Beginners Guide [4]
About I hope that this guide will be useful for people who want to have a good chance to reach the top rank, should be good for classic worlds (without archers) and newer ones, also for speed server, no matter if the speed is high (like 300) or low (like 20). It's not pure offense start, just more offensive than defensive, im one of the best if you aim to dominate in your closest area.
Two previous guides are quite good ones, but in some cases a bit too defensive. A good player is an aggressive player (but of course making some friends/allies to cooperate with is also part of fun in game). This guide is for active and ambitious players who want to know one of the best ways to become strong early and have a good chance to reach the top. Too defensive starting strategy can slow you down too much to be competitive in later game. I'll repeat some things from previous guides to make this guide a complete one. I'll create steps instead of amounts of points and what you should have at this time. Don't look at your points, look at your army. When you have a big army, points will come soon and quickly. Seeing these steps you should be able to recognize at which stage you currently are. Ok, let's begin.
At first I'd like to tell something about the difference in play between early start and late start.
Very Early start (when the world starts) puts your village in the core (one of continents 44, 45, 54 or 55) where is usually much more competition in early game than in other areas. You need more brute force to make your way to other player's resources. Not many small abandoneds to farm (people who restarted after a few days playing), other good players can be near you, so you need to care a bit more about your defense. If you're in one of continents close to the core, it doesn't differ much, but the further from the core you are, the more small abandoneds appear on the map (people who have quit or restarted early, safe way to get extra resources). It also means less competitive players near you, so you can grow fast and feel more safe.
Late start So, a late start can be also a very successful one. Maybe better for beginners, but it doesn't mean that you have smaller chance to become strong, a player who starts late will be sent to the rim of the world where they will have to build up from there. The rim of the worlds is populated by weak players who you can farm easily.
Intro Ok, you joined a world, you got a brand new village to build up. You have some time when you are under beginner protection, a few days on regular worlds. Players near you are also small. You aim to become the strongest player in your area.
1st step Building up resource buildings. Good order at start is wood lvl 1, clay lvl 1, iron lvl 1, wood 2, clay 2, wood 3, clay 3, wood 4, clay 4, iron 2, wood 5, clay 5, iron 3 and so on, to at least 10/10/8 wood/clay/iron. Up to 12/12/10 since it's the highest level you can make having warehouse still on level 1, but you need to start recruiting troops before your protection time ends. You upgrade wood first, since you will need it a lot for your first unit - spearman. If you are on world with new units and you are so lucky to have abandoned or bonus village(s) near you, after 1st levels of resource buildings, build statue, make a paladin and start sending him on abandoned village near you. His hauls will soon start giving profits.
NOTE: this initial build order doesn't work with constant early farming with paladin, you receive different amounts of resources, often a lot of iron, so you have to adjust to the situation depending on what kind of hauls you receive
2nd step
HQ lvl 3, barracks lvl 1, start recruiting spears, wall lvl 1.
If you have paladin, you can start farming abandoneds with spears/paladin, if the world you play doesn't have paladins, you need to wait until you have a bigger squad of spears, since they can die attacking a village with no troops and no wall. Simulator says that if you send for example 17 spears on empty village with no wall, with luck 0 one of them dies (a village has its basic defense), all 17 spears survive with maximum 25% luck. 32 spears have no losses attacking defenseless village with luck 0. So, consider waiting till you have like 40 spears or some swords. Each spear costs 50/30/10 and you have no guarantee that someone else didn't already take resources from your target farm-village, so don't lose your precious troops this way.
in the meantime upgrade your resource buildings (keeping iron level 2 levels below wood and clay), recruit spears, but trying to keep balance between amounts of clay and wood. Upgrade your farm and warehouse only when necessary (population reaches limit, you need bigger warehouse for higher level of resource building). Keep an eye on your neighborhood, you want to be the biggest in the area, so you need to see who is inactive/not very active to take resources from him. Look at growth of your neighbors, so you can predict how strong army they can have.
It's hard to say exactly when you should start making swords (depends on your area, targets to farm, possible threats), but it should be a short time after end of beginner protection (you see duration of beginner protection in TWStats-->your world-->world settings). Usually when you upgrade your resource buildings, even when keeping iron 2 levels below wood/clay, in some time you have excess of iron (let's say when having resources levels 13/13/11). Then it's definitely time for:
3rd step
HQ lvl 5, smithy lvl 1, start recruiting swords.
Swords assure your protection at the beginning, let you get rid of extra iron and are good for early farming with spears. They're slower, but as I said before, when you send like 15 spears on village with no troops and no wall, one dies no matter how big luck you have, but the same 15 spears sent with only 2 swords don't have losses with luck 0.
How to choose your target for early farming At first abandoned grey villages. All active people in the neighborhood will want to farm them too, so you need to farm them regularly (depending on speed of world, on speed 1 like 3-4 times a day is good enough) to make other active people tired of gaining not much resources from each farming raid. Better source of extra resources are small red villages, people who are not very active or have already given up and let their accounts go abandoned after 2-3 weeks of inactivity. When a village (also abandoned) is above 100 points, there is much higher possibility that it has a wall already and/or a few troops, what means some losses for you. But sometimes it's worth to risk and attack such village if you see it not growing for a few days. Villages below 100 pts are most likely defenseless and free to attack and plunder.
