Best start-up strategy?

[motdaugrnds]

I have been watching a good friend play this game and learning how discouraging it can be if one trusts the wrong players. The game does look interesting; but only if I will actually have the time to create a strong village. I have read the "Rules", "Wiki - FAQ" and "helps". I have also read many threads in these forums. There seem to be a number of players with great guides, even though they use terms I am yet to be that familiar with. I have not found a step-by-step guide for a new comer. Perhaps I missed it. If so, will someone direct me to where I can read it?

I would like to know how to develop my village in such a way that my resources cannot be "farmed" by another while I get the lvls I want. I am thinking my headquarters and hiding place may be best to lvl first; however, I could easily be wrong. At any rate, that is what I have started so far. I am thinking I won't even bother getting any troops to lose until I get the village units up to the lvls that will best support what I want .. also until I get enough resources to create enough defensive troups to protect what I have constructed. Is this a good strategy?

Any help (in game or in this forum) will be appreciated.

Thank you,
Mot

[servy]

You're not going to find a very good step by step intro guide. TW is simply too complex to condenses into something like that. You simply need to play and learn what you can. There is no substitute for experience.

If you have specific questions you should go to the questions forum.

As for starting out, you should really only build your hiding place after others start farming you. It's so cheap and easy to build you can build it up even while being farmed, and since there isn't a particularly high probability of you being farmed there's no need to focus on it in the likely chance that you aren't farmed early on. Early on your HQ is not going to be the choke point, resources are. You should build up your HQ to what levels you need for prerequisites for other buildings/units more so than for the build time upgrades. (Unless you get to the point where you have resources that you can't spend because all of your queues are full, which for a new player is very unlikely position to be in.) Focus first on resource buildings up to the low-teens area (there's some wiggle room obviously) and then focus on building up a military that you can use to gather resources, meaning spears at first, axes to clear villages, scouts are a must, and eventually light cavalry (LC) as a primary farming unit.

[Vhaidren]

This is a guide I wrote for people starting on paladin worlds... you may need to adjust some of the numbers depending on the world speed, but the content is still applicable I think:

I wrote a quick guide to help some of you people who are new to tribal wars in attempt to help you get a solid start on this world. This is directed at new players, not those who are already rather experienced. I think the math in this guide will really help some of you see how important troops are compared to resource buildings.

This is an attempt to stir-up some good competition in this world and make w31 more interesting, not sure if it will work, but here goes:

Tribal Wars 101 Reading assignment #1: Baby steps

In this lecture I am going to cover the strategies one could use in developing your first village up to the point of leaving beginner protection. Obviously the beginning of the game is the most important part because it prepares a cornerstone for your future empire. If you can get off to a good and solid start, you will be set-up to conquer your surrounding neighbors and be at a great advantage to entrench yourself into your surrounding area.

To begin, lets go over the first few days of your village while you are still under beginner protection:

Your first goal should be to get lvl 1 resource buildings if you do not already start with them. After that you need to look at your map and see if there are any abandoned villages in your 7x7 surroundings. If there are, your next step will be to make a paladin. If not, you will need to focus more on your resource buildings than your army at this stage in the game.

The paladin is the single most effective way to gain resources at the start of the game. He and his statue cost a total of 740 resources and he can carry 100 at a time. In light of this, he takes 7.4 attacks to pay for himself and his statue before you start making an income. Considering how fast he moves, it takes him an average of 40 minutes round trip to gather resources from an abandoned village in your 7x7 (It takes about 20 if the village is right next to you, and about an hour if it is on the very edge of your 7x7). So in all, it takes him 5 hours to pay for himself before he starts bringing you a net income.

Now, when up-grading any resource buildings from lvl 1 to lvl 2, it costs 190 resources and you gain 5 resources an hour. This takes 38 hours to pay for itself before you begin making a net gain. When up-grading from lvl 2 to lvl 3 it costs 238 resources and you gain 6 resources an hour for your trouble. It takes 39.6 hours for this up-grade to pay for itself.

