Recruiting Troops

Copy Paste of guidance for newer players in my guild:

You basically want to recruit about 50% mages, 20% archers, 20% infantry, 10% cavalry, with alot of extra level 2 cavalry strictly for gather

Mages have highest attack and ranged - they are easily (in combination with other troops) the best at city offense, city defense, and killing monsters

Archers have slightly less range & damage than mages but are a good secondary damage source - you need more than your mages dealing out damage since enemy lord troops tend to be split up into combat groupings (up to 9 on offense including angels, 10 on defense including angels and golems)

Cavalry are much less useful in attack and defense - they help a bit in city defense but are mostly used for gather or attacking undefended cities (when players begin to quit realm)

Infantry are defensive meat shields - they occupy enemy troops, buying time for, and limiting damage to, your ranged troops (mages & archers)

Special note on cavalry - you want a ton of level 2 in all likelihood - even when you unlock higher level - as they are fast, have high "load" score, are cheap to recruit, making them perfect for big gathering expeditions. Your level 2 gather ponies are outside of the % guidelines above

you will unlock higher tier troops at barracks levels (your barracks level is limited by your castle level) 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22,25,3

As you're closing in on unlocking the next tier of troops, focus your resources on those upgrades - don't pile up battle power in the form of too many low level troops. Enough to gather, kill monsters, participate in raids once we get aggressive

Strongest Lord Event quick guide

Copy Paste of advice to my guild:

these events are an awesome way to get big gems and alliance point rewards (which we can use to get more flags and elite mines)

first four days will randomly be either Power On (level buildings and technology in your college), Gather, Kill Monsters or Recruit Troops. Each event happens once and we can't predict the order.

after that there will be a three day kill enemies event - always comes last

here are some tips to put you in best position to get rewards in each phase and potentially get a top 100 lords award:

1. for power on, get 2 build queues going (200 gems for golden hammer). having a big build like castle, walls, hospital, etc. which you can rush before phase ends using building speedup is a big help.

2. recruiting - after you've completed recruiting 250 of each troop type to maximize your daily rewards (you should be getting them all every day), queue up big recruitment across your barracks which will end AFTER server resets so that you earn points. recruitment that ends before server reset doesn't count

so if it takes 10 hours for a maximum recruit in your barracks, the ideal time to set it up is 9 hours 59 minutes before server reset so they complete AFTER and you get maximum points

use this as an opportunity to fix your troop mix - many of you probably have fewer mages than the guidelines we've discussed in past.

3. gather - queue up a LONG gather - gems are best - that will run for several hours and end AFTER server reset - if that ends up being next event you'll have a big head start

4. monsters - assuming you play during server reset hours (some may be asleep depending on time zone), save up a bit of stamina so that you can immediately begin earning monster kill points

Kill Event Guidelines

Copy Paste of advice to my guild:

during Kill Event our rivals will have the following goals:

1. get easy kills by picking off gathering forces
2. get easy kills by picking us off 1 by 1
3. get good pillage during their attacks
4. minimize their own losses (when you attack your losses are permanent; when you defense you can heal up to your hospital + medic tent capacity)

luckily this can all be very easily countered by:

1. not hoarding resources during kill event - see my resource management post.
2. when you are offline, particularly if your battle power is below 500k, send your troops to reinforce a stronger ally. enemies will take big losses attacking combined armies. if you get attacked and aren't hoarding, you just burn for an hour then recover super quickly
3. if you're gathering offline, gems only (uses smallest # of troops)
4. not launching suicidal solo attacks. we will look for *smart* chances to rally. if you want to be useful, have army presets (in drill grounds)
5. if someone pops in and attacks a flag or castle, they are trying to draw you out/check if you are stupid. don't be stupid.
6. share all battle reports in alliance (not global!) chat so that we know what we are dealing with
7. move your castle into our hive if you haven't already - it's not possible to reinforce you in a timely manner if you're far away. Be as close as you possibly can to your allies cities - chessboard city formation because every second counts when you're under attack.
8. keep your farm castles empty of resources!

