Age of Empires: Castle Siege

!!!NEWS!!! Recent patches have altered some of the strategies I have written. I do not play the game anymore. Someone has offered to update/co-author this guide and I will keep you posted to those changes.

Achievement Synopsis:
You must reach age 5 in order to unlock the ability to build a special troops building. They are uniquely named for each civilization but all function the same. For the Franks it is called “Le Baux de Provence,” for the Britons, “Caernarfon Castle,” etc. Once you build the Troop’s building you can unlock the troops. Plus, your civilization’s troop is unlocked for free. For the next 3 ages, you must upgrade the troop building and upgrade the troops using pennants and wood. For the achievement, you must fully upgrade all 6 troops and in order to do so, you must be at age 8.

Looking at these numbers at an early age can be very intimidating. Don’t worry and don’t be afraid to use your pennants early on for upgrades and research. By age 6, you will be earning a few hundred pennants a battle.

Age 5 Build unique troop building- 25,000 wood 1 day 12 hours
Unlock troops- 5x 500 pennants 25,000 wood 8 hours

Age 6 Upgrade troop building 2 days
Upgrade troops level 2- 6x 1500 pennants, 87,500 wood 1 day 8 hours

Age 7 Upgrade troop building 325,000 wood 5 days 6 hours
Upgrade troops level 3- 6x 4,000 pennant 375,000 wood 2days 8 hours

Age 8 Upgrade troop building 525,000 wood 7 days 12 hours (can be rushed for a mere 3,300 gold=$30)
Upgrade troops level 4- 6x 7500 pennants 715,000 wood 3 days 12 hours

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Far Too Detailed Info on the Game Itself

Here is all the information I have gathered by playing through the game and from AoE's very slow website.I put this together because I had many questions early on and I went through a lot of routes to get my questions answered. If for any reason you are having trouble logging in, check their forums and chances are they are having problems. http://www.ageofempires.com/Forums/yaf_topics63_AoE--Castle-...

Below you will find additional info on:

Basics
Resources
Offense
Deffense
General Building Strategy
Buildings and Troops
Level by Level Basic Strategy

If you are reading this guide because you are curious well, this one is a grind or it can be purchased. It will however cost more money than I think most rational upper middle class folks could afford; as much as a decent automobile. That said…..the other way round will just take more time. Just about two months. You will need to put in about 14 six-hour long grinds, several shorter grinds and lots of waiting. You can also play this on a phone and your stats will transfer over; twice the score for no extra work.

Most of this guide is based off of my opinions and playing styles. Hopefully you are able to tell what the facts are and what my opinions are. Also, the game is constantly doing updates and changing rules. So, let me know if something I wrote is no longer true.

Thanks for the comments and info: Shadow Hydras BLUEBERRYPETE janiwesterling IgorLovison MadamDeMonica

Basics-


This is a tower defense game similar to Clash of Clans. You attack other players for resources while creating a small amount on your own. You are vulnerable to attack when you are logged out only. The game logs you out automatically after 4 minutes of inactivity. Using an auto-clicker is rumored to reset your progress or even ban your live account. It is also rumored that people have had their accounts reset for even mentioning the use of an auto-clicker on AoE site. One way to stay logged in just a little longer is to replay a video. Try to find one that is a full 6 minutes.

Before you start…. Choosing sides? There is really no difference in which side you choose from the beginning. They do not have any special abilities over one another. Things just have different names and colors. Later on, you will unlock your own regions hero and troop first but you can always unlock the others too. Right now, there is an abundance of Britons and Franks while Kieven Rus, Byzantines and Tuetonic Order are less common but by far the rarest is Saracens. Later on you can produce your own pennants but if you choose one of the rarer teams, you might be attacked more. I would advise against choosing the Britons or Franks only because their abundance.

If you have already started and are thinking about switching sides, don’t. It is really not worth it. I know early on it seems like you will never get enough pennants to reach the 7,500 but it is really not a big deal. By age 6, you will easily be getting a few hundred pennants from each battle. In fact I have been typically overstocked at most times.

4 builds- Yep that is it. Only 4 at a time. NO, there is no way to speed up builds without using gold.

