Proper Growth
If you haven't figured it out yet, this is a war game. Everything you do will be better and quicker accomplished if you acknowledge that fact. There is no point in playing if your goal is to build pretty cities with high level buildings, particularly if you don't know what to do with them. Your city structures exist for one reason only--advancement in war. Look at the facts.
What happens as your city grows? Does a little leprechaun pop out and give you a pot of gold? NO. They system gives you military books so you can make troops up to level 6, excluding the level 3 books, but more on that later. What is the effect of those buildings? Well, the majority of them are geared at your troops and fighting. The rest are support structures to keep your war machine turning. Do they make level 30 granaries and warehouses so you can make bigger buildings? NO. They make those so you can store more resources to make more troops.
Proper city building relies on your understanding of what all the parts do. Some buildings, like your Union Hall, are truly worthless beyond a certain point. Their only value is in allowing you to increase the level of another more important building. The level 10 Union Hall allows you to build a level 30 Post house, which holds up to 20 borrowed heroes. Once again, war was the purpose.
Farmer
So how is war the answer? It's not a simple answer, but if you read this carefully you may begin to understand.
Your city CANNOT support itself. Your city resources take too long to build up and NEVER produce enough. You'll always be short one resource or suffer the inability to progress further if you rely on them. Farming is the key to getting enough resources. That's right, you MUST attack to succeed. When you farm, each troop you send carries home 20 of each resource unless the city doesn't have enough for them to take. Each following attack on a PLAYER will result in half the previous farming attempt, so the second raid will only bring back 10 of each resource and so on. Since 20 more attacks won't bring back what just the first attack brought home, you need to hit multiple targets (do the math on your own, please). One is never enough. You will need to branch out and fight for more resources.
If you cannot get enough resources on each hit, you aren't sending enough troops. If you sent all your heroes can hold, then your heroes suck and need to level up. If they level up and you don't have enough troops for them, you need to make more troops. If the troops can't be made fast enough, you need more resources so you can build up your stable and forge to speed the process. Once they build faster, you need even more resources so you can make more troops, fight more often, level up your heroes, and then rinse and repeat.
Playing True
Naturally, you can't farm just anyone. Some players are stronger than you. Common logic would dictate that you should only fight players that are weaker than you. While I see the sense in that, I still have to disagree with it in a manner of speaking. If they're stronger than you, then make yourself stronger than them!!! You can't sit back and wait for it to happen, you have to work at it. War is again the answer.
So your heroes are weak. Whatever. You have the tools right in front of you to change that. Attack the Floating Castle. There's 3 of them per day so make time for one of them at least. Learn how it works from your union mates and then put it to use for yourself. Devils are scattered all over the map, and many more than there was when many of us were developing. The experience they provide increases with the distance and your hero levels. You have quests you can do that can improve your heroes and some increase both WAR and HERO experience. These quests will also help you collect rare items like stones. The last thing you should be doing is leaving heroes in as mayors to make them stronger. If you're playing CORRECTLY, your worst heroes should be your mayors, as the other methods will grow your heroes considerably faster. Your Town Hall is merely a means to improve a non-war hero that will help your city grow, not you.
As your heroes level up, so should your inventory of items through the collection of chests, exploit items, donation items, and gold. These items will help you grow even further.
Military Rank
At one time in this game, military ranks would drop if you did not continuously feed your exploit items (devil badges, supplies, armors, weapons, siege, and officer badges) to the system. About a year ago that changed and your rank no longer drops, despite what it still says on the menus.
This is EXCEEDINGLY important to your development because each rank provides bonuses to you that are yours forever. Look at the effects yourself. You can gain a permanent +1 rating to your current espionage rating in EVERY city (making that level up to 31). You can gain PERMANENT soldier queues for both infantry and cavalry. You can also speed up your recruitment rate so that your armies are replenished faster. Lastly, you can even gain attack and defense boosts of up to 25% to make your armies that much stronger! Who wouldn't want that? I'll tell you who--idiots that aren't playing the right game.
You don't need to buy your exploits either. They are free. The best way to gain them is to kill. As you gain wood chests, open ALL OF THEM. The keys cost only 20 gold each and the more you open, the more exploits you'll gain. You should also use arena points to buy exploits from the level 2 arena shop. The toughest method is something you should all still shoot for--winning the Floating Castle. The 1st place winner each weak gets 7500 exploits, and only the first place. This is a fast boost to your rank that everyone can use and should aspire to. Work at being the best and get something back for it.