City Resource Buildings

Leveling  you castle unlocks more plots of land (look at castle "info" screen for details) for resource buildings (food/wood/iron/stone), medic tents and training grounds, up to 42 total - use these slots as follows:

1. Medic Tents - you absolutely need the max of these to be able to heal a large army after an attack. Build 8 of the possible 8 as more are unlocked. You don't need to upgrade these aggressively in the first few days of a new account, but as soon as your army size begins to stretch your hospital capacity, build and upgrade these aggressively.
2. Training Grounds - let you recruit more troops with a single action - I recommend maxing these out (8 of possible 8) as well so that you can do long overnight recruits when you unlock higher level troops
3. Food & Wood - I'd build 6-8 out of the possible 10 of each of these, saving some slots for other building types. This makes the early part of the game (before you need much stone, iron) easier for newer players.
4. Stone - I'd build 6-8 of possible 10. These unlock at level 10. At first you'll have modest stone needs and it will pile up. Make sure you save one spot of land to build at least one as soon as they unlock - having a stone mine is a pre-requisite to further cast upgrades. You can sacrifice 2 wood or good to max these out if you want to reap late game benefits (you need a ton of stone and iron for big castle and other upgrades).
5. Iron - I'd build 4-8 of possible 10 (more unlock at higher levels - most players miss this because their lots are already full so they lack the option to build more). Unlocks at level 15. When your castle level is 16, you'll find that you don't use much iron. When you start passing 18, you'll likely be running out quickly. As with stone, you can sacrifice 2 food or wood to get the maximum 10.

FARM ACCOUNTS - For your farm castles, build one training ground (can't upgrade your castle without one) maximum of all resource sites - 10 farms, 10 wood, 10 stone, 10 iron totals 41 - then 1 medic tents - you need at least one to upgrade your castle - to get to maximum 42. If you're going for a "strong farm" (to kill monsters for xp, or some other well thought out purposes), build a couple extra medic tents at the expense of some resource buildings

General resource building tips/considerations:

• Wood and Food are easier to pillage than stone and especially iron - most people who quit and end up being farms do not have high level stone/iron resources for you to take
• through around level 13, these upgrades are cheap and fast. Beyond that they begin to eat up considerable resources, so you should defer picking these up if it delays upgrading the higher impact buildings - castles, drill grounds, barracks, college, etc.
• Pick one of each of food/wood/stone/iron buildings to upgrade to highest available level, as the are pre-requisites for castle, hospital, watchtower, etc. upgrades (only one, not all, has to reach the specified level)
• Your fields can hold a maximum of around 12 hours of production, so harvest these often. Unharvested resources are always susceptible to pillage and are not protected by your depot level.
• If you have a change of plans, you can destroy one resource building to make room for another - if you're not sure about a resource building, don't upgrade it past level 10 (low return on resources invested - at higher levels these take a long time to pay you back) so that you don't end up wasting too much.

Basic Resource Management

Copy Paste of guidance to my guild:

here are the basics when managing your resources.

the following cannot be looted when you are attacked:

1. harvested resources below your depot limit
2. monster kill reward boxes (never expire)
3. quest rewards (never expire)
4. daily territory rewards (never expire)

you should be hoarding these to make big upgrades safely - castles, walls, high level barracks (need a ton of food). cash these in a minute before you'll use them, not as soon as you get them. hoard them on your farm accounts as well.

start with quests because they come with xp and occasional gems/other boosts. monster boxes for when you are short a particular resource but have plenty of others.

resources above your depot maximum are like putting a bounty on your own head and paying our rivals to attack you. political situation keeps changing so don't accumulate too much.

big players (lvl 30 castles) pass on attacks where pillage is not worth the troop losses -

smaller building upgrades, barracks, research, merchant (saving shells over time can get you awesome things like peace shields and elite teleport without spending gems) are great alternatives to hoarding resources instead of having them get taken.

unharvested resources in your fields can also be pillaged so don't let them add up too much.

Useful Wao Links

WaO Official Facebook (has some useful tips mixed in):

https://www.facebook.com/WarandOrder1/

Combat mechanics (helps explained timed attack & reinforce):

http://warandorder.alphagamestrategies.com/war-order-battle-system/

Youtube video on how to forge equipment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INK9LT3zXD0

Timed Defense - Ignore Embassy Reinforce Capacity!

Copy Paste of guidance to my guild:

normally your embassy level limits how many troops can be sent to reinforce your city when you are attacked

Above that limit and troops get sent home once they reach an ally with a full embassy

there is one way to exceed this limit that good alliances understand and use

if you time your troops to arrive exactly 1-3 seconds after enemy attackers arrive

they will join the fight and you will save the day instead of having your troops just march home

you do this by checking how long it takes your reinforce to arrive

then tracking how long in will take enemy to arrive at your ally's city

and sending reinforcements when the two times are equal. ignore the game warning that embassy is full and send anyway.

Having castles set up in hive in a tight checkerboard setup minimizes reinforce time and increases effectiveness of this tactic.

Since attackers lose troops permanently, instead of being able to heal like defenders can, attacking into a thick hive of players who have timed reinforce ability is very scary even for the strongest players.

