Empire Four Kingdoms how to guide

Transcription

1 Empire Four Kingdoms how to guide Hi everyone, first of all I do not claim to be an expert, but having grown quite successfully, and amassing quite a collections of high level buildings, and a good balanced offensive and defensive armies, this is a guide to what I have found works, and why I do some things the way I do. I try to rely on resources, and slowly building up, rather than buying a crazy amount of rubies and doing it all the fast way! Building your Castle up: Ok, so I have gone the mixed approach, some with rubies, most with raw materials, and patience whilst things build! If you prefer to play the whole game without spending a penny, it s free to do so, but it will be slow going. Even if you don t spend many, there are some things that make the world of difference building at the earliest stage possible, most notably the Master Builder and Bakery! Building Slots: Early in the game, the building speed per building is really really fast! Buy the two extra building slots with Rubies and use them over and over and over! Keep them full and stack them up. Waiting for just one to finish, and being around in time to stack one more would be painfully slow! Later on when all buildings take a long time, have two out of three slots and only activate the third if you are on fire and need to skip those repairs in front of two long builds! Barracks: I mention this before anything else, because as soon as you get one, you can get troops. Once you have troops you can start fighting the Robber Barron Castles that directly surround you. Have this at as high a level as you can afford to have it at! The higher levels take a long time to build, so let them run overnight! The lower level troops are fairly weak and easy to loose in battle! The bigger troops that eat up more food, are easily my preferred troops; with the exception of the Maceman, who can swell the ranks, take lots of loot and only eat two bread each. My main heavy soldier army is for attacking, and then the Macemen fill in all the gaps left and right to get more loot! A great tactic! Master Builder: This building allows you 5% off all materials I only have level one, as every level beyond that, and there are a lot of them, require Lots of Rubies! If you are a Ruby player, its well worth going higher in level as everything will cost a Lot less in materials you do have to have one per castle/outpost, but its worth it in your main castle for sure, as it has all types of buildings, but your outposts do not! Farms, Woodcutter, Stone Quarries: These are the core of building your empire! I would recommend having 10 of each, although at least 8 will do! Of course to begin with, as a new player, you wont have space for that many, but as time goes on, make sure that you do! Any more than 10, you don t get many materials back, for what you put in, to make them! There is a tactic too, the first 4 get the most materials, then after that, progressively less, so always prioritize the first 4 of each kind, in order to get the most back (You will level up faster this way too, by completing the quests that give you experience points). Make sure you get as many of the Farms (x10) as you can, as this limits the troop number you can feed; the more food, the bigger the army both for attacking and defending! You should have 50% attacking 50% defending armies to do well! You could do 65% attacking and 35% defending if you are more aggressive in your approach, but as you reach the higher levels, you will need a bigger defensive army (This is what I have done!). Dwellings: These are essential for getting taxes get them as early as you can in the game and I would recommend 8 of them, to go alongside your 8 farms. I personally like to keep them one level below the allowed highest level you can build to, so that my farms are one level higher, and I m not just feeding my people, but so that I am able to have a good size army, which in turn brings in a great many resources!

