Guide by zenron the great

Hey everyone, welcome to The Tribal Academy, my comprehensive guide to Tribal Wars. I originally wrote this guide for a world 27 tribe, but ended up posting it here on the forums, because I like being helpful, and I may as well post it in a few different places. Now, I'm not exactly a fountain of knowledge when it comes to this game, but I have been playing this game for a long time now, and I would consider myself to be a reasonably good player. Questions as always are appreciated, and anything constructive that you have to add is welcome. However, if you feel like being insulting, please don't post. I know what you guys are like sometimes.

Activity
"the key thing is activity"

If you have read any guides whatsoever, you will have probably heard this over and over again. The key thing in tribal wars isn't necessary skill, although you need it, the key thing is activity. A low skilled active player can overcome a high skilled inactive player. So before you even look through this guide, make sure you can do this. When you actually get down to a real battle, this is something that shows itself. The more active player can send attacks at obscure times to throw his opponent off, dodge or snipe more attacks than the inactive player etc. For example, I remember in world 3, I was surrounded by a tribe called NG, it was my first world, and I certainly wasn't skilled at this point, so you would like to think I would have lost, but I didn't. I won because I have no life and was far more active then they were.

But it's not only with fighting where activity will help you. Plain ol' growth depends on activity as well. If you can't be bothered to send all your troops out to farm, then you're not going to do very well, or if you can't get on for most of the day, your buildings are going to be left doing nothing, which just stunts your growth.

Build guide
"Deal with the player"

Note: I'm not going to walk you through this step by step, there are some things which you need to find out by yourself. If I give you all the information, then you won't be able to learn properly.

The moment that you step foot in a world, be it your first time or the tenth, you have to start building up your resource places. During beginners protection, there isn't much point to you making too many troops, because you aren't going to use them yet. You need to think about your current situation before you decide on what you build. For example, if you have several barbs in your 7x7, then you may want to start making some spearmen early, but if you have 0, then there is no need for troop that early on. You want to be prepared for when the beginners protection ends, but you shouldn't waste your resources which are pretty vital at this point.

Unless you have a coplayer playing your account with you, you won't be able to keep your warehouse from being filled. We all need sleep, and at least a few of us have a life. So of course, while upgrading your resource mines, you should upgrade your warehouse a little as well. Think about it, when your resource mines get a little higher, it won't take long for your warehouse to be completely filled.

A couple of days before the beginner's protection ends, you will need to go for the the barracks and produce a few spearmen. It will mean you can farm, and it will also protect you from the surrounding people once you are able to be attacked. There isn't a set limit to what troops you should have by the end of the protection, but you have to make sure you have enough troops to be safe, and enough so that you can farm effectively. Be aware that if you attack a village with no wall with 6 or below spearment, then they will all die, and at least 1 will die until you can send 33 at once. Note, that if you accompany some swordsmen with your spear, then they won't die, but you will be hampered by the slow speed of the swordsmen. What I normally aim for is to have a stable before the beginners protection end. Some people even have Light Cavalry before it ends, which are by far the best unit for farming with. The two most efficient farmers are the spearmen and the Light Cavalry.

Okay, so once protection finishes, you can start farming everyone around you for resources, but you can’t just dive in attacking everything, you’ll just lose troops that way. Go to www.tribalwarsmap.com and go to the section that corresponds to your world. Enter the co-ordinates of your village into the top, and then, while looking at the villages and the ones around it, and look at their activity. This map will show you when the person last had a point increase and is useful to show if a person is inactive or not. If a person is inactive, then considering it is only 3 days into the world, it is quite obvious that they won't have troops and have an abundance of resources.

What you have to do at this point is to weed out all the inactive and low pointed players in your 7x7(and eventually your 15x15 and then even further), and these people will be your farms. There isn't any point in farming high point active players because it will just be a waste of your troops and it will stunt your growth. Before you attack any village, consider the risks involved in taking it. What troops would you lose, and how much resources have you just wasted? Then think about the actual village, and how long it would take you to take back those resources from the village which is now cleared. You will eventually get to the point where you have to take these people out, but there is no point in wasting resources and the time it took to build them when it isn't needed. Think of it this way, if you can't farm your 15x15 quite easily, then you shouldn't try it. If you can't farm your 15x15, then you aren't going to gain much from clearing a village. It's just another village added to your list which will only make your farming more difficult.

If you happen to discover any pointwhores who have just built up resource buildings and don't have troops you may think you've found the perfect farm. you have, but not yet. a 2k of each haul will last an hour, a big farm with at least 20/20/20 resources will last a lifetime. So what to do in this situation? Wait 12-24 hours to see if they're clever enough to start building troops, scout them again after this time and if they've started to build troops then by all means farm the crap out of them, but if they don't seem to of noticed your scouting attack then you can leave them for a week or more before farming them, at which point they'll have nice big resource buildings.

With buildings, don't build something unless you actually have to. There is no point building up your hiding place or market if you're not using it. It's just a waste of resources. Yes, it will get up your points, but you really need to think of efficiency. If your queues for your barracks are too long, then increase the level of your barracks. If your headquarters isn't building fast enough, increase that. If your warehouse is being filled too easily, then upgrade that. Don't upgrade something just because it will give you points. You should also realise that some of the most important buildings to increase like the barracks and the headquarters also fortunately give you the biggest increase in points in relation to time. I'm actually going to link another guide to help you with this, because it really is quite good: A Humble Players Guide

As for your farming trips, you should start off by sending 7 Light Cavalry and 1 scout, but once you have enough troops, you should up this to 33 Light Cavalry. 33 is the lowest amount of LC you can use to completely clear a 116 point village, which is the base at which villages start at on most worlds. Of course, if your world is not like that, then you should adapt this number accordingly.

If you find that your farms are being farmed by other people. Check the OD of everyone around you(and write them down), then put a single spear in each of your farms(spear is the cheapest unit), and wait for reports coming saying the spear has been attacked. Then recheck the people around you and see which one’s OD has increased, then deal with the player accordingly.

You should just keep building up your village, farming until you eventually get rams. There is no magic number for taking out a wall with rams, but 219 rams is the lowest number that can take out a level 20 wall(that only happens in some situations), so that is what I use. By this point, you should rule your area with an iron fist, any player who is annoying you now, you should just attack them thoroughly with axemen, light cavalry and rams. I left out catapults out of that equation, because you don’t really need them. I tend to only really start properly attacking something if I’m going to noble it, so why destroy some of its buildings if I want it?

So, once you think your ready, and you have an academy, you need to pick a target for nobling. You need to find a village that is near your first village for starters. You should scout them, and see if the buildings are acceptable levels, and whatever you do, just don’t noble a barbarian. Then you will noble the village, which leads me to my next topic.

War Tactics
"The core for victory"

There are many tactics when it comes to war that you will have to use to get by, I will teach you them right now.

Faking:Faking is the act of sending attacks at the enemy, in the attempt of making them look like real attacks, or to conceal those real attacks. Sending attacks at ram speed for example can disguise a nuke. Normally, I send mass fakes at the enemy. I don't care how experienced you are, when you log in and you have 2000 incomings, your instincts tell you to panic. Even though I know a lot about this game, it would still effect me, but you need to make it convincing! Don't send all your attacks from one village, because that isn't scary at all.

I'm going to use the example of something I do often. I'll send mass attacks from a few different villages to a village, containing a few different nukes. I try to time the nukes together so they land within a second of each other, and then time nobles to land just after. I also send other fakes to different villages, as a diversion tactic. Another method that can be used a diversionary tactic is the fake noble train. You send 4 attacks in quick sucession which may look like a noble train, but really it's just a single ram in each attack, maybe some scouts, so you can take the village out later. You see, the thing about the faking is that it is purely psychological. With enough attacks and feints from you, people make mistakes, they may even feel like quiting.

Noble trains: It takes four nobles normally to conquer a village, so its only normal to think that if you send four at once, then its going to be quicker and easier. To do this, just build four nobles in one village and attack using that. Although, you must send at least two villages worth of offensive units at the enemy, so they hit the enemy just before the train, so they Can't snipe the nobles(see below in this section on sniping). A good player can send a train in less than a second, and I’m going to tell you how.

