Saturday, 26 February 2011

Guide by Karmalot

Hey here's a guide that I wrote. It is constantly being edited, as a lot of things are debatable and sometimes I change my mind to what is better. Before I start I'll list a few achievements that I have accomplished while playing this game. I started playing this game on W17 when the world first opened up. Here is a list of all of the worlds that I have played on:

World 17
-Best Rank: 1st, for about a year straight
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
-Top 10 for about 2 years
-First to 500 Villages
World 18
-Best Rank: 1st
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
-First World Noble Train, Nobled largest player in the #1 Tribe
World 20
-Best Rank: 7th
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
-First World Noble Train
World 35
-Best Rank: 1st
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
-First World Noble Train
-2nd Place in my K was 20% my size.
World 37
-Best Rank: 3rd
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
World 38
-Best Rank: 8th
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
World 42
-Best Rank: 3rd
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
World 43
-Best Rank: 2nd
-Best ODA Rank: 1st
-Top 3 in Two Different K's
World 44 - Still Playing
-Best Rank: 2nd
-Best ODA Rank: 4th

First I'll start with a few game concepts. It is important to understand these statements and keep them in mind when reading this guide.
-You must be active, the more you farm the faster you grow: simple.
-Sometimes the situation calls for something different. For example, resource balancing. You can not predict exactly what the resource ratios your hauls will come, so therefore it is impossible to say which exact resource upgrades you need to upgrade first. However, the values stated in this guide should give you a general idea for most cases.
-When the Beginer Protection(BP) ends in your area, you must be the first person to empty the warehouses of the inactive villages. For this reason, rushing LC's is not good because you will not have enough units to empty these warehouses in time. For this, you will need several groups of a few axes + spears for each village.
-For the reason stated above:
..-The purpose of spears = to afford to buy axes pre-BP
..-The purpose of axes = to escort your spears so they don't die while farming
..-an ideal target is about 5-10 axes and 10-25 spears per farm, depending on how active the farming area is.
-LC's are the most time and cost efficient unit for farming and because of this:
..-The money you make post-BP from the inactive villages will more than pay for your LC tech
..-Once you have LC's, produce NOTHING but LC's. If you can not afford to produce LC's 24/7 with a stables 3, then you can not afford to produce anything else.
..-The purpose Post-BP Spear + Axe Farming is to maximize your capacity to produce LC's as early as possible. Rushing LC's does not account this economic principle. Once you can afford to produce LC's non-stop, then you can produce axes. Farming with Spear + Axes prior to LC tech will enable you to produce LC's + Axes earlier than just rushing LC's with out Axe+Spear Farming.
-Again, once you have the capacity to produce LC's, build NOTHING but LC's, except farm/warehouse as needed.
-Once you can afford to produce LC's non-stop, then produce axes along with your LC's and nothing else, except farm/warehouse as needed.
-Once you can afford to produce LC's + Axes non-stop, then you can upgrade structures and continue with the build order. Troop production is the most important concept of this game.
-Active farming troops will out produce any resource structure upgrade.

With that said, Let us begin with the a list of the different stages for a build order prior to nobling a village. I'll list it here with no description, then below there will be a detailed description of each upgrade.

Quote:
Statue
..Build Paladin
Farm > Upgrade Resources
..Headquarters 3
..Barracks 1
Constantly Build Spears
Farm > Queue Troops > Upgrade Resources
..Headquarters 5
..Smithy 2
..Tech Axes
Constantly Build Axes
Farm > Queue Troops > Upgrade Resources > Possibly Market 1-2
..Barracks 5
..Headquarters 10
..Smithy 5
..Stables 3
..Tech Light Cavalry
Constantly Build Light Cavalry Only
Farm > Queue Troops
..Tech Scouts
..Build a few Scouts
Constantly Build Light Cavalry + Axes Only
Farm > Queue Troops
..Market 1 - 5(Depending on your resource balancing needs)
..Upgrade Resources Until HQ is working 24/7
..Smithy 10
..Workshop 1
..Tech Rams
Constantly Build Light Cavalry + Axes + Rams
Farm > Queue Troops
..Workshop 2
..Smithy 12
..Tech Catapults
Constantly Build Light Cavalry + Axes + Rams/Cats
Farm > Queue Troops
..HQ23-30
..Stables 10
..Barracks 10
..Stables 15
..Barracks 20
..Market 10
..Warehouse 23/24
..Farm 29/30
..Smithy 20
..Academy
Constantly Build Light Cavalry + Axes + Rams/Cats
Farm > Queue Troops
..Stables 20
..Barracks 25
..Wall 20
..Build a Train
..Choose a Noble Target
Building a Resource Base to Spears

Basically you begin the game by upgrading your resources and and farming with your paladin to the closest farm to your village, Barbarian or Bonus villages.

Beside each resource I will post 2 numbers. The first will represent the cost of that resources resource per that resources increase in production per hour. That is: how many hours it will take for the resource upgraded to pay for the cost of that resources upgraded resource. For example, Timber Camp 0 produces 5 wood per hour. Timber Camp 1 produces 30. That is an increase of 25 wood per hour. The upgrade costs 50 wood, so it will take 2 hours to pay for the cost of that upgrade. The second number will take into account the total number of resources spent on that resource, assuming each resource has a 1:1 ratio in value. For example, Timber Camp 1 has a total cost of (50+60+40) = 150. 150 / 25 = 6. So Timber Camp 1 will be displayed as such: "02.00 06.00 Wood 1" Take note of how they are increasing in order, this is of no coincidence, it's call mathematics!

Quote:
Statue
Paladin
02.00 06.00 Wood 1
02.00 06.20 Clay 1
02.80 08.40 Iron 1
12.60 38.00 Wood 2
12.60 39.20 Clay 2
13.00 39.67 Wood 3
At this stage in the game, depending on what haul ratio you are producing you will need to adjust your resources accordingly. The general idea here is to decide which resource you are shortest on for the next upgrade. However, keep in mind that you will be producing spears so that you will want your wood to be about 2 levels above your clay, and your clay to be about 2 levels above your iron, as such, you may want to continue accordingly:
Quote:
16.33 49.83 Wood 4
Now you should consider pushing towards spears.

HQ 3, Barracks 1

Upgrade your HQ to level 3 and construct your barracks. You will need to send at least 4 spears with your paladin to justify sending your paladin, based on the increased travel time from sending it with spears and the haul it will yield. If you have less than 4 spears, just send your paladin by itself.