2 The Keep: This essential building determines how fast everything builds, and I recommend to have it at its highest at all times possible. For a new outpost get the first level as priority and then add Level 2 once all your core buildings are built and your Farm, and dwellings are L2 already! Once you are L2, your people in the Keep can fight too, but below this, they cannot, so make that L2 keep a priority, especially in New Outposts where you have lots of new troops just sitting there! Feeding the 5000! Windmill & Bakery! Building up fast relies on a big army to bring in big amounts of resources! Besides keeping your houses/dwellings one level below their top level at any time, here is what works You will have very hungry troops and villagers (Set by the number of dwellings). They all need food lots of it, and in your summary of how many resources you are bringing in for Wood and Stone, it also has Bread! It tells you how much is coming in, how much is being eaten, what the deficit is, and how long your stockpiles will last until your troops start deserting time to panic!!! Well, actually no! Every attack brings back bread, and when they have lookout trees to protect resources, you get lots of bread only! You will be overwhelmed by the amounts of bread out there! I have an army of offensive/defensive that eats too much than I can produce by 48 hours+. That means I Must go out on attacks regularly. If you are not a regular player, don t do this! If you are, use the 48 hours+ rule if it says 96 hours, you can afford to have more troops. The more troops, the more resources/better chance of defending your castle! I have 10 farms in not only my main castle, but also every outpost! The Windmill: is awesome, for each level, you get 10% extra food produced from your Farms, no matter the level. If you have 8-10 L5 Farms, and can upgrade your Windmill and Farms, do the Windmill first as it will give you a lot more food per hour than your Farms would in the same build time! The Bakery: works in the opposite way/direction. It doesn t work on what food you produce, but the total size of your army at that castle/outpost and what the army consumes! This is incredible, as if your army eats 1200, that s 120 food off for level 1 alone! No matter the size of the army, 10% off, and 20% for level 2, 30% for level 3. For any player, even if you don t want to play with Rubies, buy some to buy this, the power of it even at L1 is fantastic! If you can afford it at L2 and L3, it s very much worthwhile! The Windmill and Bakery are even more powerful on outposts where they are Shiny bread as priority and wood/stone as lower priority as the effects are cumulative from both directions! Stables: With this you can make every troop movement and supply run between outposts and fellow alliance members go so much faster! It does require resources, but incredibly useful. Every time you use horses for speed it does cost rubies so if you don t want to play with any, don t get it! I can recommend L2 as soon as you get it! You can travel further and faster! Stables are a must have! Tavern: From the Tavern you get spies, two from each! The L1 is fast to build, upgrading to L2 or three is ridiculously slow, and there are more important things to upgrade constantly! If you go on espionage missions (Scouting out other castles), it s less likely to win it with just one of these. Get three of them early days! That s six spies, and when set on top level of discovery, there is still very little chance that someone will catch you! You can only build these in your main castle, where space is precious! Lookout Trees: Amazingly useful and important! They protect 750 in resources (On top of the 1000 that your Keep protects), with priority of Wood and then Stone. I would recommend having at least 4 of these! In my main castle I have as many as I have room for which is 7, and in my outposts I have 13 in each! That s resources protected in my outposts! Its rare that I would have more Wood and Stone than that, as its all being used up, or sent to alliance members; but protects them, and then afterwards bread, enough that your armies wont desert you before you are next online, to go and collect some more!

3 Training Grounds: Training troops is very very slow! Build L1 for faster, L2 for much faster. This is essential with your heavy troops, but costs a lot of Rubies to get. If you buy these, another player who plays with lots of rubies will think you are fair game to attack so hide them behind two Lookout trees. If you create a forest block of Lookout trees, no one will ever see them! (Or realize how quick you can retrain your army before the next attack surprise!!!). Watch Tower: I wish I bought one of these earlier! They cost lots of Rubies, but you get very little warning of an impending attack, so if you have these, not only you, but your allies in your alliance will see the attack earlier, and have time to get defensive troops over to help! An essential for your main castle, not so much for outposts, but if your rich, why not! Estate: This determines how many outposts you can have the second you can build one; this is your priority so that you can get that outpost going! The second you can upgrade again, do so! These can take a long time, so do these overnight! Encampment: This decides how many armies you can have scurrying around, so instead of one, its then three, six and nine as it goes up in level. As soon as you can, build this! Walls, Castle Size and Defenses: Don t build your castle walls out faster than you need to! Its very tempting, but the size of your walls will determine the maximum size of an attacking army!!!!! If you are smaller, the chances are that your defending army can win! Expand as you grow, and run out of space, but not sooner! Keep all of your wall turrets and your gate as built up as possible. The higher levels of stone turrets take a lot longer, so do those overnight, two a piece. I didn t early enough, so lots could attack me as I leveled up, but I could not get enough people on the walls to defend as everyone else is stuck in the keep! If you have them at top level, that s more of your troops fighting against waves 1, 2 and 3! If