Alliance- Groups of 50 people that cannot attack each other. There a few just for True Achievements members. Try different spellings and capitol letter combinations in the search bar to find one. Yeah, I know it won’t fit in the space so try trueachievement combinations. It sure cannot hurt to join one. In fact, we will at least not be screwing each other over by joining one. If you cannot find one or if they are full, just create one. I am sure others will join. Just make it easy for them to find it.

Secret Alliance- I am starting an unofficial alliance. It works like this, I spelled the initials T.A. in the bottom of my screen using bits of road/honor. If I see anyone else do the same, I will not start a battle with them or surrender right away. We are in this together.


!!!!NEWS!!!! I am told that this idea is becoming very popular. Apparently someone is posting this idea on other sites. The "TA" can be seen on many players castles. Try it out but remember not to attack anyone that has it. "TA" perhaps has a second meaning?....



Matching- This is a little bit of a grey area. It can sometimes appear that you are matched based on crowns. I have found this to be more true when at low crown levels. However, I believe the matching is based more upon assets. What I mean by that is how much total you have invested. You probably have been attacked by someone that has a more advanced keep than you or even less advanced than you. If you visit their bases, you may find other areas are more or less advanced than yours i.e. defenses, military buildings, advanced troops, storage or production. This is just a hypothesis but it seems to be true based upon my observations.


Resources-


25% rule- The game uses around 25% for most of your resources. For example, if you had 1,000 wood, 1,000 food and 1,000 stone then you logged out, the most an attacker could take from you would be 250 wood 250 food and 250 stone. Also, your keep would hold 25% percent of the new amount (about 62 of each resource). These numbers hold up for the most part but there is fortunately/unfortunately a limit. It seems that a maximum amount of resources you could potentially gain/lose is between 50,000 to 60,000.

As far as pennants go, I have not figured out exactly how those are divided. When you attack, you only gain that civilization's type of pennant. However, when you are attacked you lose some from all civilizations; this much I know. But what I don't know is how much of your stash is available to attackers. Right now, At one time, I had about 45,000 total pennants(about 7,000 average for each civ). When I am attacked, they can take 560 of mine. It appears to be about 1/80th or 1.2% of your TOTAL pennants? if I did my math right. None the less, a small amount.

Gold- SAVE IT! You can use this for purchasing resources or rushing buildings. You can purchase gold with real money if you want to but you do not have to. The other ways to get it are by building roads to your keep, completing objectives (under achievements) or randomly in chests that are awarded by destroying keeps. I would advise you to use gold sparingly. I would advise you definitely not to use it on resources and only armies and rarely on rushing buildings but much later on. Save it up until at least age 7, you will be glad you did.

There is a maximum you can earn in one day and that is it. You can not come back a month after not playing and expect to be rich. The most you can ever get is 12 pieces and that is if you connect all 4 roads.

A good time to use gold would be if you had a large amount of a resource and I mean a large amount of resources and you did not want to lose it while away from the game. Let’s say you had to leave for work but a building space will not be done for another hour. This may be good time to rush that build to save you some time later on. This way you do not lose resources and there is not a time when you are not using all 4 building options either. Again, try not to use any until about the end of age 7.

Crowns- Crowns main function are for keeping track of leaderboard ranking. You can have 0 crowns and still attack and play the game. There are a lot of rumors about how the crowns really work. They can somewhat determine who you are paired against. You will probably be matched with someone with a similar amount of crowns as you; more or less. As of right now, crowns are still awarded by comparison. For example if I have 400 crowns and I attack someone with 10 crowns I will only gain 3 or some small amount of crowns. However, if I have 10 crowns and attack someone with 400 I would be awarded 10+ crowns. The same is true defensively. You need 2,000 crowns for an achievement. On average you gain 5 per victory; so that is about 400 wins. However, I only had 350 wins. I got about 1000 crowns in the 2 weeks of time I was doing ages 6 and 7. At age 8, the most I saw was 120 for a single battle.
See also: Age of Empires: Castle Siege Patch 1.2 Detailed

{update} At one point, crowns won defensively DID count towards the 2000 but with a recent system update, they do not count. Perhaps that will change in the future. Jan 14, 2015