The more active you are and the more farms you have, barbarian and bonus villages, then the more spears you should make. Remeber, once the BP is lifted, you will need to empty all of the warehouses of the inactive villages in your area as fast as possible; this will determine how many spears you will need to make. The inactive villages are typically the villages that have not grown since they have been created, their size will depend on your distance from the center. The faster you can empty these warehouses, the more LC's you will be able to produce and the faster you'll be able to produce them in the post-BP period.

A warehouse level 1 will hold 3000 total resources. That means, 120 spears will empty that warehouse in one shot. However, 120 spears will cost 10800 resources. So you will need to send those spears to that village about 3 times to pay for their production. But since each resource is not really equal pre-market. Wood is the most valuable at this stage, so let us take a look at the wood levels. A spear costs 50 wood, and carries 25 haul. Since the warehouse is full, the wood/clay/iron haul per spear will b e divided equally between each resource. So 1 spear will only carry 8 1/3 wood. That means, each spear must travel 6 times to pay for their cost in wood. Since it requires 120 spears to empty the warehouse and you need to travel 6 times to make money, then you should have at least 20 spears per inactive village warehouse that you expect to empty post-BP. So if there are 5 inactive villages inside your 9x9, and you're the most active farmer, then you should build at least 100 spears pre-BP.

Once you figure out how many spears you need, you will need to make sure you build them prior to getting axes. You just need to make sure that you get axes prior to BP ending and you can build enough of them to escort your spears in the process. Farm with your spears in groups of 35 each and send the remainder with your paladin. As stated above, if you have less than 4 spears to send with your paladin, then it is better to send your paladin alone.

Building a Resource Base to Axes

Farm and continue producing spears constantly and if you save up enough resources, try to perform the following resource upgrades:
Quote:
13.33 41.17 Clay 3
15.25 47.13 Wood 5
16.83 51.67 Clay 4
17.40 52.80 Iron 2
18.00 54.89 Wood 6
19.10 59.80 Wood 7
Now, you should be ready to push towards axes.

HQ 5, Barracks 1, Smithy 2

Once you've began emptying or have emptied all of the warehouses in the barbarian villages in your area you can begin by teching axes. Remember, your goal is to be past this stage prior to BP ending. You may want to produce less spears or lower resources accordingly to ensure you have axes prior to BP ending and this will depend on how active you are.

Produce 5 axes per farm and send them with your 10-25 spears or so to increase the number of villages you can hit. Start with 5 axes and 25 spears, if the warehouse is full. As the warehouse becomes empty and as you produce more axes then you will need to lower the number of spears you are sending to allow yourself to farm more villages with your spear pool. Stop producing axes once you have enough to escort your spears.

Take notes of the villages in your area and be sure that once your inactives become farmable when their BP is lifted that you have the units avaliable to send to that village immediately. These will be 100% hauls so you must time this accordingly. These resources collected by this method will be used to save up for Light Cavalry.

Building a Resource Base to Light Cavalry

If you save up enough resources you should be upgrading some resources accordingly:
Quote:
16.00 49.00 Clay 5
18.00 55.33 Iron 3
19.83 62.67 Wood 8
22.17 69.17 Iron 4
Here you may have noticed that Clay 5 should have came before Wood 7 according to its Production increase per cost, however at this stage in the game I feel that wood is just more important because of spear production. Again, this is subject to your haul ratio's and may varry slightly.

At this stage you will probably want to construct a market to take advantage of the great deals there. Try to get at least a 1.5 ratio on your resources:
Quote:
Market 1
Quote:
Market 2
At this stage in the game, again taking into account your haul ratio's from your farms and adjusting accordingly, you will need to consider the time it will take to upgrade to LC's. Otherwise, continue here:

Quote:
18.00 54.89 Clay 6
20.63 65.13 Iron 5
21.29 67.71 Wood 9
20.50 62.30 Clay 7
21.94 70.24 Wood 10
22.78 72.78 Iron 6
24.53 79.21 Wood 11
After this point, upgrade your warehouse only until you reach level 6. Then proceed with your HQ 10, Smithy 5, Barracks 5 and Stables 3.

HQ 10, Barracks 5, Smithy 5, Stables 3

Construct the HQ first, then the barracks and then the smithy. This is because you may still be in the axe/spear production stages during this time, depending on how active in farming you have been and how many farms are in your location. Then the stables and research LC`s and do not resource scouts.

The Stables - Level 3

Queue up some LC`s, then send them out farming to your current farms and/or new inactive village farms, where applicable. Once you have all of your farms and inactive villages being farmed, then research scouts. You only really need scouts to scout the villages that you're not quite sure if they built troops in or not and would like to farm. Another fun thing to do at this stage is to scout every village inside your 15x15. This will let them all know that you are far beyond them and some of them might even restart right away because of it. Do not produce anything but LC's if you do not have enough LC's in your queue to last until whatever else you want to build is complete. ie - do not queue your 45 minutes of axes if you do not have at least 45 minutes of LC queued up. And do not queue 45 minutes of structure upgrades if you do not have both 45 minutes of LC's and 45 of axes queued. Farm with your LC`s. Never stop producing LC`s.

Farming The Inactives
Monitor players on Tribal Wars Map to see if players are activly growing their village. You can not afford to draw attention to yourself here by taunting other players to attack you. Do not attack any active players that are growing or may be building troops. The whole idea of LC farming is to out-farm your opponents and starve them, allowing yourself to grow more quickly than them. Losing troops at this stage in the game hurts only yourself and slows your own growth. Only farm barbarians or vilages that have the base-set of points, that is their points are the same as when their village was created.

Continue to do this until all of the farmable villages(non-active players) are being farmed. In which case you must do one of two things: start farming farther away in the same manner, or attack another player that has grown their village. The best case here is to expand your farming borders without attacking another player. This will depend on how active you are and will determine how fast you can grow because if you`re not losing troops, then you are growing faster than if you were. But if you are limited by your activity in this manner then you must attack another player to stop him from growing.

Creating More Farms

If you determine that you must attack another player to continue growing you should start from the lowest point players in your farming radius and move up from there.

These are the only conditions you should use to determine if you will attack a player.
- All of the farmable villages inside your 15x15 are currently being farmed by two groups(one returning and one attacking). And upon clearing the player or new farm you will still have enough troops to continue farming all of these farms in this manner AND the farm you just created.
- Your farms are starting to run dry because someone else is farming them
- You will suffer the least ammount of losses if you attack this player because he will either be a good farm or is farming your farms and slowing you down.