you look at your defenses tab, then who is defending, all the people should be green (Defending troops), if you can see people in blue, or peasants, get more troops! Later on, if they are not all high level troops, train more! Even send the low level ones into battle, as you only want Longbowmen, Halberdiers and Crossbowmen in there (They have the highest stats, so will defeat the attack the best when you get really high, you want only the first two, with the third in the keep for when they break through!) Guardhouse: I have already mentioned having more people on the walls well Guardhouses add to that number, and you can have more than one! I have four in each castle and outposts have a minimum of one, more if you have space! They are faster to build and level up than the wall turrets are by the way! Getting a New Outpost: First things first, an outpost is not just a means of getting more materials to send to your main castle, the best way to think of it is to have another whole castle! It fends for itself, if you get it right! It has its own Barracks, at as high a level as possible, so that it can train its own army, and you get all the resources you can to help that particular outpost grow, sending some stone/wood to your main castle (In reality though, you are normally sending the opposite material it makes to your outpost from your main castle, which has the biggest army, and therefore gets the most from raids!). Which outpost do you take over? It s very tempting to go for one with priority of wood early in the game, and stone later in the game but don t here is why! If you go for the priority bread, low priority stone/wood, you can have a whopping population, and therefore lots of bread and troops! In fact, much larger than your main castle, especially if you get a shiny high-priority Bread and stone/wood low-priority outpost! Also, think of defending when you are attacked, its normally to your main castle if you have two outposts with massive attacking and defensive armies (50/50%), you can send the whole defensive

4 army to your main castle, defend an attack and then split your troops again. Not only are you more likely to win, but also the more you outnumber your opponent, the less troops you will loose. The attacking side of things is that with 2, 3, and later on 4 attacking armies, that s a crazy amount of resources coming in, and you can be building all four castles at once and that s why the priority of resources of Wood/Stone isn t actually that good! If you had got those, lots of resources for opponents to go after, and they know for sure you will have a very small army there, if at all!!! Build a Barracks there very early on if people are intelligent enough to look at it, they will see it is defended! Peace Treaties: There are two types, Non-Aggression Peace Treaty, and a Pact. Look at the descriptions in the alliance tab don t attack people you are at peace with! Peace is hard to win and easy to loose! If you are at war with the people around you, you will grow very slowly indeed as all you will be doing is rebuilding! An alliance with good peace treaties in place with its surrounding allies is a strong one that will grow, and whose members will level up quickly, not to mention enjoy the game more! Troop Support: First click on the players castle that is under attack, then click support. Only green troops are good in defense, so no point in sending blue as they will be useless! Click all the troops you can, add horses if need be (to get them there in time, if without them they can t), and then send ONLY if they can get there in time... otherwise there is no point and you will waste coins even though they don t get there in time! Lastly, in the panel that lets you use horses or not, there is a box that says 1 hour, so you will loan your troops for 1 hour. You can change this to 6 hours or 12 hours. Your troops will return to you at the speed that you sent them, whether by foot, or by horse! If you send attacking forces to be used, they cant actually leave the castle, they will just sit there for the person you sent them to, all snug in the castle whilst you still feed them, so only send defensive troops, when needed or asked for! Public Order: Public order is important, the higher it is, the more resources you will produce, faster you will build, faster you will train your new troops, and faster you will repair. I aim to have mine at least at 125%... if you get attacked and you are on 100% you will dip very very far below it! If you are at 125% or more, its quick to get out of it, and repair and be back on your feet faster especially as to rebuild your army (assuming that you lost the lot) needs a happy castle, to do it fast! After an attack Rebuilding! If you lost, in particular, you will be on fire, the bigger the loss, the more fires to put out (and heavier the damage done)! Also you will very much in the negative of Public Order. Your troops might start to desert and your building, production of materials, and recruiting troops will all slow down! To get this back into the positive quickly I have found out that if you put out fires in dwellings first, then wood and stone production, then walls, then pretty things, you get back into positive rating faster that way. Your Keep, storehouse and big buildings can take a Long Time to repair, so I do those overnight, or whilst away from the game for a while! Repair the block of one building type that has the least damage first (although I often heal things that take minutes like lookout trees first with the assistance Rubies, after I have paid the resources to fix them anything under 10 minutes, you can put out a lot of towers this way!). Whilst retraining your troops, don't get ANY of the basic defensive troops, they are useless! For defense, only buy Long-bowmen, Halberdiers and Archers. If you can t get the Long-bowmen yet, get more of the other two, with two thirds Halberdiers, as once you are fighting in the keep, they are the best to wipe out enemy troops in hand to hand combat, as well as in the Wave 1-3 attacks. The archers have good defensive stats against both melee and long ranged, so also good against both whilst fighting in the Keep).

