X-Kings, Free Online Game

[Travis]

Been playing around with this game this morning. Seems pretty fun, and an important part of it is sending support points to one and other (start off with 3 per day, can't send more than 1 to any single player per day).

Another great feature, you attack people for their gold, but a majority of the time no units are killed in the process, so at most you're stuck just making money again, not starting over from scratch. So same idea as Omerta, keep your gold low (use it on troops and research) and you should fly under the radar (I hope, I did just start playing today).

Anyways, here's the link, if you don't want to sign up under me (though I think you get a support point any time I sign on if you are), feel free to start your own group (though you can still have people sign up under you if you use this link).

Have fun!

hxxp://www.x-kings.com/public/new_user.php?friend=Fallen_Seeker

Edit: xx'ing this as I haven't searched their site to see what all they are hosting. Should be work safe though.

[Travis]

As a side note, to make some quick cash off the bat, go to the voting tab and use each link to vote for the game. That'll nab you $50 per vote in game which is enough to get set up and attacking others for cash.

Generally when you attack other people (of a similar or lower level) all the other person will lose is gold to you, I've yet (in 5 battles) to see anybody lose a troop, though I've gotten anywhere from 150 gold to 500 gold in the battles.

[Travis]

Double dola, whoever is GuidoB, support point sent your way for signing up under me, that'll get you an extra worker come tomorrow.

[KevinNU7]

Signed up, send me a point :)

[BrianD]

Double dola, whoever is GuidoB, support point sent your way for signing up under me, that'll get you an extra worker come tomorrow.

That would be me. Support point sent back to you.

I've already used up all of my attack points to get enough tech to stop newbie attacks. The game seems interesting enough to be worth trying out.

[KevinNU7]

I'm very confused, but it looks enjoyable

[KevinNU7]

How do you get more workers?

[BrianD]

Looks like you have to wait for them to be born. I just sent you a support point, care to send one back my way? I think we get an extra worker that way.

[BrianD]

Quick tips for those just getting started in the game.

1. Click the voting button and vote at every available site.
2. Read the tutorial in the Help section.
3. Buy the crop rotation upgrade in the Technology section.
4. Train as many soldiers as you can without going negative food (you can train more now that you have the crop rotation upgrade)
5. Attack others with 10 points, 6 units, and over 1,000 gold.
6. Spend all of your gold on technologies and buildings.

I used up all of my attack points, made 3200 gold, and bought a bunch of technology. A couple of people I attacked got mad and tried to hit me back. In 5 attacks, I have lost 6 gold, and have killed one enemy unit. A quick military/technology build up and you can be pretty safe from those just starting out.

[Travis]

Each day you get 3 support points to send out. I've used mine for the day (1 to my commander, and 1 each to the first two guys who signed up under me). I'll rotate 2 of my points through my officers each day (1 is reserved for my commander). With 3 each, we should be able to set up a good trading system.

Workers are given to you once per day. You get 1 worker just for logging in, then you get additional workers based on how many support points you've received (ie: I've got 6 support points today and will get 2 workers for that). I haven't found a chart that lists how many support points equals how many workers, as it appears to rise as you go up (my commander is at 11.5 support points and is receiving 3 workers for that right now).

I think the birth rate comes once you're a bit farther up the technology tree and have more structures.

You get a 1 turn back every half hour, so if you do a full attack (using 8 turns), it'll take you 4 hours to get those 8 turns back. So you can be like me and use all your turns at the beginning, and have to wait 4 hours to do anything, or use them a bit more conservatively and play more often ;)

Thanks for joining up guys, any of my current officers who didn't get a support point from me today will so tomorrow.

[BrianD]

Not to steal Travis's thunder, but you can also sign up via my link:
hxxp://www.x-kings.com/public/new_user.php?friend=GuidoB

I'd like to see Travis get most of the signups for introducing us to the game, but it might be nice to spread things around a bit. Maybe we'll get a FOFC guild going eventually.

[KevinNU7]

I couldn't resist!

http://www.x-kings.com/public/new_user.php?friend=KevinNU7

[Travis]

Not to steal Travis's thunder, but you can also sign up via my link:
hxxp://www.x-kings.com/public/new_user.php?friend=GuidoB

I'd like to see Travis get most of the signups for introducing us to the game, but it might be nice to spread things around a bit. Maybe we'll get a FOFC guild going eventually.

Bah! This means war! ;) I think I still benefit from people signing up under you, so I have no real objections.

I was reading though, that once you get up high enough on the technology tree, that you can leave your commander, so if we're interested, and people don't object, when I get to that point, I can pretty much leave my commander (who is serving under the #5 rated player in the game right now) so that we could start our own faction/guild. Not sure if we could do that with me still having a commander that we don't want as a part of the guild. But something to think about until we get to that point.

[Whar]

I started up today. The game seems kinda fun and a nice distraction for 20 minutes or so a day. I selected Fallen_Seeker (the original poster in this thread) as my comander.

One thing I noticed from the 'Support point' section is that a commander recieve a support point whenever one of his officer recieves one. If this is true Fallen's officer should focus on supporting each other thereby adding a worker to both the officer and the commander.

[BrianD]

I guess you get 1/2 a point for every point I get. This would be a good deal for you, but not if I steal your officers. :)

Spreading officers around would probably be a very good idea when we are at the guild stage. We'd probably get more bang for our buck if many people could get points and the commanders getting half-points. There is probably some math to be done here to figure out the most efficient system, but I'll leave that for others to do. :)

[Travis]

I started up today. The game seems kinda fun and a nice distraction for 20 minutes or so a day. I selected Fallen_Seeker (the original poster in this thread) as my comander.

One thing I noticed from the 'Support point' section is that a commander recieve a support point whenever one of his officer recieves one. If this is true Fallen's officer should focus on supporting each other thereby adding a worker to both the officer and the commander.

Not exactly sure how this is working yet. Looks like a commander gets half points for a lot of the stuff that his Officer's do, going to look more later for clarification.

[Travis]

Hey guys. Any thoughts on a guild name? We can create one now, didn't know if we wanted to go with something like FOFC, or come up with a theme name for the game. Submissions requested!

[Icy]

Shit another online game? Omerta and this is going to ruin my marriage and bussines. I'll resist by now...

[Travis]

Shit another online game? Omerta and this is going to ruin my marriage and bussines. I'll resist by now...

Give in to the dark side.

Besides, you can get medieval on somebodies ass and actually benefit from it!

[NevStar]

After some initial setbacks, the NevStarmy cut a bloody swath through the infidels. Anybody want to trade support points? (User: NevStar)

[ntndeacon]

Kilt my first opponent. I ticked off a guy so he attacked me 4 times. He lost a man too

[BrianD]

After some initial setbacks, the NevStarmy cut a bloody swath through the infidels. Anybody want to trade support points? (User: NevStar)

I have sent a support point your way.

[NevStar]

I have sent a support point your way.

And back at you! Thanks.

[Travis]

Bump for the late crew.

[vex]

Shit another online game? Omerta and this is going to ruin my marriage and bussines. I'll resist by now...
Yeah, I think I'd better pass due to Omerta.

[daedalus]

I guess you get 1/2 a point for every point I get. This would be a good deal for you, but not if I steal your officers. :)

Spreading officers around would probably be a very good idea when we are at the guild stage. We'd probably get more bang for our buck if many people could get points and the commanders getting half-points. There is probably some math to be done here to figure out the most efficient system, but I'll leave that for others to do. :)Given what I understand of the point breakdown (you get 1 point for each officer, 1/2 point for each officers of each of those officers) and the daily points (3 per day?), the best way to break it down maybe to have each commander have 4 officers under them. That gives each commander 4 points from their officers and the commander above them 2 points from that group. That also gives each officers in that group 2 partners to trade points with and leaves each with 1 free points to do with as they please, whether to use as tribute, trade or donate to help out a new starter.

I'll be signing up as soon as we figure out the point scheme, that way we can spread out the points and help each other out. :)

[daedalus]

Question: Do unused points pool up or do they go away, if unused?

[Marc Vaughan]

I'm in - still working things out - but made a bundle attacking people and invested in tech stocks ;)

Got a few knights defending me now, so should be relatively solid ..

[BrianD]

Yeah, I think I'd better pass due to Omerta.

Omerta gives you something to do every minute or two. X-Kings gives you something to do once or twice a day. Once you've run your attack points dry, there is really nothing you can do for at least 4 hours. Not doing anything for 8-12 hours is probably an even better idea. It doesn't take up nearly as much time as Omerta.

[Travis]

Okay, for the sake of getting a FOFC guild going, lets try to figure out a name that we want to use.

I'm submitting, Colossal Mounts.

Few more submissions and we can open a poll.

[BrianD]

Colossal Trout?
:)

[KevinNU7]

Is anyone else accruing a surplus of food rations over time?

Just got the option to create knights, will probably purchase the technology this weekend after I grab the attack doubling one.

[Travis]

Is anyone else accruing a surplus of food rations over time?

Just got the option to create knights, will probably purchase the technology this weekend after I grab the attack doubling one.

That's a good thing to have. If you are trying to get to a certain gold amount (for a technology or to buy a unit of salt, etc) and don't quite make it in your battle turns, you can use some of your cash to convert workers to soldiers to strengthen your defense (and offense) to try and get the rest of the cash. If you have a good food surplus, you can take the hit of not having workers for a while until you have enough battle turns saved up to get the rest of the cash you need.

[BrianD]

That's a good thing to have. If you are trying to get to a certain gold amount (for a technology or to buy a unit of salt, etc) and don't quite make it in your battle turns, you can use some of your cash to convert workers to soldiers to strengthen your defense (and offense) to try and get the rest of the cash. If you have a good food surplus, you can take the hit of not having workers for a while until you have enough battle turns saved up to get the rest of the cash you need.

I have been running at basically full military and just enough workers to stay positive food. Is there any real benefit to having more workers and no military? It seems like I would get more food and gold, but getting gold too fast is a good way to get attacked.

[Travis]

I've been running at around 2/3 knights, 1/3 workers. Right now I have 6 workers and 11 knights, so I'm getting 24 gold and 2 food every half hour on top of the food the knights are consuming. So I get an extra 48 food per day at that rate, which if needed, would feed a 17 knight army for just under an hour if I suddenly had the need to defend heavily.

I'd ideally like to have access to 500 extra food so I could really pump up my army size for short time periods when I've got extra cash kicking around, but once I get the 4th side to my fence built, I'm going to be relatively comfortable defense wise.

[Travis]

Just started a FOFC guild there called "Colossal_Might".

Please join up and hopefully we can offer each other a bit more protection this way.

[RendeR]

sent you a support point travis

signed up:

http://www.x-kings.com/public/new_user.php?friend=RendeR

[hukarez]

I'm in. Decided to 'spread' out and what not, and signed up under RendeR. Sent support points to Travis and RendeR, think I've got an extra one. I'm still fresh to this, so be gentle! http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/tongue.gif

[daedalus]

Joined as Kevin's officer to spread out our points (since that still gets Travis 1/2 point). Support point sent to Travis and Nev.

[Travis]

Hey guys, little bit of a technology tree update. After you buy the chapel (which allows you to start having a worker birthrate every month), the next branch in that tree is an update that gives you 6 support points every day instead of 3. I don't have that yet, and need to get espionage first, but hopefully soon I'll have my officers on a 2 day rotation instead of a 4 day one.

[hukarez]

I'm beginning to wonder if I've completely screwed up in my selection/choices for the Tech Tree. I went ahead and snagged Crop Rotation, Horse Shoes, and Water Mill solely for production increases.

I didn't realize the prices of researching the other stuff would have doubled. Is this a good route I took? Focusing solely on production stuff? The concept of more support points via the Mysticism or what not update seems interesting, as I've eager to get my citizens to pork each other as quickly as possible.

Also, the whole "Voting" thing for the month where you get like 50 gold per site or what not -- is that a weekly thing, or a monthly thing?

[SunDevil]

Joined. In game name : Mervent

Travis I joined using your url.

[Travis]

I'm beginning to wonder if I've completely screwed up in my selection/choices for the Tech Tree. I went ahead and snagged Crop Rotation, Horse Shoes, and Water Mill solely for production increases.

I didn't realize the prices of researching the other stuff would have doubled. Is this a good route I took? Focusing solely on production stuff? The concept of more support points via the Mysticism or what not update seems interesting, as I've eager to get my citizens to pork each other as quickly as possible.

Also, the whole "Voting" thing for the month where you get like 50 gold per site or what not -- is that a weekly thing, or a monthly thing?

I don't know if that is weekly or monthly, hoping weekly myself, but at this point, for 50 gold a piece, probably not an overly huge deal.