Since you have scouts, you can easily determine the 3rd criteria and proceed accordingly. Remeber, the key here is to do what you need to do to grow the fastest way possible at all times. Losing troops at this stage in the game will slow you down so avoid attacking players at all cost: especially those rivaling your points. Players that above you or that have the same points as you will be potential farms later on or future noble targets. Once you have your LC 24/7 production line in place you will grow faster than them. It is just slow at first because you are producing only units and not buildings, while they are producing buildings. The growth for both is exponential but for you the curve will have a much much higher slope.

Light Cavalry to Nobles

The Barracks - Level 5, Queueing Axes
Once you have units queued inside your stables, begin to queue your barracks. Never stop producing units, ever.

The Farm
These are the only structure that you should be queueing inside your HQ10. The only time you want to upgrade this structure is when either your troop queue is full & you have no more farm space, or you have troop queues long enough to outlast the buildtime of your farm. I've found while the stables is 3 and the barracks 5 and workshop 2, you should queue the farm prior to your exisiting farm being 100 supply full. then re-queue your HQ upgrades after it.

The Warehouse
Only build this structure as you need it. ie - If the next structure that you will queue is too large. Only have it the exact size that you need to queue your next structure; use the market to hold extra resources if one of them gets oversized.

The Market - Level 5
A market level 5 is good to have for when one resource is too high for your resource, or if you too low on another resource. Do not upgrade this past 10 until you have nobles. Probably shouldn`t go past 5 until you have Smithy 15.

Resource Structures - Pre-Catapults
Remeber, when upgrading your resources you need to determine what the limiting resource would be if you were to construct the next level up of each of the three resources. Do not construct anything other than resources at this stage in the game. The only exception to this would be to upgrade your farms and warehouses accordingly which will be described below in greater detail.

Continue upgrading your resources until you can keep your HQ level 10 upgrading resources 24/7. Typically I'll upgrade my resources to 14-11-17, but again this will depend on your resource ratios of your farming income.

Which resource you upgrade at this point in time will be determined by the resource ratio in the haul being returned from your farms. Here is a helpful table, in the format described above, detailing the increase in production to resource cost ratio. This does not mean build these resources, it is only to be used as a tool to help you decide which ones are the most cost effective. What resources you actually build should depend only on your resources coming in via your farms.

Quote:
000.00 000.00 Wood 0
000.00 000.00 Clay 0
000.00 000.00 Iron 0
002.00 006.00 Wood 1
002.00 006.20 Clay 1
002.80 008.40 Iron 1
012.60 038.00 Wood 2
012.60 039.20 Clay 2
013.00 039.67 Wood 3
013.33 041.17 Clay 3
015.25 047.13 Wood 5
016.00 049.00 Clay 5
016.33 049.83 Wood 4
016.83 051.67 Clay 4
017.00 052.78 Wood 6
017.40 052.80 Iron 2
018.00 054.89 Clay 6
018.00 055.33 Iron 3
019.10 059.80 Wood 7
019.83 062.67 Wood 8
020.50 062.30 Clay 7
020.63 065.13 Iron 5
021.29 067.71 Wood 9
021.58 065.42 Clay 8
021.94 070.24 Wood 10
022.17 069.17 Iron 4
022.78 072.78 Iron 6
023.43 070.86 Clay 9
024.41 070.65 Clay 10
024.53 079.21 Wood 11
025.40 082.20 Iron 7
026.33 086.17 Iron 8
026.45 077.91 Wood 12
027.63 083.05 Clay 11
027.93 092.71 Iron 9
028.00 091.92 Wood 13
028.53 095.94 Iron 10
030.18 090.50 Clay 12
030.30 100.40 Wood 14
031.68 107.89 Iron 11
032.31 096.65 Clay 13
032.49 108.49 Wood 15
033.91 117.09 Iron 12
035.40 105.67 Clay 14
035.53 119.68 Wood 16
035.58 086.08 Iron 13
037.00 125.73 Wood 17
038.23 135.63 Iron 14
038.37 114.34 Clay 15
040.63 146.17 Iron 15
041.11 140.93 Wood 18
042.50 126.30 Clay 16
043.38 149.98 Wood 19
044.10 160.83 Iron 16
044.79 132.85 Clay 17
045.56 168.56 Iron 17
046.25 161.41 Wood 20
050.22 188.44 Iron 18
050.37 149.09 Clay 18
050.43 177.58 Wood 21
052.55 200.02 Iron 19
053.67 190.77 Wood 22
053.75 158.81 Clay 19
055.60 214.75 Iron 20
058.03 171.11 Clay 20
058.41 209.57 Wood 23
060.12 235.64 Iron 21
062.28 225.57 Wood 24
063.48 252.49 Iron 22
064.01 188.42 Clay 21
067.01 245.05 Wood 25
068.53 276.70 Iron 23
068.95 202.60 Clay 22
071.93 265.59 Wood 26
072.49 297.08 Iron 24
075.95 222.79 Clay 23
077.31 288.27 Wood 27
077.37 321.94 Iron 25
081.94 240.00 Clay 24
082.38 348.08 Iron 26
083.05 312.79 Wood 28
087.83 376.89 Iron 27
089.23 260.95 Clay 25
089.44 340.27 Wood 29
093.60 407.96 Iron 28
095.88 368.49 Wood 30
096.92 283.05 Clay 26
100.00 442.75 Iron 29
105.42 307.45 Clay 27
106.34 478.34 Iron 30
114.61 333.83 Clay 28
124.91 363.41 Clay 29
135.51 393.78 Clay 30

This is when you should queue a resource structure:
-Your Farm Space is sufficient to last the build time of your resource structure
-Your warehouse space is sufficient
-You have troops queued in your Barracks 5 & Stables 3

NOTE - it is a very good idea to not go past this point until you can sustain a stables & barracks queue while you are offline or sleeping, working etc. ie - Your stables & barracks queue must be longer than the longest period that you will be offline for.

The Smithy - Level 10
Upgrading this structure past level 5 once you can sustain LC, Axe queues non-stop & your resources are high enough such that your HQ queue is non-stop. Once you start upgrading this building, you should only build two structures along side the smithy:
-The Farm
-The Warehouse
Do not queue anything else in your HQ beside those 3 structures. Again, this is all meanwhile having constant stables & barracks queue.

The Workshop - Level 2
Once your Smithy has reached level 10, construct your workshop to level 2. Tech rams and start your ram production. Build them constantly until you can produce catapults. This should be about 25-50 or so. It'll be enough to start off with and will be good until you start to encounter players that have not yet stoped playing, in which case you won't be clearing anyway until you have all of the other villages inside your 20x20 on farm. Once you have catapults, you'll then need to resume your ram production at that point.