This is just my method, I'm sure other people have different ways, this is just the way I do it. First, download opera(www.opera.com) . If you open up a few tabs in that, you will notice that you should be able to switch tabs. Go backwards to a another tab is 1, going forward is 2. Then get 4 tabs open. Right click over send troops in the village and click “open in background tab”. Do this until you have 4 attacks(or more depending on what your doing). Then get all the tabs so there up to the confirmation screen(where you press OK). Then go to first tab, press ok, type 2 and press ok again, until you've finished sending your attacks. By this method I can send attacks in 0.125 seconds, so it does work. You don't have to just use this for sending noble trains, you can use it for sending mass fakes too(just do this but on a bigger scale).

Dodging: So, you have an attack incoming and you don't want to lose any troops. Then you can dodge. This is just sending your troops out of the village so the attacks don’t destroy your men, although if the person sends rams or catapults, there will be nothing to defend your village. You can also dodge with your resources by just using the market and licking cancel after the attack has landed. Dodging is good for when you're up against a bigger player. There is no need in wasting troops if you're opponent is bigger than you, because you won't win. Unlike some of the others, this technique can be used at any stag in the game. It can stop you from being cleared at the beginning of the game, and the same for later on.

Timing: This is for when you want to know what is attacking you. As you should already know, all troops take different times to travel, we use this to find out what is attacking. If you go to www.twstats.com and go onto your worlds section and go on “distance calculator”, you will be able to put in the co-ordinates of your village and the village that is attacking you. It will then bring up the amount of time it would take every type of troop to get to your village. So by that you can see what the person is sending you. Also, if you have premium, you can just click on an incoming attack and then click on "Show walking duration" to see what speed it is, or simply use scripts.

Sniping: Sniping has two meanings in tribalwars, I may as well tell you both. The first is taking a village while another person has done all the work. However, it is the second that interests you in this guide. That is sending away your troops when you have a train incoming, and have them come back just after the offensive troops have hit and before the nobles hit, so you kill the noble train. To do this, you just send your troops away about 10 seconds before the attacks land, and then cancel the attack so they arrive after the first few attacks. That's one way of doing it, but it's terribly inefficient, and if you make a mistake, you'll may end up losing the village. I normally snipe using troops from another village. You can use troops of different speeds which will allow you to have more than one chance. This is the reason that I build 1 sword and 1 ram in all my defensive villages, because your attack will only go at the speed of your slowest unit.

Prenobling and Renobling: If you have a train incoming, then prenobling is very useful. What you do is take all the troops out of the village, then send 3 nobles(with other troops as well) at the village. Sounds silly, attacking yourself, but, when the attack lands, the person attacking you will take it, but they lose 3 of the nobles as they retake the village again twice as the other attacks land.

Renobling is just as useful, if you have just lost a village, send one noble accompanied by a lot of troops at the village to retake it again, so you don’t really lose it the village properly.

I’ve probably missed something out of this list, if anyone thinks of anything, please tell me and I will add it.

Troop Builds
"You must not mix offensive and defensive troops"

There are defensive units, then there are offensive units, then there are neutral units.

Offensive units: Axemen, Light cavalry, Rams, catapults, heavy cavalry

Defensive units: Spearmen, swordsmen, heavy cavalry

Neutral units: scouts, noblemen

In your first village, it is rather essential that you mix both offensive and defensive troops together. If you don't, you're either left open to be attacked, or your growth is stunted. Although, you should probably focus a lot more on offense, in particular LC because of their farming capabilities. Most people I know only build a couple hundred spear in their first village and the rest is built solely on offense. However, once you gain more villages, you shouldn't mix these units up. It just doesn't work. The reason for this that you want to make your offense and defense as effective per village as possible. You can't combine the troops from villages, so if you don't build all offensive troops, you won't be able to do anything against someone with any degree of skill. You may have noticed that Heavy Cavalry is in both the offensive and defensive categories, because it can be used as both. However, this isn't as awesome as they seem. They cost a lot of iron, they take a long time to build and if you consider the HC's skills per farm space instead of per unit, then you will realise that it is terribly inefficient.

Scouts should really only be build in defensive villages, but you should make sure that you have a village or a few depending on your size that is dedicated to scouts. It makes scouting things so much easier. As for nobles, you can build them in either types of villages, because they can be used effectively in both types. For example, if you build a noble train in a defensive village, you can put a lot of defense in the 4th attack, and those troops will stay in the village after you conquer it, saving you the trouble of supporting it. In an offensive village, you can put a nuke as the first attack along with a noble, and saves you having to time another villages nuke into your attack. Remember, the less mistakes you can possibly make, the better.

Now, as for the builds, I've made a spreadsheet concerning all the different types of builds that I have seen:

Spoiler:

Ok so, I guess that I have to explain some things about this spreadsheet. First of all, the "offensive power" is based on the tribal wars help page figures for each unit. Let it be known that this number is an arbitrary figure which doesn't mean it will actually be any good. The 4 "def" columns show the population loss of the defense against four different types of defense, which are as follows:

Defense 1: 10500 Spearmen, 10500 Swordsmen
Defense 2: 9000 Spearmen, 2000 Heavy Cavalry
Defense 3: 15000 Spearmen, 6000 Swordsmen
Defense 4: 6000 Spearmen, 15000 Swordsmen

I then took an average of against all four of these defenses and created the column, "overall effectiveness". The build time is quite obvious. It shows the amount of hours it will take to complete this nuke if your queue's are running none stop. Here are some things to note about the offense:

The Axe Singularity nuke may be the strongest, but it also takes one of the longest to build, which makes it pretty much useless in most situations. You can create some if you really want to, but while creating an all axe nuke, you could have created nearly 3 of some of the other types. Now, there are some of the types in that spreadsheet which I put in there just to prove a point. The "Death Via Wall" nuke was placed there to show you how important rams are in your attacks. Even though it had the highest offensive power, they still died quite easily without the rams. You must always include rams in your nuke, at least 219, which is the lowest amount that can take out a lvl 20 wall, if the village has no troops in it. That is why most of the builds in that list contain 219 rams instead of any other figure.

Another I would like to point out are the nukes which contain HC. As far as I know, the HC strat was coined by Openeye, and I don't think it suits certain playing styles, and that is the reason I don't use it. If you are a more defensive player than sure, this strategy would help you a great deal, but anyone who is truly aggressive wouldn't be able to grow as well as they should, considering the ineffectiveness of Openeye's nukes. The HC singularity nuke was placed in there because of world 49. On that world, you may have noticed that you cannot support outside the tribe, which means you cannot send support to land right after your noble train. The players solution to this is to create nobles in their defensive villages, but they still wanted their offense to be as effective as possible in these villages, to help deter against sniping and such. I was just using this to show how it kind of sucked and shouldn't really be used. It also shows how inefficient the Heavy Cavalry is.

The final one I wanted to point out as being special is the "wall buster" nuke. This nuke is good against stacked villages. It won't do as much damage in your first attack, but it will lower the wall more, and increase the damage of your next attack by a lot. So you should probably build these things.

But what else can I recommend? The nuke that I am currently using is the "Axe Deficient" nuke because it has quite a low build time and still has the power to destroy a lot. You should also be aware that I normally put 5 cats with my nukes so I am able to take out my opponents rally point. It probably won't have any lasting value in battle, but it is quite annoying to have to rebuild the same building over and over again.

Now onto the defense. You will notice from the spreadsheet that the 15k sword/6k Spear is the most effective, but again you'll see that it really isn't worth the time it takes to build it. Personally I use the 9k Spear/2k HC build because it is extremely quick to be created, and the HC can be moved quickly and easily between villages, which negates its lack of efficiency.