Troop Levels
If you've made it through the beginner quests, you should have level 2 troops. If that's good enough for you, you're destined to be a failure and I'll gladly tell you that every day. As you're progressing, you should be killing devils to aid your growth. Devils will drop items that you can donate to the union (broken weapons, bandages, soldier cloths, etc) for union badges which are a type of currency you can use to buy things in the union shop. The only items there that will ever matter are level 3 books. EVERY level 3 book should be purchased. While you do have the option to get these same books from your arena shop, this will set back other progress and is not necessary.
Level 3 books are still not enough, but they are the only books that you do not get automatically from the system up to level 6. Once you have gained and read all those books, you will continue to build your cities and gain the level 4-6 books. The better you play, the faster that will happen. In order to improve your strength as you grow, try to build the highest level troops available and use your training grounds to upgrade your existing troops.
Level 7-9 military books will be offered to you in the game with even harder work, namely killing massive amounts of devils during special events that are offered from time to time. You should limit the troop types you want to improve on when getting these books, as it is not an easy task. Concentrate on those that are most valuable to you.
Gear Hoarding
There's no harm in building up a massive collection of armor pieces and weapons, unless they are standard black items. Primarily, you should be buying all hourly sale items except the potions as you're developing. You can be picky about it when you get stronger and want to improve your heroes more, but at first, all your heroes need some decent gear to improve their performance.
Sticking to basic trainee and leather armor is never enough. As EACH of your heroes levels up, you want to get them into a new and better suit of armor. One mistake that several players make is just improving the gear on their best or favorite heroes and leaving the rest behind. If you like to model your heroes after they're gimps, then continue to ignore the rest, but it hurts only you.
Your shops supply up to level 50 gear. At level 30 they refresh the sale items twice per hour. If you're killing enough and selling some of your donation items you should have no problems coming up with enough gold to outfit all your heroes in blue and green suits of armor. Remember that blue armor at Chain grade or above cannot be passed on, nor green at soldier level or greater. Therefore, you want to buy as much as you can find. Put your heroes in full suits of armor that are all in the same series so that they also gain a full suit bonus. EVERY ONE OF YOUR HEROES needs to be in armor and have weapons. Do not buy black grade gear unless you need to finish a suit and replace it as soon as you can. It has no value otherwise.
Hero Stats
There are 4 basic hero stats. Each of these stats is determined initially by the hero's aptitudes, which cannot be viewed until you hire the hero. Starting stats can range from 1-10 but increase with every level based on their aptitudes. The 4 stats that are affected by your aptitudes and level control the effectiveness of all hero types but I'm going to concentrate on the two important types--War and Mayors.
WAR Heroes--Your stats act as boosts to your troops in battle
STR-- Affects ATK improved troop attack
DEF-- Affects Armor--Improved troop defense
AGI-- Affects Speed--How quickly your troops respond to battle and who hits first--you or the enemy
DEX--Affect Tactic--This determines the likelihood of your troops either dodging an attack or making a critical hit
These 4 Stats work together and none is worthless. Each player has their preferences. My own are for STR and AGI, so I hit hard and fast. Others might prefer DEF and DEX, which allows for less damage, and there can be other preferred combos.
MAYOR Heroes--Heroes that are parked in your Town Hall to help the cities
STR--Train--Increases your troop recruitment speed (extremely important)
DEF--Defend--Improves the attack and defense of ALL troops in a city in the even of an attack (utmost importance)
AGI--Build--speeds up building times by a certain percentage (not very important. simply put your hero with the highest AGI in when you want to start a building)
DEX--Prod (Production) Increases city resource production, but farming should provide all you need
Hero Selection
I've seen experienced players make the same mistakes as rookies when choosing heroes so I know this is more important than it seems. The heroes you hire will directly affect your ability to develop. If you are a human that hired a male dwarf because he looked like a mean old man with a cigar in his mouth, you screwed up. As soon as you find a green in your race, fire that loser. He'll do you no good.
Obviously, you all know there's 5 classes of heroes, identifiable by the color their names are written in--Orange, Purple, Blue, Green, Black, in highest to lowest quality respectively. Black heroes are as disposable as toilet paper and you should be trying to replace them from the moment you first hire them. Greens are alright if they have high aptitudes (1800+) but won't beat out an army of purples. Blues are the best that you should expect and if you're really lucky maybe a purple or two somewhere down the road.
Heroes need to be in your own race so you can exploit their specialties (and not look like a retard). Off race blues and better are fine as mayors, but as war heroes they slow you down. Literally.
For instance, if you're an orc player, you love your slow as molasses rolling uphill berserkers with a displacement speed of 30. On an orc hero with that specialty, your speed will increase with your level. If you hired that stupid old dwarf cigar smoker, you're stuck at 30. That's why we hire our own race, not because we're bigots. Fix it and don't be afraid to dismiss a crap hero just because of his level.
