Startup
So, startup is debatable the most skill intensive part of the game. It is also one of the hardest to survive; this attracts many of the games best players to it, as the increased danger is more fun for some. I consider startup the period from the end of your tutorial to when players begin to reach 50K. Before this point, being rimmed is quite possible for most players.
Off or Def
Deciding between an offensive start (one where troops created are mainly axmen and light cavalry), and a defensive start (one where troops used are mainly spears, swords, and HC) is a big choice for any player. Most players favor an offensive start, and though I won’t say it is bad, it certainly is not the only choice. In addition, and I will say this loudly, STARTING UP WITHOUT ANY DEFENSIVE TROOPS IS A STUPID DECISION. Hopefully I will not need to repeat that statement too many more times.
I used to think that the difference between offensive and defensive playing was a risk vs. reward scenario, offensive play was more dangerous, but could be more effective. However, some players (namely nauzhror, reduardam, hoang.ngheim) have shown that this is not the case and that a defensive startup can (and will) outdo an offensive startup, when played by a good player.
What a def startup does require is activity and planning. Because offensive startups farm better for the larger portion of the time (near the end, defensive startups actually overtake offensive ones), and because defensive startups cost more (researching HC and making stable 15 earlier), you need to farm more intensively to make up for the discrepancies. If you can do this though, defensive start ups become much more effective, since they provide defense (duh), grow faster, and give you an excuse to noble barbs.
Startup Form
You can subdivide startup into a few sections. They are beginner protection, just after BP, HQ push, constant queues, smithy rush, early ennoblements, and later ennoblements. Though there are not too many changes between these stages, some basic strategies, and the importance of others do change.
Beginner protection
During beginner protection, mines are of an increased value, since they are the main resource income over the first 24-48 hours. Mine levels depend on your area. To be very general, the fewer barbs and longer the BP, the higher the mines you need to build. To be less general, 1/1/1, 3/1/1, 4/2/1/, 5/2/1, and 7/4/2 are common mine levels depending on your area. Personally I like 5/2/1, as you can build it with constant queues. Sometimes it is good to go even higher than those levels, and I have seen levels as high as 15/10/8 before BP ends.
After that, things get even less specific. You generally want to get a barracks relatively quickly, and begin farming soon, massing spears as you go. As soon as your hauls are not all full, you want to begin splitting them (meaning sending in groups). To keep them from dying, groups of spears need to be sent with swords or axes.
There is a large debate between swords and axes, which I will return to later, but suffice to say that efficient farming, with small groups of troops that haul fewer than five hundred resources each. Examples of these (on opposite ends of the spectrum) are 2sp/1axe and 4sw/11sp.
The other BP related debate is when to get light cavalry. For most players, light cavalry is the main farming troop, and is requires whether or not you are doing an offensive or defensive startup. Some say getting light cavalry very quickly is the best option, and in good areas it can be. However, most of the time, waiting a bit longer and having a good farming party already is the better idea. This is simply because of the ability to create LC at a constant or close to constant rate. Because of this, many players get LC as, or just after BP ends.
As you move towards LC, you will need to upgrade your barracks, smithy, and HQ. You want to upgrade smithy first, then barracks, and HQ last. This is because this will let you keep spears and swords/axes building for the most possible time.
Post BP
Just after BP ends, things get rather simple. You have LC; you will make LC, and nothing else, until you can make LC constantly. You will farm with your LC and spears, constantly. Rather simple, but very important. The decision comes in what queue to try and make constant second. Some say the barracks queue is more important, some say HQ. Personally, I feel that the HQ queue should come first, but that is because I do not heavily use axes during the early part of the game.
However, when you do get one constant, the other will follow soon after, so it truly does not matter a lot. What does matter is keeping the stable queue constant first, and not upgrading stable, barracks, or HQ until all three queues are constant.