Especially if you snag Espionage ;)

So far, here's what I've found out in the Technology tree:

Farming - Crop Rotation (Workers +1) - Horse Shoes (Workers +1) - Water Mill (Workers +1)

Watchtower (Defense x2) - Fence (Defense x2 on side fence is built)

Saddles and Stirrups (Create Knights) - Ballista (Create Ballista)

Seige Defense Strategy (Control defensive strategy)

Mysticism (Birthrate +1) - Theology (Birthrate +1)

Trade (Buy Salt or Cloth units)

Writing (Military Experience x2)

Espionage (See enemies army unit total)

Diplomacy (6 support points instead of 3)

I've grouped these by type here, can't remember the exact order of each branch of the tree. I think it's as follows (please correct me if you see an error, I'm kind of fuzzy on the early stages):

Farming - Crop Rotation - Horse Shoes - Water Mill
Trade - Writing
Watch Tower - Fence - Seige Defense - Theology

? - Espionage - Ballista
? - Mysticism - Diplomacy

I can't remember for the life of me where Saddles & Stirrups fit in. Anybody able to fill in my blanks or tie in the branches that I'm missing the earlier portions for?

[NevStar]

Horse Shoes is a dependency for Saddles & Stirrups.

After Writing is Chain Mail (double attack & defense, pretty nice)

Can you give the attack/defense ratings of Ballista?

[Travis]

Ballistas are 4x as powerful as knights, but only usable for offense, they aren't used to help defend you castle at all.

And wow, I'll be heading after Chain Mail asap.

[BrianD]

For those that haven't thought of it yet, the trade technology gives you the ability to have a "bank". You generally sell items for less than you bought them, but if you find outself out of attack points with not enough money to buy the next tech, you can buy items and not just see all of your gold get stolen.

[Travis]

So this is our updated technology tree:

Farming - Crop Rotation - Horse Shoes - Saddles & Stirrups - Water Mill - ?
Trade - Writing - Chain Mail - ?
Watch Tower - Fence - Seige Defense - Theology - ?

? - Espionage - Ballista - ?
? - Mysticism - Diplomacy - ?

Also, the pay scale at 4,000 then jumps to 6,000 followed by 8,000 and 10,000. Not sure if it then jumps to 12,000 or to (as I'm guessing) 15,000.

[SunDevil]

No

Crop Rotation - Horse Shoes - Water Mill

Horse Shoes - Saddles Stiirrups

[BrianD]

If anyone cares about our current command structure, here is a list in current points order:

Fallen_Seeker
-------------
GuidoB
NavStar
Tokunaga
Bama_Deac
Marcy2
CaptainSlug
Solaar
MattWisbey
RendeR
Mervent

Tokunaga
---------
Hunter19
Night_Shadow
Shivastan
Tokey

CaptainSlug
-----------
slugpitcher
slugstrike

RendeR
-------
HirsheySquirt

KevinNU7
---------
Hekateros

[SunDevil]

I just thougt I would add that there are a lot of players that have quit or no longer play. After your first day and you get more support, trying going to page 800 in the attack screen. You will see a lot of 1700, 1800 gold players who have only like 6 units and 10 power. You can just clean these guys out for money. Also make sure that they do not have a commander. There are a lot of them that have no connections.

The only thing that I am worried about and do not have the experience is when a veteran takes notice of me, and blasts me back to the stone age. We will see.

I also wished the technology did not increase so fast in price. I wish it was leveled technology so the first three Techs would be level 1 and always 250 gold, level 2 would be 500 and so on, but oh well.

[Travis]

On a tech note, when you buy writing, it also opens up Water Clock which would give your workers an additional +1 food and +1 gold (to bump them up to 5 at that point).

[hukarez]

Good grief. Sounds like you guys are all well advanced in the game already. I've finally researched Mysticism, and would probably end up waiting half a week to get that damn chapel up and running.

I've just been sending out support points to various people in the Guild, using them all up and what not. It's going to take me awhile, I think. Haven't bothered hiring any more soldiers, even though I seem to be stockpiling quite a bit of food. Think I should train 3-4 more soldiers to accompany my lone 1 soldier?

[Travis]

Good grief. Sounds like you guys are all well advanced in the game already. I've finally researched Mysticism, and would probably end up waiting half a week to get that damn chapel up and running.

I've just been sending out support points to various people in the Guild, using them all up and what not. It's going to take me awhile, I think. Haven't bothered hiring any more soldiers, even though I seem to be stockpiling quite a bit of food. Think I should train 3-4 more soldiers to accompany my lone 1 soldier?

Yeah, I didn't realize early enough that it's smarter to stay in that 40-50 point range so that you can pretty much feed off the low end for a longer period of time. So now I'm trying to get as much researched as fast as possible so that I'm not a sitting duck for these guys with massive armies. There seem to be quite a few technologies that help out your defense, so I'm hoping that bails me out.

As far as your army goes, if you're not ever carrying a huge amount of gold, it doesn't hurt you to only have one soldier, but that will affect how good your attacks are. If you're making enough money, might not be a bad idea to just make soldiers for when you're attacking, then revert them back to workers while you're stockpiling some resources. Just be ready to lose some gold if people attack you as your defensive rating won't be overly high with just one soldier.

[daedalus]

Here are the choices as they came up to me as I made the upgrades:

Upgrade: Crop Rotation;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Trade;
Choices: Watchtower, Writing, Water mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Saddles and Stirrups;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Espionage

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Espionage

I owe HersheySquirt and naslund19 support points. They'll be on their way tomorrow. Sorry, I wasn't paying attention.

[KevinNU7]

I've taken the stradegy of large work forces for teh time being. I convert some for the attacks I do in the morning and then covert them back when I log out for teh day.

I now have over 4k in food, wow

Hopefully some crazy thing comes along that needs alot of food or I can get a technolgiy that allows me to sell them.

[hukarez]

Yeah, I didn't realize early enough that it's smarter to stay in that 40-50 point range so that you can pretty much feed off the low end for a longer period of time. So now I'm trying to get as much researched as fast as possible so that I'm not a sitting duck for these guys with massive armies. There seem to be quite a few technologies that help out your defense, so I'm hoping that bails me out.

As far as your army goes, if you're not ever carrying a huge amount of gold, it doesn't hurt you to only have one soldier, but that will affect how good your attacks are. If you're making enough money, might not be a bad idea to just make soldiers for when you're attacking, then revert them back to workers while you're stockpiling some resources. Just be ready to lose some gold if people attack you as your defensive rating won't be overly high with just one soldier.
Well, considering that I now need to stockpile 2k worth of gold for research, I think I might as well go ahead and grab a few soldiers worth. These soldiers don't subtract from your workers, correct? If that's the case, I think I can hire a few more soldiers I suppose...

All my stuff has been production related so far. Might pick up that Diplomacy thing to increase my support points to 6, though, I'm thinking of just saving to 7k to get that wooden chapel built up..

[BrianD]

Well, considering that I now need to stockpile 2k worth of gold for research, I think I might as well go ahead and grab a few soldiers worth. These soldiers don't subtract from your workers, correct? If that's the case, I think I can hire a few more soldiers I suppose...

All my stuff has been production related so far. Might pick up that Diplomacy thing to increase my support points to 6, though, I'm thinking of just saving to 7k to get that wooden chapel built up..

Creating soldiers converts them from workers to soldiers. When you are figuring the effects on your food production, remember to subtract the production of the worker you are losing as well as the consumption of the soldier. I screwed that up the first time I did a major military build.

The only way to save up 7k for a chapel is to get yourself to 100 attack points and steal that much in one attack run, or to stick money into trade goods through the trade technology. Trade goods act like a bank.

[hukarez]

Creating soldiers converts them from workers to soldiers. When you are figuring the effects on your food production, remember to subtract the production of the worker you are losing as well as the consumption of the soldier. I screwed that up the first time I did a major military build.

The only way to save up 7k for a chapel is to get yourself to 100 attack points and steal that much in one attack run, or to stick money into trade goods through the trade technology. Trade goods act like a bank.
Ahh, good info. I didn't want to splurge on soldiers at the risk of the few workers that I've got, so I'll keep that in mind. As for trade goods...I probably should research Trade so I can actually stockpile without risk of getting raped with a vengeance.

EDIT: Ack! Got attacked by el_nene from the La-Plata guild. No soldiers lost, but he managed to rob me of 457 gold. Sonuva!

[Travis]

Looks like the tech tree isn't necessarily based on a set order of buying one tech to get to another, or that some techs aren't unlocked until you buy 2 or more required techs, as it seems we're coming across technologies in different orders.

[KevinNU7]

Correct, I haven't gotten to those techs yet. I just pruchased the ability to build fenches, which I think is interesting.

[Travis]

Fences are great, until last night I hadn't been successfully attacked after I had built my fences (and had faced guys that had 83 units and over 400 points). Then I lost 2 knights in a battle early this AM, so I want Chain Mail now to double up my D (and so I can strike back).

[SunDevil]

Travis,

How are you affording all these techs? I will not be able to buy another tech (right now at 2,000 gold) for a while. Between people attacking me if I get close to 1300, do you just save up attack points? And I currently do not have knights, fences or chain mail for techs. Thanks for any tips.

[BrianD]

Ahh, good info. I didn't want to splurge on soldiers at the risk of the few workers that I've got, so I'll keep that in mind. As for trade goods...I probably should research Trade so I can actually stockpile without risk of getting raped with a vengeance.

EDIT: Ack! Got attacked by el_nene from the La-Plata guild. No soldiers lost, but he managed to rob me of 457 gold. Sonuva!

I didn't research Trade until just recently. I think that should probably be recommemded as an early tech to research. The cheapest goods can be bought for around 2.5k, so I would suggest researching Trade before the cost of the technology goes above 2.5k.

[hukarez]

I didn't research Trade until just recently. I think that should probably be recommemded as an early tech to research. The cheapest goods can be bought for around 2.5k, so I would suggest researching Trade before the cost of the technology goes above 2.5k. I guess I'm a bit too late in that aspect. Up to 3k for each upgrade right now -- decided to grab the Watchtower to help defend my village from being plundered, which worked for the first 2 attacks that happened to me. Of course, I think I lost 2 soldiers, however. At least, no gold taken since then.

EDIT: Right now, I have 3 technologies I can research: Trade, Saddle and Stirrupts, and Diplomacy all at 3K a piece. I was thinking of Diplomacy, so I can send off more support points to folks (need to remember to send marcy2 a support point when it resets for me), but if Trade's pretty important, I might just go for that instead...

[KevinNU7]

Travis,

How are you affording all these techs? I will not be able to buy another tech (right now at 2,000 gold) for a while. Between people attacking me if I get close to 1300, do you just save up attack points? And I currently do not have knights, fences or chain mail for techs. Thanks for any tips.Here's what I do. I login in the morning and use all my accrued attack points to raise enough money to buy a technology. Then I do not attack again until the next day, when I have accrued another 48 or so attacks. I repeat this process for a few days. Fortunetly I was getting to the point where with 8 turns I could steal about $1k in gold each time so now I can typically get 2 technologies a day. Now the price for me is up to $8k a technology so I am back to 1 a day.

I bought the trade tech when it first came up but I have yet to use it. I'm sure without it I would not be getting some other stuff so I am not too concerned.

Here is my Tech Tree right now:

What I have, in the order it was purchased
Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watchtower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Chain Mail
Saddle and Stirrups
Fence

Technoligies currently waiting to be bought
Water Mill
Espionage
Siege Defense Strategy

I'm not all that excited about my 3 technologies right now. I think I am leaning towards the Water Mill, but as I have discussed in this thread before I do not have a production issue right now with food so this will provide little benefit. I have a feeling adding the Water Mill will however unlock something much cooler.

[KevinNU7]

Mysticism What's Mysticism?

[Travis]

The best investments to make (imho) is trade and espionage.

Use espionage to attack people that only have 0 or 1 army unit protecting their gold, and (especially with 0) you'll either get 1/3 of their gold, or nearly all of it by using 1 attack turn. Basically I save up enough turns so that if I average 500 gold per attack turn, I can afford what I want with 5 turns left over (in case of a string of bad luck).

So worst case situation is that you steal 2,500 gold or so at a time and buy a cloth units, wait and do that again until you have enough to buy your tech (I'm up to 16,000 for my next tech now).

Once your worker size is up higher, then you'll wait to have all of those upgrades as well (I'm at +4, just got an available tech that would make it +5). After that I'd look at watchtower/fences/knights (not sure how effective the attacking is with just soldiers, I had knights by the time I started doing that). As long as you don't have over 80 points, not many people will be attacking you to up their military experience, and if you keep under 800 gold on hand, you won't get attacked for that either, so you should fly under the radar.

Oh, best thing I've found for attacking is to use Firefox, click each person I want to attack into a new tab, then just attack them all within a span of 30 seconds or so instead of attacking one guy, then looking for a new target, attacking, searching, attacking, etc. This way you make your money fast, know what you're spending it on, and have a surplus of gold in your hands for a very minimal amount of time.

Hope that helps a bit.

[Travis]

Mysticism allows you to have a birth rate (1 worker per day in addition to your log in worker and any workers that you get through support points).