Electing A Mayor
Mayors aren't just heroes that sit around and collect cheap experience all day, they're an operational hero in every city and should not be ignored. Some people just put black heroes in there because they feel they don't matter, but they are mistaken. Mayors can be any race.
The most important stats on a mayor are their STR and DEF. AGI speeds up building time, but you're in Animus and we don't care about your fascination with building. Go buy some Legos. DEX improves resource production, but you already know you should be getting most of your resources from farming. STR speeds up your troop recruiting speed and since everything you do depends on war, little else could be more important. DEF is obvious--it improves city defense against attacks. When selecting a hero for a mayor, try to pick a hero with those stats being their best and put armor and weapons on them that further improve those stats--particularly suits so you get the suit bonus.
If you plan on leaving the mayor in once city indefinitely, try to pick heroes that don't have troop specialties you like to use. If you can get mayors that DO have your specialties, this will work out for moving extra troops from city to city when in need. This is the only downfall of off-race mayors--they are slow to move troops.
Try to get blue mayors or better so they have higher stats to help your situation. Don't sacrifice a blue as a mayor when you still have black and green war heroes, though. To be a great player, you still need to be attacking more than defending
Things That Float On Water
That's right, the Floating Castle is on water, not floating in air. Come on you whimsical nerds, stone floats on water, not air!!!
The best time to send your heroes into the castle is not a precise science. In fact, just when you think you have it down, a hero that never loses gets stomped once in a while. There's various factors to consider, both controlled and unknown.
The first factor is your troop types. For starters, you want to be using your troop specialties for each hero, but some of those are still ineffective. Primarily you need to try to use Infantry 5&6 or any cavalry type. Cavalry 4 is the most superior unit to use for FC no matter what your specialty is, but if the hero is not scrolled for it or does not specialize in it, don't be too aggressive. Purple and blue heroes using Cavalry 4 should be able to win before the first hour is over between levels 50-60 and over level 65 may win at the start. Greens will have similar success but will need strong gear and possibly more scroll work. If you're going to ask about black heroes, please stop reading and slap yourself.
Other troop types will yield different results. For instance, heroes using Infantry 6 may NEVER be able to win the FC at the start unless they are purple and heavily scrolled and well armed. By level 50, though, they should still be sent between the 40-60 minute mark. Again, hero color and gear will play into this, so trial and error is necessary.
I CANNOT give a full breakdown of all the times for every hero color, troop type, or with every type of gear they could possibly be wearing. The best I can do for you is make general suggestions.
Troop-based scrolls and Inspiration Round 1 are important for advancing your hero into the FC at earlier times. Infantry 6 heroes will require both in order to succeed regularly before the hour mark at any level.
Keep your gear up to date, putting the best suits available on heroes, based on their levels. (Remember not to skip lower heroes by always giving the best to your top heroes)
Purple heroes will outperform others, but they are subject to the same disadvantages of troop types. Blue heroes using Cavalry4 will advance just as quickly and greens will not be far behind.
Attempt to send your hero in the same remaining minute as the hero level if you are following these suggestions and make adjustments from there. For instance, if a 45B can win at 45 minutes remaining, adjust his time to something earlier until he cannot win. Stay there until he cannot lose at that same time. Once again, troop type will truly determine the results.
Just because you lose, do not give up. Read the battle report. If your hero lost to devil types that are strong against your troop type, try again. If you lose to devils you are strong against, take a step back. When you can beat devils you are weak against, go in sooner.
I'm Rich Beotch!!!
Gold is increasingly easy to gather in the world of Empire Craft nowadays. If your bankroll is a bit slim, once again, you're doing something wrong and KILLING is the answer.
There's some obvious ways to gain small amounts of gold. On a daily basis you can collect gold for your nobility title. You can also do quests, which can gather amounts varying from 10-1000. The pagoda is a popular method but this requires lower level heroes that can win high levels of each tower, and we don't need to be stockpiling lowbie heroes for that. The simplest method is attacking ANYTHING that dies.
When you kill any enemy troop, be it from a player or a devil, you can some amount of union donation items such as rucksacks, broken weapons, bandages, etc. Each of these items can be sold for gold. If you are attacking, you have an unlimited supply of the shiny yellow stuff. So what's the real trick to amassing money in this game? Floating Castle.
If you have a hero that can win at the start of the FC, you will gain upwards of 1000-1500 of a single donation item per hit. If you send every hero in as soon as possible, you will gather so many items that you won't know what to do with all your riches.
Gold is a necessity here. You need it to heal your wounded, to buy gear, to brag how you're the wealthiest nerd you know! When you're bored, kill devils. They won't get you much, but if you kill a 100 of them that's good for a few thousand gold. Kill a player, that's what you're here for. Do whatever it takes and get rich fast without a pyramid scheme!!!
