custos
05-06-2012, 07:53 PM
Are you getting beat up constantly by stronger rivals? Having trouble finding any rivals with low enough stats to attack? If so read on, if not go away... shoo now :)
This is a suggested recovery plan if you find your Kingdom is in a very weak position, learnt from personal experience :(. For the stronger players out there this stuff will be obvious but maybe not to everyone. The following advice should work for most levels but certainly for levels up to 30. I'll use level 20 as an example point for this guide. Have a look at rivals at your level to get a feel for what a solid A/D should be and aim for that or better. If you're (e.g.) level 20 with A/D of 600/900 you are a dead man walking and this disaster recovery plan will help. I'm not saying it's the only solution but if you're desperate.... Here are my tips:
1/ BE PATIENT. Time = gold in Kingdom Age and (unless you are willing to spend RL cash) the only way to amass gold is with time. There is no race to the top (plenty of people at level 50 already) so take your time and invest in your Kingdom's structure. My recovery plan requires a couple of weeks to unfold. If you find yourself obsessively checking your Kingdom every 5 minutes go look at FaceBook or something.
2. DON'T LEVEL UP. Seriously, if you are getting beat up at level 20 things are going to be worse, not better, at level 25. You need to stay at whatever your current level is and build up your stats before progressing further. That means you have to stop earning experience points so no more beating up trolls and wolves, and definitely no more quests. I know it's tempting when your energy bar is full to go off harvesting gold and weapons/armour from the monsters but every one of those comes with experience points and that means you will eventually level up. Levelling up quickly is how you got in this mess in the first place. Don't do it.
(as an aside, I wonder how high you could level up while keeping your A/D under say 1000/1000. It would be an interesting, but maybe unpleasant, intellectual exercise).
3. BUILD YOUR ECONOMY. Gold is the key to a strong Kingdom and if you're not hunting for it you have to earn it. Aim to build every money building available at your level before levelling up. Gold allowing, you should always aim to have one building under construction, and one upgrading at all times. Try to collect your gold as soon as it appears (especially from high value, long time, sources such as silos). Gold can only be raided after it's earned and sitting there uncollected. Collect right away, and then spend on buildings/upgrades and you can't lose it. This is the time-consuming but critical part of the recovery. A couple of weeks of gold collecting, building, upgrading, expanding, will set you on the path to strength. If you build all available money buildings for your level, and upgrade them several times, you will have a pumping economy that will set you up when you're ready to level up.
Also, visit your allies. You receive 25 gold for every ally you visit (up to about 20 I think) each day. That's a free 500 gold every day. Collect, build, expand, vault. It also shows what others are building, and how they lay out their Kingdoms. Read their comments -- you will get some interesting conversations and also as many ally codes as you will ever want.
4. PROTECT YOUR GOLD. Keep expanding your vault and deposit your gold religiously. Anything unprotected should be spent on building, upgrading, expanding territory, and as a last resort, units. I've "lost" lots of attacks where the attacker has gained 0 gold. meh. If you don't expose your cash, being on the losing end of an attack is meaningless, aside for a little pride.
5. INVEST IN DEFENCE. There are three main way to defend you Kingdom from rival marauders. Units, weapons/armour (equipment), and defence buildings. My preference is for defence buildings. Units can be lost in attacks, defence buildings cannot - and they are free to repair. Equipment is okay but eventually low-level equipment becomes redundant as you gain higher level equipment, so in that sense it's a wasted investment. But since you will need units and equipment eventually there's no actual harm in buying them. My rule of thumb - if you have a building being constructed, a building being upgraded, the vault expanding and still have unprotected gold, then buy units down to the level of how much you can protect in your vault. Never leave gold exposed (see point 4).
If you are buying units, here is a consideration of which ones to buy. If you have your full complement of allies and not enough units to fill every slot (e.g. level 20, 100 allies, 300 slots available but only 100 units) it's better value for money to purchase cheap units. 1000 gold will buy 100 Foot Soldiers (A/D = 1/1 each, for a total of 100/100 plus the value of 100 weapons and armour if you have them) whereas it will only buy 9 Monks (cost $110 each, attack/defence = 3/6 for a total of 27/54 plus 9 weapons and amour). Also, losing a Monk in battle "costs" you $110 whereas losing a couple of Foot Soldiers only costs $20. Protect your gold.
You could also try to put yourself in a lower rival cohort by cutting loose some allies to lower your ally count. That might protect you from getting beaten up somewhat but I'm not in favour of that strategy. Allies are good to have for the fun of the game and for collecting gold by visiting (see point 3).