Territory Defense

Copy Paste of guidance to my guild:

during this event very powerful monsters - much bigger than the normal ones - attack our flags and we try to defend them.

the damage to flags isn't permanent; they go back to 100% immediately after the event is over

the trick to beating these monsters is for all of our troops to fight together and reinforce the same flags

it is best to have no troops out gathering during event so that you can use all 2-4 of your marching armies for defense

you can send different armies to reinforce multiple flags but not more than one army for a single flag

during the event there is a special battle log - a shield icon in the top right of your screen

this will show you which flags are under attack and how much health they have remaining (first destroyed flag ends event)

you're all smart so you know that you should reinforce the most damaged flag first to give us best chance of reaching next wave of attacks, increasing our rewards

Additional hints:

1. during event your armies march super fast when reinforcing flags - 10 seconds or so to reach flag no matter how far it is

2. flags have a reinforcement maximum - above that your troops are sent home UNLESS there is a monster there to fight. if you have the skill, try to time your reinforce to arrive 1 second after the monster so that it joins the fight at exact perfect time

3. after a fight is won, your armies may stick in reinforce mode. recall them so that you can send troops to another flag.

4. heal often and hit "help all allies" as much as possible - it speeds up the process of getting our troops back into battle

do not send troops to flags which are not being attacked, or on solo missions. it is stupid and a waste of time.

There are four monsters - each resists the attack of a certain troop type. It is helpful to avoid sending many of that troop type when defending against that monster. The monsters and their resistance are:

Fire Demons - resist mages (imagine that mages are shooting fire, but the demons are already made of fire so take little damage). Because Mages are the most recruited troop type, these are usually the toughest to kill
Skeletons - resist archers (imagine arrows going throw skeletons without hitting bones)
Minotaurs - resist cavalry (imagine horses being afraid of bulls for some reason)
Rock Giants - resist infantry (imagine swords not being able to go through rock skin, but for some reason arrows and cavalry weapons work...)

Guide to WaO

**UNDER CONSTRUCTION**

This guide is intended to be:

• accessible to new players
• easy to translate (hopefully)
• save hundreds of hours of the same thing being repeated in alliance chat
• save trial & error for new & intermediate players by filling gaps in game's (poor) documentation
• prevent new players from getting pounded, frustrated, quitting
• hopefully raise level of play - most players in this game deserve an F- grade

TL;DR version:

• join a solid alliance, be active, donate as much as you possibly can to alliance technologies (alliance should have sets priorities and hound people who do not donate), pound that "help all allies" button as often as possible
• make your army about between 75-85% ranged (mages primarily plus some archers); attack cities with minimum of melee (infantry, cavalry) since they tend to die when attacking defended castles
• Use army presets to set three armies in your drill grounds, update these as you get better troops, do not waste time with sliders. Easy army template for your three presets by purpose is:
• 1. dual purpose kill monster/reinforce allies (about 85% ranged)
• 2. loot undefended castles (100% cavalry with around 200k - 400k total carry capacity)
• 3. attack defended castles/time attack (with your allies) - 95-98% range (mostly archer), bit of infantry, 1 of each of cavalry lower level troops to be "meat shields"
• With your allies, time your attacks against defended cities (to exceed War Hall limits) AND defense of allies (to exceed embassy reinforce capacity) to arrive at target within 1-3 seconds of each other (this is called "timed attack" or "dirty rally" on offense or "timed defense" when reinforcing allies).  This greatly increases combat effectiveness - millions of troops can fight simultaneously this way. 
• Do not hoard Battle Power in the form of low level (particularly level 1-5 troops). Once you have a full army (based on drill ground capacity) plus some reserves, focus on getting your castle & barracks upgraded to until you can recruit the next tier of troops.
• Methodically upgrade you gear both in level (1 to 5 to 10 to 15, etc.) and quality (white to green to blue, etc.). The bonuses are very strong.
• Hoard your non-lootable resources (monster boxes, daily territory rewards, quest bonuses) until it's time to do a big upgrade (wall, castles, high level barracks, etc.)
• Be smart about how much above depot capacity you collect your harvested resources since they can be looted and increase your chances of being attacked.
• Getting pillaged/army all killed is not a big deal. Most of the value of your work is stored in buildings, hospital, etc. You'll recover if you remain active and get into a solid alliance.
• Spent your elite teleport, have no gems, castle level 8 (or some low level), alliance falling apart, near aggressive enemies? Just unbind your account and create a new one with the benefit of experience (possibly on newer server). You'll surpass where you were in a few days.
• Creating a farm account (which you manage well) is a great idea and more or less mandatory to end up as a top player.
• Gather gems while you sleep/are offline for extended period