Now, even if you want to take into account that the paladin takes around 5 hours to train (it depends on the world speed). And add 5 more hours to the 5 hours he takes to pay for himself once he is made, that is still only 10 hours, about a fourth of the time it takes for a lvl 2 resource building to pay for itself.

Are you beginning to see why farming is so much more effective than up-grading your mines?

Even if you don't have an abandoned village in your 7x7, you should have one in your 14x14. In such a case you only want to up-grade your resource buildings to lvl 2, maybe lvl 3 depending on how active you are. However, after that you better have you paladin out and you need to start farming.

So after the paladin is made we to focus on getting to spearmen. You need to up-grade your wood to lvl 5 or 6 depending again on how close abandoned villages are to you, and you need to get your clay to lvl 3 or 4. Leave iron at lvl 1 until you are getting ready to make light cavalry. Farming and continuous training of spearmen later will provide you with a surplus of iron as it is. If you are rather inactive and can't farm often, you may need to up-grade your iron a few times before light cavalry.

Once you have your mines up high enough, get the HQ to lvl 3 and build a barracks. Once the barracks is built, we need to start making spears. A spearman costs 90 resources and can carry 25 upon each attack. So, he takes about 3.5 attacks to pay for himself, so about 4 hours before he starts making you a net gain. Spearmen travel slower than the paladin and I would advise waiting until you have 3 spearmen before sending them with the paladin to attack. If you send 1 or 2 spears with the paladin, they slow the paladin down so much and carry so little, that you actually can gain resources faster with the paladin farming alone. Also, never, ever, ever, send spears to attack alone. They always need to be accompanied by at least a paladin or 5 axes ( in the beginning with no walls). Continue to build spearmen constantly. Do not pause to up-grade your resource buildings, I have already mathematically proven to you how silly those things are compared to your spears and paladin. Only when your barracks is busy and you have extra resources left over should you up-grade your resource buildings.

Now, once you begin approaching 70-80 spears, build at least 20-30 axes before newbie protection is over. So get your HQ to 5, then make a lvl 2 smithy. Once axes are researched, start pumping them along with your spears. Don't worry about your resource buildings unless you have extra resources because, again, they are almost worthless compared to spears. When you have about 4 hours of newbie protection left, build a lvl 1 wall and 10 swords for some minimal protection.

As soon as newbie protection is gone, start hitting those villages that are 120 points and under. If a player has more than 122 points, there is a good chance they have access to swordsmen which will slaughter your axes. Anymore than 10 swords and 1 paladin with a wall of some sort will cause heavy damage to a player attacking with even 50-60 axes.

If you have competition for your abandoned villages while still under beginner's protection, which can very well happen, you need to spike the abandoned village and kill the farmers. By spike, I mean you send your units to support/defend that village from attackers. When someone attacks a spiked village, they have no way of knowing who spiked it. Using just you paladin, you can kill other attacking paladins without losing your own; you can even kill up to 7 supporting spearmen with decent luck without losing your paladin. Such a blow in the early game will destroy your opponent's economy. If you are still having problems with a determined rival who has 20+ spears, build a few early swords to spike villages with so your paladin and spears can farm other villages and your opponents takes heavy losses on your supporting swords.

The point of this lecture is to get you to see just how effective farming is and how much of an edge it can give over those who do not farm in the early stages of the game.

Please feel free to leave comments and critiques, I don't pretend to know everything about this game. I only hope that a few people will read this and that it will help them play better.

[motdaugrnds]

Vhaidren, thank you so much for taking the time to post this guide. It is clear and gives me some much needed information. I am not clear what is meant by the "paladin worlds" as I did not know certain worlds were for certain strategies. I thought you just landed where you landed and had to work from there. There is just much to learn.

My friend is having so much trouble with a huge tribe constantly attacking his little village that it is destroying the fun for him. He has only been playing about 2 weeks. I suspect he will just give up; and if it is so bad for such a good a guy as him, I might not even want to continue to try to learn.