6. DEFEND YOUR MONEY BUILDINGS. This is in relation to the positioning of defence buildings. Place them around your money buildings to maximise your defence against raids. Don't protect your unit buildings or the "power boost" buildings like the lumber yard. Those can be raided to rubble and you lose nothing. A simple click restores them with no cost. But if your money building gets raided after it's produced gold you lose income. Structure your Kingdom landscape accordingly. Also, upgrade your defence buildings -- it's a good investment that lasts forever, compared to a unit that has a possibility of being killed.
7. DON'T ATTACK OR REVENGE. Okay, so overnight some knuckle-head has smacked you around and maybe even raided some gold. You have a full charge of stamina and the temptation for revenge is strong. Master Yoda says "resist the temptation, you must". Win or lose your attack will be registered in his "Kingdom News" and he can use that to find you and attack you again and again. If you don't retaliate the only way he will find you again is if you come up on his random rivals list. And if he levels up and you don't (see point 2) he can't even find you again that way. Avoid getting into a protracted tit-for-tat battle, especially with a stronger opponent. You'll lose more in dead units than the gold you gain -- protect your gold.
If you see a rival much weaker than you and you can't resist the temptation to attack note that successful attacks/raids earn experience points and also may complete quests which earns even more experience points, which could level you up (remember point 2). Win or lose, an attack/raid also puts you in his Kingdom News for at least 24 hours (maybe longer?, not sure) and he may come back and raid you. If you have protected your gold that's probably okay but not attacking is safer until you dig yourself out of the hole.
8. LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. By now you should have a strong economy, built and upgraded your money buildings and defence buildings, and the gold will be rolling in. Other people have posted guides on how to proceed from here (this is just to get you back on track), but as a rule of thumb don't immediately race into quests and level up quickly or you'll be back in the mess you just got out of. Take your time, concentrate on your economy at each level and build structure. Most important, have fun :)
By the way, this tactic is sometimes referred to as turtling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtling_%28gameplay%29)) and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a full-time strategy. It can be a bit boring. But if you have over-reached and want to recover a weak position it can be a useful interim strategy. I hope that this guide helps some people, and feel free to kick in suggestions.
If you want to say thanks feel free to add me (Pug) 316-695-971 :)
This is a suggested recovery plan if you find your Kingdom is in a very weak position, learnt from personal experience :(. For the stronger players out there this stuff will be obvious but maybe not to everyone. The following advice should work for most levels but certainly for levels up to 30. I'll use level 20 as an example point for this guide. Have a look at rivals at your level to get a feel for what a solid A/D should be and aim for that or better. If you're (e.g.) level 20 with A/D of 600/900 you are a dead man walking and this disaster recovery plan will help. I'm not saying it's the only solution but if you're desperate.... Here are my tips:
1/ BE PATIENT. Time = gold in Kingdom Age and (unless you are willing to spend RL cash) the only way to amass gold is with time. There is no race to the top (plenty of people at level 50 already) so take your time and invest in your Kingdom's structure. My recovery plan requires a couple of weeks to unfold. If you find yourself obsessively checking your Kingdom every 5 minutes go look at FaceBook or something.
2. DON'T LEVEL UP. Seriously, if you are getting beat up at level 20 things are going to be worse, not better, at level 25. You need to stay at whatever your current level is and build up your stats before progressing further. That means you have to stop earning experience points so no more beating up trolls and wolves, and definitely no more quests. I know it's tempting when your energy bar is full to go off harvesting gold and weapons/armour from the monsters but every one of those comes with experience points and that means you will eventually level up. Levelling up quickly is how you got in this mess in the first place. Don't do it.
(as an aside, I wonder how high you could level up while keeping your A/D under say 1000/1000. It would be an interesting, but maybe unpleasant, intellectual exercise).
3. BUILD YOUR ECONOMY. Gold is the key to a strong Kingdom and if you're not hunting for it you have to earn it. Aim to build every money building available at your level before levelling up. Gold allowing, you should always aim to have one building under construction, and one upgrading at all times. Try to collect your gold as soon as it appears (especially from high value, long time, sources such as silos). Gold can only be raided after it's earned and sitting there uncollected. Collect right away, and then spend on buildings/upgrades and you can't lose it. This is the time-consuming but critical part of the recovery. A couple of weeks of gold collecting, building, upgrading, expanding, will set you on the path to strength. If you build all available money buildings for your level, and upgrade them several times, you will have a pumping economy that will set you up when you're ready to level up.