As far as what you might unlock Kevin, if it's close to what I've figured out, looks like you could get Ballista (Espionage), Water Clock and/or Mysticism (Water Mill) or Theology (Seige Defense).

My suggestion would be to get Espionage as it's a great help in deciding who to attack, and is probably the most useful for where you're at, and your options the other way lean more towards birth rate techs (Mysticism and Theology) though Seige Defense is nice because you can manually decide whether or not to defend your gold after an attacker kills one of your troops (instead of them automatically not defending for an hour against that attacker after he makes a kill).

[Whar]

If you are looking to preserve units you can also reduce your defenders to one unit. The game will not allow your last defender to be eliminated. While it can cost money to start your campaigns it can be useful if you keep lossing a guy or two a day to the higher level enemies.

[KevinNU7]

IMO Seige Defense is a bit of a waste. If I have success against someone I will typically attack them right away. Seige Defense only lowers the threshold to 15 minutes which doesn't seem low enough.

Thanks for the insight on what I might get. Want to tell me what Water Clock and Theology are? :)

I really want Mysticism so I will probably buy the Water Mill next

[Travis]

Water Clock is another worker bonus, and Theology is another birthrate increasing tech (though it costs $35,000 to build the actual place, and is an upgrade to the Mysticism building).

As for the seige defense, you can set it so that you have no break, just uncheck both boxes, and your defenders will always defend your gold.

[KevinNU7]

That makes the Seige Defense more desirable, thanks!

[Blade]

Hey guys,

I haven't posted in this thread yet, though I have been playing for a while. I just want to echo Travis' statement about Trade and Espionage. Being able to find people with 0 defenders is a godsend...just use 1 turn attacks, and when you get enough gold, put it into trade so you can protect your money. This is key when your technologies become very expensive...

[hukarez]

I've never noticed this before, but at the top of my screen it'll say: "Next Human Validation: X minutes". What exactly is that? I swear today's the first time I've ever seen such a thing. http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/confused.gif

[Travis]

That's as long as you can be in the game without having to log in again. Just noticed that tonight myself.

[hukarez]

Ahh, sweet.

Apparently, I'm going to have a rough time getting gold to invest in Trading -- some guy from another guild just swiped 1500 from me the other night. Ugh. This is going to take some time -- or I'm going to have to start succeeding even more so than the pitiful 150-300 gains I get from picking on fresh meat.

[BrianD]

Anybody have any thoughts about the strategy of hoarding money and hoping to be attacked? Early in the game I had a number of people attack me and I got experience for killing their soldiers. I don't think I've yet lost any soldiers to attack. Is this a decent way to raise experience, or would I eventually lose more than I'd gain?

[Marc Vaughan]

What I'm doing is simply archiving attack turns until I've enough to ensure that I can purchase some trading stuff, then I go mad attacking indisciminately (normally 1-2 turn attacks against anyone with 1 or less army and 1k+ gold) ...

Once I'm worries I won't get enough Gold from attacking to archive off on trading I stop my attacks and sit back and wait for more attack rounds to build up.

[Marc Vaughan]

Anybody have any thoughts about the strategy of hoarding money and hoping to be attacked? Early in the game I had a number of people attack me and I got experience for killing their soldiers. I don't think I've yet lost any soldiers to attack. Is this a decent way to raise experience, or would I eventually lose more than I'd gain?
Sounds a reasonable premise - however at the moment I'm avoiding this simply because I want to get as high in the tech tree as possible as quickly as possible and that means gaining gold from attacks (for which you need soldiers).

[BrianD]

Sounds a reasonable premise - however at the moment I'm avoiding this simply because I want to get as high in the tech tree as possible as quickly as possible and that means gaining gold from attacks (for which you need soldiers).

I was going to follow the same tech-grab plan, but I now need $6000 to research espionage. Since I always have to attack with 8 turns, it will take a little bit to save up that much money.

[Whar]

"The not so ethical way to get Espionage"

The states you can have up to 2 extra accounts. (See their FAQ). Using a hotmail account set up a new player. Using the 80 attacks you get to start go get espoinage very early. Then using two windows you can check the troop levels with your second account and attack with your first.

[BrianD]

"The not so ethical way to get Espionage"

The states you can have up to 2 extra accounts. (See their FAQ). Using a hotmail account set up a new player. Using the 80 attacks you get to start go get espoinage very early. Then using two windows you can check the troop levels with your second account and attack with your first.

That is crazy. You are right about getting up to 3 accounts, and that really surprises me. Why doesn't everybody create a total of 3 accounts and just feed Support Points to their main account? I think I may have to do this.

I just got hit twice since I am holding a little bit too much money. I took out 2 attacking units, and gained 4 experience points. :)

[KevinNU7]

That is crazy. You are right about getting up to 3 accounts, and that really surprises me. Why doesn't everybody create a total of 3 accounts and just feed Support Points to their main account? I think I may have to do this.
I think most people do. I'm going to avoid it for now but I was tempted for sure.

[BrianD]

I think most people do. I'm going to avoid it for now but I was tempted for sure.

Lost to temptation, eh? :)

[KevinNU7]

Yep, after that post I realized I could form a pretty good system.

[SunDevil]

Yea, I got a little to greedy and was actually feeding four accounts support points into my main. I read the FAQ yesterday and saw that Human Checking message and decided that I should delete all my accounts and start over, which I did. I know have a total of 3 accounts which is allowed.

Besides now I know what techs to get first. :)

[Travis]

On the idea of letting people to attack you to get experience. You only get military experience for killing units (whether attacking or defending) against people that have the same or higher point level than yourself. The game is geared to give the defender an advantage (as your defensive values are higher for each unit than their offensive power). That said, your points equal your technologies researched multiplied by your military experience, so you have to decide whether you want to stay lower in points to give yourself easier victims for your gold attacks, or to rise faster (through military experience) and have a harder time attacking for gold, while then being targetted by stronger enemies (same point level, but larger army size).

If I could start over (considering doing this with one of my backup accounts), you are not allowed to be attacked unit you have attacked somebody else. So if you are really patient and have all workers (aside from one soldier), you could just leave that account go, buy the farming technologies as you come across them, and just build gold up that can't be stolen until you finally initiate an attack. I don't know if there is a time frame limit on this, but I tried attacking people that had 80 or so points and couldn't because of this loophole. I should have written down their names so I could keep tabs on them, but didn't think of it at the time.

Another idea or two to ponder anyways.

[Blade]

That's as long as you can be in the game without having to log in again. Just noticed that tonight myself.

Before you log into the game, you can click on the News menu item and see what upgrades have been made to the game...that was just implemented yesterday...

[KevinNU7]

If I could start over (considering doing this with one of my backup accounts), you are not allowed to be attacked unit you have attacked somebody else. So if you are really patient and have all workers (aside from one soldier), you could just leave that account go, buy the farming technologies as you come across them, and just build gold up that can't be stolen until you finally initiate an attack. I don't know if there is a time frame limit on this, but I tried attacking people that had 80 or so points and couldn't because of this loophole. I should have written down their names so I could keep tabs on them, but didn't think of it at the time.
I'm trying this with my two other accounts, I'll let you know if some sort of grace period ends and they get attacked eventually.

[Whar]

I assume there must be a grace period since how did the first guy attack anyone? I imagine you can be attacked following the first tech purchase or a period of time elapses.

[KevinNU7]

FYI - in my other two accounts I decided to pick all the worker production increases first. I now have 4 of the 5 and now Mysticism has come up! Can get the technology for only $1k, not bad.

[Travis]

Congrats guys, we just cracked the top 100 guilds in the game (currently at #97). A few of us are starting to get close to cracking the top 1,000 in individual rankings too, keep it up!

[hukarez]

Woohoo! Being part of a Guild cracking the Top 100.

Too bad I can't save up funds to buy 'Trades' since I keep getting pillaged! Even with 10 soldiers on defense. Bastards! http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif

Still, I'll send out support points to help y'all out. I figure I'll stockpile what I can, and try to save up more Attack Turns. Hopefully...*hopefully* I'll be able to succeed in attacks later on with 10 spear wielding dudes.

[KevinNU7]

Woohoo! Being part of a Guild cracking the Top 100.

Too bad I can't save up funds to buy 'Trades' since I keep getting pillaged! Even with 10 soldiers on defense. Bastards! http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif

Still, I'll send out support points to help y'all out. I figure I'll stockpile what I can, and try to save up more Attack Turns. Hopefully...*hopefully* I'll be able to succeed in attacks later on with 10 spear wielding dudes.
I can't emphasise this enough. You need to let your attac turns build up so that you can get all the needed funds for a Tech purchase in a matter of minutes.

If you collect $2k and then need to wait a couple of hours to collect some more money to by a Tech that money will get taken away.

[hukarez]

I can't emphasise this enough. You need to let your attac turns build up so that you can get all the needed funds for a Tech purchase in a matter of minutes.

If you collect $2k and then need to wait a couple of hours to collect some more money to by a Tech that money will get taken away.
I don't think I've even gotten to $2k by workers. Heck, the moment I break into the $900 range, I get attacked by it. Of course, nothing I can do while I sleep.

My attack turns were initially 120ish or so, which I used on the lesser folks to build up some funds. Unfortunately, I had a bad run at attacks with some folks with lesser units, and ended up getting nothing. http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif I did lose 2 soldiers, however.

I think I need some more workers to convert to soldiers in time. I figure, a bum rush would help me out, and I'll use one of the tactics listed earlier in the page to do so. What's your average attack power, if you don't mind me asking?

[Blade]

I don't think I've even gotten to $2k by workers. Heck, the moment I break into the $900 range, I get attacked by it. Of course, nothing I can do while I sleep.

My attack turns were initially 120ish or so, which I used on the lesser folks to build up some funds. Unfortunately, I had a bad run at attacks with some folks with lesser units, and ended up getting nothing. http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/mad.gif I did lose 2 soldiers, however.

I think I need some more workers to convert to soldiers in time. I figure, a bum rush would help me out, and I'll use one of the tactics listed earlier in the page to do so. What's your average attack power, if you don't mind me asking?

Trade is huge...if you can save up enough turns to attack outright and get trade, you can then stockpile your money in goods that are protected from any attacks...

[KevinNU7]

I don't think I've even gotten to $2k by workers. Heck, the moment I break into the $900 range, I get attacked by it. Of course, nothing I can do while I sleep.
reread what I wrote. I am not telling you to use farmers to get $2k. I am telling you to save up your attack turns until you have enough to attack over and over again to get to $2k. If you only have $2k in the bank for a minute chances are you won't get attack. Get it?

What is your team name?

[hukarez]

reread what I wrote. I am not telling you to use farmers to get $2k. I am telling you to save up your attack turns until you have enough to attack over and over again to get to $2k. If you only have $2k in the bank for a minute chances are you won't get attack. Get it?

What is your team name? I see what you're saying, and I've been stockpiling my attack turns (up to 50 something, I think). That's exactly what I've been trying to do (attempted to do so my first run around by picking on people on page 800 or so), but my attacks weren't exactly successful. Usually I ended up getting 0 gold, out of a possible 300-500 or so from a lesser point player, and/or losing a soldier in the process.

I know I need 3k to get Trades to act as my bank, which I've been trying to do this far, though having already used my 120 or so attack turns down to 0, I figure I'd save my attack turns to get to that stage where I can unleash 8 turn attacks or so.

I know I won't be able to stockpile $2k by workers alone, due to folks robbing me -- that's not a problem. My question is, the attack power of your forces for successful attacks. What attack power is a good number to get a viable success here and there? I'd rather not stockpile 100+ attack turns, only to find out some of my 8 turn attacks will fail, and could possibly result in the loss of some soldiers -- probably more so to just luck or what not, and I'd like to get a reasonable number down before I re-attempt to do so.

Right now, I have 10 soldiers on hand, and 4 workers. Presently, I think I'm around $900 on hand, but of course, I can't do anything with it since I don't have trades yet. I managed to defend successfully on occasion, and on others, lost some gold and a couple of soldiers. Naturally, this'll keep on happening until I get Trades, and like you said and have mentioned before, the only way I can really reach my goal is by a non-stop attack.

So again, what's the average attack power that you guys have when conducting raids on other folks? Is there a certain number of soldiers you'd suggest? I spent all day on Monday going through 120 attack turns attacking people I see over $1000 worth on hand. Granted, they were of lesser points (I'm sure I'll get more money's worth if I go for someone in my point area), but I had figured it'd still be some kind of moderate success. Sadly, it wasn't the case, and I think out of 80 of those turns, I had failed miserably.

I figure, if I couldn't do it to lesser folks, then I probably wouldn't stand a chance attacking other folks of supposedly equal power. I had went for folks with 6 units or so (what I can tell from the list) -- just failing in my attacks is a bit disconcerting for me.

Oh, and I'm on the Colossal Might team, under RendeR.