Village Build
"You don't max out a village"

You don’t just max out a village, it takes away a lot of farm space that could be used on troops. This is the build I use:

Village Headquarters (Level 20) -This doesn't need to be any higher than this, if your going to make it higher while building, to save time, then do so, but demolish it to level 20 afterwards. However, some people I know put this higher in villages that are on the frontlines of war, because it helps them rebuild walls/farms etc quickly.
Barracks (Level 25) -Maxed. Needs to be maxed so you can rebuild troops quickly
Stable (Level 20) -Maxed. Needs to be maxed so you can rebuild troops quickly.
Workshop (Level 5) –Doesn’t need to be any higher than this. Even with this level of workshop, you can create a full set of rams faster than the Light Cavalry or axes.
Academy (Level 2) -Its insufficient to put this beyond level 2.
Smithy (Level 20) –Maxed. Needs to be this level for academy.
Rally point (Level 1) -Maxed. This is pretty obvious
Market (Level 16) – You could debate that this number is too low, but I think that market is just a waste of farm space after this point.
Timber camp (Level 30) –Maxed.
Clay pit (Level 30) -Maxed.
Iron mine (Level 30) -Maxed
Farm (Level 30) –Maxed
Warehouse (Level 30) -Maxed
Hiding place (Level 10) –Maxed. This doesn’t really matter, it only takes up 10 farm space either way. So I’d rather have the hiding place.
Wall (Level 20) –Maxed, you need it!

Credits
Justtoner & Cwolffgurl : For teaching me to play Tribalwars
Krono5 : The farming bits on the "build guide", I based it off his guide, because I thought it was good.
Mattcurr, Servy and Masterfire: Helping after the thread was created.

Guide by Tedeni

Guide has been reviewed by:
MrBigChief
Christoff8188
Nauzhror

Recommended browser: Opera
Tools -> preferences -> advanced -> shortcuts -> Enable single-key shortcuts

Use 1 and 2 to switch quickly between tabs. This can be used for almost anything requiring multiple tabs, but mainly farming.


With this startup guide you will be aiming for 3 things:

1. An almost complete nuke by the time you're ready to noble.
2. A full 4-noble train. You won't be nobling until you have a full train ready. (3 nobles on package worlds)
3. A village with efficient building levels by the time you have a train ready. This includes: high barracks, high stable, balanced resource income.

This guide does not require you to be online 24/7, but it does require a rather high level of activity, the more, the better.

Recommended farming method: manual, without scouts, with premium. Click map, middle click on all several target farms that should have resources, and split your troops between them. Send LC alone (don't mix LC with axes or spears, as that slows the LC down) The more LC you have, the more farms you will need, so that you can split your farm runs up further. As this goes on, you will be farming in a wider area.

Something to understand: during startup, highest rank doesn't always indicate the best player. A rank 5 player could easily be in a better situation than the rank 1 player. However, in general, a high rank comes with a good startup strategy. It is not a requirement for a good startup, it is a result. Note the difference.

Something new players or 20 HQ stickers must realize:

A lvl 20 HQ is horrible during startup. I have only ever used a 20 HQ startup once, and that was in my first world, mainly due to the terrible guides floating around at the time. Using the 20 HQ felt like I needed to do 10 things at once. I needed to upgrade barracks (rax), stable, smithy, farm, and warehouse at the same time. There was a terrible bottleneck, caused by the lvl 20 HQ - I could not even farm, as the warehouse was full. I may not have been using the most efficient building order as it was my first world, but the bottleneck was so terrible that I'm forced to say that it is impossible to do a 20 HQ startup without hitting some sort of bottleneck. In fact you will probably end up hitting many.

With a 23 HQ it is possible to avoid a bottleneck, but you will need a good building order, and likely several previous experiences with startups.


--Part 1, begin--

I won't be explaining step by step on how to reach LC. There are other guides for that, and this guide is for those who don't enjoy looking at a guide every 3 hours to see what to do next. The general concept here is to be understood, and then it can be applied without needing to constantly re-read.

1. Plan for pure-offense.
2. Plan for building between 100 and 250 spears at start. 102 spears are need to clear an inactive player's warehouse, 204 allows you to clear two simultaneously, and 250 are to cover losses.
3. Plan for researching axes before LC.
4. Plan for researching scouts after LC, unless they are needed urgently.
5. Split farming runs between about 15 spears and 3 axes per target.
6. Scout and farm low point player villages as soon as beginner protection is off. Below around 90 points you can farm without scouting.
7. Don't build more than 5 swords in first village, and none early-on.
8. Don't go more than 30 - 40 scouts in your first village; you'll need 10 or less early on.
9. Early-on, as a general rule, when faced with a choice of upgrades or troops, choose troops.
10. Whilst LC rushing, if you need to choose between barracks and smithy, choose smithy if you have a resource deficit, and choose barracks if you have abundant resources. Reason is that the barracks is much faster to construct, which allows you to spend more resources in less time.

Basically follow any high quality guide to LC rush. (guides from Nauzhror, Purple Predator, etc.) You'll want to have LC already by the time you exit beginner protection. If you can't get that right, then either beginner protection setting for your world is shorter than usual, or you are doing something wrong.

Optional reading/links:
Nauzhror startup guide: http://forum.tribalwars.co.uk/showthread.php?t=265
Purple Predator startup guide: http://forum.tribalwars.net/showpost...2&postcount=16

Once you have LC, everything from this point onwards that you upgrade will either slow you down, or speed things up. What most guides, even the high-level guides sometimes miss, is the timing of the HQ rush, and as to whether you rush HQ before or after getting workshop. If you go straight for workshop soon after hitting LC, then you'll have a slightly less efficient startup. Keep your smithy at lvl 5 unless having a workshop early becomes absolutely necessary.

Early on you're going to have problems with resources. You've just started building LC, and you can't always keep the HQ running. To counter this delay, use this time to balance your resource mines, and to upgrade your stable. Yes you won't be keeping your stable running 24/7 yet, but you will soon enough, and having your stable around lvl 7 when that time comes is better than having it at lvl 3, because the stable does take a long time to upgrade.

Keeping resources balanced with consistent farming isn't too straightforward. A general guide would be:

Timber: 11 - 12
If you only plan on getting about 100 spears, then keep timber around lvl 7. Any more than 100 and you may need to upgrade to 8 or 9. A while after researching LC, you should need to upgrade to around 11 - 12 as suggested above.

Clay: 5
Upgrade to 6 or 7, but not unless absolutely neccesary; you'll be surprised at how long you can keep clay this low: I was able to get to academy without clay deficiency on several startups. Each startup I can consider a top 20 startup, since I was in the top 20 upon academy completion.

Iron: 17
Keep on lvl 1 until about a day before you are able to research LC, in which case you upgrade to around lvl 5 (higher is ok) and if an imbalance does occur, store 1000 iron in lvl 1 market temporarily. I was sometimes tempted to make iron 18, but later on with consistent HQ and Barracks upgrades, 17 kept things balanced - though if large enough iron deficiency does occur, then do go for lvl 18.

Now once you have 50+ LC, you'll be able to build them more consistently. Keep building axes whenever it is logical to do so without sacrificing iron upgrades or LC training. Soon you'll be keeping LC and axe queue's running 24/7.

Continuing, you'll be aiming for these building levels, whilst farming constantly:

HQ: 10
Rax: 5
Stable: 7
Smithy: 5
Market: 2
Timber: 12
Clay: 5
Iron: 17
Wall: 1 (do not upgrade wall beyond 1)

Farm and warehouse will vary, but you always want to make sure to upgrade the farm before you run out of troop space.

If you have no night sitter or co-player, then you should be sending your LC on multiple raids on distant farms, timing them to return when you get online the next morning. With less than 700 LC, you should be sending about 10 to each barb and inactive player, meaning you'll be splitting your night dodge attacks into about 70 separate raids. As the farms increase in points, use your judgment and slowly start increasing the LC per attack, moving up from 10 to 15, then to 20 etc.

Send your non farming troops (axes etc.) on a separate attack, also timing them to return when you wake up.


--Part 2, the HQ rush--

This is the trick to a good startup from this point onwards - aim for these building levels:

HQ: 25
Rax: 12 - 16
Stable: 10 - 14
Smithy: 5
Market: 3 - 7
Timber: 12
Clay: 5
Iron: 17

Again, farm/warehouse will vary. What you're seeing here is an enormous unbalance between HQ and the other buildings. You'll be spacing the stable, barracks, farm, and warehouse upgrades between HQ upgrades.