Also, visit your allies. You receive 25 gold for every ally you visit (up to about 20 I think) each day. That's a free 500 gold every day. Collect, build, expand, vault. It also shows what others are building, and how they lay out their Kingdoms. Read their comments -- you will get some interesting conversations and also as many ally codes as you will ever want.
4. PROTECT YOUR GOLD. Keep expanding your vault and deposit your gold religiously. Anything unprotected should be spent on building, upgrading, expanding territory, and as a last resort, units. I've "lost" lots of attacks where the attacker has gained 0 gold. meh. If you don't expose your cash, being on the losing end of an attack is meaningless, aside for a little pride.
5. INVEST IN DEFENCE. There are three main way to defend you Kingdom from rival marauders. Units, weapons/armour (equipment), and defence buildings. My preference is for defence buildings. Units can be lost in attacks, defence buildings cannot - and they are free to repair. Equipment is okay but eventually low-level equipment becomes redundant as you gain higher level equipment, so in that sense it's a wasted investment. But since you will need units and equipment eventually there's no actual harm in buying them. My rule of thumb - if you have a building being constructed, a building being upgraded, the vault expanding and still have unprotected gold, then buy units down to the level of how much you can protect in your vault. Never leave gold exposed (see point 4).
If you are buying units, here is a consideration of which ones to buy. If you have your full complement of allies and not enough units to fill every slot (e.g. level 20, 100 allies, 300 slots available but only 100 units) it's better value for money to purchase cheap units. 1000 gold will buy 100 Foot Soldiers (A/D = 1/1 each, for a total of 100/100 plus the value of 100 weapons and armour if you have them) whereas it will only buy 9 Monks (cost $110 each, attack/defence = 3/6 for a total of 27/54 plus 9 weapons and amour). Also, losing a Monk in battle "costs" you $110 whereas losing a couple of Foot Soldiers only costs $20. Protect your gold.
You could also try to put yourself in a lower rival cohort by cutting loose some allies to lower your ally count. That might protect you from getting beaten up somewhat but I'm not in favour of that strategy. Allies are good to have for the fun of the game and for collecting gold by visiting (see point 3).
6. DEFEND YOUR MONEY BUILDINGS. This is in relation to the positioning of defence buildings. Place them around your money buildings to maximise your defence against raids. Don't protect your unit buildings or the "power boost" buildings like the lumber yard. Those can be raided to rubble and you lose nothing. A simple click restores them with no cost. But if your money building gets raided after it's produced gold you lose income. Structure your Kingdom landscape accordingly. Also, upgrade your defence buildings -- it's a good investment that lasts forever, compared to a unit that has a possibility of being killed.
7. DON'T ATTACK OR REVENGE. Okay, so overnight some knuckle-head has smacked you around and maybe even raided some gold. You have a full charge of stamina and the temptation for revenge is strong. Master Yoda says "resist the temptation, you must". Win or lose your attack will be registered in his "Kingdom News" and he can use that to find you and attack you again and again. If you don't retaliate the only way he will find you again is if you come up on his random rivals list. And if he levels up and you don't (see point 2) he can't even find you again that way. Avoid getting into a protracted tit-for-tat battle, especially with a stronger opponent. You'll lose more in dead units than the gold you gain -- protect your gold.
If you see a rival much weaker than you and you can't resist the temptation to attack note that successful attacks/raids earn experience points and also may complete quests which earns even more experience points, which could level you up (remember point 2). Win or lose, an attack/raid also puts you in his Kingdom News for at least 24 hours (maybe longer?, not sure) and he may come back and raid you. If you have protected your gold that's probably okay but not attacking is safer until you dig yourself out of the hole.
8. LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL. By now you should have a strong economy, built and upgraded your money buildings and defence buildings, and the gold will be rolling in. Other people have posted guides on how to proceed from here (this is just to get you back on track), but as a rule of thumb don't immediately race into quests and level up quickly or you'll be back in the mess you just got out of. Take your time, concentrate on your economy at each level and build structure. Most important, have fun :)
By the way, this tactic is sometimes referred to as turtling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtling_%28gameplay%29)) and I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a full-time strategy. It can be a bit boring. But if you have over-reached and want to recover a weak position it can be a useful interim strategy. I hope that this guide helps some people, and feel free to kick in suggestions.
If you want to say thanks feel free to add me (Pug) 316-695-971 :)