EDIT: Presently, I have 4 workers, 10 soldiers. Would 10 soldiers be a reasonable number for me to attack other folks with? Or should I convert the remaining 4 into soldiers as well, and launch my attacks this way? I'm not planning on attacking yet -- not until I crack into the 100s on attack turns, but I figure accumulating workers or something for soldiers would undoubtedly increase my chances of success. Oh! I'm at 81 attack turns right now too. Not too far away from 100!

[Blade]

I would say that 10 soldiers is not a bad number to attack with...the key is finding people who do not have a lot of units and looking for some luck. If you are only concerned about money, I would only attack using 1 turn, as you should only use more turns if you are looking for kills. I would agree that a good strategy is to use Firefox if you have it, open up your targets on seperate tabs, and attack them all in a short span, so you can spend your money quickly and make yourself less of a target while you are stockpiling...

[Whar]

The 1 shot attacks are wonderful once you have espionage, however prior to that they can be extremely hit or miss. Hopefully your victory point score is not terribly high yet. If it is not scan the 10 pointers for those with 6 units. That generally means a person that logged in once but never again. These people usually have a 1 soldier 5 worker setup. Your 10 warriors will easily overwhlem them.

Generally you should recieve about 300 gold for an 8 turn attack on a 10 pointer with ~1300 gold. I would get espoinage before trade if you can. Once you have that tech it is easy to scan the lists for people with 0 soldiers. Generally in such a situation you get 1/2 to all the gold that person possess's for a single attack turn. Often I get 400+ gold per (1) attack. At that point trade becomes required since after 10 to 12 attacks you have 3K in gold.

I do not believe there is any difference from 8 1 shot attacks or 1 8 turn attack except how often you click the attack button. Therefore I would stick to multi-turn attacks until espoinage.

[hukarez]

Hmm. Good info, thanks everybody.

Right now, I've only 3 techs I can research from with Saddle & Stirrups, Trades, and Diplomacy. I'll keep that in mind in terms of the # of attacks, and the # of soldiers that I have. My power score right now is 60 (in all honesty, not sure how it got to be as such), and I've been rather unlucky in expending my attacks.

I wish I could tell out of how many units are soldiers on a potential enemy; unfortunate I didn't get espionage at the stage I'm in already. For the most part, I pretty much look for single digit people with over $1k on hand. Sadly, I lost about 3 soldiers about an hour ago on failed attack attempts. I think I'll re-stock my attack turns, and try a different approach when I'm ready.

[BrianD]

How does espionage and attacking turns work? I tried doing some 1 turn attacks on guys with 2 military units using my 13 knights. Every time I ended up getting zero gold. Is there a rule of thumb for using different numbers of attack turns?

[BrianD]

One other note for those looking at using espionage to identify zero unit defenders...watch up for people with zero defenders but a whole bunch of units. If they have zero defenders and over 50 units, they have probably been playing long enough to have defensive technology we haven't seen yet. I tried this a few times and lost a number of units each time.

[Travis]

So far if I attack people with 0 army units, I can get away with attacking with 1 turn, and usually get either nearly all their gold, or about 1/3.

If I'm attacking people with 1 or 2 defenders, I bump my attack turns up to 3 and usually get a pretty good haul. I tend to shy away from attacking people with more than 2 units defending as you really start running a good chance of getting nothing or some of your own guys killed. There are enough people out there with 2 or less army units though and 800+ gold that you can use your turns up with ease.

[BrianD]

Good advice, thank you.

[KevinNU7]

BrianD, for people at or level I tend to go to page 350 and then make my way down looking for targets. You don't want to go to low or else the game will restrict how much money you can take from someone because you are much bigger then them

[BrianD]

You would go as low as page 350? People there have 60 point compared to my 216. I thought anything less than half gave the penalty.

[KevinNU7]

Yes, but in some instances the penalty isn't that bad. I've attack guys with 2 soliders and $2k in gold and the penalty says the max I could steal in one attack is $800 gold.

That's fine by me :)

[BrianD]

800 is always worthwhile. :)

I guess I just haven't found too many of that kind yet.

[BrianD]

This is kind of fun, I just used 30 attack points to game about 15,000 gold. All of this was from guys my own size but zero units. Espionage is a must-have.

[hukarez]

This is kind of fun, I just used 30 attack points to game about 15,000 gold. All of this was from guys my own size but zero units. Espionage is a must-have.
Espionage. Well, I suppose I can only hope to get that after I manage to get Trades. Man, I wish I can stockpile attack turns at a higher rate.

[BrianD]

From earlier in the thread, I think Horseshoes -> Saddles and Stirrups -> Espionage is the way to go. I created a total of three accounts and had a hard time finding Espionage in any of them. As I believe Travis or Kevin suggested, get Espionage on one of the accounts and you can use that account to scout for the others.

Espionage really does give almost free money at 1 attack turn per shot.

[KevinNU7]

I can't wait to go nuts on my secondary accounts in a few days. Both are closing in on 200 attack turns.

FYI my secondary accounts got attacked last night after 48 hours, even though I never attacked anyone.

[daedalus]

Is 200 the maximum number of turns?

Updating Tech progression that I've seen:

Upgrade: Farming:
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Trade

Upgrade: Crop Rotation;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Trade;
Choices: Watchtower, Writing, Water mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Saddles and Stirrups;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Espionage

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Espionage

Upgrade: Espionage;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Ballistas

-----

Upgrade: Farming;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Trade

Upgrade: Trade;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Writing

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower

Upgrade: Watchtower;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Chain Mail

Upgrade: Chain Mail
Choices: Crop Rotation

Upgrade: Crop Rotation
Choices: Horse Shoes

-----

Upgrade: Farming;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Trade

Upgrade: Trade;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Writing

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower

-----

Upgrade: Farming;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watch Tower, Trade

Upgrade: Crop Rotation
Choices: Trade, Watch Tower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Mysticism

Upgrade: Mysticism;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Diplomacy

[tucker342]

Just signed up.


I sent support points to KevinNU7, RendeR and Travis:)

[Travis]

200 is the max number of turns you can save up at any given time.

Anybody know what happened to RendeR? Did he get nailed by somebody or delete his account?

[hukarez]

200 is the max number of turns you can save up at any given time.

Anybody know what happened to RendeR? Did he get nailed by somebody or delete his account?
Been wondering about that myself. I've been sending him support points and what not.

[Travis]

Oh, and a minor tech tree update. I unlocked catapaults (haven't bought the actual technology yet), and they are the same as ballista in the sense that you can only use them to attack, they have no defensive value (though their offensive strength is 4 times that of ballista, while ballistas seem to have the same offensive value as a knights defense). So attacking with ballista's is definitely the way to go, as that x4 value would offset them having walls and the watch tower (both doubling their D), then it would just come down to who has more units, and whether or not you attack the general's side.

I think (re: have read on the x-kings board) that there may be a later upgrade to knights that may increase their values (something akin to making them honorable knights). Anybody else read/heard anything like that? The tech tree is pretty taboo on that board, so it's hard to tell for sure what is being referenced all the time.

[SplitPersonality1]

Haven't heard about the upgrade to knights, but I just purchased Intelligence today which allows for spying on the enemy. For 100 gold you find out thing like where the opponents general is located, what type of units the opponent has etc.. Pretty nifty tech.

[daedalus]

From what I saw on their message board, intelligence is suppose to be fairly random with regards to effectiveness. For what that's worth.

[SunDevil]

Is anyone able to gain kills when attacking with knights? I know that no one can lose their last defender, so I have been attacking some people with 12 knights (chainmail) against their 2 or 3 soliders and have not had any kills yet. I also have been setting the attack toward 8 turns and still no luck. Do I need to attack with ballistas in order to get some kills? Thanks

[Travis]

I've only killed 1 knight while attacking (just did it actually), and I had 4 ballistas in the mix, first time with that account that I've attacked with ballistas. It was a 4 turn attack, but my army (42 knights, 4 ballistas) really outnumbered my opponent (8 knights defending).

That said, of all the attacks I've done, I've outpowered guys by that much numerous times and not gotten kills, so I think it may have been the ballista's this time through.

[BrianD]

I have killed a few guys with just knights. I did this before I had espionage, so I really don't know what the circumstances were. I also lost a few units while trying to get some kills.

Interesting note, I was gone the last day and a half for Easter, and came back to find myself jumped from 19 experience points all the way up to 45. Apparently lots of people tried to steal my gold and failed. If you have a decent defense, just hold on to a bunch of gold and watch the experience jump.

[Travis]

I have killed a few guys with just knights. I did this before I had espionage, so I really don't know what the circumstances were. I also lost a few units while trying to get some kills.

Interesting note, I was gone the last day and a half for Easter, and came back to find myself jumped from 19 experience points all the way up to 45. Apparently lots of people tried to steal my gold and failed. If you have a decent defense, just hold on to a bunch of gold and watch the experience jump.

Heh, careful what you wish for. I did this for a while, and went from 10 to 40 in the span of two days, then tried it again and lost 8 knights in 4 attacks (lost 2 knights each attack), while not getting any kills in return, so just a straight up loss of 8 knights and in total around 3,000 gold. It's a risky way to go, and can be great or really crappy.

[BrianD]

It is risky as I have also lost a couple of knights. It was a decent surprise considering I hadn't planned on using this strategy.

[KevinNU7]

Man I was gone for teh long weekend and lost 4 knights in the process. My main account actually did pretty well defending the gold while I was gone. They stopped 10 straight attacks before a big dog came in and stole $10k in gold. Nice work

Uprade 4 technoligies in the last 10 hours with all the turns I had accrued.

My secondary accounts took a big hit and I may scrap them all together as they are not producing much.

Question Anyone know what you need to get the second type of Birth Rate stuff, the first one is called mysticism, I already have that one.

[Travis]

I think you need to get seige defense strategy (that's the one that unlocked it for me). Not sure what all else it depends on.

That said, it costs in the neigborhood of 35,000 gold to build the structure after the tech purchase. I'm going to have to save a while for that one.

[KevinNU7]

Travis, what are you workers at? Mine at +6, with the option for +7

[Travis]

on my main account right now, I'm still at +4 while my other 2 accounts are at +5.

Been holding off on upping that as I'm getting attacked 8-10 times a night because of the gold my workers make while I'm sleeping. That and I really want catapaults ;)

Anybody found a 3rd level of birthrate or a level above Espionage/Intelligence?

[tucker342]

Gave a support point to nevstar, splitpersonality and to Travis

[Travis]

Ohhhhhhhh, advanced espionage looks cool. Which is good, as it's starting to get really hard to attack people for gold.

(For those curious, advanced espionage is as follows: This technology allows you to view the castle and wall that each of the other players have. With this technology, whenever you select a player, you can see icons showing the castle and wall that they have; it can be very useful to decide which players to attack. A wall icon is only shown when the player has completed that type of wall on all sides.)

I think I'll be taking that next. Now just to save up enough gold.

[Blade]

Is anyone able to gain kills when attacking with knights? I know that no one can lose their last defender, so I have been attacking some people with 12 knights (chainmail) against their 2 or 3 soliders and have not had any kills yet. I also have been setting the attack toward 8 turns and still no luck. Do I need to attack with ballistas in order to get some kills? Thanks

I read on the X-Kings board that if someone defends with only 2 units, they cannot lose anyone...it is based on the formula that they are using for determining kills...you should have a chance to get a kill against 3 soldiers, but it may not be likely.

[RendeR]

Sorry fellas, I was getting completely mauled, dunno if it was bad tech choices or just bad luck but I killed off my account. Just wasn't that entertaining.

[Whar]

I run Okie99 as one of my secondary accounts. Other than feeding a couple of support points to my main account Whar I use Okie99 to buy other techs that Whar passed on. Today I logged in Okie99 to do my support points and clear my gold account.

As I log in I notice I have new history so I click on it to see how much gold I have lost over the night. Stormwind nab 869 about 4 hours ago ... KrushaK nab 126 3 minutes ago. Hmmm 3 minutes maybe he is still gathering gold. I click on Krushak name to bring up the attack page. Krushak is sitting on 17,345 gold. A great huzzah arose from Okie99 knights as I commited them to close action. After 4 turns of battle 6,393 gold lay within my coffers and Krushak coffers were empty.

I quickly purchased 2 bolts of cloth as Krushak counter attack taking 764 gold. An uneasy stalemate now ensued. I had ~800 gold and Krushak ~2000. If I attacked I would not gather enough gold to buy a resource and any gain would be taken by Krushak. I quickly search the player list and found a 1000+ player with 2 army defenders. Attacking I gathered 537 gold. I quickly launched at Krushak and won 1,673 of his remaining gold. A quick purchase from the screen left me with a few hundred gold as Krushak launched his attack. Krushak recovered 136 gold. He then launched 2 more attacks, I assume to try and kill some of my troops, gaining 45 and 25 gold respectively.