HQ Push
Alright, the HQ push is one of the most vital parts of startup, but most players do it wrong, and very wrong. Hopefully I can fix this. Before you even think about upgrading you HQ to level eleven, there are some things you need to evaluate to know that you are in a good position to begin upgrading you HQ.
The first is rather simple, but people ignore it. Unless all of your queues (barracks, stable, and HQ) are constant, with some extra res building up, upgrading your HQ should not be done. Quite simply, if you don't have (more than) enough resources to keep your current queues alive, why make them more expensive?
The second thing is having a respectable troop count. This is up to you, but you at this point need to have a troop count that can not only farm well (the other requirement takes care of this), but can clear smaller targets, and survive if some of your troops die. You need a safety net at this point.
It is also a common practice to send you HQ sky high. Though the help of a higher than 20 HQ is almost always good, how high is debatable. The highest HQ level most players should go to is the level at which they cannot go any higher without adding in some other building (of course, farm and WH levels added when necessary don't count). If this happens before level 20, 20 is the highest you should go.
This brings into play balance, balancing the time to begin upgrading so that you don't start too late, but so that you are still able to get to a desired level. Getting to this point takes practice, and the development of a sense of when you can go.
There are however, mathematical ways of assessing when to upgrade. Using Cheesasaurus’s pointwhore calculator , you can find out the resources and time required to go from HQ 10-20 (or 10-whatever). You can then using the nice new looter award, you can calculate the resources you haul over a period of time, and see if this is enough or close to enough to get the desired result.
Constant Queues
So, your HQ is at whatever level you want it to be, you have constant queues in all buildings, you are doing well all around. Now what? Well now there are choices, and they all have to do with when you want to get a nobleman. Rushing to a nobleman, versus biding your time and waiting it out is the most important decision to make regarding startup.
I of course suggest trying both at one point or another, but in general, nobling between 3500 and 5000 points is where you should aim for. This is area specific though, and nobling as early as 2500 points is plausible (though only in very specific circumstances).
The reason I do not mention nobling after 5000 points is simple, though it may at first seem counterintuitive. The faster the players in your area grow, the later you want to noble. Why? Because, if you are growing faster than someone, why wait for them to build a village more slowly, grab the village while it is weak and then build it more quickly than they could have. Hopefully it makes sense, if not please tell me and I can attempt to explain in more detail.
So, now that I have explained what you are planning for, let me explain what to actually do. This is the section where you upgrade you village and troop counts. This is the time to upgrade your barracks and stable levels to where you want them at nobling. This is also when you want to decide on your final noble target. You should have already been watching over possible targets, however you now want to chose the one that best suits your needs.
Smithy Rush
The smithy rush begins when your building levels (save farm and smithy) are where you want them to be at ennoblement.
The instructions are quite simple: upgrade your smithy and when necessary upgrade your farm. If your resources overflow, you can throw in warehouse upgrades too. Be warned though, you will lose rankings. This is alright, smithies are both built for points and rank, they are built for usefulness. Do not try to compensate, as it will end up hurting you in the long run.
The other thing smithy rush is useful for is saving up resources. In all likelihood, you will end up with an excess of resources. This is a good thing, as you want them when you noble. The final aim is to have, as your level 20 smithy finishes, enough resources to build all academies, coins, and nobles you need.
Now, this is only a goal, and many (most) people will be unable to farm the 1.5+ million surplus resources required for a noble train on a coin world. But, it is in essence your goal. On packet worlds you should be able to pull in those resources, even if it is a hard fight to pull them all in.
Looking at the amount of resources you need, you will see that it might (depending on the settings) be necessary to have a level 30 warehouse to hold all of the resources you need. You don’t, if you have premium, the final three building queue spots can be used to hold building upgrades that are not used, and are just to hold resources. This enables you to hold up to four hundred thousand resources in village headquarter (or whatever your most expensive building is) upgrades.
