This game is essentially a facebook version of Travian or Evony. You start off with a Capital city and the object is to build up your kingdom, form alliances and attack neighboring kingdoms.
The only thing that really stood out to me about this game is the Knight system. Basically you can build a structure called “the knight’s hall” which you use to interact with your Knights. Your knights can be thought of as leaders or commanders. While they do not exist as individual fighting units they do provide bonuses to your kingdom. Basically, you have 4 advisory type roles that can be filled (1 knight per role) and depending on the knight’s stats you gain a bonus based on their role. Additionally, anytime you attack you’ll need to assign a knight to lead the attack. Only knights not currently serving as advisers may do this.
This is also one of two features which makes use of the game being on facebook. Your knights are your friends or more precisely you can hire out your friends as knights. If the friend isn’t playing the game then all of the knight’s stats start at 50. If you hire a friend who is also playing the game then all of their stats start at 65. Then of course for every level the knight gains you get a single assignable stat point. So there is motivation to get your friends to join.
Of course unlike other games where you “hire” friends. This game stays true to the idea. Each knight you have you must pay gold to. The gold of course comes from taxes. Additionally, as a knight gains levels they require more gold. So, it’s a good idea to only hire as many knights as you need.
The other facebook feature in this game is that you can request that friends help you build. Basically using this option will generate a post on your wall explaining what you’re building and that you would like help. Any friend who is playing the game that clicks on the link will “help you build”. The result is that the item gets constructed 1 min. faster then normal. To keep the ability from being powerful (or overly useful) only a maximum of 10 players may do this for you.
While it’s a nice idea there are major flaws with this feature. Friends can only help you while that item is being built. This means that if the item takes 15 min. it’s only valid during those 15 min. So, basically if its a short item that this feature would be helpful on it’s not valid long enough for your friends to help. On the other hand if it is an item that
takes several hours, 10 min. isn’t going to make an appreciable difference.
It’s one of those things that was a good idea, it just wasn’t implemented in a way that makes it useful. Unless of course they intend for you to multi-account while playing this game. In which case the feature can be horribly abused.
Multi-accounting Advantages
This game revolves primarily around building alliances and attacking other players. So obviously for every account you have you get one additional kingdom to do with as you please. Once the trading feature is implemented you will be able to have dedicated “farm” kingdoms. Also, as mentioned above you can permanently reduce the build time of all of your buildings by an amount of time equal to the number of extra accounts you have. This means getting a major jump start for your kingdoms in the early game.
So, multi-accounting can be very powerful in this game. As a result I would suggest being very cautious when you do it. Since you’ll probably get automatically banned if you’re caught. As a result you would probably want to refrain from telling anyone that you’re doing this. After all, you don’t want to get banned because a player you blabbed to got mad at you.
Other Hints
I’ll admit that I’m only level 20 in the game so far and have 1 day left of protection. But below are some things I feel are worth mentioning.
- Look for items with short build times: Even if it’s something you can’t make use of right now build/upgrade/research everything you can that will take 5 min. or less. Nearly everything you build in the early game has an associated quest. So building these items that don’t take very long will allow you to build up your resources that much quicker.
- You can Research, Build AND Train all at the same time: As a result once you have the resources to do so you want to do all of the above all the time. All of the research items are useful so it’s worth it to research something even if it’s not all that useful to you atm. The more research you can complete the more effective your kingdom will be. Besides, the best time to do the research is when you don’t need the item. Otherwise you’ll find yourself waiting around for something to finish researching that you badly need.
- You can always successfully scout: If you don’t mind losing a scout in the process You can discover an enemy’s defenses by attacking them with a single scout. Obviously all you’ll find out is type and quantity of the enemy’s troops. But often that’s all you really care about when it comes to deciding what to send against them. This is particularly true when it comes to attacking Computer controlled troops.
- Attack wilderness with your guards: That is to say never attack a territory with more troops then you want to guard that territory with. This is because there is no way to only send some of your troops home, it’s all or nothing. You can reinforce them after they take the land. But nobody goes home unless they all do. This includes the knight you used to lead the attack. So, I find it works best to hire out a knight for the express purpose of holding that land for you. the nice thing is that such a knight will never cost you more then 20 gold because they don’t level while holding that land for you.
- Wilderness is the same: Each land in the game has a level. This level represents how well defended the land is. Additionally, higher level lands grant bigger bonuses. If a land is not controlled by a player it is always populated the same. So once you scout out a level 2 forest, every level 2 forest in the game will have the same types and quantities of troops. Even if it’s a land you relinquished control of 2 seconds ago (iow they instantly respawn).
- Wilderness can hold instant reserve units: I’m not sure if this is truly an advantage or not but it seems worth mentioning. Anytime you release a land your troops rapidly arrive back home. This means you can abandon your lands to instantly fortify your castle against an attack. Of course since you had to build and send them there to begin with I’m not sure how useful this is unless you’re trying to trick someone into attacking you by appearing weak. Of course this all assumes you have time to react between knowing about the attack and the attack occurring.
Experimentally we discover that to get the maximum money for any given tax rate can be found using the following equation