In the newer worlds, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 the abandoned villages grow alongside your village. They will build walls to hinder you, and also create barracks and stables. However, they will not train troops. They will also upgrade their resource camps and warehouses, so you can farm easily.
4th step Next stage (axes) depends extremely strongly how much you're farming, so it's not possible to tell exactly what level of resources you should have to advance to the next stage. Before that you still upgrade your resource buildings, farm and warehouse when necessary, and try to keep constant recruitment in barracks (spears and swords, but to balance your resources, not to generate too big excess of one of resources). On worlds with new units early archers is the worst thing you can do. They cost a lot, recruitment takes a lot of time and their haul capacity is terrible. About balancing resources: spears early cost you a lot of wood, so upgrade your wood before upgrading clay to the same level. Most buildings cost much less iron than clay/wood, so you should have enough to recruit swords. Wall usually lets you get rid of excess of clay in early stage, upgrade also to like level 5 when you feel not very safe (some fast growing neighbors). You aim to have the same amount of spears and swords, when you see that you have quite a lot of targets to plunder, don't hesitate to make more spears instead of waiting for upgrade of wood/clay/iron, they can bring you even more resources than your mines generate. You need to have a quite nice resources income already to start making axes. As I said it depends on how much you're farming, but let's say around levels of resources 15/15/13 you do:
smithy lvl 2, axe upgrade in smithy, start making axes.
Now you should already have about 100 spears and 100 (maybe a bit less) swords. Mass axes, aim for having the same amount of axes/spears/swords at this stage. Combo for farming axe/spear is good, moves faster than with swords and swords stationing in the village assure your safety. With like 100 axes you can take a risk and try attacking some people above 100 points who seem not growing. They can have some wall and a few spears, but for sure full warehouse, it will give you a large boost for production. Don't forget about upgrading your resources from time to time, you can have some little problems with iron, since axes eat them too. Consider making some extra level of iron mine from time to time (balancing your resources not to have too big shortage/excess is very important). Try to recruit army all the time, your hauls should get bigger now. No need for another upgrades than resources/farm/warehouse/wall from time to time. If your hauls are really big and you see you can afford it, you can make some levels of smithy/hq, but not to stop recruiting in barracks. Your incomes must grow, next stage is quite expensive. Though they will also build hiding place decreasing your raids.
5th step Scouts. You need to feel if you can afford it. Let's describe what's going on before you're ready for scouts. Your army is growing all the time, you farm other villages using axe/spear, you should have quite nice amount of axes at the moment (depends, focus on recruitment all the time, it will give profits a bit later). Squad of axes should allow you to kill small defenses of not very active players with 100-200 pts. It's very important to farm also a little bigger players than 100 pts, they have quite nice resources levels and can give you great boost to production when farmed regularly. Don't forget completely about your defense. Amount you need depends on your neighborhood. Quite safe ratio is 1:1:1 spears/swords/axes (and, my god, NO ARCHERS!), when you are already the biggest in your area (or you allied with some quite big player) you can increase your axes amount almost all the time, making some swords and spears to increase your haul capacity and get rid of extra iron. Let's say when having 1000 axes, you could have 300 spears and 300 swords. But it really depends if you have some threats in the neighborhood. Don't expect mercy from bigger player than you, he is making axes too. Don't forget that offense is your best defense at the beginning stage. You kill threats before they kill you. Anyway, if you grow fast and you are one of the biggest in your area, most likely people won't dare to attack you in blind, without scouting. It doesn't mean you don't need any defense. A few hundreds of swords/spears + lvl 10 wall and you can feel pretty safe before people start making rams. Your amount of axes must grow all the time, it will give you access to bigger people's resources. If you think that your resources income can let you recruit faster and not stop recruiting all the time, make some levels of barracks, but no need to upgrade barracks when you are unable to recruit there all the time.
Okay, let's say your resources levels are 19/19/17, barracks on 3, wall on 10, warehouse 9, farm depending on your troops' amount. Time for:
hq 10, smithy 5, barracks 5, stable 1, scouts upgrade, make a few scouts (like 10).
Now the big farming time begins for you. Scout all your neighbors with 1 scout (on some worlds there is minimum 5 scouts that you can send in attack). You now see which players have too small defenses to withstand your axe squad. Always use simulator when you scout someone with defense, to make sure you don't have too big losses. Attack with axes only, who knows, you may need to defend in the nearest future. Scouts also allow you to see how many resources a village has at the moment. You can send waves of scoutings before sending farming raids, so you see how many of axe/spear you need to take all resources. When your scouts squad reaches about 100, you can afford to scout almost everyone (assuming that you're one of about 3 biggest people in your area). You see a 300-500 pts village not growing for 2 days - scout, kill, take resources, make good use of them instead of letting them overflow someone's warehouse. At this stage your hauls should increase since you can farm everyone with not enough defense and you can optimize your farmings, you send squads not too small, to take all resources, and not too big, so you can send more farming squads on more villages at the same time.