In all I spent 8 attack turns gaining 8,606 gold. Krushak spent 10 attack turns winning 1,123. Okie the Great rides on! :)

[Travis]

That's awesome! I had a similar type of thing yesterday, but used up more turns and time to get just over 6,000 gold, but it was pretty satisfying.

Though now that I have a decent number of catapaults, let me know if you guys need anyone put in line. I should have decent power to deal with guys at 400 points or less now. Unless they have a triple digit army count, then I'll need a few more days to get prepared ;)

[Blade]

Though now that I have a decent number of catapaults, let me know if you guys need anyone put in line. I should have decent power to deal with guys at 400 points or less now. Unless they have a triple digit army count, then I'll need a few more days to get prepared ;)

If you want someone to target, feel free to take on Angelmom who killed three of my knights while I was sleeping!

:mad:

[BrianD]

I run Okie99 as one of my secondary accounts. Other than feeding a couple of support points to my main account Whar I use Okie99 to buy other techs that Whar passed on. Today I logged in Okie99 to do my support points and clear my gold account.

As I log in I notice I have new history so I click on it to see how much gold I have lost over the night. Stormwind nab 869 about 4 hours ago ... KrushaK nab 126 3 minutes ago. Hmmm 3 minutes maybe he is still gathering gold. I click on Krushak name to bring up the attack page. Krushak is sitting on 17,345 gold. A great huzzah arose from Okie99 knights as I commited them to close action. After 4 turns of battle 6,393 gold lay within my coffers and Krushak coffers were empty.

I quickly purchased 2 bolts of cloth as Krushak counter attack taking 764 gold. An uneasy stalemate now ensued. I had ~800 gold and Krushak ~2000. If I attacked I would not gather enough gold to buy a resource and any gain would be taken by Krushak. I quickly search the player list and found a 1000+ player with 2 army defenders. Attacking I gathered 537 gold. I quickly launched at Krushak and won 1,673 of his remaining gold. A quick purchase from the screen left me with a few hundred gold as Krushak launched his attack. Krushak recovered 136 gold. He then launched 2 more attacks, I assume to try and kill some of my troops, gaining 45 and 25 gold respectively.

In all I spent 8 attack turns gaining 8,606 gold. Krushak spent 10 attack turns winning 1,123. Okie the Great rides on! :)


I don't exactly remember the rules, bout couldn't you have given the guy a support point and then not worried about the counter attacks? I seem to remember that you can't attack a guy that gave you a support point, but you can attack a guy that you have given a support point to. Couldn't you use this to make sure you can't lose your gold to a guy you just stole big from?

[KevinNU7]

Damn! I jsut clicked on the wrong Tech and spent $28k to have 6 supporter points given out in a day. Ugh

[Whar]

Poor Okie had already passed his support to my other officers and guildmates early in the day but I think you are right support gets you protection for a day.

[Blade]

Poor Okie had already passed his support to my other officers and guildmates early in the day but I think you are right support gets you protection for a day.

Yep, if you give a support point, it protects you from that guy until the end of the game day...

[KevinNU7]

Just a little Tech update for anyone lower then me

Technologies you can research

Wind Mill
Increases production by 1 per worker

Theology
Allows building a stone chapel

Plate Mail
Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 50%

Intelligence
Allows you to run intelligence operations

Tower
Allows building a tower

Navigation
Allows you to trade wool and oil

Commune
Allows you to change your commander every week

Known Technologies
Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watchtower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddle and Stirrups
Water Clock
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Mechanical Clock
Diplomacy
Ancient Writing
Ballista
Siege Defense Strategy

I think I'm going with Plate Mail next. Hopefully that releases some other great attack option. If not I will then be going after Tower, which should push my defense ratings close to 100k. That will probably unlocked a new wall upgrade to replace the wooden ones I have now.

I'm decided against Mysticism for the time being. Buying the Tech plus $37k for the buidling doesn't seem to be worth the 1 extra worker per day.

[BrianD]

How is everyone handling their gold now? I'm getting over 60 gold each half-hour, so I'm getting hit often. I've got the siege defense turned on so I don't lose any units, but it seems like an awful waste of money to just keep handing it out to attackers. Is anybody doing anything different?

[KevinNU7]

<TABLE class=b cellSpacing=1><TBODY><TR><TD class=b1>Your attacks</TD></TR><TR><TD class=b><TABLE class=p cellSpacing=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=p1>Date</TD><TD class=p1>Name</TD><TD class=p1>Turns</TD><TD class=p1>Side</TD><TD class=p1>Gold</TD><TD class=p1>Lost</TD><TD class=p1>Killed</TD><TD class=p1>Exp</TD></TR><TR><TD class=pl>1 minute ago (http://www.x-kings.com/game/view_battle.php?id=3156374)</TD><TD class=pl>Mirakulix (http://www.x-kings.com/game/player.php?id=19548)</TD><TD class=pr>3</TD><TD class=pr>East</TD><TD class=pr>10,840</TD><TD class=pr>0</TD><TD class=pr>0</TD><TD class=pr>0</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

[KevinNU7]

How is everyone handling their gold now? I'm getting over 60 gold each half-hour, so I'm getting hit often. I've got the siege defense turned on so I don't lose any units, but it seems like an awful waste of money to just keep handing it out to attackers. Is anybody doing anything different?I get about $100 a turn. When my cash gets to $1k to $1.5k I attack to get to a trade and then trade it in. So every 5 or so hours I login to do this.

This usually causes my attack turns to build up. After a day or so I will go on an attacking binge.

[BrianD]

Nice hit.

I get about $100 a turn. When my cash gets to $1k to $1.5k I attack to get to a trade and then trade it in. So every 5 or so hours I login to do this.

This usually causes my attack turns to build up. After a day or so I will go on an attacking binge.

No way to handle this other than log in every 5 hours, or deal with losing the money? Bummer, though it isn't a big deal since I don't lose any units.

[KevinNU7]

Brian, if you don't set your defense to protect your gold is it safe to assume that you don't have any defensive units? If you do I'd consider them a big waste.

[BrianD]

Brian, if you don't set your defense to protect your gold is it safe to assume that you don't have any defensive units? If you do I'd consider them a big waste.

That is only safe to assume if you can also assume that I'm not an idiot. Unfortunately in this case, you shouldn't assume either. :)

I hadn't actually thought about the uselessness of defense if I am not defending the gold. I could make a claim that having the units might scare away attackers, but that may not be true. So now this makes me question whether it is better to defend the gold, get some kills and some losses, or don't defend the gold and keep only offensive units. Sadly, my main account doesn't have offense-only units yet.

[KevinNU7]

What?! You are ahead of my in points and you don't have Ballistas yet??? I have had them for almost a week now. I ahve a good mix, 30 Kinights and right now 24 Ballistas. Combine that with my walls and Plate Mail and I my attack is 30k and my defenses are 40k right now.

I've toyed with the idea of going with all Ballistas instead, but I like the fact that overnight my guys do a good job defending my gold. OVer the last 3 days I have lost 5 Knights but I have killed 8 and only lost $3k in gold.

[Travis]

I think as you get higher in points, the idea of protecting your gold gets more and more useless. Barring a few techs (which I would assume are out there, and I just haven't found them yet), offense will win the day. I've gone almost fully over to catapaults now and have an offensive power of over 250,000. Each catapault is worth 4 knights worth of defense (at your own military experience level), so to try to have 4 knights for every catapault attacking you gets ridiculous once you have 50 or so catapaults attacking you.

That said, I'm hoping there is an upgrade somewhere along the way that evens things out, but I got sick of losing units (which I consider much more valuable than gold), so losing 3,000 worth of gold overnight isn't too bothering as going completely offensive makes it easier to make that money back than to try to split your force up to be good offensively and defensively.

That said, I didn't start doing this until I got catapaults, and had my defense up to just over 100,000 and was still getting just taken overnight, usually losing over 1,000 gold and 2 or 4 knights by the time I logged on in the morning.

[KevinNU7]

Travis,

Can you tell me the pattern you took to get catapaults? I haven't unlocked that yet

[Travis]

Oye, figured somebody might ask that ;)

I'll have to check when I get home (work computers are slow for internet stuff). I'll put up a list of the techs I had bought before I got catapaults, won't know for sure what all were needed though. Can you put up what techs you have available right now and I'll let you know which one's I had before I got catapaults?

[KevinNU7]

Known Technologies
Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watchtower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddle and Stirrups
Water Clock
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Mechanical Clock
Diplomacy
Ancient Writing
Ballista
Siege Defense Strategy
Plate Mail

[BrianD]

What?! You are ahead of my in points and you don't have Ballistas yet??? I have had them for almost a week now. I ahve a good mix, 30 Kinights and right now 24 Ballistas. Combine that with my walls and Plate Mail and I my attack is 30k and my defenses are 40k right now.

I've toyed with the idea of going with all Ballistas instead, but I like the fact that overnight my guys do a good job defending my gold. OVer the last 3 days I have lost 5 Knights but I have killed 8 and only lost $3k in gold.

I have:
Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watchtower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddles and Stirrups
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Siege Defense Strategy

I didn't have a plan picking techs, I just went with what looked useful. My military experience is at 45, so that helps my points.

[BrianD]

I think as you get higher in points, the idea of protecting your gold gets more and more useless. Barring a few techs (which I would assume are out there, and I just haven't found them yet), offense will win the day. I've gone almost fully over to catapaults now and have an offensive power of over 250,000. Each catapault is worth 4 knights worth of defense (at your own military experience level), so to try to have 4 knights for every catapault attacking you gets ridiculous once you have 50 or so catapaults attacking you.

That said, I'm hoping there is an upgrade somewhere along the way that evens things out, but I got sick of losing units (which I consider much more valuable than gold), so losing 3,000 worth of gold overnight isn't too bothering as going completely offensive makes it easier to make that money back than to try to split your force up to be good offensively and defensively.

That said, I didn't start doing this until I got catapaults, and had my defense up to just over 100,000 and was still getting just taken overnight, usually losing over 1,000 gold and 2 or 4 knights by the time I logged on in the morning.


I have been noticing the same thing with my defense. Initially I was getting all kinds of kills and experience, but lately I am just losing gold and units. This is why I stopped protecting the gold, and I guess why I should drop my defensive units. I really need to research an offensive tech. Do we ever get a tech to convert food? I'm getting more food than I know what to do with.

[KevinNU7]

Man my ME is only 28, I guess I need to attack above me more

[Marc Vaughan]

That is only safe to assume if you can also assume that I'm not an idiot. Unfortunately in this case, you shouldn't assume either. :)

I hadn't actually thought about the uselessness of defense if I am not defending the gold. I could make a claim that having the units might scare away attackers, but that may not be true. So now this makes me question whether it is better to defend the gold, get some kills and some losses, or don't defend the gold and keep only offensive units. Sadly, my main account doesn't have offense-only units yet.

What I've been doing and it seems to work ok, is a couple of simple strategies:

(1) Never keep cash where the enemy can see it (ie. either hold as trade or drop down by buying things, fences, martial training etc.)

(2) Blacklist anyone who attacks me ...

If someone does it then whether he's successful or not he gets a minimum 1 turn attack when I log in next as a warning that he'll suffer reprisals from me.

One of the main reasons I do this is simply that I personally use my attack history and re-hit people who have been easy prey in the past, saves slogging through lists looking for victims, just use victims who've been conveniently placed in the past ;)

(also check anyone who attacks you recently or while you're logged in, I've made a killing hitting someone while they're raiding - if you're lucky you can pickup 2-3k in a couple of quick hits, definitely dissuades people from attacking you again :D).

[BrianD]

Man my ME is only 28, I guess I need to attack above me more

I did it all on defense. I left for a weekend with 19 ME and came back to see 45. I think you can get away with gaining ME when you are in the middle ranks, but not any higher up. Once you get higher, all attacks happen with about 100 units and they like to kill your knights. :(

[Blade]

I have taken the same approach as Travis...I have told my defenders to never defend my gold. It is a lot easier to get gold back than it is to get more units...

That said, I am still way below you top guys for points and techs...

[Travis]

Known Technologies
Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watchtower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddle and Stirrups
Water Clock
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Mechanical Clock
Diplomacy
Ancient Writing
Ballista
Siege Defense Strategy
Plate Mail

Wow, you're a good 3 or 4 techs ahead of me, I'll check and see where the differences are and let you know.

[Travis]

I have:

Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watch Tower
Horseshoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddles & Stirrups
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Ballista
Seige Defense Strategy
Intelligence
Catapault

So while you have Water Clock, Mechanical Clock, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing and Plate Mail I have Intelligence so that must be the kicker. That said, I'll be going after the two clocks so I can get Plate Mail I think now. That or advanced espionage to see what buildings other players have built.

[Marc Vaughan]

I've got:

Farming
Crop Rotation
Trade
Watch Tower
Horse Shoes
Writing
Water Mill
Chain Mail
Saddle and Stirrups
Mysticism
Espionage
Fence
Diplomacy
Ballista

(I'm at least a couple behind you ... hence my following question :D)

Is Intelligence any good, it sounds appealing to me - but I've a feeling I'd never use it in practice, other options I'm considering are Water Clock and Ancient Writing.

