Guide: TW Tips for Quick(er) Advancement

DeletedUser

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This is a small guide I made for people who are struggling at this game. It only pertains to the early phases of this game, from the start through about the time people get ready to noble. This is primarily intended for players who know the basics but are having trouble becoming the "big dog" in their neighborhood. You may find this guide useful if you're consistently having problems getting raided and or nobled before you can noble someone yourself.

TW Tips for Quick(er) Advancement

Just a few notes on TW. My main computer crashed recently and I'm typing this on my netbook so please ignore any errors.

Note on myself and this guide: I am not the most experienced TW player around but after a few worlds I can hold my own against many players with much more playing time than I have. What follows is not intended to be an all-inclusive guide to winning TW - if you're looking for that kind of guide you'll have to look elsewhere. This is a guide intended for new players and those struggling to get a good start in this game. If you're an experienced player there is no need to read on; if not, you may be able to pick up some tips than can help you on this or your next restart. This is not a step-by-step guide to success. Always keep in mind that TW is a situational game so you will have to adapt your play style accordingly.


1. Startup. My philosophy on getting a good start is to concentrate on those things that will improve your ability to farm. While it's tempting to commit resources early on resource buildings the returns on your investment will be small compared to what you can obtain by farming. Naturally this will require active monitoring on your part. Resources are the key to progressing; active farming is the key to obtaining resources quickly. If there are no barbarians within your 7x7 soon after startup you'll have to go the resource development route. If you have adequate barbs close by it makes more sense to make farmers.

(How much you concentrate on early farmer production will also depend to some extent on you world settings. If BP is only 3 days then concentrating on farmers works very well. If it's 5 days and especially if you unit speed is 1 and you have very few barbs within a reasonable range then you'll need to commit resources to resource production buildings (primarily Timber) since you won't have enough places close enough to farm effectively. In a normal (3 day) BP setup you'll find plenty of abandoned villages nearby once the BP period is up, so farmers first.)

In a Paladin world I'll usually start by making a statue then Paly because at that time he will be your strongest troop and have the greatest carry load. I then go to spears until I have around 100 then continue to make spears and start on axes while working on the necessary upgrades for stables. Once you can make LC they will be your most efficient farming tool. (If you start with spears first before making a Paly you will run the risk of losing some on each attack if there aren't enough.)

2. Defense: Defense can be executed in more than one way. For the early part of this game I don't waste many resources on defense. It is nearly impossible to have enough defensive troops to beat a nuke while you only have one city's worth of troops. It is far better to use the threat of backtiming (and sniping) to keep aggressive neighbors off of your back. Lv 20 walls will be destroyed. That's not to say that they shouldn't be built but your priorities should go to offensive troops and upgrades that help towards this goal. The only time defensive troops (other than spears for farming) might be useful in the early phases is if you belong to a tribe, then you may be asked to help stack a tribe mate's village so you should maintain a small complement of spears/swords/HC for this purpose. (As this game evolves if you don't have a reasonable wall and defensive troops you tribe mates will probably refuse to support you, and rightly so. In the early game, however, you need to weight carefully the benefits of committing resources to walls when you might benefit more from having more farmers.) Later in this game defense becomes more important and you can commit more of your cities for this purpose; in the beginning spending too much on defense will only slow your progress.

(While I'm not a big fan of Turtling (defensive) as a start-up strategy it is a strategy to consider. I did this in my first world and while it may temporarily dissuade your smaller more aggressive neighbors from repeatedly farming your first city it is a poor strategy for long term success. The primary reason why I don't recommend this is because of what I stated in the beginning: "It is nearly impossible to have enough defensive troops to beat a nuke while you only have one city's worth of troops." With an offensive troop build you'll be able to attack any type of village but with a defensive one you'll run the risk of sustaining unacceptable losses especially if the person you're attacking had a defensive build as well. Eventually a neighbor in an offensive village of comparable size will attack you and your ability to respond will be limited by your defensive troop composition. Defensive troop builds also can limit your ability to noble larger villages. Defensive villages become much more useful as this game progresses but I don't recommend this build for your first village.)