Build up your resources buildings from time to time, make barracks when you see you can afford to recruit faster, farm and warehouse when necessary, some levels of smithy and hq from time to time if you receive good amounts of resources from your farms regularly, plunder everything around you that doesn't have enough defense, recruit in barracks all the time, increase your scouts amount to about 100-200, keep an eye on your resources amounts to balance them, not to have too big excess of one and shortage of another. Clay pit costs a lot of wood, timber camp costs a lot of clay, most buildings cost more clay, axe/spear costs more wood, sword/axe cost more iron, do everything to recruit all the time, build something from time to time and balance your resources. Again, assuming that you're one of the biggest players in the area, defense consisting of 500 sword/500 spear should be enough for you. If your area is more competitive, make up to 1:1:1 ratio of swords/spears/axes. In case someone attacked you, don't let your axes be killed in your village. Even if someone will manage to kill your defense (he would need quite strong offensive squad), and you can assume that he plays 'berserker style' (no defense at all or really small, like 100/100), you can disable such guy by letting his offense hit your village, you send your axes somewhere a few seconds before attack on you hits, you recall troops (cancel attack or support), so your troops come back to the village after the attack, and you immediately send your offense on his village, so your attack hits short time after enemy offense comes back to its home village, you gain easy kills and take back resources taken from you. Of course you would need to be online when a player is attacking you. Oh, and don't use spears and swords for attacking with axes, only for safe farming.
6th step Light cavalry (lc in short). You will need a lot of iron for them, so start keeping level of your iron mine only one level below clay/wood. Before you have lc you already farm some villages above 100 pts (maybe even above 500 pts), hauls give you at least the same amount of resources daily as your own resource buildings. You already have a 4-digit amount of axes, minimum 300 sword/300 spear/ wall 10 (depending on your neighborhood and how safe you feel). Let's say you have resources levels 22/22/21 (but it very strongly depends on how big hauls you receive daily), hq 10, smithy 7 (if you have some extra resources and you would have to wait quite long for next resource building upgrade), barracks 7 (upgrade if you are able to keep constant recruitment), warehouse, farm and wall depending on things like hauls, army size, how safe you feel. Higher levels of timber/clay pit cost much more wood/clay than iron, so you should have some excess of it, and recruiting some swords doesn't help much with decreasing this excess. It's time for:
stable lvl 3, lc upgrade, start making lc.
Lc have the best haul capacity, are the fastest for farming so you can afford to farm abandoneds further away. Make lc maybe not all the time, you would be out of iron fast. But when you see that your amount of iron becomes high, recruit some, so amount of lc will increase. 1 lc needs 4 population, so you need to upgrade your farm early enough, not to reach farm capacity. 20-30 lc is a good amount for one fast lc farming squad to farm small villages below 100 pts, that are one or more standard map square away from you (square I mean the whole fragment of map that you see on your screen). You still recruit in barracks all the time, mainly axes.
When you have bigger lc amount you can send more small farming lc squads (20-50 lc) for longer distance farming raids. Your strike force also becomes more elastic. When you scout someone and see that he has only spears, send only axes with your attack, if he has only swords - send only lc, this way you minimize your losses. Against spear/sword defense you send all axes and all lc. On worlds with new units there are also mounted archers which need stable level 5 and upgrade in smithy. Make them if you somehow have more wood than rest of resources at the moment.
7th step Rams. What should your situation look like before you reach this stage? You already have good offensive force with minimum 100 lc and 4-digit amount of axes. Your defense makes you feel pretty safe (but you don't turtle up, you're an offensive player). You farm your square using axe/spear, small villages further away with small lc squads. Your buildings look for example something like: hq 12, barracks 10, wood/clay/iron about 24/24/23, stable 3, smithy 7, warehouse 15, farm depending on amount of troops, wall 15.
Upgrade: smithy 10, workshop, ram upgrade, make about 10 rams.
You need more wood than rest of resources for rams, so don't forget about it when you balance your resources amounts. With a small rams squad you can at least take down small walls in some of your annoying farms that always kill a few of your soldiers when you plunder them. Make some rams from time to time, they are constructed fast enough in workshop on level 1. With like 50 rams you can afford to take down any wall with small amount of defensive troops, after a few attacks. Aim at having minimum 150 rams. Your offense axe+lc with rams can let you kill any defense in the area. You can think about making some more active player your farm, if you see that your losses after attack won't be too big (like loss of 1/4 of your offense to make someone your farm, I think you can afford it). Even 1k pts player can become your nice farm now. You need to have at least one bigger farm (a village above 300 pts from which you steal resources regularly), this will help you a lot to grow faster and overgrow your neighbors.
There is one more siege unit, useful only for convincing stubborn people to stop playing and become your farms. Catapults. You can aim at them right after upgrading rams. Aim at them if you have someone who has already no defense but tries to rebuild troops and wall, spends his resources and doesn't want to give up and you want him to be your farm. In this case you do:
smithy 12, workshop 2, catapult upgrade, make 5-10 catapults.