In Detail:

Assuming you've gotten through the basic tutorial, here are the things to know, by topic (hopefully easy to search through):

I. Your City
All of your buildings are important. Here is a brief (as possible) set of things to understand about each:

Castle:

1. sets the upper level limit on all of your other buildings - no other building can be of a higher level
2. leveling unlocks more plots of land (look at castle "info" screen for details) for resource buildings (food/wood/iron/stone), medic tents and training grounds (up to 42 total - discussed below)
3. Gives a bonus when you gather resources from the map which increases with level.
4. Unlocks more barracks at higher levels (from 2 at start of game to as many as 5)

This is the most important building. Your job in this game is to figure out how to keep upgrading your castle, particularly to unlock better troops through higher level barracks.

Wall - you upgrade this primarily because it's a pre-requisite to upgrading your castle to next level. It does not directly benefit you defensively in combat. 

Wall upgrades also unlock a limited (by wall level) special troop type called defense golems (can only defend city), discussed below.

Barracks - determines what level troops (discussed below) you can recruit by spending resources- at lvl 4/7/10/13/16/19/22/26/30 barracks you unlock troop tiers 2-10, respectively. Higher level barracks also recruit faster. 

You should prioritize upgrading barracks particularly when you are able to unlock higher troops tiers (watch those breakpoints), as they are *much* more useful. Hitting troop tier levels  is probably the most significant set of milestones in the game and the single metric that can help you gauge how powerful a Lord is (e.g. a lord with a lvl 19 castle & drill grounds, level 7 troops is a far stronger than one of the same "Battle Power" rating who has a lvl 16 castle & drill grounds, level 6 troops - the second lord in this example has just accumulated more lower level troops)

As a rule of thumb, you should keep recruiting until you can field an army overwhelmingly (99%+) made of the highest level troops you can recruit. In the very early game skip to recruiting tier 2/3 as those barracks upgrades are cheap and fast to get. You should also have some (10-50%) reserves at highest tier for normal attrition (so that you can field a full army as you heal)/improved city defense. Once you're there, think about focusing more of your resources towards getting the facility upgrades to produce the next tier of troops.

You may be tempted to think that you should just keep stacking troops to discourage attacks - read the "Hospital" and "Timed Attacks" sections below to understand why this is riskier than it might seem. Which troops to recruit are also discussed below.

Drill Grounds:

1. Controls how many troops can be part of a single marching army - because this is # limited, it it critical that you do everything you can to make those troops be of the highest tier you can manage (again, each troop level is substantially more powerful than the one before it)
2. Allows you to view your total army (# of troops by type and level)
3. Allows you to preset (click Drill Grounds -> Marching Army) up to 3 armies for quick selection without using sliders - this is crucial, saves you a TON of time, is something many players don't do, and you should get presets going within the first couple of days and update often as you acquire stronger troops.

This building governs how big of an army you can field (can also be boosted a bit by technology/gear), which means how much power you can project across map (the point of the game), so it should be upgraded as soon as possible every time your castle levels up.

People who don't use preset armies suck at this game - don't be one of them.

Hospital - determines how many units you can heal after sustaining "wounded" from castle defense (discussed further below), and how quickly.  Capacity is enhanced by building medic tents and through technologies. This is an important building that controls how quickly you can rebound from an attack. 

Each level supplies you with just a bit more capacity/speed, so you can defer a level upgrade here and there, as needed. You can't heal while this building is being upgraded, so time that to occur while you're asleep/offline.

How Healing works/tips:

You heal by spending a small % of the recruit cost of your troops and waiting for the heal time to elapse (this gets expensive if a large army gets wiped out so keep a stock of "unlootable" resources - discussed in "Resource Management"). Speed up buffs can be used strategically to clear your hospital quickly (or, very expensively before a pivotal battle, by spending gems - try to avoid being in this position in first place).

When your hospital capacity is exceeded, wounded troops are lost forever instead. This is why you generally do not recruit far above you hospital capacity/a single full army of highest tier troops you can recruit plus bit of reserves- the fact that they can be lost forever makes troop hoarding a risky way to store the value of your resources as compared to your other options (upgrading buildings, research, etc. the benefits of which can never be lost unless you quit).

Do not worry too much about having hospital capacity for your lower level troops - they are stepping stones to get you to higher levels, and will clear themselves over time through attrition as you attack other castles. If you know you're going to take some losses, use your highest level troops in defense of your own or ally cities so that they get wounded first - if your hospital capacity is going to be full, it should be with you highest level troops, so that any unavoidable permanent losses in subsequent defenses (if you are unable to heal in time) are of lower level troops.