The Smithy - Level 12
You will need a few cats to submit a few players arround you into quitting the game or restarting elsewhere then this is the time to get a few cats into the farm space. Tech Catapults and make arround 20-50, or a 75-100 if you feel you will need more deterence to force your neighbours to abandon their villages or stop logging on.

Head Quarters - Level 23
By now you should have enough LC's and Axes farming such that you will be able to upgrade your HQ continually. Remember, only upgrade this structure when you begin to experience periods when you have both your Stables 3 and Barracks 5 queued 24/7 without running out of farm space and you have sufficient warehouse space. That way you can continue to upgrade your resources more quickly. If you start experiencing periods where your HQ queue becomes empty because you don't have the resources to keep your stables & barracks queued, then it is because you upgraded this structure too far, and should have upgraded a resource structure instead. Continue with this strategy until you have AT LEAST HQ23. The higher it gets, the more time you will save and the faster you will build nobles. However, the higher you go, the most costly it will become. So how high you need to raise this structure will depend greatly on how active in farming you are. I typically raise it to about 23-25. 26 to 25 only saves an extra 5-10 hours or so. Just remember, it is important to keep the queue going 24/7 or the time you save in production turns into extra time spent on production.

Assuming the world speed is x1, which is arbituary, and ignoring the farm upgrades, warehouse upgrades or any resource upgrading, here are some numbers to consider:

Starting at a village with:
HQ10, Barracks 5, Stables 3, Smithy 10, Market 5
Upgrading your HQ first to the levels listed below, followed by Barracks 20, Stables 15, Workshop 2, Smithy 20 + Academy + Market 10 to represent a post-noble stage:
HQ20 = 325.58 Hours
HQ21 = 314.57 Hours ~ 11.01 Total Hours Saved ~ +11.01 Extra Hours Saved
HQ22 = 304.78 Hours ~ 20.80 Total Hours Saved ~ +9.79 Extra Hours Saved
HQ23 = 296.24 Hours ~ 29.34 Total Hours Saved ~ +8.54 Extra Hours Saved
HQ24 = 289.01 Hours ~ 36.57 Total Hours Saved ~ +7.23 Extra Hours Saved
HQ25 = 283.15 Hours ~ 42.43 Total Hours Saved ~ +5.86 Extra Hours Saved
HQ26 = 278.74 Hours ~ 46.84 Total Hours Saved ~ +4.41 Extra Hours Saved
HQ27 = 275.88 Hours ~ 49.70 Total Hours Saved ~ +2.86 Extra Hours Saved
HQ28 = 274.69 Hours ~ 50.89 Total Hours Saved ~ +1.19 Extra Hours Saved
HQ29 = 275.31 Hours ~ 50.27 Total Hours Saved ~ -0.62 = Wasted Time

Now, let's assume that you have a farm level 25 by the time you your HQ finished, so you will raise your farm 25-29 to be conservative. Aswell as your warehouse, let's assume 18(required for HQ25) as a starting point, and you will need to raise it to level 24 to afford a farm 29. So farm 25 -> 29 and warehouse 18 -> 24. Note, I'm ignoring other buildings because they are not required to build nobles.
HQ20 = 418.14 Hours
HQ21 = 402.73 Hours ~ 15.41 Total Hours Saved ~ +15.41 Extra Hours Saved
HQ22 = 388.74 Hours ~ 29.40 Total Hours Saved ~ +13.99 Extra Hours Saved
HQ23 = 376.20 Hours ~ 41.94 Total Hours Saved ~ +12.54 Extra Hours Saved
HQ24 = 365.16 Hours ~ 52.98 Total Hours Saved ~ +11.04 Extra Hours Saved
HQ25 = 355.67 Hours ~ 62.47 Total Hours Saved ~ +9.49 Extra Hours Saved
HQ26 = 347.81 Hours ~ 70.33 Total Hours Saved ~ +7.86 Extra Hours Saved
HQ27 = 341.66 Hours ~ 76.48 Total Hours Saved ~ +6.15 Extra Hours Saved
HQ28 = 337.34 Hours ~ 80.80 Total Hours Saved ~ +4.32 Extra Hours Saved
HQ29 = 334.98 Hours ~ 83.16 Total Hours Saved ~ +2.36 Extra Hours Saved
HQ30 = 334.73 Hours ~ 83.41 Total Hours Saved ~ +0.25 Extra Hours Saved

Your nobles will be avaliable faster but it will be more time consuming and demanding with your day to day farming. How high your raise your HQ during this stage is strictly dependant upon how much money you have avaliable. The bottom line is, it is faster, but it is more costly in terms of resources: but if the resources are aplenty then all that matters is that it is faster to get to nobles in terms of time. If you are unable to keep your HQ upgrades queue'd 24/7, while queuing the stables/barracks of course, then you should upgrade resources to keep the queue going. Again, upgrade your farm & warehouse only as needed during this stage. Remember it is vital not to upgrade your stables and barracks or smithy prior to your HQ at this stage.

Some people have tried to argue that raising your barracks and stables prior to your HQ is better for troop production. Well, I assure you that it is not.

First, let's ignore the farm and warehouse upgrades required to achieve nobles. Because it is clear that raising the barracks/stables prior to your HQ would increase the time to nobles simply because your troop production will be higher during your pre-HQ20+ stage which means that you will need to raise your farm and warehouses to a higher level during your pre-HQ20+ stage. This will make you save less time from upgrading your HQ because you will not take advantage of the farm/warehouse decreased buildtime because you're not upgrading your HQ, you're upgrading your stables/barracks.

Secondly, we can ignore the resource upgrades, wall upgrades, because they are not required to produce nobles. We'll also ignore workshop upgrading, because it is independant of nobles also. And finally, we can ignore the market and smithy upgrades because they'll be done post-barracks/stables upgrades anyway.

So we will assume that the only buildtimes to be considered are the barracks, stables and HQ.
Starting with HQ10, and ending with HQ23 in a straight run:
HQ10 -> HQ23 = 31.09 Hours
Add:
Barracks 5 -> Barracks 20 @ HQ23 = +29.18 Hours
Stables 3 -> Stables 15 @ HQ23 = +37.11 Hours
-----------------------------
Totalling: 97.38 Hours

Now lets say you go stables 10, before upgrading HQ to 23.
Stables 3 -> Stables 10 @ HQ10 = 22.84 Hours
HQ10 -> HQ23 = 31.09 Hours
Barracks 5 -> Barracks 20 @ HQ23 = +29.18 Hours
Stables 10 -> Stables 15 @ HQ23 = +25.00 Hours
-----------------------------
Totalling: 108.11 Hours
That is a 10.73 hour difference.