This small catapult squad gives you possibility of destroying buildings of people up to about 1k pts. Once you have enough catapults to destroy at least one level of building, you raid your target destroying his farm to level 1 (in a few attacks). He can't make troops and build a wall now. If he tries to rebuild, destroy his HQ , now his building time decreased. If he still didn't give up destroy his barracks as well. Now he really should give up, abandon his village and become your juicy farm, that produces quite a lot of resources for you.
Ok, your village thrives now, you farm a lot, upgrade resources buildings from time to time, upgrade your barracks if you can afford to recruit faster, recruitment of axes in barracks all the time, lc almost all the time (watch out for iron amount). Farm (your building) becomes very expensive now, so try to gather enough resources for next level before your population capacity reaches the limit. Or if you can't afford to make next level of farm and your population reached max, lose some offense on some neighbor to steal resources from him. You have more than 2k axes, 500 lc and 100 rams now. let's say about 500 spear/500 sword defense and 200 scouts (depending on the situation in your area). When you can afford it, you can make some levels of hq and smithy, but it's not your priority, most important is to make sure that your troops amount increases all the time.
8th step Oh yeah, nobleman. It's very expensive (more on worlds with gold coins academy system). You need to have really good resources income and a decent army before you make one. Early nobling imo you can afford when having mines on minimum levels 25/25/24, and if you farm much more than your income from mines. You should have at least about 3500 points (better 4000) for early nobling, I normally aim at my 1st noble when having village with about 5k pts, resources levels about 27/27/26, at least level 26 farm and at least 10k population filled with offensive troops (axes/lc/rams). Ok, you have it all, your resources income is already good enough, time for:
hq 20, market 10, smithy 20, academy, gold coin/packet, nobleman.
Note that until now you didn't need market at all, if you balanced your resources well. Choose the biggest village in your neighborhood as your target. Your offense should break his defense with no problem. To make sure you won't lose your nobleman because of losing more than half of offense in first attack, send your noble with escort of 100 spears and 100 swords and make your offense (axes, lc, rams, <mounted archers>) hit a few seconds before your nobleman hits. You need 4-6 attacks to take a village. Sometimes if you're receiving really great hauls, you can build 2 noblemen to speed up your first ennoblement, you send each noble with escort of 100 spear/100 sword then. Pick a minimum 1k pts village as a target for your first noble. But better to aim at min. 3k pts village, which is close to or already has academy, and has nice built up resource buildings. After you take a village, start recruiting defense there (spears/swords) and rebuild a wall (you destroyed it) to at least level 10 and make some scouts. Your new village will be scout/defensive. When population in your 1st village reaches 24000, get rid of most of scouts there to free farm space for more offensive troops. Do the same with your spears/swords in 1st village when you already have not bad defense in your 2nd village (at least 1000 spear 1000 sword. Just send these sp/sw from your offensive village to a suicide attack. in 2nd village you aim at having at least 1000 scouts (up to 3000), so you will be able to scout everyone you want. The rest of population for spear/sword. HC (heavy cav) this early is a waste of iron - you need it for lc.
9th step Ok, you have now defensive village with about 4k pts, an offensive village with about 7k pts, maxed farm and resources there (on level 30), barracks at least on level 20, stable on 10. Upgrade your market depending on how much resources you wanna transfer to 2nd village to build it up faster. 1st village is recruiting offense all the time, 2nd one defense all the time, increasing amount of scouts from time to time. You can now say you had a good start ;).
What later? If your area isn't very competitive (many abandoned villages, a few villages with a good size (above 3k pts), when you decide to take another village, you can make it your second offensive. It gives you a lot of firepower and allows you to slaughter anyone you want. But usually there are some guys that you can expect that they would want to attack you. So in most cases it's better to make your 3rd village defensive. Again depending on your neighborhood, you can decide to make your 4th village also defensive, but then your 5th one should be offensive. You need more firepower to destroy another guys who managed to take over some village(s) already)
You aim at 1:1 ratio of offensive:defensive villages. Maybe a little more defensive than offensive. Try to have each offensive village quite close to another one that is defensive. If you take something further away from your main cluster, better make it defensive, because support from your other villages may not arrive there on time. you can consider to make some of your defensive villages hc/spear, it moves faster and recruitment is a lot faster than spear/sword. A good ratio is about 9k spear and 1900 hc. In offensive village up to 300 rams, barracks and stable recruit all the time.
buildings levels for fully built up villages:
hq 20, barracks 25, stable 20, workshop 5, market 18-20, the rest maxed (you can forget about hiding place)
Suggestions and ideas to improve it are welcome
Suggestion: If you rely more on your farms for getting resources than on your own buildings, maybe you should not keep iron mine two levels below timber land & clay pit. Your farm villages have less iron mine, too, and provide you less iron than other resources. So you need more iron from your own village. Iron mine takes so much time to upgrade, and you don't get it built soon when you are thirsting for iron. If you have a space in your warehouse, some excess of iron can't harm you, after all.
