Teachu Textbook

TeachU Textbook

Assembled into PDF format by Calandryll

Table of Contents:

I. Forward (by Calandryll) II. Introduction III. Activity IV. Early Building Strategy V. Farming A. Rushing LC i. The Strategy VI. Defense Strategy VII. Nobles A. Early Nobling B. Noble Methods VIII. Openeye’s HC/Cat Strategy A. HC Strategy B. Defense Strategy i. Example One ii. Example Two C. Offensive Strategy i. Example Three ii. Example Four D. Economic Advantages E. Epilogue IX. Fake Attacks A. Swarm B. Decoy C. Fanged X. Personal Alliances XI. Scouting XII. Good Tribes A. In a Word; Activity B. Aristocracy C. Diplomacy XIII. The Importance of Queen

Forward:

Any good player knows that the best players are not always the ones that have been playing the longest, but the ones that have put the most effort into learning the game. Through out my short TW life, I have attempted to read and find every guide and useful piece of information. Roaming through the help forums at unreasonable hours of the night, lit by the dull glow of my monitor. It wasn't long after I started playing that I discovered this guide. Immediately I recognized that I was reading one of the best assembled guides on the forums. The sheer wealth of knowledge alone would make me rocket to the top! Since I have discovered it, I have continuously posted it in my tribes forums, and have even sent the Early Build Strat section in tribe invites. If you want to become the best player you can possibly be, it is not your tribe that is going to help you. You need to be actively seeking information. Read all the guides you can find. And I can see that you already are, as you are reading this guide. The most important thing to know when you are reading various guides, not everything that someone says is right for you. Most information in guides is generally correct. And even if you disagree with almost everything someone says, there has to be something that you take away from it. Even a broke clock is right twice a day. In short, if you want to be a great 'expert' player, then you must read guides, and you must read them over and over again. I have long since saved guides onto my computer for future reading or posting. Recently, I decided to turn this guide into a PDF complete with links and a table of contents. I hope that this will allow more people to read it. If not, it is at least beneficial to myself, and whoever else decides to download it. Feel free to distribute this PDF as you will, it is here for everyone to use and read!

I. Introduction to TeachU Guide

Why make TeachU just benefit the 75-80 players that came and gone through its short life? Another of goals with TeachU was to write several guides on subjects that haven't been covered in other guides or go into more advanced theory and strategy of TW. Originally I wanted to write a all encompassing manual for TW but after 21 pages it got a bit much. Anybody who knows my guides be prepared, there going to be a lot to go through. I tried to remain as objective as possible and cover as many viewpoints on the various topics as possible. Many thanks go to the various players in TeachU who offered all the input on various ideas and what not. One of the best things about TeachU was the varied views from all the different players. I give full permission to these guides being posted elsewhere in tribal forums or whatever you like. I want to spread the knowledge to all who want it. All I ask is that you leave credit with TeachU when you copy/paste them. It is their effort that brought this to be. With that enjoy and I hope they help,

Openeye

II. Activity

The biggest key to success in this game is activity. Sadly, you can’t just get by that. Any amount of skill wont mean shit if you’re not on. ● ● ●

Once everyday for a 1 speed world (1 hour per day) 2 times a day for a 1.5 speed world (1-2 hours) Better than 3 times a day for speed 2. (2-3 hours)

These a rough estimates, you may be able to get by with less but not if you want to remain competitive. Also those times are averages, on days where you are under attack or are launching attacks you will obviously be on a lot longer and other days you may not have more than 10 mins simply to check to make sure nothing is incoming. Note: Also, despite how ever many sitters you have that can watch it "whenever you go out" don't trust them to be able to play it well. As your account and theirs grows you will have harder and harder times with finding sitters. Base this off your time and not the time of your friends. Despite what many think about how good players having sitters round the clock, it’s often just not true, oftentimes it becomes a lot of sleep deprived nights and 02:00 alarms. So choose with speed world will work best with your life and what units/settings you enjoy and select that world and stick with it, don’t play a lot of worlds. Just because X world is the newest or just started it doesn't mean it’s the right world for you. Quite likely the world that has been going for 6 months would be better, just because you cant start at the beginning or core of a world doesn't mean you cant be successful and gain a solid rank(if that’s what you are going for). In fact, many times it’s actually easier to build a large and successful account on the rim, later in the world rather than in the beginning. Also get involved in the politics and the P & P of the world to get your name out, but refrain from becoming a spammer. ONLY, post well thought out pieces; you're better to say nothing than to spam or say something stupid. There are a lot of good players who are never known because they never speak out, that’s not in itself a bad thing, but name recognition can open a lot of doors that would be otherwise closed, such as new tribes, friends, and allies. Further, it will help you stay better connected to the global political atmosphere which can be a big help when it comes to later in the world and your looking for a new region to colonize into.