That means that if you go HQ last or during, and only bring your stables up to 10 from 3, exlcuding the extra farm and warehouse space you'd need aswell as excluding any barracks upgrading, which would lead to more farm space required pre-HQ23, making it take a longer time. Which means, for 10.73 hours you are producing LC's at stables level 15 as opposed to stables (at most) level 10. I don't have to quote production times to show that stables 15 will produce more lc's than stables 10 for that period of time.

Again, this is only true if you can afford 24/7 production. The time you save on buildtimes of your stables or barracks independantly will yield more troops than if you were to upgrade them first. This is because you will be producing units at barracks 23 + stables 15 for about an extra 20 hours instead of 20 hours at Barracks 5, Stables 3 or any level between the two groups. Producing troops at a higher level of production for the barracks and stables simply yields more troops pre-noble in the same time period. Anyone who does not upgrade their HQ in this manner and opposes an opponent that does will lose every time.

The Stables - Level 10
Since the stables is your main farming tool, you will want to upgrade this structure to 10 as soon as possible.

The Barracks - Level 10
Now you will need to plan ahead here for when you start to clear villages. Upgrade your Barracks to level 10 to increase your Axe:LC ratio.

The Market - Level 10
This structure is cheap and quick to build. Geting the Market to 10 will depend on the resource ratios you are collecting from farming. You can sometimes get away with upgrading this post-barracks and post-stables. This can also aid you during your smithy crunch as you can hold extra resources with your merchants.

The Stables - Level 15
This is your pre-noble Stables goal. Get this structure to 15 to enable your noble nuke production level.

The Barracks - Level 20
Once you've completed your stables pre-noble quality, you will want to upgrade your barracks to at least level 20, Level 23 is even better and more ideal but this will depend on your activness if you can afford it or not. Maximizing your production capabilities is important because once you're producing nobles you will have wasted some units killing off a player while you noble him so you will need to be capable of quickly re-producing your units for your next target.

The Warehouse - Level 24/25
Since your production is so good you will need at least a Farm 29 or a Farm 30 Pre-Academy, depending on how quick you were at this build order. Farm 29 requires Warehouse 24, and the Farm 30 requires the Warehouse 25. Get them up respectivly before proceeding. There is no benefit from Smithy 13-20 Pre-Noble so you should get your warehouse up first.

The Farm - Level 29/30
As stated just before here, you will need Farm 29-30 pre-noble with this build order to house your units. Build this before proceeding to finish your smithy. If you are on a teching world, you may want to juggle your smithy in here but I've found that it is not possible because of the unit production levels and queue lengths.

The Smithy - Level 20
Now that you have your stables 15 and barracks 20-23, now it is time to make the push to your Smithy 20. Remeber, you must still continue your 24/7 queue's of your stables and barracks.

The Academy
Once you achieved Smithy Level 20, construct your academy and start your noble production and find a nice big juicy player target. If you followed this strategy closely you will be able to noble anyone of your choosing, assuming that they have not done this exact build order themselves. If that is so, find someone else to noble and deal with them later or ask them to join your tribe. At this stage in the game you should have arround 200 farms.

The Wall 20
Once you are nobling villages you will want to upgrade your wall. This guide is about complete map dominance in your 20x20. Following it will cause you to both out-grow and starve your enemies and clearing the ones that will not become noble targets. Walls are a defensive structure and since this guide is about all Offense & map control, they are not needed. Walls are used to boots your defensive capabilites and you don't need walls until you need to defend. With that said I will also point out that you only need to defend against nobles. When such is the case, again as a consequence of following this guide, you will be the largets player inside your 20x20 and most of the time your 45x45. As you can see here, you will not be needing to fear anyone in your area. You will be the first one in your 45x45 with a complete noble train. And you will also be nobling the largest village in your 45x45 which in turn should be offensive. As stated below in the village ratios and noble targets, you should be running about 3 offensive villages before making a defensive one. If you are really new then you should go to a 2:1 ratio, but I assure you, a 3:1 ratio is quite safe if you have a strong enough lead on your opponents.

Wood/Clay/Iron - Level 30
Now is the time to start spending money on upgrading your resources each to level 30. It is important not let any form of unit production or structure upgrade to be slowed down by the production of packets or coins to produce nobles. It will greatly benefit you to only produce packets & coins second to increasing your forms of income: troop production & resource structures. The faster you max out your resource structures, the faster you will achieve maximum coin and packet production from your village.

Coins & Packet Production
Again, as stated above, coin and packet production comes last.

Smithy Research
This section is strictly in regards to the 10-level tech system. Here I will post a minimum number of troops required to make upgrading the research on your units more cost-beneficial than queueing another unit. Obviuously as your queues become longer and longer, you will be upgrading your tech levels much sooner than the threasholds stated below, however it is good to note that they do exist. Upgrading your research is prioritized before upgrading structures, and after adding troops to the queue. Following the above build order should yield Axe 10, LC 10, Rams 8 or 9 Pre-Noble where you`ll have about 5000 axe and 3000 LC and 220-240 rams.

Quote:
Axes:
0001 < Level 01 = 0225
0225 < Level 02 = 0367
0367 < Level 03 = 0617
0617 < Level 04 = 1028
1028 < Level 05 = 1715
1715 < Level 06 = 2859
2859 < Level 07 = 3069
3069 < Level 08 = 8081
8081 < Level 09 = 8662
8662 <>
Quote:
LC's
0001 < Level 01 = 0095
0095 < Level 02 = 0157
0157 < Level 03 = 0222
0222 < Level 04 = 0371
0371 < Level 05 = 0620
0620 < Level 06 = 1038
1038 < Level 07 = 1502
1502 < Level 08 = 2524
2524 < Level 09 = 3721
3721 <>
From Pre-Noble to Post-Noble

Anything prior to this section of this guide, I belive is the best way to play the game. Any other way I consider to be newbish and poor. On worlds that I join, I look for players that are not playing in the matter that I described above and I do one of two things:
-Turn them into farms
-Or I noble them.

It is not possible to lose to anyone that is farming equally or is equally as active as you are if you follow the above part of this guide. Everything below this section really depends on personal preference, however I will begin to detail how I design my array of villages during the post-noble stage.

Your Empire of Villages

Ideally, you want all of your villages to have the same ammount of points, which includes defensive villages, offensive villages etc. Having similar building stuctures will help you achieve this and will also allow you to easily change an offensive village to a defensive one if needed in the future.