Now I have tested HQ 23 on several startups, each time I've had more than enough resources to reach it. One world I was constantly in and out of the top 20, until the point that I hit HQ 23. At that point, I was rank 1. From then on after, I dropped slowly in rank as other players built their HQ's above 23 - some players went for 27, some may have gone even higher. (later once nobles were out I was back in the top 5, but until then, the high HQ players dominated the top ranks)

There comes a point where you must choose your limit, and the cost for HQ 26 and 27 is very high. Additionally, the time saved with a 26 and 27 HQ will partially or completely be lost because you may very well need to slot several upgrades between lvl 25 and lvl 27. If you plan well you can avoid those problems, but the time saved is barely noticeable, so I would recommend keeping with 25 HQ to avoid the pitfalls of anything other than excruciatingly precise planning.

For newer players, I'll explain why there is the huge imbalance between HQ and other buildings at this stage. You are not academy rushing, point-whoring, nor troop-whoring. What you are aiming for, is to build an efficient village as quickly as possible. If planned correctly, you will have more than sufficient troops, as well as resources. You put high HQ into place BEFORE starting on the buildings that take forever to construct, this includes high level barracks, stable, smithy, etc. You are not aiming for rank 1, you are aiming to build a noble train fast, with massive quantities of troops available by the time you do reach academy stage. If planned correctly, you should be able to mint 10+ coins immediately after you build the academy. Try to avoid canceling any troops queues, as you sacrifice 10% of resources to do so.

Now - once you have your HQ at 25, it is time to boost the troop production. Shoot the smithy from 5 to 12, upgrade workshop, farm, barracks, and stable way up. These are decent targets to go for:

Workshop: 2 - 5 (will vary depending on how many catapults you need)
Rax: 21 - 24
Stable: 15 - 18
Farm: 29 - 30
Warehouse: 28 - 29

NOW: Upgrade smithy from 10 (or 12 if you built catapults) up to 20, and build academy. In rare situations you may need to academy rush sooner - this is if someone near you is also academy rushing. Then it's a case of eat or be eaten.

Finally, this guide is somewhat situational. It assumes you aren't going to get into any fights during startup, that you won't need to clear anyone with any decent wall too early, and that you aren't going to be catapulted. If it becomes clear that some neighbors enjoy using catapults, then using a 27 HQ is more viable.


--Part 3, the unexpected happens--

You find yourself under attack. Situations will always be different, but remember that right now your best weapon is your existing troops. Don't start upgrading your wall just because you are being attacked. These are the various decisions you'll need to make:

1. The hiding place is a fast upgrade. Build it up quickly if your headquarters is not busy.
2. Dodge resources by putting buildings and troops in queue.
3. Remember that resources stored in the market can be plundered, so if you have existing offers, cancel them and use them temporarily on building upgrades or troops.

First, can you backtime your attacker without large losses on your part? Scout him, test the waters, and if you can, try to clear him by attacking. You have near-pure offense, so you should be attacking, not defending. However under certain conditions you'll find that you cannot attack him. Mostly this is because he is attacking with a significantly large force of defense units, or because his tribemates have pre-stacked him, preventing your expected backtime. If this is the case, you need to kill his troops when he attacks you. Now the wall decision:

1. Attacker is not using rams: possibly upgrade wall if his attack force is small. This should cause him to lose troops each time he attacks.
2. Attacker is using rams: don't build wall, waste of time.
3. Attacker is using rams and you have several tribemates within support range: build walls, and have your tribemates coordinate defense to land at the same time.

You never upgrade the wall to boost the defensive power of your attack units. The wall is in place to either provide a low level defense rating to kill a few troops each time your opponent attacks, or to boost the defensive strength of allied troops supporting you.

Aside from a small basic defense, the wall is percentage based - it is almost useless by itself or together with offense units. It will boost the strength of support troops by a percentage. Here are the exact percentages: http://en49.tribalwars.net/popup_bui...?building=wall

If the attacker is using catapults to hit your rally point to prevent you from backtiming him, try downgrading your rally point, and then research it approx. 5 minutes before his attack lands, timing the research to complete 1 second after his attack lands.

A good same-speed backtime would be:

1. Whilst your opponent's troops are incoming, set up a rally point confirmation tab targeting your opponent's village, so that you see the Ok button. Do not click Ok yet.
2. Open a new tab, making sure to keep the confirmation tab intact.
3. Attack a nearby barb, timing it so that your troops return 1 second after his troops hit you.
4. Downgrade rally point, and do a timed upgrade so it is complete 1 second after his troops land.
5. Immediately after your troops return, click Ok on the first tab.


--Part 4, sending trains--

When sending a train certain conditions should be met. You must make two checks each and every time you send a train:

1. After sending, refresh the commands or rally point page and make sure the first attack contains the majority of your offense.
2. All 4 attacks of your train should be within the space of a single second. An opponent with a single village will find it easier to split a train with an attack or attacks crossing over into another second. The reason for that, is when barb dodging, an attack will always return at 000 milliseconds.

In archer worlds, always remember that a noble uses general offense. What this means, is that you should be sending your follow-up nobles with axes, not cavalry or mounted archers. To test this, simulate:

Attacker:
100 LC, 1 noble

Defender:
30 HC, 10 wall

Notice the attacker only loses 17 LC, but the noble still dies. The other extreme exists too. Remove the HC, and add 190 spears to the defender. Notice the attacker now loses 98 LC, yet the noble survives.

To avoid fluctuations like this, use axes together with follow-up nobles, and the noble will survive based on a 50% ratio of axes that survive. This should prevent some nasty surprises.

On non-archer worlds, nobles can be sent with axes or LC, as whether the noble dies or not is purely based on the total percentage of accompanying troops that die. For example, 100 LC + noble, assume 49 LC die, the noble will survive.

Startup Guide by StayingActive

Startup Guide - Guaranteed top 10 account

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Please remember this is a Guideline dont copy all the build orders exactly. Adjusting to different situations, imo, is what makes a good player, good.

Thanks.

Last edited: 21st of January, 2011


My Standard Build Order - Close Barbarians Preferred. Activity Required.

1.Do the tutorial, which will give you resources and 5 spears at the end. When the tutorial tells you to send 5 spears to a barb, do it to get the reward at the end of the tutorial. But cancel immediately. As sending 5 spears alone will, although reap a minuscule profitable, lose you 50 valuable limber due to 1 spear dying. Which is not a good idea.

And then the following:

if you have a barb directly adjacent to your village:
Build Statue
and Build Paladin

If you dont have a barb right next to you then build Clay 1, wood 1, Iron 1. <- in that order. THEN build Statue

Farm the nearest villages to you constantly with 5 spears and 1 paladin, If you are finding that there are other active players in your Close proximity, who has built a paladin soon too ( you will see because of increase in points, from statue ) then consider Spiking a Barb near you, and hopefully kill his paladin. Which will a. stop him from farming, and hold him back. And b. leave more resources for you. Make sure you withdraw the Spiking Pally from the barb as soon as possible so you can continue with farming whilst building one of the following:

NON PALLY WORLD
1. In a fantastic area ( 2 or more barbarians touching your village)
Build Clay 1
Wood 1
wood 2
wood 3
Iron 1

2. In an Average area:
Build Clay 1
Build Wood 1
Build Iron 1
Build Clay 2
Build Wood 2
Build Clay 3
Build Wood 3
Build Wood 4
Build Wood 5

PALADIN WORLD
(statue)
Build Clay 1
Build wood 1
Build Iron 1
(statue)
Build Clay 2
Build wood 3
Build wood 4

Alot might depend on what resources you are getting from your initial farming with your paladin. If you are getting alot of clay for example, then you might not build clay as high.


HQ 2
HQ 3

BARACKS
Constantly Build Spears.

As soon as you have additional spears, send them with your pally and your 5 spears to the nearest Barb/bonus/ inactive ( If there is no BP.) get between 40 – 120 spears, depending on the number of Barbs, bonus villages that are farmable In your area, always send troops to the nearest villages if you are still getting full hauls to save time, and get more resources. As soon as your hauls drop, spilt up your troops more, and farm villages further away etc. Preferably, farm constantly. If you cannot do this – get an account sitter for when you are not online.
Build warehouse Levels where necessary, You don’t want Red resources.

Warehouse 2- build warehouse 2 when your IRON is approaching its cap
MARKET – store iron in market by setting lopsided offers. E.g. 1000 iron for 2000 wood, you will need the iron later. But if someone accepts, then Great! You’ve just got 1000 Free resources. If you have too much just trade it back at Rip off prices. 2:1. and you will be getting a lot of free resources.
Don’t underestimate the market, it is very useful.

