While adding locations and upgrades to your domain may be the most basic decision you can make, the individual resources and quantity of resources you use have a very real effect on how your domain will build and expand, especially in the early stages of a war.

While at first glance it may seem that the commander with the most income holds the most power, this oftentimes isn't true. In fact, gaining excessive income is not only wasteful, but it can become quite tedious to add 17 more gold to your existing pile of 80, for example. (Plus, who wants to be known as the Donald Trump of Conquest?)

Therefore, the purpose of this guide is to learn how to build your income around the rest of your domain. Generally speaking, locations and upgrades should be the last thing you add to your domain.

Locations vs. Upgrades
Every domain needs both locations and upgrades. (If you have an exception, I'm all ears.) However, the quantity of each that you select can vary slightly, depending on strategy. Here's the pros and cons of both:

• Locations: Generally provide quicker, free income. However, create new regions to defend, and you can only annex 3 after the encampment.
• Upgrades: Protect your locations, don't add regions, and help bring out new bonuses in your locations as they reach certain levels. Unfortunately, have a worse cost-income ratio than locations.

If you're planning to dominate the battlefield early, consider more locations and less upgrades. If you're going to take a more conservative strategy, you'll want to use more upgrades.

Establish ideals
Based on the domain you have already built, it is important to establish some rough estimates of the amount of income you would like at various stages of the war. (If you have an existing domain you can use as an example to follow along, that may be helpful.) Since your income builds up quickly, the most important stages are:

• Term 2: How much income would you like? (Oftentimes, this is as much as you can get.)
• Term 3: Depending on your domain, you may want enough income to play your biggest units, or if you have a lot of actions, enough to play decent-sized units and have some gold/mana back for actions.
• Term 4: By this point, you really want to have enough income to use just about any resource in your domain.
• Term Infinity: The last, and very important, determinant is how much income you want for the majority of the war. Once you've established this, you can safely barter your excess locations and upgrades, rather than building up more than you need.

Those who live, those who die
The primary consideration I've left out is the cost to sustain units. If you have a heavily-based creature deck, for instance, and your largest unit is a dragon of apocalypse (show), then you might reach the conclusion that you need only 9 mana for income. However, if many of your other creatures have costs to sustain, and if you have commander spells, then you probably need quite a bit more.

Also, mercenaries such as wizards, craftsmen, and archers have a tendency to live much longer than warriors and creatures. (Obviously, this depends somewhat on your strategy.) Therefore, a wizard such as disciple of the moon is much more costly than an ixen advocate in the long run, since you can guess that the ixen advocate will be ruined in battle much sooner. Therefore, the more archers, wizards, and craftsmen you use with costs to sustain, the more income you will need.

Rough guidelines
For fear of boring you with too many abstracts and not enough concrete numbers, I'd like to provide some rough guidelines for you to consider. Adapt these guidelines slightly based on your individual strategy, and also based on the locations and upgrades you choose to use.

• 50 card domain: 23 locations/upgrades (I suggest 10 locations/13 upgrades)
• 60 card domain: 27 locations/upgrades (I suggest (12 locations/15 upgrades)
• 80 card domain: 36 locations/upgrades (I suggest 15 locations/21 upgrades)

With these rough estimates, establish your ideal income levels, then barter excess resources once you reach your highest level. If you find yourself with an extreme excess of locations and upgrades (you will always have some extra), consider lowering the amount that you use. If you often have to regroup, or are establishing little income by terms 3 and 4, then you probably need more locations and upgrades. (Or, maybe you just need to shuffle better.)

Follow up questions:

• What are your magic numbers for location/upgrade split?
• What is your biggest challenge when selecting locations and upgrades?
• What is your favorite locations or upgrade, and why?