Obviously, your various types of villages will require different structure levels to be efficient. So you will have to tweak the structure levels slightly based on what type of village it is. The less points in your villages the better. This is to leave the most farm space possible per village for troops. The more troops you have in your offensive village, the more damage you will deal and the less losses you will take when attacking. Another important factor to remember here is production time. The higher your barracks/stables/workshop in these villages, the faster you can produce full nukes, and the faster you'll be able to clear players arround you, expanding your map control. So for this purpose, all of the villages discussed here will achieve a total of 9714 points.

Your first village should be an offensive village with minimal defensive troops in it. How many really depends on how active you are and what quality of players are arround you. Ideally you want no more defense than you build pre-LC`s.

All of your villages should be offensive until you need to produce defensive units to defend vs a neighbour that is producing nobles. If you noble quickly enough and produce enough offensive troops, controlling your area, you will be able to elminate those players by taking their village before they become a threat to you. This is why you should really only be nobling villages that have academies. Another factor in how many offensive villages you should build prior to building defensive ones is the remaining quality of your first village`s nuke.

These offensive villages should all be outside of your current farming area. That way the units you produce to farm(lc`s and axes) will not be farming the same farms that you are currently farming. A good way to search for a direction to noble is to scout various villages in different directions and see where most often the warehouses are fullest. Thats where you should noble because less people are farming there.

You can really get away with making 4 or 5 offensive villages before dedicating a defensive one. But again, this depends on how active you are. If you end up nobling a village for some reason inside your farming radius, might as well make that one your first defensive village. More about this ratio is below under the topic: Choosing your Noble Targets.

Here is a list of village structures and troops that you should build there. The details on how the troop ratios were calculated are posted below in a section titled: Troop Mechanics. Each village posted here will have 9714 points. The troop ratio's of the Axes and LC's are based on the avaliable farm space from the other units and the ratio of their build times.

First Village - Offensive(Church Worlds) (Where Applicable)
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,770 | Limit: 1
Troops:
Quote:
6229 Axemen, 200 Scouts, 2200 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
6229 Axemen, 50 Scouts, 2275 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
5998 Axemen, 200 Scouts, 3195 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
5998 Axemen, 50 Scouts, 3270 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 7)
First Church (Level 1)
Academy (Level 1)
Smithy (Level 20)
Rally point (Level 1)
Statue (Level 1)
Market (Level 19)
Timber camp (Level 30)
Clay pit (Level 30)
Iron mine (Level 30)
Farm (Level 30)
Warehouse (Level 30)
Wall (Level 20)
First Village - Offensive(Non-Church Worlds)
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730 | Limit: 1
Troops:
Quote:
6217 Axemen, 200 Scouts, 2193 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
6216 Axemen, 50 Scouts, 2193 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
5986 Axemen, 200 Scouts, 3189 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
5986 Axemen, 50 Scouts, 3264 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 1 Paladin, 4 Nobles
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 2)
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)

General Offensive Village
Points: 9714| Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730 | Limit: ~2:3
Troops:
Quote:
6345 Axemen, 100 Scouts, 2314 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults
6345 Axemen, 25 Scouts, 2351 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapultss
6114 Axemen, 100 Scouts, 3309 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapultss
6114 Axemen, 25 Scouts, 3347 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapultss
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 2)
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)
Noble Train Village - Offensive
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730 | Limit: 1 or 2
Troops:
Quote:
6204 Axemen, 100 Scouts, 2236 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 4 Nobles
6204 Axemen, 25 Scouts, 2274 Light Cavalry, 750 Mounted Archers, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 4 Nobles
5973 Axemen, 100 Scouts, 3232 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 4 Nobles
5973 Axemen, 25 Scouts, 3269 Light Cavalry, 220 Rams, 10 Catapults, 4 Nobles
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 2)
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)
Defensive Village
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730| Limit: ~1/3
Note: Through my own simulations I've determined that a 1:2:2 ratio is the best ratio in every situation except vs large cavalry villages, which are rare and expensive for an opponent to build, as such, you too should only build HC's when you are pressed for time when trying to raise your defense troop levels. Barracks units are far superior in terms of farm space and cost, constructing HC's just maximizes your defense per time. But if you're not getting attacked, you don't need to waste your population and resources on them.
Troops:
Quote:
5700 Spearmen, 2850 Archers, 25 Scouts, 2000 Heavy Cavalry, 10 Rams, 10 Catapults
4110 Spearmen, 8220 Swordsmen, 8220 Archers, 25 Scouts, 10 Rams, 10 Catapults
4110 Spearmen, 8220 Swordsmen, 8220 Archers, 25 Scouts, 10 Rams, 10 Catapults
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 2)
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)

Church Village - Defensive
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 8,762 | Limit: Dependant Upon Village Distribution
Troops:
Quote:
1716 Spearmen, 3433 Swordsmen, 3433 Archers, 25 Scouts, 10 Rams, 10 Catapults
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 5)
Church (Level 3)
Academy (Level 1)
Smithy (Level 20)
Rally point (Level 1)
Statue (Level 1)
Market (Level 19)
Timber camp (Level 30)
Clay pit (Level 30)
Iron mine (Level 30)
Farm (Level 30)
Warehouse (Level 30)
Hiding place (Level 8)
Wall (Level 20)
Scout Village
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730| Limit: ~1/20
Note: These villages will house pure scouts, both for scouting your opponents and defending your villages.
Troops:
Quote:
10315 Scouts, 20 Rams
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 20)
Workshop (Level 2)
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)

Catapult Village - Offensive
Points: 9714 | Avaliable Farm Space: 20,730 | Limit: ~1/100
Note: Eventually these will become redundant as nobles become more easily buildable. But before that happens, these villages will be very useful in keeping players you don't want to waste nobles on from rebuilding too quickly.
Troops:
Quote:
2384 Axemen, 25 Scouts, 1298 Light Cavalry 220 Rams, 1500 Catapults
Quote:
Village Headquarters (Level 20)
Barracks (Level 25)
Stable (Level 18)
Workshop (Level 13)
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)
Hiding place (Level 5)
Wall (Level 20)
Choosing Your Noble Targets
This is how I prioritize my noble targets:
-(Sum of Resource Structures)/3;
-If Academy, then 30;
-Smithy*3/2
-(Barracks + Stables)*3/4;
Whichever is higher out of the four, I'll noble that target first. Typically I'll noble these villages at or near the edge of my farming from my main village.

Your first noble noble target should be at least 10 tiles away from your main. The farther outside of your farming radius the better. Nobling inside your farming radius does not increase your income. That is why it is important to noble far away from your main so that you can effectivly double your farming radius. The same should be for your 3rd and maybe your 4th village.

