Introduction

This guide will go over the basic mechanics of the game, along with build guides for efficiency in order to develop into a powerful account. This is workable with all 3 tribes, with each tribe being able to have additional advantages in certain areas, which will be highlighted.

Tribes

Each tribe has its own strength and weaknesses, which need to be considered when developing. All three tribes are able to hold their own against others, depending on how you adapt them to your situational needs.

Romans

These are considered the simmers of the game. In terms of raw power, their infantry is unmatched. However, their troops are expensive, and they have a slower start than the other tribes. Once they have developed, they are very hard to stop. They have a dual build feature, which means they can build a resources field AND a building at the same time. A good roman will use this feature to grow rapidly. They also have a Horse Drinking Pool (HDP), which lowers their cavalry upkeep by one for their Scouts, EI, and EC at levels 10, 15 and 20 respectively. Their hero’s gain 100 Fighting Strength per point instead of the 80 Fighting Strength per point that the other tribes get.

Gauls

This tribe is recommended for beginners. These are set in favour of defensive play; however, you can still run an effective offensive account with them. Their cranny gives better protection (3000 instead of 2000 at level 10), and are also able to build a trapper to trap enemy raiders. Their defensive unit is very cheap and does not need researched. In favour of offensive tactics, they have the fastest troop in the game (Theutates Thunders or short TT’s). Their hero gains a speed boost over the other tribes.

Teutons

These are the aggressive tribe. Their clubswingers are fast to build, and very cheap. This allows them to raid for profit very easily, and rely heavily upon outnumbering the other tribes and suppressing their growth to maintain the advantage. Their hero allows for cranny effectiveness to be at only 80%, meaning at level 10, it protects 1600 (2400 for Gauls) if the hero accompanies the raiding force.

Getting Started

We will make the assumption that you have developed your fields to at least all to level 2.

In order to grow your village rapidly, there is a certain ratio that the resource fields follow in their requirements for the next level. The best method to use is a 10,12,8,6 method. This means that you have clay producing the most, followed by lumber, followed by iron, and crop at half the clay value. Basically, 3 clay fields at level 1; 2 lumber fields at level 1; 1 iron field at level 1, continuing this pattern as you increase the levels.

Crop fields will vary as this is the only resource which will drop as you build more things, (upkeep). As long as the crop production is at least half the clay production, then you will be doing well.

With this ratio, you will be able to maintain a consistent growth of your fields without having to wait too long till you can build the next field.

Defending yourself from raiders

Raiders will attack you for any of the following three reasons:

• To get resources from you to further their own development
• To kill your troops with their hero to grow their hero in power
• To keep you small and stopping you from growing effectively

These are all very easy to counter, IF you know how to.

Protecting your resources

Cranny

A cranny is a powerful building in protecting your resources. It will ALWAYS protect enough resources for you to build the next level. So you can safely build a cranny to level 10 very easily. This would protect 2,000 of each resource (3,000 for Gauls)

After you build one cranny to level 10, you can build as many more as you want to keep yourself protected. In this way, you can protect your resources for the duration of your offline time.

Spending down

This involves being online, and spending your resources on buildings, troops, market trades, anything in order to ensure your resource stockpiles are BELOW your cranny limit when the raider lands their attack.

Protecting your troops

A hero is very strong and capable of killing several troops on its own. If you have under 100 troops in once place, an enemy may hit you with their hero in order to give their hero valuable experience to make their hero stronger. In order to prevent yourself from being hero farmed, either have auto-dodge turned on (gold club users) or ensure your troops are not in your village unless in large numbers when you are offline. To do this, you work out how long you are offline for, say 8 hours, then pick a village that takes your troops 4 hours to reach, send your troops to raid it (keep the village target very small and safe), so that your troops get back when you do.

Dealing with suppression

Using the tactics above, you can easily grow while under constant raids/attacks. Do not despair and remember that activity is very important.

Defensive Overview

When it comes to defending against attack, there are two ways of doing this, passive, and active defence.