5 The Alliance: Being an active player in an active alliance is very rewarding. An alliance where all players are sensibly spaced out, and all a good distance from each other thrive. Alliances that have members scattered long distances are doomed to fail, although you can move castles to be close to an alliance of a friend. You cannot move outposts, so you would have to abandon one, and start again, if you move a long distance to join up with an alliance! The alliance itself has special stats that help the members to get resources and supportive troops to each other faster, increase the number of players in an alliance, pay less resources (% interest, on Stone and Wood put into the alliance funds), and at war stats. If you click on the alliance tab, and then the box with an arrow on it, there is another button with a box with an arrow on it. You can give wood and stone from any castle/outpost of your choice. Rubies and Coins come out of your collection. I do a lot of raiding so if you ever need help with resources, especially Bread to feed armies, do let me know, No one person can afford to be the main contributor of Coins and Rubies, but by everyone chipping in, the strength of an active alliance, with all members contributing, really makes a difference. Honor points The Glass Ceiling!!! Its up to you whether you think this is fair to do or not, but one of our members was attacked to harvest his honor points, and I was too for the same reason not that long ago... and its normally from much higher level players that wipe you out and cause lots of damage (I asked the players why they attacked and they said for honor points... not even resources!). If you train 3-4 of your weakest troops and send the minimum number against the lowest level castle you can find. No one who is L5 when the protection from raids timer runs out is playing still! Even so, I sent a few hundred of each resource to say sorry for he attack... to a L5... that s mega amounts. If you loose, when you have 600 honor points, you will loose about 180 honor points in one go. If you go over 550 honor points you start to become a target... over it's open season on you! For some reason the balance of higher level players against lower, when for honor points only is very unbalanced! Attack 101: To understand how best to defend, you need to understand attacking... For attacking always send your troops with highest attack stats in wave one, 2/3 of the amount possible is needed at the left and right flanks, but fill up the front! Then you attack in waves two and three with the highest looting capacity, as if your first wave was strong enough to wipe them out... they should walk straight in. I normally attack empty castles (peasants only) with 1 ladder to the sides, three to the front, and then plunder bags on the front only (in waves 2 & 3 normally), as these have biggest troops per bag (if you buy bags and then double them up with Rubies, its cheaper than buying carts). This is why people fill the front before the sides for attacking... to get into the castle/keep and plunder as much as possible. The more troops, the more resources you get per cart/bag! If you attack an occupied castle, the only difference is use lots of ladders, and battering rams! I would use a minimum of 5 ladders at the sides, 10 at the front. Also at least 3 wooden battering rams, a big opponent, 10! Remember to send scouts to new targets, as you will learn what you need to send, from that report! Look at the info on all troops in the recruiting... the blue ones are best for attacking great attacking stats, but if you look at their defensive stats, they are rubbish, so no good for defending. The best troops at attacking will be lost easily in defending, so use green troops for that! So that s attacking... people use most troops at the front as they get the biggest attack stats total in one go, get to use the % extra loot for the biggest amount of troops, with the smallest loss of their own troop numbers!!! Once you have finished off their defenses you might as well follow the rest through, and finish off the ones at the sides in hand to hand combat in the keep... without the defensive stats of walls and turrets, from the left and right! You loose less troops that way. Of course if you have a big enough army, attack front and one, or both sides! Remember that attacking costs coins = taxes. The more that attack, the more it costs. The further distance they go to get to the target, the more it costs however, if you send more, you will have a more decisive victory and loose less troops! Troops cost a lot to train, so it s a balancing act!