Farming/boosting crowns- POINTLESS. While possible to farm crowns, it is a waste of time. The best and last chances to farm crowns would be between ages 3 and 5. At these times, building and army is still relatively fast. Also there are still a lot of idiots out there designing terrible fortresses. But there are so many more crowns later on; just be patient. And yes, it is possible to boost crowns but very unlikely and pointless. You have to have battled someone you know and then revenge battle each other. You set up the keep in an easy location, destroy it then logout. They would then strike back right away. Read my forum post for more specifics. But again, pointless. You could argue that boosting could gain you gold but it is such a small amount you are better off roaming the streets collecting cans, taking them to a scrap yard and THEN buying gold.

Realistically, at age 8 I was getting about 40+ crown while being attacked in my sleep and still able to get another 50 or so crowns while fighting on any given day. So, it is not a question of whether or not you will get this but a question of when. It will be very nice to get this early on. That way your focused strategy is not on crowns AND resources but resources only.


Offense-


Choose your battles wisely. Even though your opponent may have great wealth, the loss of time building armies may not be worth the risk. Your particular army or attack style may not be well suited against a particular defense. Also, as you progress through the ages, your tactics will vary greatly.

Check the corners of the map for cheeky hides.

Ask yourself, where would I hide a trap? An open hole in a wall is usually a set up. Send in a pawn to explore.

Watch other videos from your alliance or from people who attacked and beat you. Visit them and check THEIR log. Learn from them. It is a great way to stay logged in too while waiting for your army to build.

Low resources, move on. The only low resource battles you should consider are abandoned games that you can easily win with only 1 or 2 troops.

Heroes- (age 3 and up) always bring one with. You may need to design an army specifically for that hero’s skills though or just use them as bait.

Revenge battles- Here, you can observe your opponent’s castle as long as you like, build the perfect army or make a good choice about whether or not it is in your favor to strike back. No matter the outcome, they can revenge attack you again. Don’t take it personal if you are defeated by someone stronger than you and don’t rush in because you are pissed.

Victory? There is more than one way to win a battle; destroy their keep, destroy %50 of their buildings, destroy %100 or……looting. Now technically looting is not a win. However, there are times when you are only after a particular resource or pennant. You can choose battles where those resources are easy to get. You probably won’t waste a lot of troops, it should be quick but…..it does count as a loss and you will lose crowns. Big deal right? Well, you will not gain many crowns of the needed 2,000 for another achievement. But at the same time, gaining a huge amount of resources hardly feels like loss to you, but it sure does to your opponent. Also, do not use what you do not have to either army-wise.

Full power- This type of attack will probably include many types of soldiers that you employ at different times of the battle. Don’t forget your hero. This particularly applies during the later stages. This style will require to you to be skilled with the finer points of the game and will probably take the longest to build.

Flash mob- This is particularly effective around age 5 when you can access the Knights Templars/horse units. Using all ladder troops early on is popular too. The idea is that you only bring one type of a fast unit and bum-rush the entire place. Sometimes spawning them at different locations. This technique fails when you land on a fire trap or if the defenses have been built close together or your mob gets smashed by a catapult. Also, this can be slow to build but fun as hell.

Looting- opposite of full power, you only use a few soldiers and move and protect them very carefully. A great combination is equal portions of infantry, Briton’s longbow men and mamluks. The goal is to gather a small amount of supplies quickly. Chance are you will lose the battle but gain a small decent amount of resources. You can also keep building armies while attacking with a minimum of troops. This strategy is really effective if you can put a long stretch into the game or if you do not want to log out and risk losing a large resources. Using this method, you can do many battles an hour even at higher ages. You will make enemies though.

Apparently, this method was frowned upon by the developers and there was an attempt to patch this. It may not work as hot as it used to.


Defense-


For God’s sake DO NOT attempt to protect your camps!!!!! They disappear when you log out. Put them in a corner. The story is that the camps go away to another land to attack. They are called camps and that means that they are away from home. In real life, putting up tents in your back yard and sleeping in them is not camping, it is called sleeping in your back yard. DO NOT put your camps in your walls! Or even close to your other buildings. It leaves an outline that attackers can see. If they can see it, they know there is not a trap there.