Suggestion: Add a time table to help people out. It seems unnecessary but helps people not go crazy thinking their behind
Two previous guides are quite good ones, but in some cases a bit too defensive. A good player is an aggressive player (but of course making some friends/allies to cooperate with is also part of fun in game). This guide is for active and ambitious players who want to know one of the best ways to become strong early and have a good chance to reach the top. Too defensive starting strategy can slow you down too much to be competitive in later game. I'll repeat some things from previous guides to make this guide a complete one. I'll create steps instead of amounts of points and what you should have at this time. Don't look at your points, look at your army. When you have a big army, points will come soon and quickly. Seeing these steps you should be able to recognize at which stage you currently are. Ok, let's begin.
At first I'd like to tell something about the difference in play between early start and late start.
Very Early start (when the world starts) puts your village in the core (one of continents 44, 45, 54 or 55) where is usually much more competition in early game than in other areas. You need more brute force to make your way to other player's resources. Not many small abandoneds to farm (people who restarted after a few days playing), other good players can be near you, so you need to care a bit more about your defense. If you're in one of continents close to the core, it doesn't differ much, but the further from the core you are, the more small abandoneds appear on the map (people who have quit or restarted early, safe way to get extra resources). It also means less competitive players near you, so you can grow fast and feel more safe.
Late start So, a late start can be also a very successful one. Maybe better for beginners, but it doesn't mean that you have smaller chance to become strong, a player who starts late will be sent to the rim of the world where they will have to build up from there. The rim of the worlds is populated by weak players who you can farm easily.
Intro Ok, you joined a world, you got a brand new village to build up. You have some time when you are under beginner protection, a few days on regular worlds. Players near you are also small. You aim to become the strongest player in your area.
1st step Building up resource buildings. Good order at start is wood lvl 1, clay lvl 1, iron lvl 1, wood 2, clay 2, wood 3, clay 3, wood 4, clay 4, iron 2, wood 5, clay 5, iron 3 and so on, to at least 10/10/8 wood/clay/iron. Up to 12/12/10 since it's the highest level you can make having warehouse still on level 1, but you need to start recruiting troops before your protection time ends. You upgrade wood first, since you will need it a lot for your first unit - spearman. If you are on world with new units and you are so lucky to have abandoned or bonus village(s) near you, after 1st levels of resource buildings, build statue, make a paladin and start sending him on abandoned village near you. His hauls will soon start giving profits.
NOTE: this initial build order doesn't work with constant early farming with paladin, you receive different amounts of resources, often a lot of iron, so you have to adjust to the situation depending on what kind of hauls you receive
2nd step
HQ lvl 3, barracks lvl 1, start recruiting spears, wall lvl 1.
If you have paladin, you can start farming abandoneds with spears/paladin, if the world you play doesn't have paladins, you need to wait until you have a bigger squad of spears, since they can die attacking a village with no troops and no wall. Simulator says that if you send for example 17 spears on empty village with no wall, with luck 0 one of them dies (a village has its basic defense), all 17 spears survive with maximum 25% luck. 32 spears have no losses attacking defenseless village with luck 0. So, consider waiting till you have like 40 spears or some swords. Each spear costs 50/30/10 and you have no guarantee that someone else didn't already take resources from your target farm-village, so don't lose your precious troops this way.
in the meantime upgrade your resource buildings (keeping iron level 2 levels below wood and clay), recruit spears, but trying to keep balance between amounts of clay and wood. Upgrade your farm and warehouse only when necessary (population reaches limit, you need bigger warehouse for higher level of resource building). Keep an eye on your neighborhood, you want to be the biggest in the area, so you need to see who is inactive/not very active to take resources from him. Look at growth of your neighbors, so you can predict how strong army they can have.
It's hard to say exactly when you should start making swords (depends on your area, targets to farm, possible threats), but it should be a short time after end of beginner protection (you see duration of beginner protection in TWStats-->your world-->world settings). Usually when you upgrade your resource buildings, even when keeping iron 2 levels below wood/clay, in some time you have excess of iron (let's say when having resources levels 13/13/11). Then it's definitely time for:
3rd step
HQ lvl 5, smithy lvl 1, start recruiting swords.
Swords assure your protection at the beginning, let you get rid of extra iron and are good for early farming with spears. They're slower, but as I said before, when you send like 15 spears on village with no troops and no wall, one dies no matter how big luck you have, but the same 15 spears sent with only 2 swords don't have losses with luck 0.
How to choose your target for early farming At first abandoned grey villages. All active people in the neighborhood will want to farm them too, so you need to farm them regularly (depending on speed of world, on speed 1 like 3-4 times a day is good enough) to make other active people tired of gaining not much resources from each farming raid. Better source of extra resources are small red villages, people who are not very active or have already given up and let their accounts go abandoned after 2-3 weeks of inactivity. When a village (also abandoned) is above 100 points, there is much higher possibility that it has a wall already and/or a few troops, what means some losses for you. But sometimes it's worth to risk and attack such village if you see it not growing for a few days. Villages below 100 pts are most likely defenseless and free to attack and plunder.