Finally, throughout the smithy rush stage, you should be on the lookout for a few things. Even if you have cleared a target, using opportunities to make gains is not a bad idea. If you see 500 point jumps, or large increases in ODA or ODD, especially those where you can match an attacker and defender, as they can give you better (either well built villages or easier ennoblements) targets. If you are lucky enough have someone of a good size near you cleared, scouting them and possibly changing noble targets is never a bad idea.
Early Ennoblements
The early ennoblements phase begins when you get an academy and nobles, and ends when you have between three and five villages.
Your first ennoblement is the most important, it is when you are most vulnerable, and will make or break your startup. Since you have a target, you need to clear and noble them. There are a few ways of going about this, either through trickery or brute force. You also want to make sure your target is viable and useful. These are what I will cover.
Choosing a target is your first step, they should be near you, but not too close. They should be relatively large, but not so large that you will sustain a lot of damage nobling them. This will come down in a large part to personal opinion. You need to find what type and size of target best works for you.
As for actually nobling your target, there are many things to note. Simply scouting a target and then nuking them is an option, as is blindly nuking them. These though carry a large risk. If your target is in a tribe, they can get stacked. If they have defense, you can get cleared. If they can snipe, that can also be a problem. Even if these do not occur often, they can cause problems.
Because of this, the safer route is normally trickery; however it is also harder, and by no means insures success. If a person sees you are ticking them, they will almost always call for support. It is also morally questionable (but then this is a game), and sometimes will get you a bad reputation. It is worthwhile though, both for the precleared village you can get, and for the look you know is on your opponents face.
Another, somewhat more important, strategy to take note of is conobling. Conobling is only very common on packet worlds, but is used form time to time on coin worlds.
Conobling is so useful on packet worlds because it simulates a train. It also makes sniping harder and clearing your target almost a certainty. The other good thing is that it means nether player needs a level 3 academy, as with 2 nobles each they have a train.
The downsides are that conobling requires a lot of planning, some good timing skills, and reliance on another player. All three of these can be mitigated if you know the player, whether from a previous world or because you are in a premade with them.
After your first ennoblement, you should make your second village what your first is not. If you first is mainly offensive, your second should be defensive, or vice versa. This will provide you with a safe way to expand. As you continue nobling, they should get closer together. By your third ennoblement, three should be a lag time of only a few days between conquers.
Late Nobling
Late Nobling starts when you have between 4 and 6 villages. This is also the time where you should be getting your first fully built village completed.
At this point, you should have a noble train built and held constantly. You should be farming a few mil per day and be able to build a noble every time you use one up. This should enable you to noble once every day or two in depending on luck and your offensive/defensive balance.
This means you will begin to settle into a rhythm which would only be interrupted by incoming attacks, war, or a lack of targets (which would be very unlikely). Luckily, these can be covered in my upcoming sections.
Farming
There are many methods of farming. They are all useful, but at different stages of the game. The later the method is used, the fewer clicks it takes, but the more likely you are to get less than full hauls. This is a tradeoff that prevents you of having to send 30-40 thousand farm runs in a day and keep the same efficiency you used earlier on in the world.
Manual Farming
Before you have scouts, Scout Report evaluators and their ilk are (obviously) ineffective. Luckily, because of the relatively small troop numbers, manual farming is not as strenuous as it can later become. At this stage, it is also very effective.
For the first day or so, when you have only spears (and on pally, worlds, a pally), you should send them in a single group. This is to minimize losses, as spears sent alone will normally lose one, a loss you can’t have. On pally worlds, begin farming as soon as you have your 5sp and a pally. On non pally world, wait until between 9 and 12 spears (personal preference). They should be kept in a single party for as long as possible.
As soon as farms being to empty (and you are not getting full hauls), you should build your smithy and begin creating swords or axes. The sword or axe debate is one I will get back to, but you need to make one of the two.
The goal of splitting is simple, to time your attacks so that they are close enough together to keep barbs clear and prevent others from farming, but not split so small that you waste resources on swordsmen.