Your keep only holds about 25% percent of your wealth but if destroyed, means an instant defeat. Point being, do not overly stress over your keep as you progress through the ages. If the keep is the only thing they get, you only lose 8% of your wealth plus you get a short peace treaty.

Upgrade everything you can but keep in mind that defense buildings will not operate while they are being upgraded. I would suggest only upgrading one at a time.

Check out other defenses. No defense is perfect against all types of attacks. If there was a particular fortress that smoked you, then copy it. You may end up rearranging your entire set-up a few times during each age; sometimes by a little or a lot.

You cannot possibly defend all the buildings EVER.

Do not build what you do not need; less to defend.

In early stages, you will be defeated regularly and sometimes by 100%. This is OK. Learn from it. Watch your playback videos of when you are attacked. They can really help you determine what your weakness are.

You can still be attacked during a peace treaty by a revenge attack. However, your peace treaty will remain active if you do a revenge battle. I once believed you could not be attacked if your crowns were at 0. This currently being discussed in the comments section. The overall opinions are that yes, you can be attacked by random PvP even if your crowns are at 0. The proof is that when you have 0 crowns and are attacked, it shows the potential crowns that would be won and not your real total.

In my opinion, set your patrol points and guardhouses to attack right away. The only time when this may change is age 7 when players can use Joan of Arc.

The outside boarders of the game field DO NOT act as a natural wall. If you see a fortress with a keep way in the corner, this is usually an easy victory because you can spawn just behind where they can build out to.

Oh, and if it was not clear from before, DO NOT PROTECT YOUR ARMY CAMPS!!!!!!! STUPID PEOPLE!!!!!!! I still see this at age 8


General building strategy:


The ABB’s of the game. Always Be Building! ALWAYS USE ALL 4 BUILDS!!

Diversify your material- try to use different types of material regularly.

Choose builds that will finish when you will be ready to start another one. There is nothing worse than having to set an alarm for the middle of night just to start another build.

Try to build in this order:
1.Storage- You may find it impossible to move forward or build anything new without being able to store it properly. Although not as fun as other builds, doing these at the beginning can really prevent you from wastefully over-stocking on any of your resources. So build or upgrade. Keep in mind though, the more buildings, the more you have to defend. So sometimes, the expensive upgrade is far better than the cheap and fast new building. P.S. Avoid building the second stone store-house as long as you can.

2.New builds- at the start of each age, familiar buildings become available as well as new types of buildings. Start with the familiar buildings. They are usually cheap and quick but can be readily beneficial such as camps that can add 6 more troops to your army.

3Military Buildings- barracks, range, stable, siege, hall of heroes, super-soldiers home(lv5) and the two research facilities. Upgrade these next, particularly early on so that overstock of resources can have a place to go and then level-ups/research can happen while other buildings are happening.

4.Defense- Only upgrade on defense building one at a time. While upgrading, that building will not function. You may even wish to rearrange your defense set up while a certain upgrade is taking place. Upgrade in order of least importance; guard-house, archer towers, crossbow towers, catapult, giant arrow, flame towers, trebacks

5.Production- Yep, another boring build but really well worth it over time. At full capacity, your mills and farms will produce about 70,000+ a day.

6.Traps- Caltrops, engineer traps, fire traps; generally these are quick to upgrade or build and you can do these in-between builds or if you are playing often or monitoring your progress regularly. The caltrops and fire traps will never increase their duration no matter how far you upgrade them.

7.Walls- Technically a defense build but instant. Try to put a little at a time into your walls. A good time to invest is after completing a build.

8.Loyalty- Absolutely no practical use for these. The only time you should invest in this crap is if you are overstocked on anything. You CAN hide a trap with them with the AoE upgrade 1.4. I guess you can draw words or shapes with them……. (swastikas and other offensive symbols will get you banned) .


Buildings and Troops


Keep- a useless building that you must protect. Keep(PUN) in mind the 25% of 25% (1/16th) rule as it relates to the amount of resources your keep holds. Think about this when trying to gather resources, there are far more resources in the storage buildings than in the keep even with the stupid bonus chests.