In the newer worlds, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 the abandoned villages grow alongside your village. They will build walls to hinder you, and also create barracks and stables. However, they will not train troops. They will also upgrade their resource camps and warehouses, so you can farm easily.
4th step Next stage (axes) depends extremely strongly how much you're farming, so it's not possible to tell exactly what level of resources you should have to advance to the next stage. Before that you still upgrade your resource buildings, farm and warehouse when necessary, and try to keep constant recruitment in barracks (spears and swords, but to balance your resources, not to generate too big excess of one of resources). On worlds with new units early archers is the worst thing you can do. They cost a lot, recruitment takes a lot of time and their haul capacity is terrible. About balancing resources: spears early cost you a lot of wood, so upgrade your wood before upgrading clay to the same level. Most buildings cost much less iron than clay/wood, so you should have enough to recruit swords. Wall usually lets you get rid of excess of clay in early stage, upgrade also to like level 5 when you feel not very safe (some fast growing neighbors). You aim to have the same amount of spears and swords, when you see that you have quite a lot of targets to plunder, don't hesitate to make more spears instead of waiting for upgrade of wood/clay/iron, they can bring you even more resources than your mines generate. You need to have a quite nice resources income already to start making axes. As I said it depends on how much you're farming, but let's say around levels of resources 15/15/13 you do:
smithy lvl 2, axe upgrade in smithy, start making axes.
Now you should already have about 100 spears and 100 (maybe a bit less) swords. Mass axes, aim for having the same amount of axes/spears/swords at this stage. Combo for farming axe/spear is good, moves faster than with swords and swords stationing in the village assure your safety. With like 100 axes you can take a risk and try attacking some people above 100 points who seem not growing. They can have some wall and a few spears, but for sure full warehouse, it will give you a large boost for production. Don't forget about upgrading your resources from time to time, you can have some little problems with iron, since axes eat them too. Consider making some extra level of iron mine from time to time (balancing your resources not to have too big shortage/excess is very important). Try to recruit army all the time, your hauls should get bigger now. No need for another upgrades than resources/farm/warehouse/wall from time to time. If your hauls are really big and you see you can afford it, you can make some levels of smithy/hq, but not to stop recruiting in barracks. Your incomes must grow, next stage is quite expensive. Though they will also build hiding place decreasing your raids.
5th step Scouts. You need to feel if you can afford it. Let's describe what's going on before you're ready for scouts. Your army is growing all the time, you farm other villages using axe/spear, you should have quite nice amount of axes at the moment (depends, focus on recruitment all the time, it will give profits a bit later). Squad of axes should allow you to kill small defenses of not very active players with 100-200 pts. It's very important to farm also a little bigger players than 100 pts, they have quite nice resources levels and can give you great boost to production when farmed regularly. Don't forget completely about your defense. Amount you need depends on your neighborhood. Quite safe ratio is 1:1:1 spears/swords/axes (and, my god, NO ARCHERS!), when you are already the biggest in your area (or you allied with some quite big player) you can increase your axes amount almost all the time, making some swords and spears to increase your haul capacity and get rid of extra iron. Let's say when having 1000 axes, you could have 300 spears and 300 swords. But it really depends if you have some threats in the neighborhood. Don't expect mercy from bigger player than you, he is making axes too. Don't forget that offense is your best defense at the beginning stage. You kill threats before they kill you. Anyway, if you grow fast and you are one of the biggest in your area, most likely people won't dare to attack you in blind, without scouting. It doesn't mean you don't need any defense. A few hundreds of swords/spears + lvl 10 wall and you can feel pretty safe before people start making rams. Your amount of axes must grow all the time, it will give you access to bigger people's resources. If you think that your resources income can let you recruit faster and not stop recruiting all the time, make some levels of barracks, but no need to upgrade barracks when you are unable to recruit there all the time.
Okay, let's say your resources levels are 19/19/17, barracks on 3, wall on 10, warehouse 9, farm depending on your troops' amount. Time for:
hq 10, smithy 5, barracks 5, stable 1, scouts upgrade, make a few scouts (like 10).
Now the big farming time begins for you. Scout all your neighbors with 1 scout (on some worlds there is minimum 5 scouts that you can send in attack). You now see which players have too small defenses to withstand your axe squad. Always use simulator when you scout someone with defense, to make sure you don't have too big losses. Attack with axes only, who knows, you may need to defend in the nearest future. Scouts also allow you to see how many resources a village has at the moment. You can send waves of scoutings before sending farming raids, so you see how many of axe/spear you need to take all resources. When your scouts squad reaches about 100, you can afford to scout almost everyone (assuming that you're one of about 3 biggest people in your area). You see a 300-500 pts village not growing for 2 days - scout, kill, take resources, make good use of them instead of letting them overflow someone's warehouse. At this stage your hauls should increase since you can farm everyone with not enough defense and you can optimize your farmings, you send squads not too small, to take all resources, and not too big, so you can send more farming squads on more villages at the same time.