To do this well you have to judge three things: number of barbarian villages, production by barbarian villages, and area activity. Judging the number of barbs is rather easy, you count up all of the barbs you expect to farm. Judging productions is slightly harder, but all that you need to do is send 2 attacks, one that clears the village and one that hit 20-30 minutes later. You can then calculate the resources produced per hour. The final one is area activity, and it is the hardest to judge. If you have a large number of active players, or received multiple restart mails, you can expect more players farming then if you were in an area with few active players.
Once you determine these three things, you can decide on how big or small you need to split. The total number of spears is more or less based on barbs and total resource production in your area. The number of swords or axes is based on area activity, and barb production speed. If area activity is high, you need to split smaller (and so need more axes or swords). If production is high, you do not need to split as small.
There are some numbers that players commonly split troops to, because none will dies when farming a troopless village at 100% morale. Some for swords are (sp/sw) 2/2, 8/3, 10/4, 11/4, and 20/5. Some for axes are (sp/axe) 2/1, 6/2, 11/3, and 20/4. With 5+ swords or 3 + axes, any number of spears can be used. These are all used because they never die if the village has no wall.
The final goal of manual farming is to get farming groups that can haul 2550 resources. This is the resources that a village with warehouse 1 and hiding place 1 will hold. During a 3 day BP, it is possible to get 2-3 such groups. In a 5 day BP, 3-5 of them. These groups let you gain an enormous influx of resources as BP ends in your area. This influx is normally enough to push you to LC and scouts, ending your manual farming period.
Swords vs. Axes
The debate between swords and axes has been going on since I began playing, in 2008. Before I really get into it, let me set a few certainties in place: if you are playing defensive, make swords, and if it is a ten tech world, unless you are playing defensively, make axes. Those two cases are certain, because they remove the largest reasons to choose the other.
That covers them in the most basic sense, but it does not give all the reasoning. The biggest reason to use swords is the savings in research and the extra smithy level. They also balance your iron when you would normally be overflowing. This is offset to a large degree by the extra offensive power and speed afforded by using axes. Because of this, swords are better farming alone, or in lower activity and lower spiking areas, while axes are only good for splitting and for high activity areas. This is because the axes can both split smaller, and clear small defenses if need be.
Because of this, in most cases swords or axes is a totally personal choice. It is one of those annoying little places where you as a player need to decide what is the best one for you.
Script Farming
So, now you have a few hundred infantry and are in the process of researching LC. Cool, you are on the road to doing well, hopefully. Farming though is probably becoming really time consuming, with all the math and manual sending of attacks. So now you can move on to script farming.
There are two possible goals for script farming. Some players use script farming until they noble. Others use it until they get scouts. I am one of the latter, but the former can also do very, very well. It just requires more activity. If you are not coplayed, getting scouts and then changing is the better idea.
To actually script farm, you need a farming script (how unexpected!?!). There are a few ways of getting them, my personal favorite is zomgtw’s one. Simply chose your world, then click on the farmfinder. Then It provides rather simple instructions on how to change the farmfinder so that it gives a script output, of only the village types you want to attack. Then you can manually add and remove villages that you do or do not want to farm.
You will want to make 2 scripts, one on a larger radius that farms with cavalry, and one on a smaller radius that farms with infantry. You will want to remove the small radius from the large radius, to prevent overfarming. This method makes farming very efficient, though balancing the two radii can take some finesse. The infantry script should send one farming group (say 4/11 sw/sp) and the cavalry farming group should send 2 LC.
During this time, you should make only LC until LC queues are constant. Then begin making some thins in you HQ and barracks. None of your troops should stay in your village for more than a few seconds as long as you are online. The lets you gain resources and keep farms dry to the best possible extent. Depending on how well or badly farming is, you may need to change the radius of your farming script to keep hauls full or close to full, while also keeping farms nearly dry. You do not want farms to overfill, as that lets other players steal your resources.