Build Clay 4
Build Iron 2 ( optional )
Build Wood 6
Build Wood 7 (optional tbh)
HQ 4
Build Wood 8 ( optional )
(spend some resources on Spears, if you are having lots of resources from farming, and if you can – build spears and Buildings constantly at the same time.) - of course, only if there is still plunderable resources out there. Your main goal is to have spears being trained constantly.
However, don't waste money on spears if it is not necessary.

HQ 5
( still building spears if it is necessary to do so, if it is necessary – then that is a very good thing, because it means your farming is good and you have lots of Barb villages in your area which is unbelievably Helpful early game, as you are most likely seeing If you are at this point)

SMITHY
If you are losing spears from the base defense of villages, then you might want to train a few Swords. Just a few to escort the spears and reduce deaths. Just dont get too many of them, as you will need the Iron for LC later on.

split up your troops into farming groups of
2 swords with 2 spear
3 swords with 5 spear,
4 swords with 11 spear
5 swords with 15 spear.

or if axes, split into tiny groups of 6 spears, 2 axes, 3 spears/ 2 axes... etc.. depending on distance of the barb. ( more if further )

SMITHY 2 ( optional, read below )
If you can afford it, ( this would depend on your competition in your area, and if or not people are spiking your farms) then you might want to research Some axes, and split them up with your spears. instead of Swords. Also, with axes ( if you can get enough ) you can clear people more efficiently when BP has ended. Don't get too many axes though. Around 50 is absolutely fine. If you have already built swords and are splitting up your spears into small groups, its not necessary to build axes. Just go for LC..


~~
If you see there are a few active players in your area, then consider building using some Swords, and spike some villages. Always send your paladin with the swords if you are spiking, otherwise they will likely Die.
Example:

Simulator:
Attacker Units: 20 spears 1 paladin
Losses: 20 spears

Defender Units: 10 swords
Losses: 10 swords

Without the paladin as well, you lose all of your swords, and his paladin is able to escape.
However, if you include your paladin with the swords, then:

Simulator:
Attacker Units: 20 spears 1 paladin
Losses: 20 spears 1 paladin

Defender Units: 10 swords 1 paladin
Losses: 4 swords

As you can see, the paladin has a great effect. We only lost 4 swords this time, and the enemy paladin was killed too. A lot of players do not use spiking very much, but it is a very effective way of keeping the other players growth in your area to a minimum.

~~

BARACKS 1
BARACKS 2
BARACKS 3
BARACKS 4
BARACKS 5

Just to note, alot of people will say to upgrade HQ to 10 first. upgrade barracks up first, as this will build troops quicker. ( Swords, possibly axes ) Although, you MAY not be able to keep constant queues. when you DO build them, they will build quicker, and you will be able to use them quicker. and farm!

Remember to perform any farm/warehouse/market resources upgrades where necessary, by now you should have a good count of spears, and you are getting the maximum amount of resources you can from your area. If the hauls are getting too low, now is the time to stop building spears. But if there is more barbs appearing ( from enemies restarting , or if BP is ended earlier, then continue to Spam spears from your barracks, and farm! farm! farm!


HQ 6
HQ 7
HQ 8
HQ 9
HQ 10

( farm/warehouse etc upgrades where necessary, keep farming with your troops, spiking etc etc, you should find by now that you have out grown most of the players in your area. And if there is still people left, then just keep farming as much as possible, and leave no resources for them!)

SMITHY to 5
STABLE 1 ( if you built axes earlier, then build scouts if you WANT. -> scout -> clear -> farm. All of these choices will Determine how quick you get LC. so its all about Judgement )
STABLE 2
STABLE 3

Now we are going to build the Proper farming troops, Light cavalry! 5 times better than spears. Faster, stronger, can carry more, Aggressive.
Research them, and if you have offers in the market still there, cancel them and with the Iron, Build as much LC as you can, and farm with them ASAP. Keep building them like there is no other thing matters, ( because it doesn’t ) You shouldn't build many buildings at this point, just concentrate on LC until you have about 50 - 80 of them. The farming should be brilliant by now, and your warehouse and farm should be a good level.
Research and Train about 10 – 20 scouts, and slowly begin to take out what is left of your area, if your farming is good, then Build up your axe count, by taking out players in your area, you are creating more farms. But be cautious, don't get too carried away. And only clear someone if you think it will be profitable in the long run.
After The Lc and axes are being pumped out, work on resources to around levels 16/17, build up the iron mine first – as you will need it to build LC, then build up Clay and wood, but not as high as the Iron.
( upgrade HQ to about 12, if you need to beforehand to get this done quicker )
If you don't have enough resources coming in to upgrade the mines.. just spend the resources to upgrade the wall. But this is unlikely.


HQ to 18-23
Stables to 10
Barracks to 6
Stables to 11
Barracks to 7
Stables to 12
barracks to 8
Stables to 15
barracks to 19-21

( building farm upgrades in between of course )

HQ to 24 If you have enough resources to comfortably do this without having to stop any queues
Smithy to 10
Workshop to 5 - 8 start training rams


Build up Your offence, Constantly farming all the villages around you and clearing any threats early on if you can. You will want to get a few Catapults as well, about 10-30, and if you know a player will dodge the attack, send some axes and cats to knock down his farm levels. Don’t destroy enemy villages too much, because they can become good noble targets later, and avoid attacking larger tribes and starting trouble with your tribe. Make sure you don't get backtimed. By sending some LC to hit the village at the times he would want to launch a counter.

Quote:

How to farm ( Lardingd ) http://forum.tribalwars.net/showthread.php?t=99427

upgrade HQ if you need to, to 25/26/27 - generally, if it is a slower world, then building a higher HQ is a good option. however most of the time, It is better to leave your HQ at 24/25 rather than 26 or 27.
SMITHY 20 ( also whilst your upgrading smithy.. upgrade Farm a few levels and warehouse too, try and save up for the noble building )
Academy
Coins/ nobles
Noble train ASAP
whilst finishing off upgrading your village, upgrade market aswell. so you can send resources to your new village, then confinue to build your nuke

Take your second village, with your offence and Noble train – you will be able to choose a large village to attack. Many times do I target the highest ranked player in my continent ( if that is not you ) and take there main village. If there tribe is weak, and your noble train is very good, then there is not much they can do. Because being High ranked, they will have offence too ( Defence is Slow ), so no need to scout – because they will not survive. The only thing to watch out for is a powerful paladin weapon. So if it is a weapon world, you might want to consider scouting first.
You do not want to lose most of your troops. If the noble is able to survive by sending it in the Nuke, then go for it! ( use simulator to help you )

Other Buildings you want to upgrade once you have taken Multiple villages and you have troops being queued: ( remember to specialise your villages in offence/defence )
Village Headquarters (Level 23)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 5)
Academy (Level 1)
Smithy (Level 20)
Rally point (Level 1)
Statue (Level 1)
Market (Level 20)
Timber camp (Level 30)
Clay pit (Level 30)
Iron mine (Level 30)
Farm (Level 30)
Warehouse (Level 30)
Wall (Level 20)

From this point Onwards Its just a matter of Staying Active, Nobling, helping out your tribe, and ALWAYS farming. Use scripts to help you if you are a premium user.
I recommend buying a premium because it makes things 100X easier J

Good luck and have fun! Hope this Guide helps some people.

How to be a newb and not a noob by Robert.Paulson

1. Know what kind of game you are playing. This is a war game, not a peaceful game. If war isn't what you signed up for, then you're simply playing the wrong game.


2. Be skeptical. There are alot of people in this game who say they know what they are doing or can offer guides on how to play. Anyone can say anything. But you need to ask yourself when you listen to these people talk whether what they are saying makes sense and if what they are saying offers plainly visible benefits for fighting. Overly complex explanations for why a seemingly bad idea is supposedly good idea usually means that it's a bad idea coming from a bad player.


