TACTICS & GUIDES (Still under construction)I've prepared some basic guide for new players, do check them out to learn more about the game. But please feel free to ask here if you have any questions, that's what we're here for =)
Starting the Game» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
When you start the game, your IGN & your city name will be at the default Empire.xxxxxx. So the first thing you wanna do is to rename your IGN & city name. On the world view, your IGN will be displayed just below your city.
Building Your City» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
Your city is basically divided into Rural & Urban areas. The Rural area (beyond the walls) is where you build your resource building e.g. mine, quarry, farm & logging camp. On the other hand the Urban area (within the walls) is where you build developmen building e.g. Academy, Barracks, Hospitals etc.
You can’t increase the number of tiles to build your buildings on, so choose wisely how many buildings to build. This is my recommended city structure for beginners;
Rural Area
4 Logging Camps
4 Quarries
4 Mines
12 Farms
Urban Area
5 Barracks
3 Hospitals
6 Villas
1 of the rest
You can try other setups like lesser logging camps, quarries, mines & boost more farms instead for Rural area. Or more barracks than villas in the Urban area (don’t go lesser than 4 hospital, it’s the only thing that will save part of your troops from dying when youre city is under attack). So it’s all up to your creatively actually. The recommended structure is more of a safe bet only.
Building Your Troops» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
Your troops will be a very important asset, they're not only for attack & defense. But we also need them to gather resources or send help. So you definitely want to train more troops at every opportunity that you have. Don't worry if you don't have enough food to feed them, you can use them to gather more food than you need.
There are 4 types of troops (Infantry, Ranged, Cavalry & Siege) & 4 tiers for each of them;
Tier 1 - Swordsmen, Slingers, Outriders & Battering Rams
Tier 2 - Hoplites, Skrimish Archers, Light Cavalry & Ballista
Tier 3 - Armored Pikemen, Guardian, Companion Cavalry & Siege Tower
Tier 4 - Immortals, Marksmen, War Elephant & Onager
Higher Tier troops are stronger, but they have higher food upkeep & are slower. Not to mention takes longer to train too. But it's worth it to get higher Tier troops.
Also, each type of troop has different load capacity. This is the amount of resources that they can carry back to base. These are the load capacity for each troop type Siege > Infantry > Ranged > Cavalry. So if you have more troops than your maximum march size, you definitely want to bring along those that has higher load capacity to bring back more resources.
Getting Resources » Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
There are 2 main ways to get resources;
1) Raiding Other Cities
Attacking other cities is a great way to earn resources. It’s fast depending on how far & rich the defending city is. But most people would have upgraded warehouse which protects their resources, so sometimes you may get very little resources from the raid. It’s best if you can find abandoned cities aka dead cities, you won’t lose any troops at all cause there’s no troops defending the city. So just march in & collect the city’s resources.
2) Harvesting From Resource Tiles
You can also occupy various available resource tiles around your city. The higher the level, the more resources that they contain. Plus, they’re not guarded by any troops so you can gather resources there safely unless someone attack you while you’re gathering resources. The more troops that you send over, the more resources that they can carry back to your empire. Some troop have higher load capacity, so if you have more troops that you maximum march size, pick the higher load capacity ones.
Getting Materials & Gems » Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
There are 3 main ways to get materials & gems;
1) Raiding Other Cities
Attacking other cities with hero in it is the easiest way to earn materials & gems. If the city is dead, you will not get any materials or gems. So attacking abandoned city will not get any at all, you’ll only get resources.
2) Harvesting From Resource Tiles
Occupying resource tiles will randomly give you materials (NOT GEMS), higher level resource tile gives high chances of getting high quality materials.
These are the materials you can get from the following resource tile:
Camp: Feather, Leather, or Timber
Farm: Hide, Parchment, or String
Fort: Jewelry
Mine: Glass, Metal, or Plating
Quarry: Marble or Cloth
So if you're looking for glass, try harvesting more often on mines or if you're looking for feathers, harvest more often on camps.
3) Completing Quests
There are some quests, even basic ones that may give gems & materials as rewards. It's actually easier to get them from quest than harvesting on a resource tile. So keep on doing the quests whenever there is any available, it's just tap & go anyway.
Crafting Equipments» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
You can craft equipments for your hero at the forge such as weapons, armors, shields, helmets, accessories etc. The equipments are good to boost your troop's strength & your city's economy. You need materials to craft those equipments, the recipes are available in the forge so check it out & see which one you'd like to craft. This will help you to plan the materials to hunt, I'd suggest that you save all the materials that you've hunted until your hero is level 25 or 30 before crafting the equipments. This is because you'll level up to 25 pretty quick, so those lower level equipments may get obsolete fast.
There are 6 level of qualities for each equipment. This is depending on the quality of materials that you used to craft the equipments.
Level 1 - Gray (Lousiest)
Level 2 - White
Level 3 - Green
Level 4 - Blue
Level 5 - Purple
Level 6 - Gold (Best)
You can upgrade the quality of your materials by combining them. You'll need 4 of the same quality material to make 1 higher quality material or gem. For instance, you need 4 level 2 Glass to combine into 1 level 3 Glass. That's how you can improve your material quality & then craft high quality equipments.
Hero Skills » Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
As your hero levels up, he or she will gain skill points. Use the skill points wisely to learn the useful skills. At the beginning, I strongly recommend to focus on increasing speed related skills such as researching, building, marching & resource gathering speed. Time is critical, without these time reductions, you'll take a very long time to grow.
Stronghold Levels » Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
On top of the usual increase in march sizes, these are the other known features that will be unlocked as you level up your stronghold.
Lvl 1 to 5: Gets 2 free teleports that allows you to teleport anywhere.
Lvl 6: March slot +1, meaning you can send out 1 more marching troops.
Lvl 8: You get to unlock Tier 2 troops
Lvl 9: Get better looking city walls LOL
Lvl 10: You get to unlock Tier 2 traps & build prison to capture enemy heroes.
Lvl 11: March slot +1, meaning you can send out up to 3 marching troops now.
Lvl 13: Get better looking city walls ehe.
Stronghold level 9 onwards is where most of the action starts. You'll most likely spend your effort just farming to grow from lvl 1 to 8. Although you get to train T2 troops at level 8, but it takes time for you to complete all the research to unlock the T2 troops. Once you have T2 troops, you'll be ready for some battles.
Alliances» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «
Alliances are very important in this game. You may want to join 1 as soon as possible.
Benefits of joining an alliance:
- Able to receive help to speed up your construction & research
- Able to do alliance quests
- Able to receive alliance gifts
- Able to earn loyalty points (which can be used to purchase stuffs in the alliance store)
- Able to do trades
- You'll get protection if you move to your alliance base & if your alliance is strong.
- Less lonely
But being in an alliance, you're bounded by the alliance rules. It's set by the alliance leader, so learn your alliance rules. Some of the very common rules in most alliances are:
- Must teleport to the alliance base (ask your leader for the coordinates)
- You & your city must have a name
- You can't attack people from other alliance without the leader's permission. More often than not, you won't get the permission without good reasons e.g. you got attacked cause people rather not spark an alliance war.
This post has been edited by NightHeart: Dec 2 2013, 04:34 PM