Build up your resources buildings from time to time, make barracks when you see you can afford to recruit faster, farm and warehouse when necessary, some levels of smithy and hq from time to time if you receive good amounts of resources from your farms regularly, plunder everything around you that doesn't have enough defense, recruit in barracks all the time, increase your scouts amount to about 100-200, keep an eye on your resources amounts to balance them, not to have too big excess of one and shortage of another. Clay pit costs a lot of wood, timber camp costs a lot of clay, most buildings cost more clay, axe/spear costs more wood, sword/axe cost more iron, do everything to recruit all the time, build something from time to time and balance your resources. Again, assuming that you're one of the biggest players in the area, defense consisting of 500 sword/500 spear should be enough for you. If your area is more competitive, make up to 1:1:1 ratio of swords/spears/axes. In case someone attacked you, don't let your axes be killed in your village. Even if someone will manage to kill your defense (he would need quite strong offensive squad), and you can assume that he plays 'berserker style' (no defense at all or really small, like 100/100), you can disable such guy by letting his offense hit your village, you send your axes somewhere a few seconds before attack on you hits, you recall troops (cancel attack or support), so your troops come back to the village after the attack, and you immediately send your offense on his village, so your attack hits short time after enemy offense comes back to its home village, you gain easy kills and take back resources taken from you. Of course you would need to be online when a player is attacking you. Oh, and don't use spears and swords for attacking with axes, only for safe farming.
6th step Light cavalry (lc in short). You will need a lot of iron for them, so start keeping level of your iron mine only one level below clay/wood. Before you have lc you already farm some villages above 100 pts (maybe even above 500 pts), hauls give you at least the same amount of resources daily as your own resource buildings. You already have a 4-digit amount of axes, minimum 300 sword/300 spear/ wall 10 (depending on your neighborhood and how safe you feel). Let's say you have resources levels 22/22/21 (but it very strongly depends on how big hauls you receive daily), hq 10, smithy 7 (if you have some extra resources and you would have to wait quite long for next resource building upgrade), barracks 7 (upgrade if you are able to keep constant recruitment), warehouse, farm and wall depending on things like hauls, army size, how safe you feel. Higher levels of timber/clay pit cost much more wood/clay than iron, so you should have some excess of it, and recruiting some swords doesn't help much with decreasing this excess. It's time for:
stable lvl 3, lc upgrade, start making lc.
Lc have the best haul capacity, are the fastest for farming so you can afford to farm abandoneds further away. Make lc maybe not all the time, you would be out of iron fast. But when you see that your amount of iron becomes high, recruit some, so amount of lc will increase. 1 lc needs 4 population, so you need to upgrade your farm early enough, not to reach farm capacity. 20-30 lc is a good amount for one fast lc farming squad to farm small villages below 100 pts, that are one or more standard map square away from you (square I mean the whole fragment of map that you see on your screen). You still recruit in barracks all the time, mainly axes.
When you have bigger lc amount you can send more small farming lc squads (20-50 lc) for longer distance farming raids. Your strike force also becomes more elastic. When you scout someone and see that he has only spears, send only axes with your attack, if he has only swords - send only lc, this way you minimize your losses. Against spear/sword defense you send all axes and all lc. On worlds with new units there are also mounted archers which need stable level 5 and upgrade in smithy. Make them if you somehow have more wood than rest of resources at the moment.
7th step Rams. What should your situation look like before you reach this stage? You already have good offensive force with minimum 100 lc and 4-digit amount of axes. Your defense makes you feel pretty safe (but you don't turtle up, you're an offensive player). You farm your square using axe/spear, small villages further away with small lc squads. Your buildings look for example something like: hq 12, barracks 10, wood/clay/iron about 24/24/23, stable 3, smithy 7, warehouse 15, farm depending on amount of troops, wall 15.
Upgrade: smithy 10, workshop, ram upgrade, make about 10 rams.
You need more wood than rest of resources for rams, so don't forget about it when you balance your resources amounts. With a small rams squad you can at least take down small walls in some of your annoying farms that always kill a few of your soldiers when you plunder them. Make some rams from time to time, they are constructed fast enough in workshop on level 1. With like 50 rams you can afford to take down any wall with small amount of defensive troops, after a few attacks. Aim at having minimum 150 rams. Your offense axe+lc with rams can let you kill any defense in the area. You can think about making some more active player your farm, if you see that your losses after attack won't be too big (like loss of 1/4 of your offense to make someone your farm, I think you can afford it). Even 1k pts player can become your nice farm now. You need to have at least one bigger farm (a village above 300 pts from which you steal resources regularly), this will help you a lot to grow faster and overgrow your neighbors.
There is one more siege unit, useful only for convincing stubborn people to stop playing and become your farms. Catapults. You can aim at them right after upgrading rams. Aim at them if you have someone who has already no defense but tries to rebuild troops and wall, spends his resources and doesn't want to give up and you want him to be your farm. In this case you do:
smithy 12, workshop 2, catapult upgrade, make 5-10 catapults.