3. Offensive troops: Axes and LC are your main offensive troops. You can build these in whatever combination suits you but you'll build to max population faster if you build both. You should also have siege; most build rams but a small complement of cats are also nice to disrupt your neighbor's towns with. You should work towards a goal of having at least 7 times the number of population that you commit to buildings in offensive troop population. (This ratio will be smaller at the beginning and larger as you get closer to being able to noble.) The key here is to prioritize your use of resources towards troops rather than buildings. The more you can farm with the more you'll collect. Of course, upgrade buildings as you see fit but try to keep troops queued up to build at all times. (Points mean nothing if you don't have the troops to back it up - troops first always.)

4. Farming: As previously stated farming is the key to more resources that in turn is the key to faster growth. There are many approaches to effective farming. I use a website called TW Farm Report. It is quite flexible once you figure out how to use it. You will need scouts (Scout Lv2 on some worlds) to make it work right. I recommend it highly. Don't just farm barbs; look for inactive players as well.

5. Keeping an eye on your neighbors: The map that comes with TW can be made more useful by spending on Premium but there are more robust maps available. I recommend using TW Maps as it not only gives you a wider view but also more useful information. You can highlight nearby player cities and tribes and it will show you when the last time they logged on was. (Small caveat: the information shown is usually delayed by a variable amount of time.) You can also apply a filter that has a number of useful functions. This is what I use to show me player activity and growth rates. You can also check their activity by using TW Stats.

(Don't bother attacking active players right away unless they threaten you or are too close for comfort. If you do attack, attack with as large an offensive force as possible to minimize your losses. Because attacking will use up troops you use for farming it is typical for resource collection to decrease while attacking; so don't attack too far from your town in the early phases. Also keep in mind that at the early phases of this game (pre-noble) you won't be able to conquer a town; the best you can do is to take out your opponent's army or damage structures in his town (with siege). Try to monitor your opponent's play habits and catch his army in town while he's away. If he's online when you attack any decent player will dodge and place you at risk of getting backtimed. The longer you can let some of your nearby villages develop the better farms they will make. It's a trade-off so kill some but try to save some for later.)

6. City Development: I almost didn't add this section as what you do can be so variable based on available resources. Although troop production should always be you first priority this doesn't mean that you should totally neglect city development. You should set goals for levels of critical buildings based on whatever strategy you happen to be playing. As previously stated, the returns from developing resource buildings (lumber, mine, clay) are relatively small. Unless you seldom log on they really won't produce appreciable rates (greater than 1k/hr) until you get them above Lv24 (in slow worlds). It's far more useful to put resources into structures that assist in troop production and in getting troop production buildings built quicker. Since there is not much point in getting these types of buildings at so high a level that you're building troops faster than you can collect resources for you'll need to be monitoring your production and production capability and adjust resource allocation appropriately. Finally, don't forget to get your HQ level up. People who take the time to do mathematical analysis of the "noble rush" (quickest time to noble) have shown that you'll get there faster by constructing a mid-20's level HQ as soon as reasonable possible. I'm not necessarily promoting this strategy and like everything else there will be advantages and disadvantages to this approach. The important thing to remember is that a higher level HQ will allow other buildings to be built faster. The "optimal HQ level" really depends on what stage of this game you're in, your growth strategy and game settings so you'll have to experiment and find out what works best for you.

7. Nobles: You can noble quite early in this game but unless you have a good target reasonable close to you I generally recommend waiting until you can send a train. Of course this is situational but typically the higher level the village is that you take over the less building you will have to do and faster you can make use of it. Try to avoid taking barbarians if there is anything better within reasonable range. Learn to send 150-250 ms trains. (Use Opera - it helps.) In a world with academy levels you can only send one noble per total number of academies you have (in this case, count each academy level as a separate academy). There are certain benefits to nobling early as well. These include having more than one town to develop simultaneously, being able to "specialize" villages earlier, nobling promising targets before your neighbors can get to them, and getting rid of potential opponents. The downside is that you're typically slowing your development at somewhere in the sub-3k mark to get your Smithy up to Lv20 and saving up for a noble. There are always choices and consequences in this game - chose the course that suits your style of play the best.

8. Read: Knowledge is power. You can gain knowledge through a number of methods to include experience, asking questions of your more experienced tribe mates, and by reading. Listed below are a couple of decent URLs to consider; there are many others that you can Google. You'll have to adapt based on your current world and how other players are playing around you. I wish you well.