3. Be humble. If you're new to this game, recognize this fact and don't expect to be some kind of out of the blue phenom. Best thing you can probably do is try to find yourself a mentor who DOES play well, and listen to what he says. When he says "offensive start is the way to go" don't give him any yeah-buts. I never understand why or how so many new players put worlds of faith into the bad teacher's plans eventually paying off, but so often seem to dismiss as wrong advice when it comes from good players.


4. Don't plan, try, or want to conquer the world. This kinda goes along with #3. On dozens of servers and about 100 worlds, some of them being open for several years, there has only been once where it's happened that a tribe has conquered the entire world. Focus on what's in front of you. Dominate your 15x15, make a good first conquer, things like that. In all honesty, new players should not view their first world as where they will accomplish very much. All you really need to do on this world to make it a success is learn, so that the next time you'll be even better.


5. Have a sense of urgency. This game proceeds slower than your typical computer game or video game, so alot of new players get sucked into thinking they have all the time in the world to eventually start making troops, or wait until later to worry about one day coming under attack. You need to learn how to start strong. And then you need to learn how to continue strong. Often bad players will offer you instructions where they talk about "eventually" this will be to your advantage. If it takes two months for a plan to pay off, you'll be dead before you get there.


6. Play other strategy games. There are two particularly I can recommend, being chess and poker. Both of those games are similar to tribalwars in certain ways. Chess is a war game with an assortment of pieces that have unique characteristics, where you have to learn when to attack, where to attack, and weigh sacrifices against rewards, all while developing and altering strategic and tactical conditions. In poker, you are playing against many people, all of which may be potential allies or enemies at different times, where you have to learn to read and gauge a person, while weighing how much an investment costs you, how much it will give you in return. These are skills that can go a long way in tribalwars. But the most important thing to understand about these three games is that chess and poker both have a fairly simple set of straightforward rules, but actually learning how to play and play well takes time and involvement. And the exact same thing is true for tribalwars.


7. When in doubt, TROOPS! In chess, everything happens from what you do with your pieces. In poker, everything happens from what you do with your chips. In tribalwars, everything happens from what you do with your troops. Your troops give you fighting strength, and you've probably already heard a million times that troops win wars, not points. But let's move beyond that worn out line. Troops give you resources. Troops indirectly give you points (through farming, which allows you to build your village). Troops give you dominance in your area even when you aren't attacking other people (from outfarming opponents, catting down barbs to protect them from being nobled by weak players or to at least make for poor villages when weak players noble them anyway). Troops bring you respect from others and can mean the difference between a strong tribe being willing to accept you as a member and teach you how to play, or being stuck with no other option than crappy tribes that are disorganized and lead you over a cliff by teaching you all the wrong things. Just remember that everything you are doing should be based on the goal of getting more troops, protecting your troops, or using your troops to your maximum gain. When someone offers you such and such guide, you should ask yourself "how will this give me the most possible troops?" If you can't find a good answer, then you shouldn't listen.


8. Be all that you can be. Sorry if it sounds trite to quote an old US Army motto. But noob tribes often neglect individual ability thinking that working together is enough by itself. Teamwork is important, very important as a matter of fact. But a team of very good players working together will always defeat a team of so-so players working together. You will never become a better player if you don't strive to be a better player.

Church Guide by Pulsar FTW

Maybe if I post this here... when people search for their church question before asking it (like they all do) they'll see it first.


Church Info

Church Belief Radius:
Level 1: 4 fields in every direction
Level 2: 6 fields in every direction
Level 3: 8 fields in every direction


Church Cost Structure:
Level 1: 16.000 wood - 20.000 clay - 5.000 iron - 5.000 population
Level 2: 20.160 wood - 25.600 clay - 6.300 iron - 2.750 population(additional)
Level 3: 25.402 wood - 32.768 clay - 7.938 iron - 4.263 population(additional)


Church Build Time Factor:
Level 1 = 5:40:00
Level 2 = 6:48:00
Level 3 = 8:09:36
The actual build time is calculated by the following formula:
([build time factor] * 1.05^(-[level of the village headquarters])) / [world speed]


Church Point Values:
Level 1: 10 points
Level 2: 2 points
Level 3: 2 points


Church Build Requirements:
Level 5 Headquarters and whatever farm level required to hold the population.


Church Destruction:
Churches can be catapulted but they take significantly more catapults to drop a level than normal buildings.
It takes 400 catapults to destroy a lvl 1 church(Please confirm?)
167 to take lvl 2 to lvl 1(Please confirm?)
and 125 to take lvl 3 to lvl 2(Please confirm?)
Or 600 to take lvl 3 down completely. (Please confirm?)
This is with against a empty, wall-less village with 0% luck, no morale penalty and religious attackers (religion makes no difference to the defence of target buildings)
"When you noble a village the church 'flies away'" - Morthy

Church Effect:
All villages that are not contained within a church radius will have all troops' defensive and attack power reduced to 50%.
This means that you can attack outside your church's radius, as long as the attacking village is inside it.
Defending troops take the church effect of the village/person they are defending.


Exception:
There is an exception to the above setup/rules. The very first church that you start with will be a church that has a 6 field radius and is 10 points. This church cannot be upgraded at any point. In addition, the original church can't be damaged by catapults.

EDIT(s):

• Yes you can demolish your first church. However it would be a huge waste. As when you build it back, it will still just be the same 'first (non-upgradable) church'. You can only move it to another village if you have no other churches.
• If you lose your first church, you can rebuild it if you have no other churches.
• Churches only affect your own villages, not allies, not others. Only yours.
• This church is a different one to the one that built priests on the early German servers.
• Barbs/Bonus will not be affected by churches (I.E spiking villages)
• All calculations of religion will be done at landing time.
• Having religion/belief at two or more has no effect. It’s just to inform you that your village is under the effect of two churches, you receive no extra bonus for it.
• First churches take less than 15minutes to build at any level HQ. (Please confirm?)

Basics by jamm

Part 1: Basics you should know

Well, after playing this game for a couple of years I came back to play one last round, which was kind of disappointing, but I don't want to leave without give you guys some final advice.

I'll try to cover on the 7 most common mistakes from my point of view only, as nor I have time for a long guide and neither do I think anyone would read some douzen pages just to improve his gameplay, espacially cause some basics are pretty boring to the players that have been here for more than a couple of days...

First something about animals:
#1: Lambs and Wolves
#2: Turtles
#3: Rams
#4: Cheetahs and Horses
#5: Lions
#6: Ducks
#7: Symbionts

First above all: Forget the rankings for a moment. Points do fight in my point of view, but they are not important. If you play right points will come. If you play just to get a top spot in some ranking you have allready lost. Keep this in mind. It's the most important lesson you will ever get.

#1: Lambs and Wolves
Before you begin to play decide what you want to be, prey or hunter. The game is called tribalwars and it hints which 2 things make you successful in this game: Working together and Attacking. A lot of players start STW and all they ever do is build defense and build out there villages, never reaching a good position in the ranking. Sorry, but you'd be better of with a nice single player game and an additional chat program. If you want to play TW you better be ready to interact with other players: Attack others, defend against them, support friends and tribemates who are attacked. If you don't care about that at least I don't understand why you are playing this game at all.

Furthermore a lot of players herd together like lambs. Large tribes are formed, but when the wolves attack everyone is for himself and the lambs run around. If you form a tribe be sure you got a tribe where you really coordinate. Don't form a tribe just for the sake of having one. You might get a good ranked position which will attract even more players but as long as the tribe doesn't work together in offense and defense you will just fight and bitch around in your tribe. Nothing is more frustrating than being attacked and noone sends you help. So the morale in your ranks will drop and your tribe will fall apart.

Herding like lambs doesn't help against wolves.


#2: Turtles
When you start playing and at a certain point find that someone around you is growing faster than you, you have two options again. Either to fit in the role of the lamb once more or to try and do something against it. If you decide to go for all defense: you have allready lost, your downfall may come a little later, but it is inevitable. Offense builds faster in TW, is cheaper and you can farm with it effectivly, so being defensive will only save you if the bigger players targets are less defended than you are. But if you want to take your fate into your own hands this game will become real fun. Send a few scouts (depending on the style of the world 2-5) to each village around you. Yes, even the biggest ones. If someone around you is that much bigger he has probably bashed some targets and is getting resources from them now. Attack those too and get the resources yourself. if you find villages with low points (not the grey ones) but high wall that have no troops left, send defense and set up traps for the high point players (prefer spears when setting up traps, but never send only spears)

When you build defense never build one kind of defense only. Spears are the most effective defense in the beginning, but a defense consisting only of spears is extremly easy to destroy. Swords and archers are very effective considering use per farm space, but again, pure defenses are cracked easy.