This small catapult squad gives you possibility of destroying buildings of people up to about 1k pts. Once you have enough catapults to destroy at least one level of building, you raid your target destroying his farm to level 1 (in a few attacks). He can't make troops and build a wall now. If he tries to rebuild, destroy his HQ , now his building time decreased. If he still didn't give up destroy his barracks as well. Now he really should give up, abandon his village and become your juicy farm, that produces quite a lot of resources for you.
Ok, your village thrives now, you farm a lot, upgrade resources buildings from time to time, upgrade your barracks if you can afford to recruit faster, recruitment of axes in barracks all the time, lc almost all the time (watch out for iron amount). Farm (your building) becomes very expensive now, so try to gather enough resources for next level before your population capacity reaches the limit. Or if you can't afford to make next level of farm and your population reached max, lose some offense on some neighbor to steal resources from him. You have more than 2k axes, 500 lc and 100 rams now. let's say about 500 spear/500 sword defense and 200 scouts (depending on the situation in your area). When you can afford it, you can make some levels of hq and smithy, but it's not your priority, most important is to make sure that your troops amount increases all the time.
8th step Oh yeah, nobleman. It's very expensive (more on worlds with gold coins academy system). You need to have really good resources income and a decent army before you make one. Early nobling imo you can afford when having mines on minimum levels 25/25/24, and if you farm much more than your income from mines. You should have at least about 3500 points (better 4000) for early nobling, I normally aim at my 1st noble when having village with about 5k pts, resources levels about 27/27/26, at least level 26 farm and at least 10k population filled with offensive troops (axes/lc/rams). Ok, you have it all, your resources income is already good enough, time for:
hq 20, market 10, smithy 20, academy, gold coin/packet, nobleman.
Note that until now you didn't need market at all, if you balanced your resources well. Choose the biggest village in your neighborhood as your target. Your offense should break his defense with no problem. To make sure you won't lose your nobleman because of losing more than half of offense in first attack, send your noble with escort of 100 spears and 100 swords and make your offense (axes, lc, rams, <mounted archers>) hit a few seconds before your nobleman hits. You need 4-6 attacks to take a village. Sometimes if you're receiving really great hauls, you can build 2 noblemen to speed up your first ennoblement, you send each noble with escort of 100 spear/100 sword then. Pick a minimum 1k pts village as a target for your first noble. But better to aim at min. 3k pts village, which is close to or already has academy, and has nice built up resource buildings. After you take a village, start recruiting defense there (spears/swords) and rebuild a wall (you destroyed it) to at least level 10 and make some scouts. Your new village will be scout/defensive. When population in your 1st village reaches 24000, get rid of most of scouts there to free farm space for more offensive troops. Do the same with your spears/swords in 1st village when you already have not bad defense in your 2nd village (at least 1000 spear 1000 sword. Just send these sp/sw from your offensive village to a suicide attack. in 2nd village you aim at having at least 1000 scouts (up to 3000), so you will be able to scout everyone you want. The rest of population for spear/sword. HC (heavy cav) this early is a waste of iron - you need it for lc.
9th step Ok, you have now defensive village with about 4k pts, an offensive village with about 7k pts, maxed farm and resources there (on level 30), barracks at least on level 20, stable on 10. Upgrade your market depending on how much resources you wanna transfer to 2nd village to build it up faster. 1st village is recruiting offense all the time, 2nd one defense all the time, increasing amount of scouts from time to time. You can now say you had a good start ;).
What later? If your area isn't very competitive (many abandoned villages, a few villages with a good size (above 3k pts), when you decide to take another village, you can make it your second offensive. It gives you a lot of firepower and allows you to slaughter anyone you want. But usually there are some guys that you can expect that they would want to attack you. So in most cases it's better to make your 3rd village defensive. Again depending on your neighborhood, you can decide to make your 4th village also defensive, but then your 5th one should be offensive. You need more firepower to destroy another guys who managed to take over some village(s) already)
You aim at 1:1 ratio of offensive:defensive villages. Maybe a little more defensive than offensive. Try to have each offensive village quite close to another one that is defensive. If you take something further away from your main cluster, better make it defensive, because support from your other villages may not arrive there on time. you can consider to make some of your defensive villages hc/spear, it moves faster and recruitment is a lot faster than spear/sword. A good ratio is about 9k spear and 1900 hc. In offensive village up to 300 rams, barracks and stable recruit all the time.
buildings levels for fully built up villages:
hq 20, barracks 25, stable 20, workshop 5, market 18-20, the rest maxed (you can forget about hiding place)
Suggestions and ideas to improve it are welcome
Suggestion: If you rely more on your farms for getting resources than on your own buildings, maybe you should not keep iron mine two levels below timber land & clay pit. Your farm villages have less iron mine, too, and provide you less iron than other resources. So you need more iron from your own village. Iron mine takes so much time to upgrade, and you don't get it built soon when you are thirsting for iron. If you have a space in your warehouse, some excess of iron can't harm you, after all.
Suggestion: Add a time table to help people out. It seems unnecessary but helps people not go crazy thinking their behind