Storage- Silos, lumberyards and storehouses. Upgrade these but only build what you have to. The less you have, the less you have to defend. Sometimes it is easier just to do the expensive upgrade than the cheap fresh build. The highest these go are level 9 and will reach a combined total of 1,600,000. Most high level players only upgraded these to the levels necessary to access age 8. Defend these; they contain most of your resources. When attacking, look for the buildings that appear to have the least in them. These actually contain the most.

Production- Farms, mills and quarries. Build and upgrade these. They will make life a lot easier for you but will certainly not be your main source of income. They can be upgraded to level 9. At full operation, you should be getting around 250,000 wood/food a day. Try to protect these but they are not essential. When attacking, do not underestimate these, while they only contain a comparatively small amount or resources, they can be a quick and easy source due to the fact that they are not protected well.

Research buildings- There are two of these odd shaped ducks and are uniquely named for your civilization. They produce pennants but hold a hold about 1% of your pennants during an attack. They can be upgraded to level 6. These should be protected more so than your production building particularly ONLY if you are a rare civilization. When attacking, these are what you go for when pennant hunting.

Troop training bonus and hero slot increase are the two I consider the most important. Next would be hero recovery time, scouting time and wall mounted troops in this order of importance.

The production bonus researches are a good investment at first but at level 5 and 6, they are not a good investment. In order for them to pay off, you need to keep playing for another month to see a return on your investment. I also got the first two crown bonuses but after getting my 2,000, what is the point in investing?

The last three I consider useless; resource protection, reward chest bonus and pennant these all sound really appealing, but when you read the print, they suck. I actually got all of these for the first three levels of the research buildings but did not get any more. Resource protection only insures up 5% at the top level? Waste of wood. The reward chest bonus is OK if you are capturing the keep frequently but my playing style was not about the keep after age 5. The pennant boost is a joke. This boost ONLY applies to pennants awarded in bonus chests. A chest at age 8 awarded me 18 pennants. Let’s do the math, 15% of 18 is 2.7 crowns. Huge waste of wood.

Military buildings- Barracks, Range, Siege Workshop, Hall of Heroes, Stable and super-troops building(uniquely named for each civilization). These are the buildings where troops are unlocked and updated. How, what, when and if you choose to upgrade is really up to you and your attack style. These buildings all contain some resources but definitely the least. They are the lowest priority in your defense. When attacking, go for these if desperately going for resources or a 50% victory.

Camps- these will determine how many soldiers you can bring into battle. Upgrading them quickly becomes expensive, time consuming and lack-luster. I have seen top level player have them upgraded as high as level 8. At that point, they have about 64 spots they can fill. Levels 5, 6 and 8 only give you one troop but 7 will give you two. If I did not make it clear earlier, do not attempt to defend these. Put them far away from you. When attacking look for their silhouettes as a good indication of where a trap is not. Hopefully your opponents never reads this.

Stable/Siege- I personally found no use in upgrading the cavalry. Almost every person I go up against deploys them in their defenses, I find them useless. Their stats are impressive the further along you go but I am just not in love with them. There are also some troops and siege weapons that I stopped upgrading but that is up to you.

Hall of Heroes- I wanted to go into a little more detail with this one for a few reasons. While you need to unlock a minimum of 6 for an achievement, unlocking them all is not necessary. The building itself can only be upgraded to level 3 for 100,000 food and the first two tiers of heroes can all be upgraded to level 3/4. While not as powerful, the first tier heroes can heal very quickly. This can really come in handy. Basically, when upgrading any hero, they become stronger and can use their special power an extra time. While that is really cool, it takes more time to recover and can be a drain on pennants.

My attack style greatly benefited from Saracen’s tier 1 hero, Tariq and Byzantine's tunnel rat because I was able to use them so often and I have never upgraded them.

The tier 2 heroes I upgraded were the Briton(cool) and the Frank mostly due to the fact that I was waaay overstocked on their pennants but I did at least unlock most of them for the same reason. They can also be upgraded to 3/4.

The tier 3 heroes can be upgraded but the building upgrade is 975,000 food and not worth it. I finally have unlocked all the tier 3 heroes only because of overstocked pennants again. Overall, really think about if it is worth it to spend the pennants and to always prioritize upgrading the unique-super-troops first.

