In the past couple of weeks I’ve been hooked on OpenFront, a trendy little web game. The principle is deceptively simple: you control a country on a massive map, and your goal is to conquer every other player (anywhere from 30 on the smallest maps to 150 on the largest). To attack, you just click on an opponent, and part of your army will surge toward them. You’re represented as a blob on the map, and your army moves like a fluid, spilling across the terrain whenever you send it forward. That’s the core loop. On top of this, there’s a basic economy and some simple diplomacy. It’s free to play, requires no account, and you can be in a match within 15 seconds.

What makes the game addictive isn’t its simplicity, but the emergent gameplay that grows out of these mechanics. The economy, though simple, creates satisfying snowball effects, and the limited communication system (you can only talk using a handful of emojis) produces strange, surprising outcomes. The game feels a bit like a slot machine. You spin up a new match, and after a few minutes you’ll know whether you have a chance or not. At that point, you can commit to the run or quit and immediately start fresh. After grinding through hundreds of games in this wonderfully unproductive pursuit, I decided to write a guide that pulls together everything I’ve learned.

I assume you already know the basics of how the game works. If not, jump into a match or two for ten minutes to get a feel for it. The good news is that OpenFront is open source, so you can poke through the code if you’re curious. For this guide, I actually dug into the source myself to confirm some mechanics. What follows is a walkthrough of each phase of the game.

Span and very early game

At the very start, you get a few seconds to pick where to spawn. Those few seconds are probably the most important decision you’ll make in the entire match. Since bots and weak nations are cleared fast, your initial location determines how much breathing room you’ll have. You want to balance three criteria:

Avoid heavy player density. This is the single most important factor. If too many players spawn nearby, you’ll be forced to fight over scraps of land. Even if you survive the early chaos, you’ll eventually be crushed by someone who spawned with more space.
Look for good expansion opportunities. Don’t pick a landlocked area or a corner of the map. Once bots are gone, you’ll need space to expand, or you’ll suffocate.
Mind the terrain. Terrain matters a lot. Tap the spacebar to see the topographic map. Plains let you spread like butter, hills slow you down, and mountains make progress painfully slow. Plains give you faster early expansion but make you easier prey later. Bad terrain means a weak opening, and in this game, slow starts snowball into quick deaths.

Some mechanics worth knowing:

Attacks prioritize mountains first, then plains, then highlands.
Defense multipliers: Plains = 80, Highlands = 100, Mountains = 120. Fighting on mountains is bloodier.
Tile spread per tick differs: Plains 16.5, Highlands 20, Mountains 25.

Once you’ve spawned, your next job is clearing bots. This is critical, since bot clearing gives you both land and the gold you need to kickstart your economy. Don’t blow all your population right at the start, or you’ll stall while others farm bots more efficiently and outpace you.

You only control two sliders:

Troop/worker ratio. More workers means more gold, fewer troops.
Attack ratio. Determines how many troops are sent per attack.

I usually set troop/worker between 75 and 100 percent. If I feel threatened, I push 100 percent for an intimidating army. If I’m safe, I lean toward 75 percent to boost gold.

For bot clearing, keep your attack ratio between 30 and 50 percent. At 30 percent, you send steady, efficient attacks without draining yourself. At 50 percent, you can sometimes one-shot bots, get troops refunded, and expand rapidly. Always watch the bots and nearby players. Bots commit far fewer troops per attack (1/20 of their stockpile versus 1/5 for humans), so when they attack, they weaken themselves—perfect time to swoop in. Expand in one direction to maximize bot adjacency, and pay attention to allies. If you sync attacks with them, you can finish bots faster, avoid being cornered, and ride their momentum.

Never waste energy attacking players in the early game. Bots are worth it because humans get a 20 percent attack bonus against them. Nations are trickier—they expand more, build buildings, and fight harder than bots. It’s often smarter to leave them alone at first. If you let a nation live, it may build cities you can later capture for free. And weaker players bogged down fighting nations are easier to scoop.

Nations are tougher than bots. They expand more, can build buildings, and are closer to human opponents. Don’t attack them until the bots are cleared. Sometimes it’s even better to leave nations alive to construct buildings you can capture later. They can weaken other players (especially noobs) for you as well.