Do build defense!! Building just scouts (the white wall) will help you against certain players (actually the bad ones), but if you have a good player near you, he might just attack you cause he just knows his offense is able to destroy everything. Furthermore you will need the defense of others to block attacks once someone decides he wants your village. Sure you could hope that you are the only one who is hiding without any real defense and in need the others who have defense will send you. Sorry, the others think the same way and thus you won't get defense. So, start making a difference and build defense. And start defending others that build defense, not those who claim doing so.

#3 Rams
Defense is good, defence behind a high wall is better. It will double your defensive rating, and depending on how much offense your opponent sends it may easily double or triple his losses and on the other hand your losses will be far less. Defending villages without a wall is far more difficult as you might imagine.

On the other hand the attacker has a way of lowering your bonus and the sad part is, about 95% of the players playing this game don't use it. Rams. Build them, for gods sake, please never attack a village that has troops and a wall without rams. It will not neglect the whole bonus a wall gives but most of it. The best number is (again depending on the settings between 153 and 219, usually 219). I do understand this is an odd number but if you play a little with the simulator you will find out why it is this and neither less nor more. And it might teach you to use the simulator, which is always important.

While we are at it: Look at the stats for your troops. Notice how low the attack rating for spears is? Never, ever attack with spears. They just aren't made for attacking. They are for farming in the very early game and for defending against cavalry, thats it. Don't send spears to accompany your nobles. It's clueless since they would just die against any kind of troops.

#4: Cheetahs and Horses
If you have to run for a long distance, will you want to sprint 50metres then be exhausted for a minute than run 50m again? Keep it steady. A lot of players build headquarters, stable, barracks and the workshop to a high level, which then has 2 benefits: they have more points and thus the ranking is better and they have the ability to produce more in less time. Sorry, you just fell for the biggest mistake you could ever make. If you haven't got the resources to keep that building producing all the time you just wasted resources which would have been better used producing something in that building. You have also gained points and thus helped your bigger neighbour having a better morale when he is attacking you. There is no problem with a queue that is long. I have a level 5 barracks, a level 3 stable and a level 2 workshop at least till I have 2000 points and still I always had the biggest armies on the servers I played.

#5: Lions
Hunt in packs, defend in packs. Playing alone will get you to a certain point and you might even get quite high in the rankings, but against any good tribe you will have no chance at all. The sad part is: everybody knows that and still there has been less than a handful temporary actions from tribes with excellent teamwork, let alone tribes who really do that. On the other hand about every single tribe in this game claims to have superb teamwork ;)

The problem is that in TW 99,9999% of the players are interested in their own rankings above all else. Superb teamwork is not possible if there is noone willing to sacrifice this interest. Period.

Most players may think that supporting each other makes them an excellent tribe. Actually thats far from the truth. It just shows their tribe is not totally pathetic. While we are at it: If you are in a tribe don't be the asshole who only builds offense, cause you can grow faster that way. you too will need defense eventually and since we know that defending alone is not possible you will have to contribute, too.

The usual thing you can observe is that high ranked players have a lot of kills and quite some offense (and problems with morale). Low ranked players fear attacks by high ranked players and hide behind their defense, till all the targets that have less defense than them are allready taken care of. Then it is their turn.

Lesson one: Morale bashers
Actually it is far more benefitial if the high ranked player had defense for him and the small guy and the small one was all offense. The smaller would be defended by the larger one pemanently and every village he attacks would be nobled by the big one.

Lesson two: Resources
It is quite easy for a big player to get a fixed amount of resources since he has multiple villages. the small guy has a hard time getting enough resources to build troops, coins, nobles, whatever. On the other hand it is so much harder for the big guy to gain points and very easy for the small one. So by supporting the small one with resources their combined points grow faster.

Lesson three: Defending
Offense is really really strong in this game. Still defense has one effect that makes it even stronger. It can be stacked, the more the better. Prepare for defending your tribe mates. Defense travels faster when sent with a paladin, so about everyone in your tribe can reach the village that is currently nobled. remember: the more the better. So the attacker has no problem to destroy small amounts of defense ten times, but the same amount at the same time is a hurdle he cannot take. So, coordinate your defense

Lesson four: Offense
Coordinate your offenses. Attack the same player in all his villages at once. No, do not send at the same time. Arrive at the same time. Even better arrive at multiple players villages at the same time and take them out at once so they have harder time defending themselves.

#6: Ducks
I guess I'll have to explain timing first. You see the server time in the lower right corner and you see the current lag right in front of it: page was generated in xxx milliseconds. At certain times this lag becomes higher but is still stable at other times it is not controlable and is between 9 and 20000 milliseconds. If it is like that forget timing. It's impossible. This doesn't happen too often though.

Everytime you send troops out you can click on the order and will find a time of arrival like this 21:43:56:443. the last three numbers are in grey and a little smaller.

So if you want to arrive with troops at the same time you will have to arrive in the same millisecond. you know the time your troops need from A to B so it's just a matter of preparation to calculate the time when you would have to send theoretically. Practically you still have a problem. From the moment you want to click till you click you have your reaction time, from the time you click till the click is transferred you have the lag (but we can test the current lag by just making any click in another window and get a good estimate) and finally that click needs to be transferred all over the world to that server somewhere in germany, which then has to execute it. good thing is there are just 3 things that influence this time and both are about the same everytime - your distance from the server, your computers ram and cpu and the browser you are using. the only way to find that is testing testing testing. click an attack every full minute and look at the order when it arrives. if you do this a couple of times you will find your computers lag. For me it was 1,45 seconds in average.

So now we know that we have to click for example 1,6 seconds before we calculated. Next we have to find a way to really click in the perfect moment. I count from 1 to 5 each second to get a feeling for 0,2 seconds. If you get a feeling for it and don't feel stupid talking to yourself any more you might even click on a early 2 or a late 3 to improve your timing even more.

So now that we know how to time we can not only attack in the same second but also send our defense out before the first attack hits and let it return before the other 4 are coming in, which is called ducking an attack. be careful though. there are some trick plays that destroy your rally point. think about it for a while and you might see the benefits. additionally ducking will make you loose your village, so if you are able to get at least about 4 times your current defense till your attacker returns it's well worth it.

#7 Symbionts
Please specialize your villages. you will need defense and you will need offense, which work together quite fine, but mixing both in one village is highly inefficient. Since a offense is stronger the more attack power it has you will want to maximize that by building a high amount of axes, lcav and rams (219, remember?) in it while keeping the farm slots wasted for stupid buidlings (hq 30 and market 25 is incredibly stupid) and for defensive troops (that have really low attack ratings anyway) low.

On the other hand you don't want your enemies to know where your offensive villages are so they should look the same as your defensive ones from the outside and you should a few (maybe 5 or 10) scouts in each village. Imagine someone sending 4 scouts to each of your villages while you are offline. he will be blocked in all your defensive villages that have scouts, but will see all easy targets. you can do that via support too, but at least I tend to forget so at a certain point in the game.



So if I still find any moron, that
builds only offense and no defense without telling it to his tribe in advance
attacks with spears
attack without rams
hides behind a white wall
has a mixed village with spears, axes and about everything in it
doesn't support his tribe mates
only builds defense and nothing else

I'll get you slus, and put a nole on you ;)

Survival Guide for Beginners by dr.obradovic

The Beginner's Guide to Survival!

There is a bunch of so called "guides for beginners" on the forum and the wiki. They were all written by experienced players telling you all those "do's and don'ts". But, do they tell you all you need to know? My answer is - NO!

So, being beginner myself, with only two weeks of playing, I've decided to describe the first person experiences of an absolute beginner. After reading the whole story, someone could say I just had a bad luck, but I could happily just say that I had a great(!) luck, for learning this lesson so early. It could have easily happened that I survived for say 2 months or even more, my disappointment would be devastating. This way, I can live with two weeks of my life lost and decide on my own if I'm willing to try again and risk spending much more time on this game.