PS> I can't see the point currently for a tech which allows me to trade in 10k currency at a time, I'd never leave that much in view anyway ... anyone found a use for Navigation - or something in the tech tree which requires it?

[Travis]

I have navigation with one of my backup accounts, and if you use Firefox, it can come in handy.

I usually tab open as many people with 0 armies and 800+ gold as I can handle with 1 turn attacks. If I can have 20 or so turns saved up, then if I go quickly enough, I can save up enough to buy one of the higher trade items (and then not lose as much gold on the trade).

That said, ancient writing is a blessing and a curse, as you'll get more XP, but that sends you up the point scale faster, robbing you of the easier gold targets. Having better resource producers is always good, as you can support more armies with less workers, which seems to be a very good thing once you get up higher and need as strong of an army as possible to steal from people, as it seems like a lot of these guys don't fall victim to having a ton of workers and no army. If anything they have all offensive units, but that's hard to tell (with any of the techs I have now). Intelligence can give you results on that (telling you how many units of a type the enemy has), but it's a crapshoot at best really. The best part of intelligence is that it can tell you where the enemies general is, or the best direction possible to attack from.

I also think Intelligence is necessary to get advanced espionage (shows you what completed defensive buildings the enemy has, ie: fences, walls and so on, but only if they have been built on all sides if that is an option).

In your case, I'd go Water Clock, as I think that's the one that unlocks Plate Mail (+50% to your offense and defense).

[Marc Vaughan]

Thanks Travis - sounds like a sensible suggestion ... consider it taken :D

[KevinNU7]

So while you have Water Clock, Mechanical Clock, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing and Plate Mail I have Intelligence so that must be the kicker. That said, I'll be going after the two clocks so I can get Plate Mail I think now. That or advanced espionage to see what buildings other players have built.
I figured it out. What you call Catapults I call Ballistas :)

So I made the switch to compeltely offensive, we'll see how that goes

[Travis]

Are you sure? I have both Catapaults and Ballista's now.

Ballista's have the same offensive value as a Knight's defensive value while a Catapault is 4x as strong offensively as a Ballista.

[daedalus]

Just updating one of my tech tree. Interesting to see that Watchtower was one of the prerequisites for the Chain Mail branch.

Upgrade: Farming:
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watchtower, Trade

Upgrade: Crop Rotation;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Trade;
Choices: Watchtower, Writing, Water mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Saddles and Stirrups;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Espionage

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Espionage

Upgrade: Espionage;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Ballistas

Upgrade: Mysticism;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Diplomacy, Ballistas

Upgrade: Watchtower (8 000);
Choices: Chain Mail, Water Clock, Fence, Diplomacy, Ballistas

[daedalus]

Additional update of the Tech Tree.

Upgrade: Farming;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watch Tower, Trade

Upgrade: Crop Rotation
Choices: Trade, Watch Tower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Mysticism

Upgrade: Mysticism;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Diplomacy

Upgrade: Diplomacy (2 000);
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

Upgrade: Watchtower (3 000);
Choices: Trade, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

Upgrade: Trade (4 000);
Choices: Writing, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

[KevinNU7]

Anyone have an extra supporter point hanging around?

I'm sitting on 31 points and one more will get me another worker. I will send your account 3 points tomorrow (1 from each account).

[KevinNU7]

Are you sure? I have both Catapaults and Ballista's now.

Ballista's have the same offensive value as a Knight's defensive value while a Catapault is 4x as strong offensively as a Ballista.
You are right. Wish I had picked Intellgence sooner

[KevinNU7]

Anyone have an extra supporter point hanging around?

I'm sitting on 31 points and one more will get me another worker. I will send your account 3 points tomorrow (1 from each account).
I made it to 32 but it looks like I didn't have any new supporter points. I guess some of my officers got helped me out with half points. PM if you believe otherwise

[Marc Vaughan]

I'm trying a new approach with one of my 'sub-accounts' (haleyv2 - my sub accounts are named after my eldest kids if you wondered).

I'm sticking on a low rating score for a while stock-piling Gold, simply put at this level with 10 Knights I can pick up around 5-15k a day with my eyes closed because its easy to find prey and I'm too small to get capped during attacks.

Once I've stockpiled around 100,000 I'm planning to shoot up in size considerably all at once - I've got around 30,000 piled up so far in a few days raiding, can anyone see drawbacks to this approach?

(main reason I'm trying it is that my main account is finding it increasingly hard to find easy prey without being capped the further up the rankings I go ... oh and does anyone have any suggestions for how to actually kill opposition troops? - I attack a huge amount but only kill around one enemy trooper every other week)

[KevinNU7]

Marc, I have the same system going for my subaccounts. I think I'm going to wait well past $100k though. I think when the game restarts I will keep this process in place for all my accounts.

Question: Does anyone know how officers work for the restart?

[Travis]

I'm not sure how the officer tree works on the restart, but I was having thoughts about trying the same strategy as you guys a while back, only to have it nixed because I got attacked and ended up killing attackers (raised military experience skyrocketed my points).

That said, with a *huge* army, I think you guys have the right idea. That said, if you're going with a normal to small size force, it might even be better to get to a certain tech level (say about 5-8 bought techs), then keep all that gold (and a decent size in the open to invite attacks by guys near your level, as they won't have the bigger offensive weapons yet, you'd only want guys with knights and soldiers attacking you, at the best ballistas). Use your defense to hopefully kill attackers with a higher point total than you so that you raise your points through military experience so that your smaller army has better offensive and defensive ratings than those you are catching up with (so they'll be as effective as an army twice their size so to speak).

Once your point total gets high enough that you're then dealing with people that have catapaults (or the equivalent if this is a new age), then go hogwild on techs, hopefully enabling you to get to at least the same offensive level as them (in which case you can switch out all of your defensive units and go strictly with the top offensive unit, making gold raids easier).

I've somewhat managed this with my main account, but my other two accounts are kind of stuck in no man's land right now, so I'm trying to save gold up quickly with them to get them to the catapault level.

Thoughts?

[KevinNU7]

Damn, I am such a fucking idiot.

I saved up $48k for catapults and I hurried to transfer it all out of trade and then hurried to teh Tech screen. From there I went and clicked on multipling by military experince by 4. GROAN!

Now it is going to cost me $55k for catapults.

[KevinNU7]

I have a new strategy I am now mullying over. I'm thinking of taking my sub accounts to absurd levels of gold and then using commune to change my officer. Once I have done that I can change everyone to works and quickly have my main account attack my subaccounts and steal the huge sums of gold I have accumulated. The key will be keeping the accounts close enough in points. Maybe I'll jsut beef up one sub account with the other sub acocunt since they are still relatively close.

[BrianD]

A couple of you mentioned a restart. Is there a restart coming?

[hukarez]

I don't have an alternate account, still sticking with Hershey. It's been a long time coming, but I've managed to finally get Trades and Saddle & Stirrups.

Are folks dishing out their support points? I've been sending all 3 of my to random people within the Guild; figured I might as well send them instead of letting them go to waste.

[Travis]

With my main account I've been using a rotation method for my direct officers to use up my support points each day. With my subaccounts, I generally give them out randomly.

The restart that we've discussed is when the current age (1st age) ends and the next begins. I'm assuming this means that the game will change somewhat in it's appearance (different techs/units, time period), but this may not be the case. That and if they have any big updates to make to the game they'll probably do it in between ages.

[BrianD]

I tend to give my support points out to people who send them to me. I would send them to my officers, but I don't have any officers other than extra accounts I've created. :(

Have they announced a restart at a specific date?

[Marc Vaughan]

I give support points out to anyone from within the Guild who seems low on men for their point total pretty much (oh and my sub-accounts obviously) ...

[Blade]

I give my points out to those who give them to me. I use my subaccounts to feed to each other...

[KevinNU7]

I have some agreements with people to exchange points with each other. Other then that I give back to whoever gives me points or to my Officers

[KevinNU7]

Just stole $3k from the #27 ranked player :)

[KevinNU7]

Killed knights on two guys ahead of me today. My expereince went up 8 points each time :eek: I'm now over 1,000 points. I'm a little disappointed, I liked keeping it low. My attack ratings are ridiculous now, almost at 500k

[BrianD]

Killed knights on two guys ahead of me today. My expereince went up 8 points each time :eek: I'm now over 1,000 points. I'm a little disappointed, I liked keeping it low. My attack ratings are ridiculous now, almost at 500k

I killed a bunch of knights last night to kick myself over 1,000 points. My attack power isn't quite as good as yours, but I haven't yet had the money to convert to catapults.

[KevinNU7]

If I have 1 soldier and 1 knight they can't be killed right?

I'm trying to set-up the slightest bit of defense to ward off the people lower then me from stealing my gold.

[Travis]

I've been using 2 knights for defense, and have the option to buy the upgraded tower (which unlocks the upgraded fence), but think I'll hold off on those to go after better production and plate mail, etc.

Though for your question, since I've gone to 2 knights, I've been attacked a bunch and haven't lost either of them yet, so I'm assuming they can't be killed.

[KevinNU7]

There is now a new leader in the Guild :)

[KevinNU7]

Tech Update for everyone

Technologies you can research
Wind Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Tower - Allows building a tower
Navigation - Allows you to trade wool and oil
Commune - Allows you to change your commander every week

Technologies Known
Farming - Basic Farming
Crop Rotation - Increases production by 1 per worker
Trade - Allows you to trade goods
Watchtower - Allows building a watchtower
Horse Shoes - Increases production by 1 per worker
Writing - Multiplies by 2 military experience acquired when killing units
Water Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Chain Mail - Doubles the attack and defense power of your units
Saddle and Stirrups - Allows creating knights
Water Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Mysticism - Allows building a wooden chapel
Espionage - Allows you to view other players' total number of military units
Fence - Allows building a fence
Mechanical Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Diplomacy - Increases support points to 6
Ancient Writing - Multiplies by 3 military experience acquired when killing units
Ballista - Allows creating ballistas
Siege Defense Strategy - Allows controlling defense strategy
Theology - Allows building a stone chapel
Plate Mail - Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 50%
Intelligence - Allows you to run intelligence operations
Astronomy/Geography - Multiplies by 4 military experience acquired when killing units
Catapult - Allows creating catapults
Advanced Espionage - Allows you to view other players' defense buildings

This was not the order I bought these Tech, this is the order the system has them at.

Up next for me it to build the Stone Chapel for $37k and then I think my next Tech purchase will be Wind Mill.

Does anyone know what Navigation or Commune unlocks?

[BrianD]

Commune unlocked nothing for me when I bought it, but there may have been other dependencies that I missed.

[Marc Vaughan]

Intelligence - Not worth the cost imho unless you want some tech behind it in the tree, its way too random in the information returned (if any) ...

For instance having it say ... "x has more than zero defensive units" when I can already see through Espionage that he's got an army of 80 units (so its a fairly safe bet at least a few are knights) isn't the most helpful imho ...

[daedalus]

The impression I get while browsing their message board is that Intelligence is suppose to be random like that. Given the amount of possible random information, I'm with Marc on not favouring it so much. Although a few posts did make some hint at greater usefulness later one.

As an aside, if anyone has sent me support point and I did not return it, in all likelihood it's because I logged in late and didn't get to see that y'all sent me one. If that happen (you sent me support point and I did not return it), please mail me in game, PM me here or post here. I'll make sure to sent back the support point (either via Hekateros or Chiron).

Danke, by the way, to those who have. :D

[KevinNU7]

You can't get Catapults without Intelligence. That in and of itself is more then enough for me to erge everyone to get it.

[Travis]

Intelligence can become more useful once you're higher up in trying to find people that have more than 2 knights. The problem with nearly everybody going completely offensive is that it reduces your chances of getting kills once you've hit the 1,000 point mark because very few people keep more than 2 knights anymore. I've found a couple guys through extensive use of intelligence (cost me a lot, but worth it to find a few targets), and it never hurts to find out which side their general is on too ;)

[KevinNU7]

WOW! I just pruchased the Wind Mill and look what it unlocked!

Battering Ram
Multiplies by 3 the power of your attacking units
This technology multiples by 3 the power of your units when they attack. It does not change the power of your units when they defend. This technology boosts considerably your attack military power!

[Travis]

Man, that's crazy, I still have Greek Fire to get (increases attack and defense by 33%), and with not adding any more units, that'll put my attack power to almost 1.5 millioin, by the time I get to Battering Ram I can be knocking on minimum 5 million.

Makes me wonder just how good the defensive bonus is when you have your castle built, as a lot of these mid range techs certainly bump up your offensive power in a major way.

[BrianD]

How many total techs do you guys have? I'm still stuck around 20 and not seeing any of the cool tech you have.