At any rate, if I do continue to play, I am grateful for your guide.

Mot

[servy]

Different worlds have different settings, one of which is whether or not the world has the paladin unit. World settings can be seen in the other information section of the help.

[whitty]

Different worlds have different settings, one of which is whether or not the world has the paladin unit. World settings can be seen in the other information section of the help.

Yeah world settings can affect your start-up strat a hell of a lot.
In slower worlds I always find it's useful to get your HQ high first then a strong military. Little point in boosting resources if your farming income is more efficient than the resources.

[Vhaidren]

Also, as far as you are concerned with protection your resources and village from attacks/ raids, let me point out the following:

1. A hiding place won't do much... the aggressive player will attack you until you lose interest and abandon the village, then he will farm it. It doesn't matter if he gets resources or not, he will attack you.

2. The easiest way to prevent yourself from being farmed is to kill all your neighbors. This is best done on worlds with growing barbarian villages, as you can force your neighbors to abandon their villages and then farm the growing abandoneds. The best defense is to eliminate all possible threats.

3. The easiest village to defend is the village that is growing the fastest, to grow fast you will need troops to farm, so the more troops you have farming, the faster you can grow your village because you will be getting resources at 10x the speed (or even faster depending on your activity) than those who are not farming. When you have 10x more resources to spend on defense (or offense, as offense is a better defense than defense, if you can understand the paradox, if not, that's okay) you can make your village so strong that no one around you can touch it.

4. Real defense comes in the form of defensive troops, so build troops, not buildings to defend your village. The only exception to this is obviously the wall. A wall and a strong army of defensive troops (spears, swords, HC, archers) is what you need to safe-guard your resources. The more you farm, the more resources you can spend on defensive troops.

The point I am trying to get across is troops, troops, troops, troops.... TROOPS. You need an army to grow. Your army is your defense, it is your offense, it is your economy. Don't worry yourself about your resources mines, they are nothing compared to the amount of resources your troops can bring in. Now, obviously you need to use common sense, if you are not as active, you will need to up-grade your mines to compensate for your lack of farming.

I am also going to try and explain that paradox I mentioned about, about offense being a better defense than defense... this might be above and beyond you right now, and if it is, I invite you to come back and ponder it later after you get more experience with the game:

It is the idea that the player who goes completely offensive at the beginning or the game (in your 1st village) is going to have a huge advantage over the average player who splits his first villages into defense and offense, or goes completely defensive. It is a risk really, you build 90% offensive troops and hope that if someone attacks you you can dodge, that no one will attack you, or that you have killed and farmed everyone around you and there is no one left to attack you. If a strong player decides to attack you and wipes out your troops, you are done, you are screwed, time to restart. However, 80% of the time this doesn't happen, as fear-tactics keep most individuals from attacking you. Make yourself look huge and powerful, and no one will touch you. (I have a guide written on using fear-tactics, if you want it, mail me)

Now, if you win the gamble in going 90% offensive and no one attacks you, you are far, far, far beyond your neighbors. You can only really farm with an offensive army, and you can only clear villages to farm later with an offensive army. Farming gives you tons of resources, so it makes sense that the more offensive troops you have, the more farming you can do, the more resources you have, the faster you can up-grade, the faster your village grows, the faster you can make more offensive troops, and with more offensive troops your village expands faster and faster... and so on and so forth.

While you are farming everyone near you with your offensive army, there is no one left to attack you, and anyone who does try and attack you will have to march their army from a great distance, giving you plenty of time to dodge or, if you are experienced enough, shadow them back and kill their army (I'm not going to bother explaining shadowing right now). Thus, you have a completely defensible position by making a completely offensive village and you get to reap all the farming benefits of an offensive army.