III. Early Building Strategy

Next major concept you need to learn is building strategy, not only what to build but when to build. Building strategy can differ greatly based on several factors: player strategy, the age of the world, your neighbors, farming, activity, and several others. I will also touch on early troop production, though I will get more involved on that topic in a later lesson. Upon arriving with your first village your first goal is to boost your resource income. While you (and presumably your neighbors) are still under protection you have only 2 routes to do this. Either 1) upgrading your resource buildings or 2) farming grey abandons. Unfortunately you can’t plan on the grey abandons, either your lucky enough to have them or you loose out. Your first few builds should be aimed at resource mines. Based on your activity you may be forced to build a level or two on your warehouse, but hopefully you can keep the stockpile small enough that it’s not an issue for a while. Don't bother with walls or hiding places in the first half of protection as there is no way of being attacked. If you’re later world and your stockpile isn't remaining balanced you might find a level or two of market could pay of in short order. IF you have an abandon nearby it would be helpful to build the barracks/statue & paladin early to build a few spearmen and begin farming it for additional resources. Based on the number of abandons, your hauls, and your activity try to balance your spearmen production so that you don’t have any more than necessary to get the job done. If your playing from the world beginning don’t bother building more than 500 spears, later world no more than 1k. If you feel additional troops are needed for your farming concentrate on axes or even better LC. Once you can afford to keep your HQ building 24/7 then you can start upgrading your HQ. There is no need to upgrade prior. Also at this point, you should build the barracks and smithy and getting that running 24/7 aiming for axes as soon as possible. As a reminder you shouldn't build more than 500 spears or swords (early world) or 1k spears and swords(late world) and should in fact aim to stop at 1/2 that number (250/500). As you approach the end of your protection you should start building the wall up to protect yourself. The wall is more useful at defending than your troops as it not only adds a base defense value it also adds a multiplier to your defensive troops(even though they may not number great). Further your wall will hurt an opponent EVERYTIME they try to farm you unless they have siege equipment(which you should beat them too). This combined with activity should be enough to discourage any early aggressive action against you. As you continue to grow don’t be in too big a hurry, the key is balance. If you race to get a noble or upgrade your mines, or your barracks/stables too fast without consideration for the other aspects you will find yourself at disadvantage versus other players. Based on farming, activity, and neighbors continue to grow with your goal being "building 24/7" your barracks, stables, and HQ should all be building as much as possible as often as possible. If you’re not using resources as fast as you gain them then you need more barracks, stables, and HQ. If you are waiting on resources then you need to upgrade mines, markets(if they are open), and farm more often/effectively(which often means more troops).

Note: This is what I mean by balance: The balance of income and spending, not the balance of levels of improvements. You may have only level 15 mines, level 20 barracks, and only level 10 HQ or vise versa and have level 20 mines, only level 5 barracks, but level 15 HQ. It all depends on your farms, neighbors and your own activity. There is no magic formula, no build x levels of A, y levels of B, and presto success. As a result don’t feel that you’re a failure if you get nobled or farmed on your first few times. Sometimes even doing everything "right" still results in failure. As you continue to grow after you have nobled and started expanding there are a few base rules that you should learn: 1) Hiding places are largely useless. Don’t bother with them and preferably demolish them on sight. 2) There is no need to build a HQ past level 20. Its only points you don’t need. 3) You don’t need to build a siege workshop to max. Level 5 is often more than you will ever need. 4) A max pointed village isn't a good thing. In fact often times you shouldn't be much above 10k points per village MAX. 5) It isn't how many points a village is that determines its worth; rather the troop count is the deciding factor. 6) Things you should max without fail: Barracks, Farm, Warehouse, Mines Your goal in determining your village builds is to find balance between points, troops, and effectiveness. Every building adds points and takes away from your total troop count. The small number of points that each building adds on or troops it subtracts may not seem to mean much in the end but its impact is much greater later on. 500 points and the 125 troops isn't much for one village but when you have 100 villages its 50k points and 12.5k troops with could have a rather large impact on morale. This is a rather minor difference, often you can shave 1k or more points off your villages and add an additional 250 or more troops doubling those estimates. So as you build your villages think about the bigger picture and weigh the value of the buildings prior to building them. For example, if your not having a shortage of rams you likely have little need of further upgrading your workshop; In the case of a defensive village likely the workshop is all together unnecessary, and perhaps in extreme cases even the stable (though I don’t suggest it) depending on your troop strategies.