[KevinNU7]

BrainD,
I have 25 techs, the keep I guess it getting the right order. It looks to me like some of the "cool" ones won't come up unless you have a good amount of worker production techs.

Travis,
Greek Fire sounds good. I'm obviosuly excited about getting Battering Ram. Right now my units are little of 1M in attack mode, so this tech will really boost that up.

Unfortunetly I haven't killed a soldier in a few days now, seems no one in the 2500 to 1500 point range plays with a defensive stradegy.

[BrianD]

Any thoughts on what a viable defensive number is? I was thinking of trying a defensive strategy, but I'll only be able to come up with about 1.6 million defense.

[Travis]

Wow. I had been having luck the last few days with my backup accounts, finding mid range guys that were either buying techs or saving up for the bigger trade units, and nailing them for 8,000 gold on an attack, but tonight just took the cake.

Was using my main account, and on a 1 turn attack, stole 35,374 from a guy, then took 5,608 on another 1 turn job for a tip. He was quite nice about it, dropping me an in game message telling me to enjoy all the gold ;)

So I bought battering ram, and have a tidy 3,675,672 attack power right now with Greek Fire still to go. Also opened up Advanced Intelligence, not sure what I'll save up for next though.

[BrianD]

Anybody figure out how to get the trebuchet? I've seen a few people with it.

We really need to put together a FOFC technology tree. I'm seeing all kinds of defensive technologies, but none of the offensive techs that everyone else is getting. Looking at all of the top people in our guild, I see that nobody has the upgraded tower or walls which I thought might lead to the better offensive stuff.

What kind of production does everyone have? My best account is at +9 food/gold. I believe my next production upgrade is currency. And I still haven't seen the plate mail tech.

[KevinNU7]

Brian do you have Siege Defense or any of the intelligence/espionage type techs? I think those unlocked plated mail for me.

Also, I am +7 in workers so you definetly don't need to go any further in that direction to grasp the offensive items.

[KevinNU7]

Damn, just lost 2 catapults :(

[BrianD]

Brian do you have Siege Defense or any of the intelligence/espionage type techs? I think those unlocked plated mail for me.

Also, I am +7 in workers so you definetly don't need to go any further in that direction to grasp the offensive items.

It was the ancient writing that was holding me back. I never cared that much about getting a lot of experience, so I never grabbed the tech. I do have it now on most of my accounts.

I'm still considering running a defensive strategy on my main account. Once I get the castle, I should be able to run about 4 mil defense. Getting plate mail will push that to 6 mil. This may allow me to keep more of the money I produce rather than just giving it all away.

[KevinNU7]

Travis, can you help me figure out what will release Greek Fire for me? I'm not too interested in any of these Techs to be quiet honest. I guess I'd pick Silk Weaving, but I am already +7 in workers so I doubt that is the one that I need

Techs to Purchase
Tower - Allows building a tower
Silk Weaving Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Navigation - Allows you to trade wool and oil
Commune - Allows you to change your commander every week
Advanced Intelligence - Allows advanced intelligence operations

26 Technologies Known
Farming - Basic Technology
Crop Rotation - Increases production by 1 per worker
Trade - Allows you to trade goods
Watchtower - Allows building a watchtower
Horse Shoes - Increases production by 1 per worker
Writing - Multiplies by 2 military experience acquired when killing units
Water Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Chain Mail - Doubles the attack and defense power of your units
Saddle and Stirrups - Allows creating knights
Water Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Mysticism - Allows building a wooden chapel
Espionage - Allows you to view other players' total number of military units
Fence - Allows building a fence
Mechanical Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Diplomacy - Increases support points to 6
Ancient Writing - Multiplies by 3 military experience acquired when killing units
Ballista - Allows creating ballistas
Siege Defense Strategy - Allows controlling defense strategy
Wind Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Theology - Allows building a stone chapel
Plate Mail - Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 50%
Intelligence - Allows you to run intelligence operations
Astronomy/Geography - Multiplies by 4 military experience acquired when killing units
Catapult - Allows creating catapults
Advanced Espionage - Allows you to view other players' defense buildings
Battering Ram - Multiplies by 3 the power of your attacking units

[Marc Vaughan]

Something I've been mulling around doing with my accounts is using one to 'buff up' the others.

Ie. Using my biggest account to accumulate Gold using an 'attack only' (ie. no defense) setting and then putting all the Gold in the open and hitting it repeatedly with the small account I'm attempting to build up.

Using this method I could probably give my smallest account an income of over 75,000 Gold Pieces a day, if I did this for a week then it'd be possible to make it the same size as my main account in that timespan.

If the Guild used this practice then everyone could comfortably bring themselves up to a around a thousand points pretty quickly.

Thoughts? - too dirty a system to use or not ...

(Apologies to 'purist' game-players, I've a nasty habit of finding ways to 'break' games ...)

[KevinNU7]

Marc,
Any dreams of finishing on the Top page will force you to do "unpure" things. The Top players arrange experience trades by allowing players above them to kill their units in exchange for the same. I personally hate it but see why they do it. I think your idea is a lot less servere and definetly plausable. The only issue is stealing the gold from your account before other people do.

[BrianD]

I hope I didn't just start a guild war. I saw a guy hit me so I waited for him to hit 3k and I took it from him. The I did it again...and again. When he gave me a support point, I switched to a different account and hit him again. The idiot just kept grabbing gold. He eventually got pretty pissed.

[daedalus]

Just updating what I've seen on the Tech Trees as I've charted them.

Upgrade: Writing;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Saddles and Stirrups;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Mill, Espionage

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Espionage

Upgrade: Espionage;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Mysticism, Ballistas

Upgrade: Mysticism;
Choices: Watchtower, Water Clock, Diplomacy, Ballistas

Upgrade: Watchtower (8 000);
Choices: Chain Mail, Water Clock, Fence, Diplomacy, Ballistas

Upgrade: Chain Mail (10 000);
Choices: Water Clock, Fence, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing, Ballistas

Upgrade: Fence (12 000);
Choices: Water Clock, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing, Ballistas, Siege Defense Strategy

Upgrade: Siege Defense Strategy (14 000);
Choices: Water Clock, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing, Ballistas, Theology

Upgrade: Theology (17 000);
Choices: Water Clock, Diplomacy, Ancient Writing, Ballistas

[Marc Vaughan]

I hope I didn't just start a guild war. I saw a guy hit me so I waited for him to hit 3k and I took it from him. The I did it again...and again. When he gave me a support point, I switched to a different account and hit him again. The idiot just kept grabbing gold. He eventually got pretty pissed.
I've done the same a few times ...

My favourite was one player who sent a rather peeved mail to me, I responded politely and the next day got one from his dad apologising for his language :D

[KevinNU7]

I get them all the time. My response is usually pretty rude. People who think it is alright to attack people for gold but then whine when they themselves get attacked need to grow up.

[BrianD]

The guy was pretty dumb to keep gathering gold and lose it all to me...though I'm sure he thought he was safe after giving me the support point.

[TazFTW]

Woot! Got my first military experience points from killing 2 units of an attacker. That'll teach'em.

[hukarez]

I hope I didn't just start a guild war. I saw a guy hit me so I waited for him to hit 3k and I took it from him. The I did it again...and again. When he gave me a support point, I switched to a different account and hit him again. The idiot just kept grabbing gold. He eventually got pretty pissed.
I've been trying to stockpile products and stuff every day on occasion. In any case, I got my 1st message in ages from someone (Sini5t3r of 'The Scourge' Guild) I hit earlier this week:

"omfg... u killed one of my knights for a lame 400 gold?!?!?"

If I recall correctly, I needed just a couple hundred more before I could buy 1 unit of cloth, and in the process of getting that extra couple hundred, killed one of the bloke's knights.

So! Long story short: Feel free to rape this guy repeatedly!

[BrianD]

Travis, can you help me figure out what will release Greek Fire for me? I'm not too interested in any of these Techs to be quiet honest. I guess I'd pick Silk Weaving, but I am already +7 in workers so I doubt that is the one that I need

Techs to Purchase
Tower - Allows building a tower
Silk Weaving Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Navigation - Allows you to trade wool and oil
Commune - Allows you to change your commander every week
Advanced Intelligence - Allows advanced intelligence operations


In case you haven't gotten your answer yet, here is what I have. Greek Fire is one of my next choices.

Farming - Basic Technology
Crop Rotation - Increases production by 1 per worker
Trade - Allows you to trade goods
Watchtower - Allows building a watchtower
Horse Shoes - Increases production by 1 per worker
Writing - Multiplies by 2 military experience acquired when killing units
Water Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Chain Mail - Doubles the attack and defense power of your units
Saddle and Stirrups - Allows creating knights
Water Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Espionage - Allows you to view other players' total number of military units
Fence - Allows building a fence
Mechanical Clock - Increases production by 1 per worker
Ancient Writing - Multiplies by 3 military experience acquired when killing units
Ballista - Allows creating ballistas
Siege Defense Strategy - Allows controlling defense strategy
Wind Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Plate Mail - Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 50%
Intelligence - Allows you to run intelligence operations
Silk Weaving Mill - Increases production by 1 per worker
Navigation - Allows you to trade wool and oil
Astronomy/Geography - Multiplies by 4 military experience acquired when killing units
Catapult - Allows creating catapults
Arithmetic - Increases production by 1 per worker

My guess would be the silk weaving. The last tech I got was Astronomy/Geography

[KevinNU7]

I got Silk weaving and all it did was unlock another worker tech. So This time I got Navigation (which is a useless Tech) and it unlocked Greek Fire.

[Travis]

I can currently buy Diplomacy, Navigation, Walls (2nd level), Currency and Roman Art.

Ideally I'd like to unlock Trebuchets, so I'm thinking of grabbing Currency, though knowing that Navigation will unlock Greek Fire sure makes that a safer looking bet. On the bright side, getting to +10/+10 for my workers will let me have that many more offensive units, so may as well see what that opens up I guess.

[daedalus]

For the heck of it, I bought some tech today. I found it interesting that Writing was the key to open up both Chain Mail (defensive tech) and Water Clock (production tech) but, ironically, not Ancient Writing (next level of experience tech).

Oh. As an aside, I'm intentionally not upgrading Fence with this account because I know it opened up Theology with Heka and I wanted to see what else opened with other upgrades.

Sorry that I'm not more help with the higher level stuff. I was never able to bring myself to attack people terribly much. (Yes, I suck at PvP.)

-----

Upgrade: Farming;
Choices: Crop Rotation, Watch Tower, Trade

Upgrade: Crop Rotation
Choices: Trade, Watch Tower, Horse Shoes

Upgrade: Horse Shoes;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Water Mill, Saddles and Stirrups

Upgrade: Water Mill;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Mysticism

Upgrade: Mysticism;
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Diplomacy

Upgrade: Diplomacy (2 000);
Choices: Trade, Watchtower, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

Upgrade: Watchtower (3 000);
Choices: Trade, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

Upgrade: Trade (4 000);
Choices: Writing, Saddles and Stirrups, Commune

Upgrade: Saddles and Stirrups (6 000);
Choices: Writing, Espionage, Fence, Commune

Upgrade: Espionage (8 000);
Choices: Writing, Fence, Ballista, Commune

Upgrade: Espionage (10 000);
Choices: Writing, Fence, Navigation, Commune

Upgrade: Writing (12 000);
Choices: Chain Mail, Water Clock, Fence, Navigation, Commune

[KevinNU7]

I can currently buy Diplomacy, Navigation, Walls (2nd level), Currency and Roman Art.

Ideally I'd like to unlock Trebuchets, so I'm thinking of grabbing Currency, though knowing that Navigation will unlock Greek Fire sure makes that a safer looking bet. On the bright side, getting to +10/+10 for my workers will let me have that many more offensive units, so may as well see what that opens up I guess.
What is Roman Art, experience?

[Travis]

Roman Art is the 3rd level for birth rate. The actual church costs 90,000 to build once you've bought the technology.

If you log into your accounts, you'll notice a rather important announcement was made today. The current age ends on May 15th.

Going to try and get a hold of trebuchets and pound my way into the top 100 before this age ends.

[KevinNU7]

Well I have to say I've learned a lot of this age and am confident that I can be in the Top 50 next time around.

My subaccounts went from 150 points to almost 2,000 each after the announcement :)

[Travis]

Think it'll be a definite advantage to restart. Got a few new ideas to try as far as when to go techs, and when to go for kills. That and which techs to grab and when.

Think I just cracked the top 200 for right now, trebuchets should definitely give me a shot at getting into the double digits.

[KevinNU7]

I think my plan for the next go with be to get to catapults as fast as possible and then horrid my money while I stay right around 200 points. Then I'll tech buy all the way up to about the cost of $100k per tech and then build up MXP

[Travis]

That should be interesting, as I'm going to take a similar path, getting up to ballista (hoping that's high enough pure offense to get kills at the lower level), and try not to get any non-offensive techs other than trade and espionage, save up around 750,000 gold in trade, if not more, then try to raise my points strictly through kills until hitting that middle zone (where it seems everybody is pure offense and no D), then do my tech buying to try and get myself back to the people who have D (and therefor killable units) and skip on the catapault army level (hopefully being able to buy enough techs to go from ballista to trebuchets). Right now I have 29 techs, and it'll cost me 124,000 to get my 30th tech, so I'm definitely aiming to save up enough to get to around the 30 tech mark or higher before I start my tech expansion stage.