VERY IMPORTANT - when a heal is complete, you have to be active to claim your healed units back (there will be a red cross you can click) and clear your hospital. If you're expecting more attacks while you are offline which will stretch your hospital capacity, you probably want to use speed ups to clear your hospital first. 

Tip #1 - if you've taken a substantial hit and have long heal times, expect to be active in game for next few hours but do not expect a subsequent attack, heal in 10-60 minute chunks since your allies can each speed this up by hitting their "Help all Allies" button. In a highly active alliance, you cut your heal times substantially

Tip #2 - save your healing speed ups (and your unconstrained speed ups which can be used on anything which take time to complete - healing when you need it is much more important than speeding up buildings, recruiting or research) for times when quick healing is strategically important for example your alliance is under heavy attack and you want to reinforce multiple times. Think hard before you use these up - it is likely that at some point you'll wish you had more of these in your pack.

Warning - to repeat - falling asleep/going offline for an extended period with a full hospital leaves you with a strong chance of losing your remaining troops permanently (unless you are using peace shield while you heal slowly).

Depot

When (for 99%+ of players not if) you are attacked successfully, your attacker will be able to drag off as much of your accumulated resources as they can carry (based on their troop's cargo capacity). For harvested/collected resources (uncollected in your fields is always susceptible to being pillage), your depot will protect a modest amount from being carried away. This amount can be increased by researching relevant technologies.

You need to be aware that, when you accumulate harvested resources above your depot capacity ("hoarding"), instead of carefully spending on buildings, troops, research, at merchant, alliance research donation, etc., then you are increasing the reward for attacking you. It's like putting a bounty on yourself, or providing a rebate to your attackers on the troops they'd lose attacking your castle. If you do this,you should have a plan for being able to defend yourself, mostly by being in a solid alliance. Remember that the last sad words of many noobs in this game is "I was saving for my castle" (See "Resource Management" lower in guide). Monster boxes, quest & daily territory awards cannot be looted.

Like hospitals, each level of depot adds a small bit of increased capacity, so upgrading is a bit less of a priority than it is for other buildings.

Watchtower

Allows you to scout your enemies, a special action on the map for collecting pre-attack (or defense planning/threat assessment) intelligence. Also grants passive skills like being able to see more information of armies marching towards you/across map. Higher level watchtowers give more useful scouting reports & passive scouting/intelligence benefits.

Click Watchtower -> Details -> More Info to see each level's benefit. Level 12 is especially helpful for evaluating targets. 

Since you can rely on ally's scouting for a bit (you shouldn't do this for too long - everyone in alliance should understand the benefits and contribute to scouting), you can upgrade this at your convenience if you don't let it fall too far behind.

Note that scouting another city is not a friendly action. You should not do this lightly vs. stronger players/alliances. People get wiped out (or even get their whole alliance wiped out) every day in this game due to foolish scouting.

Blacksmith

Unlocks the ability to forge gear which gives you bonuses (very important), upgrade raw materials for crafting higher quality items with better bonuses (also important), increases speed at higher levels (not important).

The major blacksmith level milestones are every 5 levels - 5,10,15,20, etc. - as these levels unlock the ability to create the next tier of item. In between level upgrades can be done at your convenience but milestones upgrades which unlock better gear should be done as soon as possible so that you can begin the crafting itself, which takes time.

Crafting gear is discussed in detail in its own section below.

College

Enables technology research (spend resources once per technology to get permanent bonuses). Each tier unlocks significantly better research. Most technologies are useful, some are crucial. Generally should be upgraded quickly (less important than barracks which get you next tier of troops, or blacksmith which gets you next tier of items,

See "Technology" below for some guidance on how to prioritize research.

Embassy

Your embassy does two things:

1. Controls how many times your allies can use the "Help All Allies" (which is free - always do this immediately and as often as possible) function in game to speed up certain game actions (buildings, healing, research, crafting items, etc.). The # of times you can be "helped" can be advanced by alliance technology. This is very useful as it can easily cut an hour off of many actions you take. Can be particularly useful for speeding up a long healing process in hospital (heal in chunks of 30-60 minutes instead of burning up your speed ups or using gems).
2. Sets an upper limit to how many troops you allies can send to reinforce your city vs. attack.Troops above this limit are sent back UNLESS they are timed to arrive when combat is underway ("Timed Defense"). 