After that simply just noble the most threatening players within 10-20 tiles of any of your villages. If there are more than 2 villages within 10 times of yours that are a threat, you should be catting down their smithy so you can keep expanding elsewhere, unless they are the best target in the nearest 20.

Continue with that strategy until you have a large area, and simply cat down players within your region that you do not want to be growing or you don't want to noble yet.

Only when you control a massive area, something like 20% of an entire K should you be starting to fill in your gaps.

A good way to decide which direction you want to expand first would be to send out a few scouts. Look for villages that are clearly farmable by your standards, and if the warehouses are full it means you hit the motherload. The players in that area are not farming, so when you noble in that area you will have free reign of the resources there.

If the village is being farmed, and you are left with no alternative direction to noble then you should figure out which player in that area is doing the most farming and noble him instead.


Defending Mass Incoming Rams/Scouts & Mass Incoming Noble Trains
This is what you do when you have mass incoming & mass noble trains. Follow these rules, starting with rule #1 to prioritize yourself to decide what to do when you are under attack. The first rule is more important than the 2nd one, and the 2nd more than the 3rd and so on.

Rule #1 - Incoming Ram Speed or Scout Speed
Never let them scout you. Attacks at scout speed, you need to stack with as many scouts as possible while still being able to defend all of the villages.
Attacks at greater than scout speed and less than noble speed, you need to defend with as many scouts as you can afford to let die, and a few swords, 100 or so.
If you don't have many troops "based" in that village(that were built there), or if the village is relativly new, it is okay to let them scout you in this situation. It will be obvious that you won't have many troops from there so letting them scout it will not reveal any "new" information.
All of the other rules are for noble speed attacks only.

Rule #2 - Incoming Nobles: Villages that house 1 or more Nobles
If you have an incoming on a village that houses nobles, you must defend that village at all cost. Especially if you use trains. When you have a large number of villages, 4 nobles will cost you more resources than losing a couple of defensive villages defending it, defending it with 4 defensive villages. Because of this rule, this is why it is ever so more important to house nobles in as few villages as possible, while still maximizing offensive power in your trains. 2-4 nobles is ideal to have been built for each of these types of villages.

Rule #3 - Incoming Nobles: Villages that house Churches
Well, this rule only really applies if there is another village in the church radius that is under attack.

Rule #4 - Incoming Nobles: Try to Snipe
If the incoming noble train is snipeable, then you must first try this. You can either set up a "support train" from a nearby defensive village and send support at the village, like you would a noble train, only split up your defensive units into 5 or 7 groups. Semd them all at ram speed, cancel the ones that miss, then send them all at HC speed, then scout speed, then sword, then spear. Note - This only is good if the incoming noble train is from the same village. If it is multiple villages it is likely that it is multiple nukes. Do not trust a sitter with this. If you are unable to be online to perform this action, move on with these rules and do not trust someone to do it as a sitter. You can try, but do not count on it working at all. Plan ahead instead.

Rule #5 - Incoming Nobles: The Pre and Re Noble
If your village has inc nobles and several nukes preceeding it AND that village has only like half a nuke in it or a couple thousand defensive troops, or if those nobles are from different villages then it is likely they are several nukes with the nobles so it will be better to not defend it and you will not be able to snipe. Instead, you should dump the nuke you have on a village before the noble lands, or try to let those defensive troops die somewhere else, or try to snipe anyway with those defensive troops. Once you've done this, then you need to land 3 nobles before the noble train lands, preferably 4 at the right time such that the loyalty is below 20 before the attacking players 4 nobles land. If you do this, you should destroy 4 nobles 1 or more nukes at the cost of half a nuke + 1 noble, or half a defensive village + 1 noble, or whatever you have stationed in that village.

Rule #6 - Incoming Nobles: Already Supported Villages
If the village already has support, it is likely that the player who sent them has already counted on losing these troops. You should defend these villages first. Look arround and see if you will be able to stack enough troops to defend these. A good rule of thumb is to defend the villages with at least 4 full defensive villages. If you do not have enough support OR the smithy levels of spear/sword/archer/hc are too low, ie - less than 9 or 10. Then you will need to contact the owner of the support and ask if he can recall the troops(at different speeds for his own benefit) and re-send some more support to another village(which you'll determine farther down this list), if it can be done in time. If you can not juggle the support arround to a different village then you should either send the support home and try to snipe with whatever D troops you have built there and hope for the best or send the troops home and try to snipe and hope for the best.

Rule #7 - Incoming Nobles: Smithy Levels: Spear/Sword/Archer/HC = Max Level, Wall = 20
These villages are the more profitable to support and defend. Ideally it is best if these villages do not have nukes preceeding the noble train. Stack these villages with 4 defensive villages.

Rule #8 - Incoming Nobles: Villages housing full Defensive troops
If you are unable to use these defensive troops to snipe other noble trains that are incoming to them, use it to snipe the noble train coming to this one. If not, then you must try to stack this village. Once again, 4 full D villages worth. If you are unable, either send this support somewhere where it can die before the noble train lands, or leave it home and hope for the best.

Rule #9 - Incoming Nobles: Villages housing full nukes
Stack these villages if possible. If you are unable to stack this then use this nuke where you can before the noble train lands.

Rule #10 - Incoming Nobles: Villages with incoming nobles that have the nobles land well after other villages that have incoming nobles.
These villages you must defend last. Sometimes you will be able to defend 2 or more villages with the same defensive troops simply by juggling the support arround to different villages.

Rule #11 - Incoming Nobles: Too bad, you lose this one.
Build as many D troops as possible in that village, utilizing the barracks, stables, and workshop and try to snipe or hope for the best. There is nothing else that can be done here.

Forgive me if there's any typo's, I only just wrote this up now. I think it covers just about every situation.

Defensive Heavy Cavalry Strat by 68 Soldier.

Intro:
Welcome to my guide on defence troops, I've played since w1and hope to share my hybrid strat and the know how on how to defend your village. Bear with the long post, i sure hope it's worth your time. The guide is based upon a server without archers or paladins, as old units are my favourite Also, the time numbers are based on a speed 1 world, as that seems to be the normal speed.

Written by 68 Soldier. (thanks to mim for tips and proof reading)

Feel free to use the guide


1.1: The Troop Counts
1.2 Advantages
1.3 Tech levels
1.4 Perfect Village Build.
1.5 Putting the defence into action

1.1- The Troop Counts

The troop counts are similar to those used in Openeye's HC strat (The TeachU textbook), however, are more HC heavily orientated than those Openeye used. However, seen as you can't pull in as many HC from nearby offensive villages, i go a bit more HC heavy than Openeye does.