[BrianD]

Should we try to put together a tech tree to use in the next age? I haven't figured out what strategy I want to use next age, but I'm thinking a tech tree might help out. With only a couple of weeks before the end of the age, we could all delete a sub-account and recreate one to get the lower level techs mapped out. Maybe our main accounts could help with the higher level accounts.

[Travis]

Not sure what others opinions are, but I'm pretty sure I've read that the tech tree will be changed each age (additions/subtractions/rerouting to get to certain techs), so I'm not sure how beneficial it would be.

One main bonus to your idea would be to be able to compare the current tech tree to the new ages tree, and see just what sort of changes were made at what level, might give us an advantage moving into the next age after even moreso than the one in a few weeks.

That said, we may also want to keep it relatively quiet, as there is a big taboo on their board for tech tree discussion, maybe time I take a look at doing something similar to what what Icy did for Omerta. Would there be much interest is us having a seperate forum for X-King discussion, be it strategy/tech tree/etc, or should we just stay in this thread?

[daedalus]

Actually, if I understand it correctly from the few times I ventured into their forum, my impression is that, while the Tech Tree does change from age to age, it's not a terribly drastic change. So we would see a benefit, if we were to go for it.

Two things, in addition:

1) I think it would be good for us to work out a plan for how we want to structure the Guild after the restart. Things like officers and commanders and what nots.

2) I'm going to have Nereus actually spend his money in a few days. Is there any specific path or anything anybody would like to see. He should be able to get close to 300 by then.

[BrianD]

Not sure what others opinions are, but I'm pretty sure I've read that the tech tree will be changed each age (additions/subtractions/rerouting to get to certain techs), so I'm not sure how beneficial it would be.

One main bonus to your idea would be to be able to compare the current tech tree to the new ages tree, and see just what sort of changes were made at what level, might give us an advantage moving into the next age after even moreso than the one in a few weeks.

That said, we may also want to keep it relatively quiet, as there is a big taboo on their board for tech tree discussion, maybe time I take a look at doing something similar to what what Icy did for Omerta. Would there be much interest is us having a seperate forum for X-King discussion, be it strategy/tech tree/etc, or should we just stay in this thread?

I would not want to use their board for tech tree discussion. Since most of the FOFC players are in our guild, I'd say to keep the tree discussions within the family...either in this thread, or one dedicated to tree talk.

As an aside, I'm about to buy a castle for my main account and will be converting all of my catapults to knights. This seems like a good time to test the effectiveness of a full defense. I'll either get smacked down to no army, or I'll be carried up high in the rankings.

[Travis]

Brian, how many points are you at, and if possible, could you figure out what your defense would be approximately? Might be able to figure out how 'crackable' you'll be without you dropping the cash on a complete army overhaul. I'm still guessing that you need to have the big (2nd?) castle version to have an effective defense. Is that the level you're going for, or the 1st level castle?

Also, I just upgraded my workers to the +10 food/gold level, and it still didn't unlock trebuchets. D'oh.

[BrianD]

Brian, how many points are you at, and if possible, could you figure out what your defense would be approximately? Might be able to figure out how 'crackable' you'll be without you dropping the cash on a complete army overhaul. I'm still guessing that you need to have the big (2nd?) castle version to have an effective defense. Is that the level you're going for, or the 1st level castle?

Also, I just upgraded my workers to the +10 food/gold level, and it still didn't unlock trebuchets. D'oh.

I am going for the actual castle building. I think it works out to castle level 3 since the tower was castle level 2. My defense will be a bit under 5 million. It wouldn't keep everyone out, but it might just get some kills from the bigger guys going for the 1-turn attack. Also keep in my that my ME is 69. Every successful kill from a bigger guy will bump that up and increase my overall defense.

[Travis]

The only thing that would scare me with your plan is having your own knights get killed in attacks. Seems like until you can get the castle level above the one you're talking, things are really tilted towards offense (especially with battering ram). Just knowing the success I've been having against castled opponents, especially those with less points than I have, yet the lack of success I have against the big castles makes me think that's the big turning point for being able to have effective defense.

Not trying to talk you out of it, just know there are a lot of guys out there with 10 million + attack power.

[BrianD]

The only thing that would scare me with your plan is having your own knights get killed in attacks. Seems like until you can get the castle level above the one you're talking, things are really tilted towards offense (especially with battering ram). Just knowing the success I've been having against castled opponents, especially those with less points than I have, yet the lack of success I have against the big castles makes me think that's the big turning point for being able to have effective defense.

Not trying to talk you out of it, just know there are a lot of guys out there with 10 million + attack power.

Quite honestly, I don't really care what position I end up in when the age closes. Generally you don't really know for sure anyway since the game pretty much resets and starts over. This is mostly an experiment to see how defense works. Once I get the castle built, I can start buying fortified walls. This is another 2x multiplier, so that should help.

Actually, I may have done my math wrong. I may not get to 5 million defense until after the walls. I guess we'll try it and see.

[KevinNU7]

Well I made a nice run today with my sub accounts bringing both of them close to 4,000 points. Man if they had the same size army as my top account I could really do some damage. Looks like Travis is going to be tops in teh guild as my main account has fallen under a bit of bad luck and I'm a tech behind him.

[KevinNU7]

Just killed someone with Halbuts or something to that effect. When I kill a solider I get 4 points, when I kill a knight I get 8, when I killed this thing I got 12.

[BrianD]

Halbardier probably. They are the next unit after knights.

If anybody cares, I changed to a defensive strategy about 5 hours ago. In that time I've withstood 12 attacks, lost 0 gold, lost 0 units, and killed 8 units. Sadly, I've only gotten 12 ME points. I'm currently running at about 2.5 mil defense, with 3.6 mil where my general is. Not great, but not too bad.

[Travis]

Brian, what level guys have been attacking you? Army size/top unit? I'm curious if the offensive and defensive powers are taken at face value, and how much stronger an offense has to be to crack a defensive group. That's pretty much why I've gone completely offensive as it just seems like things were tilted that way so I've pretty much stuck with that and was going to develop defense later on.

[KevinNU7]

I'm also intersted. I always assumed that a 4M offense would beat a 3M defense but that may not be the case.

[BrianD]

I went from 1660ish to 2376 points. From the guys that gave me XP, one has 61 units, 37 army, another has 143 units, 110 army. Both guys had catapults. The most recent (and fun) result came from a guy who now has 83 units and 60 army. Hit hit me for 1 turn and lost 3. Then he hit me for 8 turns and lost 3 more. Then he hit me for another 8 turns and lost 5 units. :)

I had a guy with 235 units/135 army miss, and one with 245/171. This guy has 1809 points which works out to 27 techs and 67 ME. I'm guessing those techs give him some decent firepower. Of course he only hit me with 1 turn...more turns may have done more damage.

If you two each want to take a swing at me, go ahead. I really don't care what happens. My defense is 3.5 million everywhere but the south where it is 5.2 million.

[BrianD]

Correction, the biggest guy to miss me had 293 units with 212 army. His points are 3542 which works out to 23 techs and 154 ME.

[KevinNU7]

BrianD, we get no benfit out of hitting you since you are below us in points. Plus my attack is over 21M the results would be pretty bad.

Here's my Tech update

Options to Buy
Tower - Allows building a tower
Arithmetic -Increases production by 1 per worker
Commune - Allows you to change your commander every week
Advanced Intelligence - Allows advanced intelligence operations

29 Technologies Known
Farming
Basic Technology
Already known

Crop Rotation
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Trade
Allows you to trade goods
Already known

Watchtower
Allows building a watchtower
Already known

Horse Shoes
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Writing
Multiplies by 2 military experience acquired when killing units
Already known

Water Mill
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Chain Mail
Doubles the attack and defense power of your units
Already known

Saddle and Stirrups
Allows creating knights
Already known

Water Clock
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Mysticism
Allows building a wooden chapel
Already known

Espionage
Allows you to view other players' total number of military units
Already known

Fence
Allows building a fence
Already known

Mechanical Clock
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Diplomacy
Increases support points to 6
Already known

Ancient Writing
Multiplies by 3 military experience acquired when killing units
Already known

Ballista
Allows creating ballistas
Already known

Siege Defense Strategy
Allows controlling defense strategy
Already known

Wind Mill
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Theology
Allows building a stone chapel
Already known

Plate Mail
Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 50%
Already known

Intelligence
Allows you to run intelligence operations
Already known

Silk Weaving Mill
Increases production by 1 per worker
Already known

Navigation
Allows you to trade wool and oil
Already known

Astronomy/Geography
Multiplies by 4 military experience acquired when killing units
Already known

Catapult
Allows creating catapults
Already known

Greek Fire
Increases the attack and defense power of your units by 33%
Already known

Advanced Espionage
Allows you to view other players' defense buildings
Already known

Battering Ram
Multiplies by 3 the power of your attacking units
Already known

[BrianD]

BrianD, we get no benfit out of hitting you since you are below us in points. Plus my attack is over 21M the results would be pretty bad.


I mean it more as a learning experience. 1 turn might kill some of my units. It probably would, but we don't know for sure. It was just a thought.

[hukarez]

Haha! I've become above mediocre!

I think I'm doing rather well for the time being. Been dishing out support points, just because I don't like seeing them go to waste.

I have been attacked by a bunch of members from another guild (DVD-something), but other than that, those surprising kills that I've gotten from their failed attacks has been bumping me up in pointage. http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/eek.gif

Nonetheless, all I need is to stock up on some attack turns. I feel compelled to get below 2k in gold to avoid being attacked, I've noticed.

[KevinNU7]

Seems alot of people mail it in now late at night, It's pretty easy to average 1,500 gold per turn late at night.

[Travis]

Weekends seem to be a great time to have turns built up. Guess most people have lives or something and aren't online enough to either use their money, or attack others for it, works out great for those the rest of us though :)

Got another 10,000+ hit tonight, too bad I had already traded it in when they hit me back for 64 gold, heh.

[KevinNU7]

I tend to play very little on the weekends. But Sunday night I check out my hattrick game and usually use up all the turns that have built up.

Last night I found a nice target that I usedf 8 turns with my two subaccounts and killed 3 knights each. Unfortuently I only had 3 turns left on my main account at the time and they did nothing against the guy. THis morning I tried again and failed two times, what a waste of 16 turns. I guess he turned up his defense

[KevinNU7]

Well I bought Arithmetic so now my workers are +9. This unlocked Roman Art (next level in teh birth rate) and another Tech for workers.

In one of my subaccounts I decided to unlock the "Change your Commander" to see if it took me down a different path. It didn't in fact it didn't even give me Roman Art, so I now have 3 techs to chose from for that account, what a waste of $113k.

In my 3rd account which is actually leading the guild right now I may buy advanded intelligence to see if that unlocks anything cool.

Travis, do you have advanced intelligence? If so, I guess that would prove to me that it doesn't unlock anything adn I could save my money for something better

[KevinNU7]

Military Experience more important then attack power in killing Units
I've been running some analysis on this issue for the last two days now.

Account name Kevin_M11 has a MXP of 278 but only an attack rating of 20M because of army size
Account name KevinNU7 has MXP of 235 but an attack rating of 27M because of a larger army

Last night I found a target with Kevin_M11 and killed 3 knights with an 8 turn attack to the East. I then logged out and logged back in as KevinNU7 and did the same attack. This time KevinNU7 register no kills!

Today Kevin_M11 killed 2 Halbuts with 8 turn attack to the east. KevinNU7 followed with teh same attack and only recieved 1 kill

Something to chew on

[Travis]

Something else to chew on, the #1 player in the game has cannons now.

FREAKING CANNONS PEOPLE!

[BrianD]

He also has a castle of at least level 4 or 5, and fortified walls with a moat.

[NevStar]

Military Experience more important then attack power in killing Units
I've been running some analysis on this issue for the last two days now.

Account name Kevin_M11 has a MXP of 278 but only an attack rating of 20M because of army size
Account name KevinNU7 has MXP of 235 but an attack rating of 27M because of a larger army

Last night I found a target with Kevin_M11 and killed 3 knights with an 8 turn attack to the East. I then logged out and logged back in as KevinNU7 and did the same attack. This time KevinNU7 register no kills!

Today Kevin_M11 killed 2 Halbuts with 8 turn attack to the east. KevinNU7 followed with teh same attack and only recieved 1 kill

Something to chew on

Remember, it gets harder to kill units as their numbers decrease. That's why it's impossible to lose any units when you have 2 knights defending.

Just for the sake of completeness, you might want to attack with KevinNU7 first.