This building is quite important, but each level's increase in these two abilities is modest, so you can upgrade at your convenience as long as you don't let it fall to far below the level of your castle.

Special Buildings:

Hall of War

Enables "Rally" functionality. When you set a rally (only works for non-allied cities or Ancient Ruins), you set a 5, 10 or 30 minute period where allies can send their troops to your castle to participate in an attack on the target you specified. Higher levels cost a special item called "War Swords" in addition to normal resources. These can only be obtained in small amounts (and randomly) by killing monsters in your alliance territory, purchasing from merchant, winning in daily event hall "Pinata". These methods only give a few was swords as a time, and slowly, so if you choose to upgrade this building more than a few levels (or want to take less than a year to collect the war swords), you'll have to spend gems to buy war swords (10s of thousands to reach higher levels). If you buy war swords, save up 2,500 gems at a time for the bulk discount.

This building is crucial to get maximum rewards from Ancient Ruins (discussed below), so each (good) alliance needs a couple of higher level War Halls, meaning some people need to bite the bullet and mine or otherwise obtain (quests or real money) the gems to upgrade. Not everyone in the alliance should build them though - that would waste gems. How many depends on activity levels, times people are on line, etc., so there is no general rule.

With the exception of very high level players (20s+) who have spent the tens out thousands of gems on a very high level war halls, most alliances will instead rely (correctly) on timed attacks which are free and have no limit on the amount of troops. Additionally, timed attacks can be launched immediately, whereas with the rally period (when participating armies march to your castle before setting out) delays the action and gives the target warning and time to prepare through their Watchtower.

However, for appropriate targets (you have scouted and will overwhelm a target with your wall hall capacity), war hall offers the following advantages:

1. No risk of a "timing miss" - especially without practice, there is risk in a timed attacked of missing the 1-3 second window and arriving too early (probably having to recall to avoid losing troops - you need to burn a power up to do this) or too late (having to spend power ups, which are limited, to speed up to your allies' time).

2. Everyone arrives at exact same time - even in a well executed timed attack, the first to arrive takes a bit more risk of loss (combat begins to resolve immediately then others join in as they arrive). This is different from #1 which addressed missing the time window entirely.

3. If things look bad (e.g. ally receives significant reinforcements) you only need to spend one withdraw card to pull everyone back, instead of every lord burning one

4. You can save everyone in the alliance time by having one person consume a speed up. It is more or less impossible to get everyone in a timed attack to speed up with perfect timing.

Event Hall

Is permanently a level 1 building which helps you manage Realm Events (discussed below) and daily bonuses (also discussed lower), including pinata (I'll let you figure out how to randomly pick prizes yourself).

Workshop

Unlocks at level 10 and gives you crafting materials (up to a maximum of second tier) for us at your blacksmith every few hours. When you hit castle level ten, click this building, flip it from level 1 to level 2, and make sure the queue is always full - don't wait to figure out the perfect next material. When you have a sense of what crafting materials you need more than other, adjust the future queue (max of four at time) to get you what you need. Keep this producing materials at all times.

Merchant

Is the ship in the top right corner of the map. There is no level/upgrade aspect to this. In the sell tab, you can trade resources for "shells", the merchant's currency. In the buy tab, you'll see items you normally need gems to purchase available for shells (or priced in gems but discounted from normal cost). If you don't like inventory, it resets every 8 hours or you can reset by spending gems (don't it's a bad deal).

Many players ignore this - in author's opinion it is an excellent way for a free to pay player to acquire items that they'd normally have to spend gems for - War Swords, Elite teleport (relocates your city on map), Battle Fog, Reset Lord Skills, Withdraw cards, army speed ups, etc. Don't waste your shells on crap.

Selling resources for shells (it will look like bad deal at first blush) then being very disciplined on what you spend them on will result in you having some very useful situational power ups for when you need them. It is also good to buy the most useful items (discussed below) when they being sold for a gem discount, before you need them - 1,600 gems is much better than 2,000 to move your city (using "Elite City Teleport"), for example.

Resource Buildings, Medic Tents, Training Yards

These are mostly self explanatory, here are some tips:

1. Medic Tents - you absolutely need the max of these for reasons discussed under "Hospital. Build 8 of the possible 8 as more are unlocked. You don't need to upgrade these aggressively in the first few days of a new account, but as soon as your army size begins to stretch your hospital capacity, build and upgrade these aggressively.
2. Training Grounds - let you recruit more troops with a single action - I recommend maxing these out (8 of possible 8) as well so that you can do long overnight recruits when you unlock higher level troops
3. Food & Wood - I'd build 8 out of the possible 10 of each of these, saving some slots for other building types.
4. Stone - I'd build 6 of possible 8. These unlock at level 10. At first you'll have modest stone needs and it will pile up. Make sure you save one spot of land to build at least one as soon as they unlock - having a stone mine is a pre-requisite to further cast upgrades
5. Iron - I'd build 4 of possible 6. Unlocks at level 15. When your castle level is 16, you'll find that you don't use much iron. When you start passing 18, you'll likely be running out.