As every good beginner's guide starts, let's first give an example (the facts in my case).

The 14th day of my playing, I woke up in the morning and logged in, just to find out that late in that night there was an attack on my village. The good news was it was only a scout attack (the report marked with a blue circle). I was prepared to defend from scouts, I had a bunch of my own scouts sitting in the village, I knew that the attacker needed at least twice that number to obtain full information, I was relieved. Then I opened the report...

The attacker had sent 480 (yes, four hundred and eighty!) scouts. Ok, I thought, someone really strong attacked me, let me check who it was and from which village. What the...? This guy had only about 100 points more than me, his village was in my neighborhood, and the last shock was when I found that he joined the world the very same day as I did!

As naive as every beginner, my first thought was - something must be wrong here. Then I tried to rationalize the whole thing. Since I was quite satisfied with my own development for these 14 days (I had about 1200 points, resource structures at level 20, I was farming nearby villages, I had some nicely growing troops - 65 spears, 65 swords, 30 archers, 20 scouts, 60 lcav, my resources income was pretty steady to support further upgrades and recruitment of more army), I concluded that this guy couldn't be much much better than me, he is surely more experienced player, I thought, but he could not develop his village so much better than me. The final conclusion of mine was that he must have been a spy in his tribe whose only task was to produce vast numbers of scouts and spy on villages that show some development.

I was soooo wrong!

Later that day, the same player attacked again. I had about two hours to think of what should I do, how to prepare for this attack, what troops he was sending to me... I was a bit confused - if my thinking was right, he couldn't have much of regular troops, but why would he send scouts again? He saw my all of my troops, so he knew what he can expect. Should I risk and wait for the attack with my troops in the village? I decided to be careful, so I dodged the attack to avoid troops and resources losses.

Can any beginner guess with what forces he stroked? I couldn't guess! Here are his forces:

Spear fighters (): 264
Swordsmen (): 48
Archers (): 599
Scouts (): 480
Light cavalry (): 174
Heavy cavalry (): 149
Catapults (): 114
Paladin (): 1

Omg! What the...!

Obviously, this guy was all but not a spy in his tribe. He did such an enormous development of his village for the same time and with about the same number of points. I laughed to my stupidity...

Look, there were catapults and heavy cavalry in his forces! Let's paste this forces into simulator. Total costs for these forces calculated by the simulator are:

Timber (): 186.590
Clay (): 136.700
Iron (): 195.880

And what about the time needed to upgrade hq to 15, smithy to 15, stable to 10, farms to say 20, warehouse to 20, not to mention the resource structures, probably a decent wall, and the time needed to recruit all those troops but only after structure requirements have been met?

How is this possible? Was he cheating? Unfortunately, the answer is no, he was not cheating and this is quite possible. Anyway, the question remains - how?

Well, my fellow beginners, the answer is very simple - by playing 24/7... Do you like this answer? I certainly do not like it, but, sorry, it's the only answer... What you have to do to accomplish this is to start building troops and farm other villages like crazy from the very first MINUTE of joining a world! And, do not be foolish, do not waste resources and time for upgrading resource structures (like I did).

What happens if something similar like this happens to you? Well, in theory, there is not much that you can do. That attack smashed my wall from level 14 to level 3. I do not have enough resources (and time for playing) to build up an army that could defend my village from this guy. He already has enormous advantage in troops, and he will certainly not stop neither recruiting more troops nor attacking me nor farming other villages for more resources. He will be stronger with each new attack. The next time he attacks, he could just smash my farms and disable me from further development.

In practice, however, you can play some tricky games and wait for his mistake. If you are lucky enough and/or he is not smart enough, then you can hope he will make a mistake which could give you some advantage and a chance to overpower him. And don't be fooled by this encouragement, the odds are really too small. This would also require that you start playing 24/7 yourself, watch out for any incoming attacks and carefully plan in advance all your moves, and, of course, continue to constantly farm other villages.

If you cannot play 24/7, then you must prepare your village for an attack that might come while you are not playing. One way to do this is to send all your troops to a distant abandoned village and schedule their return to the time when you will be online again. This will save your troops from slaughtering. Also, spend all resources that you can on structures and new recruitments. He will kill all your newly recruited army if he attacks, but this is better than letting him take any resources from you. If your farms are smashed and you cannot do anything but upgrading farms, you can accept even the most non-favorable market offers just to get rid of an excess resources, but carefully choose delivery periods, so you can do this again! You can also put more than five farm upgrades in the queue and then cancel and add again repeatedly. The whole idea is to lower his pleasure as much as possible - if he does not kill any troops nor gets any resources, he will be just wasting his time on attacking you, maybe he will once realize that he has smarter things to do. ;)

Well, while I was writing this, my war with this guy continued... As if I had some Nostradamus genes, I predicted a lot of what could happen in the future, to the great satisfaction of mine!

The guy kept attacking constantly, I used the tactics explained above to minimize my losses. And I will restrain from judging his intelligence, but this was what happened so you can judge on your own!

His forces were a bit stronger with each attack, several hcav's and catapults were added to his forces each time. He was always coming to my village just to find no army of mine and no resources to collect. Once he hit my farms and put them down to level 3. I needed the whole day to rebuild them so I could continue my troops production.

One day, he attacked with catapults only. Why? Beat me! He must have guessed that I do not have any army at all. I wish I didn't dodge that attack, but who would knew. My hope was that he will make the same mistake again and that I would be smart enough to predict when it happens. But how? With patience and not giving up. It's easy now for me to be smart after the battle, but this is the answer. Right out of nowhere I got my chance!

The further development was quite interesting. He sent his forces again, but by checking the time they needed for arrival, I knew there were no catapults this time. I left small amount of troops in my village to give him an illusion that they are all newly produced units (a couple of swordsman and a couple of lcav). He landed with full force and killed my poor troops. I obviously accomplished what I was up to - he thought exactly what I wanted him to think!

As soon as he got report about this attack, without waiting for his troops to come back to his village, he sent his catapults immediately (again, I knew that by looking at the time of the arrival of his new attack). I knew that there could not be much of his troops to support his catapults in this attack, and I knew this was my last and only chance for confronting his catapults with my army.

Omg, that was a blow of the century, at least from my perspective. I killed him 50 of 50 archers, 13 of 100 scouts, 6 of 6 hcav and 138 of 138 catapults! Lol, I couldn't stop laughing!

This must have been very painful for him, lol. You can calculate on your own (in the simulator) how much resources this will cost him to rebuild (do not forget the time too). I put him down for at least a couple of days.

Of course, he is still much stronger than me (he still has his hcav about 200), I lost about 80% of my poor army in this battle, he will retaliate for sure, I do not have any chance against him in the near future (except if, counting on his brightness, hopefully he get into problems on some other side).

But, after all, this was a great moral victory for me, don't you think the same? I can now leave this game with my dignity intact!

Finally, you can ask yourself - Why would you want to play a game like this and spend so much time with it?

Well, this is not much of a strategy game, if you ask me, you simply do not have enough information to create any decent strategy. This is just a mind-playing game with your opponents, with still so little information about their thinking. Playing cat-and-mouse games with your opponents could not be called strategy. The only question is who would give up first.

The worst aspect of this game is that it gives by far too much of advantage to players who can spend more time than you can. Not to mention that every time you go to sleep, in the morning while making your first coffee, you can find your village devastated! My tactics described above would not save your from nobling your village - if you leave your village undefended over night, you could easily find in the morning that you do not have your village anymore!

At the end, I will give you a short overview of what you ULTIMATELY MUST do to become a strong player on a world (in the order of importance):
1. Read all beginner's guides on the wiki and the forum. Consult the help all the time. Learn fast and do not implement anything you read if you are not sure (with your own brains) why exactly you should do that!
2. Play 24/7.
3. Recruit constantly.
4. Farm other villages constantly.
5. Avoid upgrading your resource structures too high in the early stage. There will be time for this, and the farming gains much much more resources.
6. Upgrade your structures with a plan! Do not be lead by for what you have resources at the moment or what troops you would like to have.
7. I'm not sure about the wall - rams and catapults still confuse me. I'm still a beginner, remember?

Good luck!