Passive Defence

Passive defence is where your village has certain buildings in place which allow you to harm raiders without using your troops. The buildings which are used in passive defence are:

• Residence/Palace
• Wall
• Trapper (Gaul Only)

It is very important to get your wall to a minimum of level 5 early on in the village development. This is fairly cheap to do, and will help to kill 1 or 2 raiding troops on its own, coupled with the residence/palace, you start to see the enemy losing troops and gaining nothing but losses from attacking you.

Trapper (Gaul only): This allows the building of traps which your enemies must face before any other defences. The traps work as follows: all traps must be filled with troops before the attacking force deals with the other village defences. If the attacking force is smaller in number than the number of traps, all troops get trapped and the enemy effectively has lost those troops, but still has to feed them. In order to free the troops, the enemy must win an attack mode assault on the defender to free his troops, but some of the trapped troops will die in the breaking free event.

The defender can release the attacker’s troops, and the attacker can kill his trapped troops. Both of these methods allow the traps to be repaired. If they are broken free, all traps are lost and require being rebuilt.

Active Defence

This is where you have defensive troops waiting on the attacker, in order to kill the attacking force. With a wall already in place, the defensive troops gain an additional bonus, making them stronger. When doing an active defence, it is best to have spoken with one of your alliance leaders to arrange a strong defence to ensure minimum losses on our side.

Defensive Troops

Defensive troops are the troop types which should be used in active defences.

Roman:

• Legionnaire (best against cavalry)
• Praetorian (best against infantry)

Gaul:

• Phalanx (best against cavalry)
• Druidrider (best against infantry)

Teuton:

• Spearman (best against cavalry)
• Paladin (best against infantry)

As you can see, each tribe is capable of defending against all types of attacks.

Rally Point

The rally point has become important in T4 servers for one very important reason. IF the number of troops the attacker uses is less than your rally point level, you can see which types of troops are incoming, but not its number. Why is this important? Because you know that the number of troops incoming is less than your rally point level. So a level 5 rally point would show up to 4 troop attacks, a level 20 rally point would show up to 19 troop attacks.

The rally point also shows whether the incoming is an attack or raid mode. This allows you to determine whether or not the attack can be destructive with catapults, or simply a smaller hit that can safely be dodged.

Offensive Overview

Now that we have covered defending, it is time to look at how you can use your troops to increase your own development.

Offensive Modes:

There are two modes to select when going on the offensive;

• Attack
• Raid

Each mode has set rules applied to them, and which one you chose will allow you to ensure certain things.

Attack Mode

This mode is the ultimate offensive mode. This mode means that your troops will hit your target until either all your troops die, or all the target’s defences die. This mode must be selected for catapults to operate. This mode is the only mode which will free trapped troops.

Raid Mode

This mode allows you to hit a target, and if there are defences, usually only fight until half the troops die, then the fight is over. The exception to this is when the defences are extremely strong and outnumber the raiding force by a large percentage.

Raid mode is usually selected when you wish to hit someone for resources and do not want to risk losing all your troops.

Village Development

In order to settle new villages, you require a certain about of Culture Points (CP). Your residence/palace will show you your current CP levels, as well as the production per 24 hours. A celebration / party, which can be hosted in a City Hall, gives CP equal to the village CP production at time of starting the party (500 max). This is how you can increase your CP production rapidly in order to gain more villages. A party is expensive early game so consideration is needed in whether to throw a party, or increase your production.

To get a new village, you need settlers. These can be built from a level 10 Residence/Palace. Settlers are very expensive. Before you can get them, you should have the following buildings and levels.

• Main Building level 10
• Warehouse level 10
• Granary level 10
• Residence level 10
• Resource fields level 7

If you do not have these, work on getting them before starting to save for settlers.

Settlers cost:

• 5800 lumber, 5300 clay, 7200 iron, 5500 crop each for Romans
• 5800 lumber, 4400 clay, 4600 iron, 5200 crop each for Teutons
• 5500 lumber, 7000 clay, 5300 iron, 4900 crop each for Gauls

Capital Choices

You have certain choices to make for a capital. For gold users, a 15c (map slot with 15 crop fields) or 9c (map slot with 9 crop fields) is best. For non-gold users, a 9c or 7c is best. The reason for this is later in the game; crop will become a big factor in deciding how big an army you can get. Gold users have an npc function, so can convert crop into other resources to assist in development, whereas non-gold users need to be smart about which resource productions they have.