General resource building tips/considerations:

• Wood and Food are easier to pillage than stone and especially iron - most people who quit and end up being farms do not have high level stone/iron resources for you to take
• through around level 13, these upgrades are cheap and fast. Beyond that they begin to eat up considerable resources, so you should defer picking these up if it delays upgrading the higher impact buildings above. Pick one of each of food/wood/stone/iron to upgrade to highest available level, as the are pre-requisites for castle, hospital, watchtower, etc. upgrades (only one, not all, has to reach the specified level)
• Your fields can hold a maximum of around 12 hours of production, so harvest these often. Unharvested resources are always susceptible to pillage and are not affected by your depot level.

City Wall Defense

This number is a rating which has no impact on actual combat in you or your targets' cities. If you are successfully attacked, your wall will burn for about an hour, sustaining damage (not a big deal - you generally just wait for this to end and for your wall to recover). If you are attacked over and over, your wall may burn for long enough to lower your rating to zero, and your city will randomly teleport throughout map. Being "burned out" very rarely happens to active players.

IMPORTANT - when you are farming inactive players, pay attention to their city defense. If you attack them too frequently or in waves of multiple armies (which is stupid because it takes several hours for their fields to regenerate resources for you to take in the first place) instead of sending one pillaging force to grab everything, you will speed up the time when they burn out and teleport away, forcing you to spend time finding new targets.

GOLDEN HAMMER

You can spend 200 gems to get 24 hours worth of a second building slot. Obviously you should only do this if you are active enough to make use of it, and have plenty of resources you want to convert into upgrades. You cannot have 3 upgrades going at once.

General Tips/Considerations on city buildings:

1. Time your long upgrades (walls, castles) to occur while you sleep so that you can make the most of your active time
2. Be aware of the pre-requisites for the upgrades you are planning - castles can only be one level higher than your wall, hospitals can only be upgraded if you have at least one farm of a certain level, Watchtower requires certain level sawmill, etc. Don't plan on upgrading your castle right before you go to bed without having a plan for your wall having been upgraded first.

II. The Map

Your city spawns in a realm on a planet. To navigate.

• Click the map icon in the city to view your city's immediate vicinity. You can zoom out by "pinching" in this view. This is what you use to give your army orders and where you spend most of your play time.
• In map view, click the realm button above the city view bottom in the bottom left to see realm view - there:
• Your city will be highlighted along with your alliance territory
• Click "DISTRIBUTE RESOURCES" on bottom right to see where on the map higher level "gathering sites" tend to spawn. This is very valuable for being able to find gathering sites of a higher level for while you are offline. It also shows you where higher level "Elite"gather sites spawned on map.
• Note that the center of the map contains the "Royal City", surrounded by black earth (heavily slows down movement across those tiles). The strongest lord/alliance will seize conrol of this and be king/get bonsues. Then go on to fight in kingdom vs. kingdom. This is the end game.
• Click anywhere on map in this view to zoom into another spot on map
• Note that other cities/sites in your realm are the only ones you can interact with. You have to "Elite Teleport" to another realm to do anything there.
• In realm view, click the planet. You'll see that your realm is one of many on its planet. Pinch the planet like you would in Google Earth if you want to see what's going on in the other one(s). This is useful if you say, spawned on realm 120 on planet 2 because your friend told you about WaO, but you want to join him on realm 60 on planet 1 through Elite City Teleport.

BEST REAL ESTATE

You can conduct these actions on the map:

ACTIONS....

Resource Management

The following resource stores cannot be looted - you should save them until you *really* need them (a few minutes before you upgrade your castle is a great time) and not cash them in immediately like a noob - as soon as these transform into lootable harvested resources, their value drops:

1. Alliance Territory Rewards - you get these once a day based on your alliance's total territory and your resource productions. They provide Wood and Food only. You can cash them in by clicking the box in your mailbox. They do not disappear until you cash them in. Be very careful about using the "Mark all read" button in your inbox - it will cash these in. Definitely do not delete messages which contain these rewards. Cash these in AFTER quests but before single resource boxes when you need both food and wood for a given upgrade.
2. Quests - you get these by hitting milestones - attacking cities, monster, recruiting certain level of troops, reaching battle power #s, buildings hitting levels, etc. They provide all resource types, experience points, and, occasionally gems. Cash these in BEFORE territory awards or single resource boxes so that you can accelerate getting the experience points and occasional gems.
3. Single resource boxes - are acquired by killing monsters, participating in ruin rallies, and certain other actions. Use these when you need a single resource type (e.g. have plenty of wood but little food) and cashing in one of the other non-lootables would cause you to have too much of a single resource type be vulnerable to looting.
4. Gems can never be taken.