6 Lastly, never use unique troops that you get from buying with Rubies, or quests in wave 1! The troops in wave 1 WILL take losses. My Travelling Knights and Crossbowmen never go in Wave 1, but always in waves 2 & 3 at the front, as they are great for attacking if wave 1 fails, but also have incredible looting capacity! Always put pyromancer s in wave 3 only if you own them... They are very weak, but do great damage at the last minute of your attack? If you can build a troop type from your barracks, they go in wave 1, if not, protect them! Who to attack: First things first, respect all alliance that you have! They are hard to get, with a lot of diplomacy, and easy to loose. If you are joining an alliance, ask the question of who can you attack or not first! Allies who are in a pact are shown as Yellow on the map, where their names are and are obvious! Allies who are in a simple peace treaty of non-aggression are marked in White, however they are much harder to see! If you see a big alliance near you, best not attack them! If an alliance is a total of one member, king of themselves, attack them! If they are a member of an alliance of only a few people, but the rest are a long way away, go for it! If they aren t in an alliance, go for it! If they are in an alliance where all members are low level, and your alliance is happy with you attacking them, go for it! If players are in an alliance and they are all higher level than members of your own don t attack ever!!!!!! Once again always respect your peace treaties! Lastly only attack someone once every 24 hours! If you attack more than that, they will quit the game and you will loose a location that you could get resources from, and have to look further and further away, which costs more, and takes much much longer! Also don t attack players less than 2/3 your level (there is one exception to this rule). When you find a player who after two attacks on two days only defends with peasants, keep going! There are many people who leave the game alone at various stages of building/leveling up! I call these resource farms/mines again only once every 24 hours if they come back and you have attacked 4 times a day, they will fold their castle. It doesn t harm to drop an saying that you are attacking for resources, but if they come back to the game, you will stop straight away, and even send them some back to help them rebuild. I have found out that I was repeatedly attacking two active players this way, stopped, and they are still playing! The exception to that rule as you are leveling up, you can still attack those resource farms/mines that you found, back in the day, when you were a lower level yourself; no matter what the difference in level is. It s not unfair; as they aren t playing any more, just stick to the one attack every 24 hour rule! Defense 101: First of all every time you are attacked or attack someone else, have a good look at a battle report. You really do learn a lot from these! If you are under attack, as soon as they are close enough, you will be able to see who is on their way, and what tools they are using! If they are only attacking you at the front, go into your defenses tab and change your spread of troops to 100% at the front as soon as the attack is over, put it back to normal! If they are attacking Front and one side, remove the other side from the mix! I personally know that most people attack front foremost, and I do the same, then if I have spare troops add to the sides. For this reason I change my castles to 60% front defense, and 20% sides, but if I am around when an attack is happening, I change it to best fit the attack, in defense!