IV. Farming

If you’ve ever wondered how the “great” players get such good starts look no further. This is the answer: Farming and lots of it. It requires activity and aggressive action. Your goal here is to fuel your growth with other’s resources so you can get further ahead. The core of this is to get and use as many resources as fast as you can. The most effective means to gain resources isn’t always to build your mines. It’s actually to steal it from your neighbors. Resources > Troops > More Resources > More Troops > More Farms > More Resource > More Troops > Victory

A. Rushing LC If you're active it should pay off for you. If you only log in for around an hour a day, stick to other slower routes to LC. As you all should know, Light Cavalry are the best unit for farming. They're fast, and carry the best haul for the amount of population you put in (other than if you built 4 spears, but they're insanely easy to get killed off). LC are also fantastic attackers, which can give you a huge advantage if your enemy has built up a paladin and some swords, which axes would have been screwed against. This strategy may still not be your thing, but if you want it here's some rough guidelines.

i. The Strategy You shoot for spears from the off (after a paladin of course, but that should go without saying), and continuously build them up. You need to be actively farming villages in your area. You also need to build up your resource buildings minimally, but build them up to L9/10 then just leave them alone. From this point get the buildings you require for a stable: ● ● ●

Level 10 HQ (Build this up first) Level 5 Barracks Level 5 Smithy

Then build your stable, bypass Scouts and just upgrade the stable to L3. Research LC and start building them. *Note: You also avoid researching Axemen and Archers whilst on the route to LC. Simply build up spears and farm like a mad man, or woman if you prefer.

Again, I stress the importance of activity for this strategy - as without it you may as well stick to the more traditional build up.

V. Defense Strategy

There are four main ways to defend. To be a truly great player, you will need to master and use all of them. First there is stacking. This is the most fundamental skill in defense, and also one of the most effective. This is essentially supporting villages under attack in an effort to kill the attacking armies. Problem is though that as simple as it seems many players fail at this. The either move in to little defense or improperly select villages to defend. When your stacking you should avoid: ● ● ● ● ●

Defending villages that don’t have full walls Defending a village with less than 30k population of D units Defending with just HC support Using offensive units to defend Defending remote villages

The goal with stacking is to maximize your opponent losses will minimizing your own. Defending villages, unlike attacking, allow you to amass armies as large as you want. Which considering how the battle system calculates is a huge advantage. No offensive army can consist of more than 20k total population (unless farm bonus) which when combined with a wall bonus can vastly swing the balance to the defender’s side. If your smart with your defense you can knock the teeth off the aggressor with very few of your own troops lost. You just need to remember the more defense you can get the fewer casualties you will take. When you’re playing defense its all about conserving troops which stacking allows you to do very effectively. Next there is blocking/bouncing nobles. This defensive method is a far step up from simply stacking and often requires very exact timing and planning. Further if you cant figure out how to mark incoming this method will fail for you. Your goal here is not to kill the offensive armies. Rather you are trying to dodge as much as you can and just defend against the nobles. This is a very risky strategy but can be used to buy significant amounts of time if you need to hold out for a while longer and have low troop counts. This is done by first marking the incoming nuke and noble speed attacks so that you can later dodge defense in between the clearing and noble attacks. Often times this will require you to be accurate down to the second, in some cases milliseconds to make sure that you split that short bit of time between the attacks. This works because nobles (especially the middle nobles of a train) often have small escorts which make them for very easy targets and if the nobles don’t survive no loyalty is lost.