The following "lootable resources" can be taken by anyone who can march in and defeat your defensive troops:

1. Resources you've harvested, looted from other lords or gathered (everything in your resource totals at the top of the screen).
2. Resources lying unharvested in your fields. When you are pillaging undefended cities (armies already destroyed, Lord has quit game), this is what you're usually taking - what their fields have generated since the last attack.

Unless you are very confident in your ability to protect your city (new players should not be), keep your lootable resources below you depot capacity - spend them on smaller building upgrades, research, troops, shells from merchant, etc. Accumulate unlootable resources to upgrade your castle, wall, high level barracks, etc. Remember that the amount of lootable resources is exactly the incentive other Lords have to attack you. The other lords on the map will not let you "save up for my castle" without trying to take your resources.

Your ways of acquiring resources, in order of speed/resource yield:

1. Looting other cities (often the undefended cities of players who have quit game)
2. killing monsters
3. gathering on the map
4. your resource buildings

The faster methods require more time, attention and activity.

Your Army

There are four basic and one special troop type discussed below. The suggested %s are for your *total forces*, not what you should be sending out to conduct an attack (discussed separately):

The two melee units (make your army 20-25% total of these types):
1. Infantry - useful for city defense, "meat shield" duty in monster & city attacks (absorbing hits while ranged units provide offense). These should make up 10-15% of your total forces.
2. Cavalry - useful for gathering (highest Load) and looting undefended cities (highest speed travelling across map; high Load attribute also useful). In combat, can close very quickly on enemy mages and other ranged troops. These should also make up 10-15% of your total forces.

The two ranged units.(should be 75-80% of your total forces)
3. Archers - Less range and attack power than mages, but slightly tougher & faster. Have bonuses against specific troops type depending on which troop level (not a major consideration in building your army). Are the second slowest troop (behind mages) across map. Should make up 15-20% of your total forces.
4. Mages - your offensive (in both attack and city defense) workhorse. Great range & damage, Move very slowly across map (slowing down your entire stack). About 60% of your total forces should be mages if you want your army to be useful. 

Finally:
5. Golems:

• cannot leave your castle
• are recruited in your wall instead of barracks. 
• act effectively as extra infantry (meatshields, essentially) during city defense. 
• total you can have is limited by your wall level and some technologies you can research
• unlike other unit types, during city defense they can die (some will end up "wounded" so these also take up some hospital capacity
• are cheap to recruit (but take a long time to do so)
• can be an effective supplement to your defenses in sufficient numbers and with bonuses from research.

Every time you reach a higher troops tier, you should refresh up to these %s with the highest level troop type until you have a full army plus reserves relative to your drill ground max army size. Your lower level horses will remain useful for attacking undefended cities and gathering, and your lower level infantry will help serve at meatshields when you attack defended cities.

Note - above %s are based on what most players should do until they reach troops tiers 8+ (at which point you'll know what you're doing, hopefully). Certain *very* high level players make much heavier use of archers (ranged but move faster than mages) and cavalry (especially if they can afford to lose troops in large numbers) than what I indicate here, but this is not relevant for most readers of this guide. The %s will make more sense after you read about Combat below, and gain experience.

Your troops do not consume food or any other form of upkeep and the only one whose total number is limited is golems.

Combat

The most important thing to understand is:

1. When you defend your or your allies cities, or attack a monster or participate in a ruin rally, any troops which "die" in combat are wounded instead and can be healed, up until your hospital capacity. Monster attacks and ruin rallies only result in slight wounded, heal after each time and you'll be fine.
2. When you attack another lord who still has troops (is active), any forces which die in combat are lost forever. You can only convert a small percentage to wounded through technology (useful if you have valuable high level troops - tier 6 at least).

Timed Attacks/City Defense

Monsters

Looting

Can't fake scount with one pony

Gathering

Defend site trick

Technology

Crafting

Lord Skills

Events

Clearing your Hospital/Healing in Stages

Pillage

Alliances

Alliance Technology

Pack (items, buffs)

Farm/Alternate Accounts