Super-Troop Building- given a different name for each civilization, this building is the most important for this achievement. Hopefully, you can work this building non-stop. Upgrade troops based on their abundance of pennants. While I stated earlier that there would be plenty of pennants, that does not mean you can be foolish. Use pennants wisely.

Defense- checkout leaderboards and your own alliance for ideas and compare how great players have designed their layout based what age they are. There is no such thing as a perfect castle. Generally you always want to put towers behind walls. Place your traps, based on what your weaknesses are and place them there. Your videos should also show you the most common routes enemies are taking. When attacking, look for easy access to towers and guardhouses and blind spots from towers.

Defense troops- The choice to use infantry or bowmen on your walls depends on your ability to predict your attackers. Wall mounted infantry work great against ladder-troops but are useless otherwise. Guardhouses are great; upgrade them, defend them, keep them apart and do not box them into walls. Same is true with the 3 outposts but clump them together. I have always set defense troops to attack right away. I think it makes things more chaotic for attackers.

Walls- As you advance, build walls out in layers. http://www.ageofempires.com/blog/?p=1353 Although this page is a little outdated, somethings are still true. For other ideas, visit the top players on the leaderboard. One thing that is common is to space out small bits of wall so that troops can only launch at great distances. Try to upgrade a little at a time. If you have extra stone, it is sometimes better to spend it on the wall rather than having it stolen. Always upgrade in this order: gates, inner-wall, mounted wall, corner/joints, walls around defense towers and finally, whatever is left. Walls go up to level 10. When attacking, look for poorly designed corners to sneak through.


Level by level basic strategy:


Age 1- less than an hour

Ah, the good ol’ day. Back when building took but a few seconds.

Just follow instructions.



DO NOT SPEND ANY GOLD!

Age 2- a few hours

You are probably thinking, hey this game is pretty fun. Back when I was your age, I was having the time of my life; building and destroying.

Build and upgrade anything you can.

Be careful when you do your campaign battles that you are able to use the resources quickly and that they do not go to waste from attackers. You can save the campaign battles for a later date too. You will have to battle other people to get anywhere. That is OK, most of them have already abandoned their game so, no guilt.



DO NOT SPEND ANY GOLD!

Age 3- About a day or two

The pace the game moves at and the options at this age that are available are just about perfect. Enjoy.

Same as before upgrade everything and when you a ready, start the upgrade to age 4.

But before doing so, check the status of your crowns. Have you noticed that even though you are winning most of your battles, has the total you are getting gone down? Probably not but if it has, lower your shown crowns by losing some battles and surrendering right away. Remember, it is the total crowns collected not the crowns you have. This is a good time to grind out a few battles if you are up for it. The further along you go, the longer it takes to build an army; up to 45min at age 8. A good goal would be to have well over 100 crown collected by the end of age 3. You can check your status in the achievement tab. Keep in mind, it does take a little while to update sometimes.

This is the first time you will get exposed to the 4th form of resources, pennants or flags,… what have you. Relax. Do not think that each one of these is priceless. Yes they seem like you can only get a few each battle and that it will take forever to get the 7,500 from each civilization that you need especially from the rare Saracens, (gasping for air). All that will change. By age 7, I was taking about 500 pennants during each battle and even more in age 8. So, go ahead and unlock all the heroes when you can. Some are pretty useless but some are really cool. My favorite is of course is the rare Saracen’s hero. You will see why later; I would advice you not to upgrade him for a few reasons.
You may also be wondering about the two research options and the pennants that are sometimes required. At this point most of the research is beneficial and you should go for it. By all means, make sure you are keeping your builds at full capacity before spending on a research. Read my section on research for more info.




DO NOT SPEND ANY GOLD

Age 4- 7 days

You are probably starting to notice the builds are getting much longer and the time it takes to build an army has increased.

Try to upgrade everything you can. It is OK to jump to age 5 a little early so that resources are a little more abundant. Hopefully you have gathered about 500 crowns by the time you are ready to move on to age 5.











Still, DO NOT SPEND ANY GOLD I know it is getting really tempting and you probably have 200+ saved at this point, but hold out until age 7. Trust me.