However as I said this method is risky. Your villages often, if not always, get their walls destroyed, which makes any future defensive efforts very risky. Further this method requires your account to be watched 24/7 because if you can’t mark the noble attacks you will become a sitting duck. Additionally there is always the possibility that those nobles could be escorted by a full nuke which will render most any defense useless with the loss of the wall. Else they could just time another clearing attack into the middle of the train. But that being said if this is executed correctly a player can truly last nearly forever on a minimum number of troops. The next method of defense is counter attacking. If you are constantly on the defense you can never bounce back. Offense builds faster than defense so if you don’t strike back you will be fighting a loosing battle. Further you can use your offense to actually effectively defend yourself by targeting enemy offenses. First step to effectively doing so requires you to identify which villages are offensive and which are defensive. Next is to attack with your nukes aiming at those offensive villages to take the nukes out while they are at home. It’s the best and most effective way to cripple your opponent. The catch of it is though that they can easily dodge your attacks. The best way to ensure that this isn’t the case is to time your offense to arrive immediately after the target nuke returns home to prevent them from sending it away in time. Last method of defense is the most unorthodox, but one of the most effective: Renobling your own villages. This method involves purposely allowing your village to fall into enemy hands or even prenobling it to make it “easier” for them. This is another of those risky maneuvers. It’s actually very effective, especially on non-coin worlds. The goal is to make the enemy take the village spending the noble, then hopefully repeatedly renoble his new village from himself over and over again, and then finally for you to take it back again. This makes your rival spend his nobles wasting the packages that they cost to build which can really cut into resources slowing down the war effort against you. Further you can turn their own troops against them as they repeatedly attack and renoble themselves. If you are using this method be sure that all the troops of the village are used else you will lose them without a fight when the village is nobled. *Note, you will feel the costs of the renobling the village on a package world as well. Also bear in mind that when the village is out of your control you will take a dive in points which can lower your morale and assist your defensive effort elsewhere which can come in very useful in a close fight. Then you come back with your own offense/noble and take the village back. Just be sure to do so quickly (within seconds if possible) else you may end up facing support in the village you can’t beat when they rebuild the wall. Like so many of the defensive methods before timing is key.

VI. Nobles

A. Early Nobling Okay since nobling is here and you getting close to that big second village its time to start looking for room to expand. But which villages are the best villages? What do you noble and what do you keep as farms? Do you noble close or far? Is it worth clearing that village for nobling? First of all you need to get the noble and understand how to use it. I assume everybody figured it out from the help files, but here it is again: ● ● ●

Level 20 HQ Level 20 Smithy Level 10 Market After you build these you can build your academy, then a coin or package, and lastly your

noble. Now that you have a noble you need a target. First you normally shouldn't noble on of your farms for your first target. What makes a good farm and what makes a good noble target are 2 different things. A good farm has high resources, a good noble target has good troop production. What you’re looking for isn't "the complete package". Your target village may have low mines, or bad farm, or similar and still be a good target. What you are looking for is a village that can be another troop production site so that you can pump the troops even faster. You can make it into a good village later. So as you’re looking around at scouting reports you’re looking for villages with higher stables and barracks. Smithy and Farm are also important. HQ and Mines are helpful, but can be rather low without hurting you bad. These are the biggest factor in determining a good second village. You should be farming enough so that you can push the village from your main until you can get your resources and farming in your second village under way. You need troops ASAP, for farming and countering outside threats. You’re most vulnerable at this stage, right after nobling your second village. You just put a huge investment into getting that second village and likely lost a significant portion of your troops obtaining it. Further your troops are now spread between 2 villages, even though you only have 1 village with an army. This is why you want a military stronghold for a second village rather than a resource haven. Plus if your farming correctly you should be getting most of the resources back that way even though it’s not under your banner, so nobling it wouldn't really help you much.