Now, on worlds without growing barbarians, you may need to allow one or two people in your 14x14 to live for nobling later, but then you can always make nobling trains to noble further away. (A nobling train is 4-5 armies all containing one noble used to instantly noble a village, nobling with a single noble takes 4-5 attacks to take-over a village).

Also, note this all applies to your very first village, when you start taking multiple villages, you will need to make some defensive villages, but your question was aimed at a good starting strategy, so I won't go into mid/late-game now.

Hopefully, some of that made sense to you, if not, feel free to ask questions. Feel free to mail me with any specific questions that you may have. I don't profess to know everything about this game, but I can certainly give you some good advice if you are just beginning to play.

[motdaugrnds]

Thank you both for trying to help.

I share my computer with a friend; thus, have had the advantage of watching him play this game. He is the kindness man I know and was setting up his village to be of support and help for other villages. He contacted other villages and tribes in an attempt to make friends, even build a tribe of his own. He did that the same way he lives his live in the real world, with honor and ethics. What I saw while watching this was a large tribe contacting him saying they would be allies, then attacking one of his villages, apparently expecting him to just let it go and do nothing about it. Since my friend is loyal as well as honorable, he tried to help. A war ensued and that "huge" tribe has been bombarding my friend's little village over and over and over and over until now my friend is so discouraged...the game has been spoiled by this large tribe's ability to tear down all my friend manages to build .. time after time. I, myself, have thus concluded this is not the game I want to be playing.

Again, I do thank you both for trying to help and I do know there are probably quality people behind some of these villages. I just don't need the frustrations my friend has had to deal with.

[slayer1345]

Well it is called tribal wars, and the frustration comes with the game as it a game where you can get killed off and you need to work hard not to die. This is sometimes annoying but in my opinion it's what makes this game so exciting in the first place. If you don't want to play a game with high risks this probably isn't the game for you.

[Vhaidren]

Thank you both for trying to help.

I share my computer with a friend; thus, have had the advantage of watching him play this game. He is the kindness man I know and was setting up his village to be of support and help for other villages. He contacted other villages and tribes in an attempt to make friends, even build a tribe of his own. He did that the same way he lives his live in the real world, with honor and ethics. What I saw while watching this was a large tribe contacting him saying they would be allies, then attacking one of his villages, apparently expecting him to just let it go and do nothing about it. Since my friend is loyal as well as honorable, he tried to help. A war ensued and that "huge" tribe has been bombarding my friend's little village over and over and over and over until now my friend is so discouraged...the game has been spoiled by this large tribe's ability to tear down all my friend manages to build .. time after time. I, myself, have thus concluded this is not the game I want to be playing.

Again, I do thank you both for trying to help and I do know there are probably quality people behind some of these villages. I just don't need the frustrations my friend has had to deal with.

If you fail the first time... try again? Odds are you will be met with greater success as you have obtained more experience. Everyone gets destroyed the first time they try playing, and many the second time, but by the third attempt, you are usually ready to seriously compete.

[no system]

If you fail the first time... try again? Odds are you will be met with greater success as you have obtained more experience. Everyone gets destroyed the first time they try playing, and many the second time, but by the third attempt, you are usually ready to seriously compete.

Then again you could be lucky like me

First time, just mailed players around me getting to become friends with them, Im still on that world and havent lost a village to an enemy yet

[PeRvIs]

Also, as far as you are concerned with protection your resources and village from attacks/ raids, let me point out the following:

1. A hiding place won't do much... the aggressive player will attack you until you lose interest and abandon the village, then he will farm it. It doesn't matter if he gets resources or not, he will attack you.

I always get a level 10 hiding place pretty early on.

If your going to dodge attacks (to conserve defense) instead of blockign them an HP makes balanced usage of your resources a lot easier.

[mattcurr]

I always get a level 10 hiding place pretty early on.

If your going to dodge attacks (to conserve defense) instead of blockign them an HP makes balanced usage of your resources a lot easier.

Qft
Hp>all

[GibGirl]

The one hint that hasn't been mentioned is important above all others.

