the top player.

Late-Game

As the number of players drops to single digits, usually 2 or 3 strong players will emerge as the favorites for the win, with a few smaller players providing their allies with gold through Trade.

It is possible for the top players to be allied with each other, in which case it can be difficult for one of them to act unless they have a very large troop advantage on all of their peers.

Though endgames can take many forms, matches will often come to a close with one or several MIRVs being launched. If all of the top players get MIRVed, it may happen that one of the weaker players will take over large amounts of Fallout and indeed later take the win.