Be sure to keep the following in mind, you need to be careful who you target if you go after an active player. *Note: you only really have the option of going after an inactive player in TW 4.0 because of the growing abandons. If you are playing other settings your first noble should always be an active player. In attacking an active player you need to be wary of him and his neighbors. Figure out how many tribe mates he has in the area, there is a chance that several of them may support him/her during this. Also if you get a feeling for his activity level and log in pattern you can use that against him to get the drop on him/her. Proximity has a huge place. If s/he is close (1-3 fields) you will be able to move fast and could take them out before they know what happened. It they are on the edge of your 13x13, good luck you could be in for a fight. Remember each field your target is away is another 60-90 mins that EACH attack is going to take you. That’s not only more time for support to arrive, but also the natural regeneration of loyalty that you will have to fight against further prolonging the effort. You need to consider the troop cost as well. Nobling an active player often requires you to clear a significant amount of troops(else he should already be a farm). You need to be careful you can handle the losses and weight them against the possibility of support. Use the simulator and make a smart decision here. It’s not uncommon to be nobling on player and turn yourself into a noble target because you tried to take on too much and killed your troop count. I have seen many a player clear a good noble target to have support come in a finish off his decimated troops, or be nobled up or farmed right after nobling their second village because they didn't have anything left. Don't forget these are your farming troops that are getting killed here, you must be careful not to kill them all else your farming is over. There is no magic number, weight the activity level of your region and your threats. Where in one case I might allow for 50% or even 75% casualties in another scenario 25% or 20% might be too much to pay. Like always, doing it "right" doesn't always lead to success.

B. Nobling Method There are mainly two routes of nobling in TW, train and wave. Train is the standard method and involves sending 4-5 nobles in very short succession to take a village loyalty from 100% to yours as quick as possible. The other, wave method, involves sending noble(s) multiple times to work the loyalty down and take more villages at once. Each have there advantages and disadvantages. Each has its place and can be very effective used correctly.

Trains Quick, little time for support to counter With great timing and coordination very difficult to counter Focuses your attack so you can concentrate your nukes Effective at any distance Easily identified Improper timing can render ineffective Offers opportunity to “bounce” D to target nobles Requires more nobles

Waves Fewer nobles needed Not as easily identified Spreads the defense over more villages Doesn’t need as exact timing Works with morale Takes more time, allowing for mass support to counter Only effective short range Spreads your offense over more villages Requires you to be online longer as you need to repeatedly launch armies/nobles

VII. Openeye’s HC/Cat Strategy

A few things you will need to understand to follow me. First of all this strategy doesn't make the most mathematical sense. I'm sorry but what works on paper rarely works in real life. For those who think that it does, you really need more exposure in RL and TW. I don’t know of anybody who makes use of 20k axe armies and yet using the math it would seem to be the most effective strat. This strategy doesn't work for people on the fence. It's largely an all or nothing deal simply because of teching limits. If your villages don’t have HC teched to 3 then you can’t send HC there to defend. You lose too many to remain effective and with LC in your offense you loose your ability to tech HC to 3. Also uniformity is simpler. This strategy is originally Thar's (at least on .net) though I did modify it a bit mainly the catapults, as everybody does along the way. If you can’t identify fakes and can’t effectively time/stack defenses you will fail at TW, but especially fail at this strategy. This also works best when all your villages are named the same, simply compounds the confusion this strategy can put your enemy in. Also considers what I remember of speeds of W4. Though it may change based on your world the ratios remain the same. Obviously this is old units.

A. HC Strategy Grouped villages in 10 village tactical groups based on proximity (Largely just for organization and to maintain ratios). 6:3:1 Offense:Defense:Scouts Offensive Village: 1250 HC 11500(ish) Axes 200 Rams Defensive Village: 1250 HC 11500(ish) Spears 200 Cats Scout Village: 5000 Scouts 8500(ish) Spears 200 Cats Techwise: Offensive: Sp:Sw:Axe:HC:Ram Defensive/Scout: Sp:Sw:Scout:HC:Cat First, thing I would like to point out now is that I employed this strategy even though my 100+ villages were all touching. This isn't just for spread players in fact it works even better for players who are condensed. The way this strategy beats others is not in power. Obviously, your average army is comparatively weaker to sp/sw & axe/lc players. What you win with is versatility, speed, agility, outsmarting, and disheartening your enemies. Why is 1250 HC the magic number? Simply it’s a balance issue. It's easy to get carried away with the HC and since they are (statwise) weaker than their opposites(LC/Sw). You don’t want to swing too far one way simply because of a need to maintain balance. And though 10k/1250 HC isn't a balanced defense but by the time you figure in the villages with 1250 HC you can pull in from further out and from offensive villages you will find that your defense will be HC heavy as it is. Further given that axes compared to HC are much better on offence its better to give them the benefit and keep the balance swayed their way (more so than you would with LC).