Age 5- 7+ days

This is when my jaw started dropping and the game started getting long. However, I did build and upgrade EVERYTHING during this age and I was really glad I did.

One of the first things I did was to build my super-troops-building. Being a Frank, the Knights Templar were unlocked right away. I used the hell out of these guys. My entire army consisted of them. Sometimes I would not even need them all. I would just watch them devour everything in their path. I was winning almost every battle by %100. Had I known more about the crown rules, I would have lowered their total down well below 50. In any case, I had over 500 showing when I was finished with the age and had collected just over 1,000.

The down side to the swarm tactic is that these troops took a while to build. If a defense set-up was built close together, I had problems. Sometimes, crossbow towers really devastated me and same with patrol pikemen. Either way, it was fun using this set up and seemed pretty effective most of the time. I did end up bringing a few ladder troops with too because a catapult could really hurt too.

I did upgrade everything available, researched everything and even had all of my walls up to level 5. I am happy I did all of that. It really made the next few stages that much easier. There are a few research options I could have done without.







DO NOT SPEND GOLD

Age 6- 17+ days
Wait, what,…..17 days?!?!?!?!?!

As soon I got here I actually calculated the time it would take to upgrade everything and if, IF you built at full capacity, 24/7, it would take just over 17 days. No F’n Way. I am ready to be done with this game. My attitude and strategy have totally changed.
The first thing I did was upgrade my super-troops-building and the second was upgrade the keep to age 7. To hell with this place. The next most important thing I can advise you do to if you would like to move this along quickly would be to upgrade your storage buildings. Make this a priority. Before moving to age 8, you will need to have 3 lumberyards at level 8 and 1 at level 7 and at least 3 silos at level 7.

As far as your troops go, upgrade them if you have enough otherwise upgrade the building.

My attack strategy changed too. With fire traps and fire towers, the flash mob was failing miserably. My direction at this point was strictly resource based. The crowns were not even a consideration at this point and that turned out to be a good thing for the crowns. I will go into heavy detail of what my attack strategy is. Your other more common option at this point is to upgrade your siege workshop and unlock the trebuchet.

I completely downsized my army and most of the time relied on the stupidity of others. Most of my successful attacks were with 2 mamluks, 4 longbow men(not composite) and a hero; I now consider success to be in terms of resources not crowns. To build them takes about 6 minutes which means I could attack about 10 times an hour. It means I was building small armies at the same time I was battling. I only focused on resources and only chose battles that I could potentially walk away with large amounts. I was able to easily take +60,000 wood or food an hour. Oh, and did I mention, I would take a hero every time and usually it was my man, Tariq, the Saracen? Since I never upgraded him, his recovery time was under 20 min(due to research upgrades.) That meant I could use him almost every 2nd or 3rd battle. In my opinion, he counts for at least 4 level 2 Longbowmen.

Step 1: choose a rich or stupid opponent. Check those corners of the map, they think they are so cheeky. Look for exposed storage buildings. Even if you only destroy their production buildings, those can add up over many short battles and few troops.

Step 2: Launch a mamluk. If this triggers all of their outpost and guardhouse troops, then deploy a second mamluk. Your goals right now are to clear out troops, destroy guardhouses, look for fire traps and finally destroy any easy buildings. When all that is done, Look for an unprotected section of wall to have your mamluks start chipping away at. Mamluks are pretty fast and it is possible to manually dodge a lot of catapult fire if needed but definitely not arrows, ballistas or fire.

I developed a technique for fighting off enemy troops particularly mounted troops and pikemen. I call it the mamluk square dance. This works great if you are not fighting off other mamluks. As troops approach, you will be firing at them. As soon as they are close, move them to the left or right of the approaching troops and not too far away. The enemy will follow but will hesitate just a little when they turn. This allows you to fire on them again without taking any damage. As soon as they are close, turn again in the same direction forming a square. It might take a little getting used to the right size of the square and the timing but it is totally worth it. By doing this, you can destroy large amounts of troops without taking much damage yourself. By age 8, I was still defeating entire first waves of troops with only 2-3 mamluks.