Defensive Villages:
9000 Spears
1800 Heavy Cavalry
5-10 Cats.

Offensive Villages
7000 Axes~
3000 Light Cavalry
227 Rams

Scout Village
Scout Village:
5000 Scouts
8000 Spears
280- Cats.

Unlike the HC strats used by players such as Openeye, i don't replace LC with HC. In an offensive situation, you cannot use the advantage as the HC strat gives defensive wise shifting defence around, so i prefer to make the nuke as efficient as possible to attempt to minimize losses during the clearing process, which is ultimately what the Axe/LC/Ram combo does over any other combination in offence.

Why 1800 HC over 1250 or another number: I prefer 1800 HC over any other number due to balance. It isn't balanced from the farm space aspect, however, it is more balanced in defensive power situation. It is more General defence heavy than 1250 HC, however, the 1.25k option can't be used as effectively due to you not being able to draw in HC from offensive villages. However, it still brings a big time difference over that of the Spear/Sword option many players use.

Cats? In Defence The only reason ever to use cats in defence is if you have just been heavily hit. They are mediocre in defence and having 200 or so of them is much preferable to not having the cats at all. However, i always have 5-10 cats for sending fakes.

Cats in a scouting village?Yes, i put cats in a scouting village so the village can be doubled up into a village to send cat trains from. ie: Waves of about 50-100 catapults that render villages useless that you either can't, or don't want to noble.


1.2 The Maths side of things and effectiveness.

In comparison to the defence strat of Spear/Sword, on paper the HC strat looks bad. In a Nuke vs HC defence, the Spear/Sword looks far more valuable than the HC strat can ever be. However, should you be disheartened by this, you need to open your eyes to the bigger picture.

The whole point of the HC strat is the ability to shift defence easier and increase rebuild times dramatically. Shifting defence using the HC strat can be far more effective than the spear/sword combo.

For Example:

Last night on w19 after going out, i came back to 7 attacks heading at one village out of my cluster, I have only 100k points there and about 14 villages. This village had been gifted to me by a quitting tribesmate so, was slightly far out of my clusters. The attacks were not fantastically timed, however, without the HC strat the village would have been a goner.
I had 3 minutes between the clearence and the first noble hitting, however, shifting my defence i dodged and slid the own villages defence in between the clearing wave and the noble train. That was 9k spears and 1800 HC i could definitely get in at the appropriate time.

Quote:
Defence so far
9k Spears
1.8k HC
30 Cats.

I could have risked it, hoped no nukes were escorting the noble. However, not being able to mark the attacks, i didn't have enough confidence to leave it at that and hope for the best. Luckily, i could get 2 full villages worth of HC strat defence into the village.

Quote:
Defence Now.
27k Spears
5.5k HC
30 Cats

However, due to the HC strat, i still had in my main cluster around 5 defensive villages under no risk of being attacked. So, i sent up all of my HC.

Quote:
Defence Finally
27k Spears
9k HC (not all villages were full)
30 Cats

His one nuke managed to kill off about 3k Spears and 1k HC between 7 villages.


Summary: By shifting my defence and using the HC strat, i killed a nuke, a noble train and lost about 3 hours worth of building defence. I think you can see the advantages ;)

1.3 Tech Levels

Offensive Research Levels
Level 3 Spears
Level 2 Swords
Level 3 Axes
Level 3 LC
Level 3 HC
Level 1 Rams

You are put at a small disadvantage in offensive situations having level 1 rams, however, still the chances are that other tribesmates will continue to use the spear/sword option over and when requesting support from them, the sword level 2 will make a huge difference to their losses. It's not just an advantage for your tribesmates losses, it's an advantage to the other members of the tribe and your own. By saving their defence, it helps keep you secure brings more advantages to the more defensive player than the disadvantage you get in offence.

Defensive wise, it's the same as any other defensive village on the tech level front.

Defensive Village
Level 3 Spears
Level 3 Swords
Level 3 HC
Level 3 Scouts
Level 3 Cats.

1.4 Perfect Village Build

The optimum village build is essential to both offensive and defensive villages. Get the village wrong and you end up with unecessary bad moral and poor farm space, disallowing the troop counts reccommended.

Village Headquaters - In many situations, 20 is the best village build. You don't Need to ever get it higher than that very often. However, what people fail to recognise is that fact on a frontline place, 30 Headquaters can bring it's advantages aswell. You have to compamise on farm space, thus meaning in a 1 attack Vs 1 defence village, you'll hurt. However, should you be on a frontline, your village Should be stacked. So, it's not about one defence, it's about your tribes faith and how fast you can rebuild wall.

25 Barracks
20 Stables
20 Smithy
3 Academy (or 1, dependant on world settings)
1 Rally Point
19 Market
- A level 19 market gives you 91 merchants. Allowing you to pass packets around your villages effectively, 30k/30k/30k or any combination of 90k resources should be enough from one village.
30 Timber Camp
30 Clay Pit
30 Iron Mine
30 Farm
27 Warehouse
You should be active enough to cope with 27 warehouse. Getting it over 27 is pointless and gives an unessential disadvantage when it comes to moral purposes.
10 Hiding Place - Often people demolish on sight, however, should you dodge a clearing wave, keeping those few resources gives enough to start your wall rebuilding.
20 Wall

1.5 Defending Your Villages

Some of the main advantages of the HC strategy is the ability to shift defence, swiftly stack villages, and snipe between nobles and clearing waves. Without the basic knowledge required to defend in this manner, the vast majority of the advantages are wiped out useless.

'Sniping' The noble

[quote]Sniping, as it is commonly called, is the sliding of defence between a clearing wave and nobles. The advantage of sniping is the fact that you can maintain your losses to a minimum whilst also keeping the village and killing off the noble train.

How to snipe

Sniping is most effective when you have a premium account activated, most players should have access to one, so a few steps are based upon a player being able to use certain premium features.

Stage One: Recognition of the Attacks

Firstly, you need to 'Spot' the attacks. This step involves a premium. You need to try to be online to spot the attacks so you can see the speed of the attack and so you can recognise the clearing wave and to dodge the nuke and see the noble.



Stage Two: Actually Sliding the defence

You can do this in two different ways:

You can use the TW stats attack planner and use it to time support in from another village instead of an attack. Just send at the time given, it's a simple tool to use.

Or, you can do it manually and send an attack, and then cancel so the troops return in time to kill off a noble. This only works in defensive villages.

By 68 Soldier.

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.