Activity. In the end, it doesn't matter what your choices are if you're not active enough. Someone else who is more active will farm more and get more of the resources - and eventually they'll go after you. The more active you can be, the better.

If you're only logging in once a day, for example, you won't last. It doesn't matter how lucky and/or good you are. You're doomed.

If you have the ability to be very active, you often can afford to take even more chances, as most players won't go after you when you're bigger than them. I prefer to try and rush LC - though, of course, not at the cost of neglecting my troops. By rushing LC, I can get even more aggressive in farming, meaning more resources, and even faster growth.

[mattcurr]

The one hint that hasn't been mentioned is important above all others.

Activity. In the end, it doesn't matter what your choices are if you're not active enough. Someone else who is more active will farm more and get more of the resources - and eventually they'll go after you. The more active you can be, the better.

If you're only logging in once a day, for example, you won't last. It doesn't matter how lucky and/or good you are. You're doomed.

If you have the ability to be very active, you often can afford to take even more chances, as most players won't go after you when you're bigger than them. I prefer to try and rush LC - though, of course, not at the cost of neglecting my troops. By rushing LC, I can get even more aggressive in farming, meaning more resources, and even faster growth.

Not in an attempt to flame you but judging by your statistics in world 34 I do not think you either are active enough or fully understand lc rushing enough to implement it, when lc rushing you should never have to sacrifice troops. Its a tricky thing to do, I would recommend not doing it most of the time you don't need it. Last time I started I didn't and kept up in the top 5 just fine. Feel free to Pm in 34 or here if you want clarification on what I wrote I would normally write more but its 3am.

[GibGirl]

Not in an attempt to flame you but judging by your statistics in world 34 I do not think you either are active enough or fully understand lc rushing enough to implement it, when lc rushing you should never have to sacrifice troops. Its a tricky thing to do, I would recommend not doing it most of the time you don't need it. Last time I started I didn't and kept up in the top 5 just fine. Feel free to Pm in 34 or here if you want clarification on what I wrote I would normally write more but its 3am.

I think maybe you misread me due to the lateness - as I said, don't rush LC at the cost of neglecting your troops. If you're not active enough to be able to do it and keep your troop queues full, then don't. I'd also lean toward saying it's more effective further out on the rim, where the density of active, strong players is a lot lower, thus there's a lot more farming you can do and over a wider range.

Then again, perhaps my phrasing is used to mean something specific that's a little different from that I'm intending to say.

[thomasP.]

i could help anyone who asks i am thomasP. in tw and im going to be on 58 im on 56 and will quite 57 the moment 58 comes out. so find me and i can answer your questions cuz i dont have the time to make a step by step guide... jus tell me which vill u wana make and ill tell u how based on your location. notice it depends on your location in the game. like where you are reletive to other players therefore itd be hard to make a step by step guide. i could do it give me a few hours which i dont have. itd would take around10 guides all put into one. therefore i dont have the time. so find me and message me in one of those world and i can help u then. :D have a good time destroying people.

[XxBRICKSTERxX]

If I can give any advice it would be don't read the wiki.

[the nemesis123]

As said before. Experience is Key. Beyond that, getting in with a good crowd and having a decent teacher helps.

[bobby turnip]

as nemesis says; experience is key

anyone can snipe a train
anyone can dodge
anyone can backtime
anyone can send a 150ms train

they are all very easy things to do. However, until you have had experience actually doing it, managing even 500 incoming attacks is tedious, even with premium. Until you know what your really doing... you can dodge incomings, but you often become lost on learning when to dodge, when to tag, when to plan your snipes etc.

i can remember dumping an acc with 1k incomings on w32 and thinking 'holy hell how do i deal with this?' because it was my first world, and i had never actually had experience in tagging more than 50 attacks.

experience is the ultimate teacher with tw.

as for startup though... the key is knowing how to use a few sites/scripts... zomgtw & twfarmreport/SRE are pretty much all you need though lol