A capital is the only village in which you can build your resources fields past level 10. Level 16 fields are very achievable, requiring 3 warehouses and 3 granaries in order to do the last levels.

New villages

New villages can grow much faster than your first village, because you are able to send resources from your first/other villages to the new village in order to help it have the resources to grow fast.

Please be aware that a general build plan follows a set order designed for gold users with minimal passive defence building or resource protection. You are expected to know to have these things building as well as following the build plan.

A General build plan is as follows:

• Main Building to level 3
• Granary to level 1
• Warehouse to level 2
• Marketplace to level 1
• Rally Point to level 1
• Main Building to level 5
• Warehouse to level 5
• Granary to level 5
• Resource fields to level 5
• Main building to level 10
• Warehouse to level 10
• Granary to level 10
• Barracks to level 3
• Academy to level 10
• Town Hall to level 1
• Party
• Residence to level 10
• 3 settlers & next village

Stage 2:

• Marketplace to level 5
• Resource fields to level 7
• Main Building to level 15
• One field each resource to level 10, rest to level 7
• Bonus buildings to level 5
• Resource fields to level 10
• Marketplace to level 10
• Set for purpose.

Purpose of villages:

Villages can be described as one of the following:

• Capital
  Your capital is your main centre; you will be building new villages around it. You will be making the most resources from this village and will be storing troop here.
• Hammer
  Your hammer village is where you would build your hammer (a hammer is simply a term used to describe large forces used to do extreme damage).
• Anvil
  Your anvil village is where you would build your anvil (an anvil is simply a term used to describe huge defensive forces) from; you can have several of these.
• Scout
  Your scout village is where you will be building scouts, recommended you have one of these.
• Supply
  Your supply villages are villages you will use to ship resources to your other villages to help build them or keep the troop building queue going constantly.

If you are newer to the game, or yet to decide which option to go with, I would recommend you go down the anvil route. Later in the game, you can then build a small hammer to experiment with and still have the protection that having an anvil brings.

Building a hammer:

After you have finished the general build plan, rush the barracks up to level 10 and start building your tribe’s infantry unit from it, making sure its kept going 24/7.

Once this is achieved, get your stable up to level 10 and do the same for your tribe’s cavalry unit.

Raise the barracks level to 15,

Raise your siege workshop to level 10, building rams while getting the requirements for the catapults.

Once everything is going 24/7, increase the levels till they are all at level 20.

Make sure you have at least 3 granaries as you will need a large crop stock for when you attack someone with your hammer.

• The key is keeping the troop building constantly.
• Remember to upgrade all troops being built in the blacksmith
• Raise warehouse and granary when you can, you will need at least 3 of each of them.
• Keep pushing resources from your other villages to support this troop production
• Send the troop off to your other villages to stop the negative crop occurring

Building an Anvil:

Building an anvil is pretty much the same as building a hammer, just with less work.

Rush the barracks to level 10, build the defence troop 24/7, and raise the barracks slowly to level 20, keeping the queue going constantly.

Get 2/3 warehouses and granaries,

• Remember to keep queues going constantly
• Send the troop off to your other villages to stop the negative crop occurring

Building a scout village:

Building a scout village is the same as an anvil except replace the barracks with a stable for Roman’s and Gaul’s, keep it as a barracks for Teutons.

• Remember to keep queues going constantly
• Send the troop off to your other villages to stop the negative crop occurring

Building a supply village:

A supply village is used to ship resources to the other villages to help them grow faster or keep the troops building.

You will want to have at least 2 warehouse’s and granary’s, a marketplace at level 20, a stable at level 10 in order to build a Trade Office, this building increases the amount of resources merchants can carry, so upgrading these to level 20 maximises your merchants carrying capacity.

• You should not be building troop in these
• You can store troop in these