Step 3: Look for safe places to launch your longbow men. They might need some guidance and babysitting from time to time. If Tariq is available use him instead preferably to fire his special arrow at a cluster of targets.

Step 4: Quit? Surrender is an option. You keep what you stole and it will lower your crown total (yeah). If you still need crowns you may choose to fight it out to a 50% victory. Hopefully you did not use many troops and remembered to build and army while fighting.

USE GOLD VERY SPARINGLY OR NOT ALL

Age 7 +month (or just over a week if you hurry)

Ehhhhhh…….. Are we done yet?

This will be the longest grind the game has to offer. The first thing you have to do is upgrade your lumberyards. You have to have 3 of them to level 8 and one to level 7 but in order to do that you have to have your silos able to hold 325 wood (three at level 7 or two at level 7 +2 at level 6). When that is ready, starting thinking about the big grind to age 8. This is why we saved that gold.

Keep upgrading your super-troops or their building while waiting for the big build to happen.

You probably have noticed at this point or even age 6 that crowns are being awarded more generously. Keep your totals low and you will probably be receiving 50 a day.

Using the same looting technique, I was getting about 100,000 resources and hour but I was finding I needed more troops and in fact, I started bringing a few infantry to act as decoys and even a single flame unit into each battle. The second hero option also came in handy here even if it was a useless hero. Since my troops were also upgraded, it was taking longer to build armies. This is when the gold came in handy.

Grind to 825 wood- I had over 500 gold by this point and started spending it on rushing troops. I would always leave out a few mamluks so that while I was attacking, they could still be built. I made a rule of never spending more than 5 gold at time. So sometimes I waited. It took me over 6 hours of straight grinding to get the 825. I took a few short breaks here too just to let armies build; watched some replay videos but always stayed logged in.

Age 8- 6+ months (this is only a guess at how long it would take you to upgrade everything. I am not going to find out)

There are not as many stupid people at this age but still a few that baffle me. I have seen a few that look like they are out of age 4; wooden walls, no flame towers. Perhaps they are on to something…….

I got my 2,000 crowns about a day after getting to age 8. Depending on how you did, you should be close if you do not have it by now.

Upgrading your super-troop-building is going to take 7 days and 12 hours. After that, you have 6 more troop upgrades. They are 715,000 wood a piece. Think of these as 6 final but easier grinds to knock out. Try to upgrade your army build time, army camps and hero recovery time.

I also have become more dependent on infantry. I use them as meat-shields and distractions from heavy fire while my softer longbow men fire at resources. Other than that, if your defenses are worth anything and you still need crowns, it should only take a few days to reach your 2,000. I got mine while I slept. I was attacked 4 times and earned 37 crown. I have been earning 50 to 100 crown a day. Most of those come from my great defenses. I rarely am able to take the keep but I can win by 50% a few times a day.

USE GOLD SPARINGLY AND WISELY- GET ALL FOUR ROADS CONNECTED.





The End
Hey, you got it! For other's sake I would suggest setting up your keep so that it may be destroyed easily. I hope you find mine and destroy it. I made it very easy even to get 100%. But don't waste your troops on the 100%.

Option B
Another potentially quicker way to do this is that once you have successfully defended your castle 10 times, you could simply not ever invest in defense ever again. You could then only invest in offense and production. You would be assuming that you will be attacked and defeated a lot but if you always spent your resources, what can they take? Plus you get a treaty.

This is just a theory but it should work the same if you can do the 10+ long grinds and not log out during those times.

I would love to hear your feedback. I plan to re-edit this based on comments.



bt

6 different civilizations times:
LVL 1 - 500 banners and 25k wood - will give you
LVL 2 - 1500 banners and 87.5k wood
LVL 3 - 4000 banners and 375k wood
LVL 4 - 7500 banners and 715k wood


Thanks to Soschiro for the info on lvl 3. Thanks to BemusedBox for the info on lvl 4

I would recommend using gold to change civilizations once you have enough banners to finish lvl 3 and 4 (11500) and change to one that you are low in. It helps speed up the process of getting banners.

As for wood, don't be fooled into spending your wood on unnecessary items and make sure you spend your food on upgrading your troops to make raiding easier.