Your goal in getting a good number of scouts should be gotten relatively quickly. You want one group of scouts for every 10 or so LC, and every 20 infantry. You will also want some extras.
SRE
Now your farming gets good and much easier. You will want to keep those farming scripts around, as you will still need them. But you want to add another, an SRE (scout report evaluator). There are some very nice ones out there, but they all do more or less the same thing: they calculate resource production based on mine levels, and time since you attacked, and then the resources that will be in a village when you attack it. Then they put the right amount of troops in to clear the village. This turns your farming into a science, and into something that is less activity intensive.
As far as actually farming, you need an SRE. I I’ll give some good ones later, but for now just know you need one. Another helpful script is the last time farmed script, which shows how long it has been since a village was farmed. SRE’s are very simple scripts, you simply run them on a report and then your rally point, and then send an attack and repeat the process.
The trick is using your last attacked script to help balance the area you farm with the time between farm attacks. This will make the balance between dry farms and empty attacks easier to control.
Tribalwars Farm Report
Tribalwars Farm Report (TWFR) is a multi village SRE that makes life easy at the 20-400 village stage. Updating reports is a slow process, but sending attacks that are correct becomes much easier and less time consuming than before.
The basic method of using it is, once you created a script on the website (which provides guides), you can open all rally points with opera>panels>links, and then tab through and run the script on every tab (this can be done with an opera shortcut). This has let me farm with over 200 villages in under 10 minutes in the past.
Bookmark Farming
Bookmark farming is most easily describes as a farming script on steroids. They take a little longer to set up (you have to save the attack again links of each report as a bookmark), but they let you open a group of attacks directly to the confirmation screen. They can be used at any point early game in place of a farmscript, if you know you can send troops to every village on the list.
Their other major use is lategame, at which point players (the most obvious example of which is (lodda/cer-berus) have used them to farm in enormous quantities to keep amazing leads.
Conclusion
You may have noticed that as I went on, the paragraphs and explanations got shorter. Don’t worry, I was not slacking, it is simply that as things get less work intensive, I don’t need to explain as much. This shows in an odd graphical representation how farming gets easier in terms of work and time spent as the world goes on.
Scripts
[In Edit]
Making the Best of Your Area
Now things get really interesting. So far, I have covered things that are generally regarded as basics. Now I will talk about analyzing players and villages in your area, and how you can use troops and strategy to outthink opponents and win against them. More or less, now the game begins.
I covered this to a degree in the pregame section, under the tutorial section. However, that was only a cursory overview of how you can both influence and improve your area. There are a number of ways to influence your area, from restarting to restart mails to other, slightly more devious tactics. Most of these tactics have almost nothing to do with in game skill (however being able to do things that are intimidating helps), and are really more of an intellectual skill or challenge.
The first and most basic one it this: know when to call it quits. There are two mains reasons to do this. The first, if your area sucks. It is a fact of life that this will happen sometimes, the law of averages says that every once in a while, you will get an area with one barb, or an area with 17 active players fighting over the 2 barbs there are. If this is the case, restart, things happen, life is unfair (or, fair down to random chance as the case may be). If this does happen, you might want to restart.
The other time you want to restart, surprisingly, is when you get restart mails. I say this seriously; I still restart on occasion when I land near another good player, as both of us will mess up the other’s growth. Now, you need to stay smart. If you receive a restart mail similar to this, you can probably go on with your game as normal.
I like if u restrt nao. Plz restrt or I keel u. Thx.
However, if you receive one that looks like the product of someone intelligent and with backup and proof, you might want to talk to them, and debate restarting. Here is an example I recently used.
Hello,
It seems (unluckily for you) that you have appeared in my direct vicinity. Why is that bad? Well, most likely, I'm better than you. Unless you appear in the top of the top echelon of players, this area is not one where you can grow or thrive. I've played on worlds similar to this one, most notable w54, where I played on
this account while leading the rank one tribe. Like this world, it had churches, and like on it, I will do very well, from the first day. If you would like to see more earlygame experience, my most recent account was
Leaf Coneybear, which was rank one solidly prenobles.