TW Farm Report
http://www.twfarmreport.com/

TW Stats
http://www.twstats.com/

Tribal Wars Map
http://www.tribalwarsmap.com/

Opera for faster trains ("t" method)
http://forum.tribalwars.us/showthread.php?p=8012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBGnhGlMrd0

Other Tribalwars Hints and Tips

http://wiki.tribalwars.net/wiki/Tactics

http://tribalwarshintsandtips.blogspot.com/2008/10/tribe-guide-by-openeye.html

http://www.ihavenomercy.site11.com/

http://www.spanglefish.com/tipsandtrade/index.asp?pageid=141608

What kills what?
http://www.spanglefish.com/tipsandtrade/index.asp?pageid=141610
(If you're not sure you can always use the Simulator at your Rally point.)

The (almost) Complete TW Dictionary
http://forum.tribalwars.net/showthread.php?t=142735
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
I'm not going to comment on the validity of the guide, as I'm not a startup junky..

But a couple of things that I'd change:

1) Include a section for definitions, put it in a spoiler. But things like BP, backstabbing, Sniping, LC, are terms that newer players may not understand, if this guide is geared towards them, you need to gear the terminology towards them, or give them a definition of it.

2) All those links at the bottom are extremely helpful.... To someone who knows how to use them, and where to use them. Include footnote references throughout your post, so the user will know where each of those links fit in. Telling a person to learn to send a 150-200 ms noble train is great, but there is no way they'll understand that this is done by using the t-train method. Link them up, so they'll understand how the links relate. In fact, using teh example of the 150-200 ms train, do it like this would be better:

Learn to send 150-250 ms trains.

3) WoT (Wall of Text!) are hard to read. Put some color in, or some headers in, to help split up the monotony of the writing, reading novels isn't for everyone, it certainly will be less appealing to someone who doesn't have a clue.. It'll just be one overwhelming mumble of words.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
Even before I read through... MAN! People who will bother to read through that wall of text most probably know what you are talking about already. You need something different to reach to new players..
 

DeletedUser

Guest
2. Defense: Defense can be executed in more than one way. For the early part of this game I don't waste many resources on defense. It is nearly impossible to have enough defensive troops to beat a nuke while you only have one city's worth of troops. It is far better to use the threat of backstabbing (and sniping) to keep aggressive neighbors off of your back. Lv 20 walls will be destroyed. That's not to say that they shouldn't be built but your priorities should go to offensive troops and upgrades that help towards this goal. The only time defensive troops (other than spears for farming) might be useful in the early phases is if you belong to a tribe, then you may be asked to help stack a tribe mate's village so you should maintain a small complement of spears/swords/HC for this purpose. (As this game evolves if you don't have a reasonable wall and defensive troops you tribe mates will probably refuse to support you, and rightly so. In the early game, however, you need to weight carefully the benefits of committing resources to walls when you might benefit more from having more farmers.) Later in this game defense becomes more important and you can commit more of your cities for this purpose; in the beginning spending too much on defense will only slow your progress.

Change backstabbing to backtiming. I assume that is what you meant? Easy to make a slip-up when writing something this large, but that is a crucial word so could do with being altered. You may also wish to mention that for less active players, turtling (ie training mainly defence early on) is the better option. If people keep losing troops to your walls and defence they will leave you be for a while.

5. Keeping an eye on your neighbors: The map that comes with TW can be made more useful by spending on Premium but there are more robust maps available. I recommend using TW Maps as it not only gives you a wider view but also more useful information. You can highlight nearby player cities and tribes and it will show you when the last time they logged on was. (Small caveat: the information shown is usually delayed by a variable amount of time.) You can also apply a filter that has a number of useful functions. This is what I use to show me player activity. You can also check their activity by using TW Stats.

You may wish to mention that TW maps allows you to check growth rates of players in your area, so you can monitor growth of potential threats in your area and possibly predict whether they have certain troop types yet (based on builds).

Don't bother attacking active players right away unless they threaten you or are too close for comfort. If you do attack, attack with as large an offensive force as possible to minimize your losses
.

Better sometimes to attack with axes, no lc. A lot of people build spears early on for farming, and most skip swords. Lc should constantly be farming in my opinion - let your axes wipe out the spearmen. They are a lot cheaper to replace too.



I made a few suggestions that you may wish to include. Nicely written though.
 
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