7 Troops 101: Ok, so here is a quick guide to troops: Simple Blue = Offensive, Green = Defensive! Before I list them if you are being attacked with lots of troops with attack stats of 109 (Two Handed Swordsmen), and you are defending with spearmen (defense against melee soldiers 40, ranged 8!), they will get massacred! If you defend using Halberdiers (defense against melee soldiers 135, ranged 45), they will defend very very very well indeed! Its X number of troops verses X number of troops and people will generally send their best so use the best, the weak wont do you much good and you will loose a huge number of them! Spearman, Bowmen, Crossbowmen: All very weak troops. Use when you yourself are at a low level, but as soon as you can get bigger and better, don t bother with them! They are fast to produce though, so if you are under attack and have 20 minutes until the attack, there s no harm in producing a set of 5 Bowmen in 16 minutes! Maceman: The best low-level troop! Only 38 attack power, but a huge 32 looting capacity for a cheap fast produced attacking troops! Use them in waves 2 and 3 to fill out the front, left and right slots, after your heavy troops in wave 1, and your special troops in wave 2 & 3!!! You are looking to bring back a Huge Amount of plunder with these guys! Also they only eat 2 food each! Swordsmen: They eat 3 food each, so be careful! They have all round nice stats, but have a knack of being lost in GREAT numbers! (Which is frustrating as they take a long time to produce). Attack of 31, where as the Maceman has an attack of 38! Better at defending ironically with 38 against melee, 36 against ranged! I don t get these now I can get higher-level troops, a complete waste of space! Two-handed Swordsmen: Amazing in attack, totally useless in defense! 109 Attack, 19/5 in defense! They eat 4 food each, but pack a whopping punch for wave 1 attacks, and best of all you can just keep on recruiting them with your hard earnt coins/taxes! Halberdiers: The same thing but defensive. 135 defense melee, 45 defense ranged attack just 17 do not attack with them! The backbone of a defensive army, use at least half of your defensive troops as these!!! Archer: Best all round defender, useless for attacking! They eat 3 food, but have 53, 55 defense, and only 10 attack power! Use to fill your archery defense until you can get Longbowmen (L5 Barracks), but even then use lots. These are fantastic in your keep, as they will help knock out whatever has got through the first wave attacks, and step up to the plate in wave 2 & 3 attacks if you loose the other troops!!! Longbowmen: Amazing in defense against ranged soldiers as soon as you can get these, get 2/3 the amount that you have Two-Handed Swordsmen!!! Eventually 50/50, but the rest will be filled in by your Archers that you already own! Travelling Crossbowmen and Travelling Knights: These are the best troops in the game! Very strong attack stats, high plunder capacity, use in Wave 2 or 3, never wave 1, as they are hard to get! Can be bought in a Ruby package on offer, but you are better off getting the Ruby offers that offer 70% extra Rubies (At least once a week, and regularly when your Rubies are running low hmmmm), or 100% extra Rubies (rare). You can also get them from the quests that appear below your castle. You have to make up a puzzle, attack Robber Baron Castles to find the pieces! You have to attack a hell of a lot of them, and from what I can gather from your main castle! Travelling Crossbowmen: 135 Ranged attack, 22/30 defense. Looting Capacity 35. Travelling Knight: 146 Melee attack, 20/9 defense. Looting Capacity 34. There are other special troops but just read the stats as you see them. None of the ones in ruby packages are worth the money! If you get the extra ruby packages, you can build yourself some very heavy troops just get to L4 Barracks as fast as you can for 2/3 best troops, L5 for the rest too!

8 Equipping your walls! Ok, you have to be told this one, all those fire arrows, rocks to throw, gate protection etc. that stuff doesn t work at all, unless you equip your castles with them! If you look at your defenses tab, then click on a wall section in the middle of the screen, you can then assign these to those wall sections. The better the castle is built, e.g. turrets and walls of stone and moats, the more things you can protect it with! Every rock you throw takes out more troops, and if you use up excess resources to build all your defensive items, and people scout you out with spies, it wont be long before they choose a different target, as their losses would be too high! Mercenary troops and being attacked by them: These are troops that people buy, and normally when you humiliate them in battle, they send them after you. They appear from a random direction to your castle from a Mercenary Camp, and you have to guess who sent them A player? An alliance? but you do get some time to defend and rally people together. For every one of these armies you defeat, the more likely, that the player who sent them, will get the shock of their life, as their very expensive Ruby army was lost, they won t attack again! When the alliance teams up to defend and defeat these, it s the biggest victory possible! They are all very high-level heavy troops! If you can afford to own them, they eat no food, so you can have as many as you can afford with Rubies/real world cash, and it wont affect the size of army you can afford to feed at your castle!!!