So sorry, but here you won't have much success. Feel free to restart, and I will provide you with assistance in your new area.
Thanks,
NN
I hope that you all can tell how obvious that difference is. So you be the judge of how dangerous, or not a potential enemy is. But do always keep the early restart option in mind, it is worth it.
The other ways to influence your area are all somewhat questionable tactics. So, if you don’t like trickery, being mean, and backstabbing defenseless tweens with unusually large e-peens, you might want to skip this section. Then again, you might not.
This, my young and budding masters of tribalwars, is your first exposure to politics and diplomacy. No, I don’t mean the diplomacy where “You Lie!” reigns supreme (although it does), nor do I mean the politics where people bash each other over the head with chairs (although a little scare tactic goes a long way). I mean the diplomacy where finesse and poise are important, where the right word can be the difference between being rimmed, and being rank one.
What do I mean? Well the biggest tactic at this stage is backstabbing, which is very low, but a good introduction to others. Let’s say for example you have 2 players in your area that you consider dangerous. You talk to one, and convince him that you will make an alliance with him if he clears the other one. Once the second is cleared, you proceed to noble both. It is a horribly mean thing, but one that can lead to extremely fast and easy expansion if done correctly. Always be aware that you can sue similar strategies, and be aware that people could be using them on you too.
Spiking
Another interesting tactic to influence your area is spiking. Spiking, if you didn’t know, is when you send troops to support barbarian villages, to keep other players from farming them, and to kill troops. There are two rules I abide by when it comes to spiking, 1. Don’t spike; 2. Spiking is the best way to combat spiking. What I mean by this is that in normal circumstances, spiking is bad, if you are getting mostly full hauls in a notably average area, spiking will only slow you down, it is simply better to use the troops for farming, instead of spiking.
The few times where spiking is helpful all center around one thing: competition. If your area has very few barbs, an unusually large barb, or other people spiking (making many barbs dangerous to farm), spiking can make sense, although restarting at 26 points would have been better. Spiking, as tactics go, is rather simple, you send relatively large group of defensive troops to a barb and have them sit there. If they aren’t attacked, the barb is going unfarmed, if they are attacked, you have just earned yourself some resources. Once enough time has gone by, send your troops to the barb and recall your support with minutes (or seconds) to spare.
Tribes
you said:
Hey, I thought this guide was about a game called tribalwars, get on to the tribal part already.
Well yes, small child with extraordinarily good comic timing, this game
is called tribalwars, and there is, believe it or not, a tribal aspect. In the startup stage of the world, tribes are markedly different than in any other stage. In many cases, the rank one tribe is the place you don’t want to be. Normally, at least for around the first week, the rank one tribe is a mass recruiting tribe full or pointwhores. You are smart, you are reading this, you don’t want to be a part of that, now do you?
Well, then there are things you want to look for in a tribe. Many of them are rather easy to find, believe it or not and some are downright surprising. First thing to look at is first impressions. Does the name of the tribe and name of the players think good or bad? Then look at the tribal profile, does it look nice, does the CoA look nice? Is there a distinct lack of serious ASCII art? If all of these are true, then you may have a good tribe. Next, look at the grammar of the profile, and what they say; a good tribe will give you a contact and/or recruiter, and not much else. Simplicity is key for most good tribes.
Then, talk to people. If the leader of the tribe is easy to find, and they have good communication and grammar skills, they probably have enough sense to lead at least a mediocre tribe.
Once you have found your prospective tribe and talked with their leaders, feel free to apply to the tribe. Send a well written mail outlining your past successes, experience, abilities etc. With luck, you will be accepted.
Being in a Startup Tribe
Well, this is where I leave off for today folks.
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