B. Defensive Strategy Since it’s easier for everybody to see the advantage on defense before offense I will start there. Sp/HC build nearly 3x faster, this alone is huge. In wartime you’re looking a rebuild in less than 2 weeks rather than over a month. Further since spears move nearly 2x as fast as swords(not really but in times of need it feels like it) and your support moves at the speed of the slowest unit you can move a lot more of your armies a lot further when needed to counter.

This becomes even more special when you log in and only find an hour or two before the first strike hits. In times when you can’t see the slowest unit because you logged in late this strategy really shines. Example 1: You log in to find attacks on one your villages, or on a newly nobled village that were incoming before you nobled. In both cases no way to identify the troops and only 2 hours until they hit. With a sp/sw defense set you can only draw in full defense from villages within 2 fields of the target and spears from 3 fields away. Chances are you only have 1-2 D villages nearby(if you’re lucky and it’s near your cluster). So you can decide to call them in and expect heavy loses(especially in that newly nobled walless village) or wait it out and prepare a counter offensive. Not a lot of options and your right where you opponent wants you: losing a village, or losing a large number of troops. Now with the HC strat you have a lot more options. In 2 hours you can have sp/HC from up to 3 fields away(nearly doubling the number of fields support can originate from) and draw HC from 7 or 8 fields away. This gives you 2-3defensive villages to draw full defenses from and, considering your offensive village HC are also fully capable of defending, likely 4-5 villages you can draw HC from. (Maybe more if you built in a compact cluster like I did.) In two hours you talking about the difference of 20k/20k and 30k/10k HC Please do the math for me and tell me what defense will hold up better... You will suffer less loses, less wall damage, and further you will lose troops over 8 villages allowing you to rebuild your armies in 1/4 (or less) the time verses loosing in only 2 villages. Now you have 8 villages pumping new recruits from barracks and stable rather than rebuilding from 2 village barracks. Spread the loses; Spread the rebuild. This strategy really shines when your villages are close because of this situation that I illustrated. The closer you villages are the further the enemy armies have to march and the shorter your support takes. The defense works because it allows you to stack defense to minimize you loses while maximizing your enemy loses. You aren't looking to match kills with the enemy; rather you’re looking to kill 4 or 5 or more enemy troops for every casualty you take. In this aspect your troops will last through a lot more battles on defense than with the sp/sw strat. Sometimes though you are just getting whooped. 1k+ incoming everywhere and all at once. Your sp/HC aren’t as powerful as sw/sp so how do you survive? Example 2: Worst fear is realized: Massive incoming, many enemies, and lots of nobles. Sure you have time to react, 24+ hours to impact, but what’s the use? First don’t panic. Just get to marking the incoming. Over half of that crap is ram fakes, scouts, or armies without nobles. Pick out the nobles and likely nukes. (As any good player would do, right?) Most large operations of this nature have bad timing, maybe not on individual villages but between villages. The noble train on village "A" hits 5 hours after village "B", Village "C" & "D" 2 hours later ect ect. Guess what each of these is? A repetition of example 1. Sure it’s on the massive scale but it’s not undefendable.

Sometimes though you can't get enough defenses there in time, the walls are down, there timing is across several villages at once. Then what do you have? You have the best dodge defense available. Every village has a defense waiting to block a noble somewhere. And while you are playing kill the noble in sector A, sector B can be stacked up in 2 hours to kill a nuke or two and 2 hours later be moved to block a nuke elsewhere(Not only does support get there twice as fast it gets home to be redeployed 2x as fast). I'm sorry but sp/sw can’t do this nearly as well. Your offenses in a sp/sw & axe/lc get launched off to either noble back lost villages(not that villages without troops are what you need in this situation) or go on suicide runs to piss off your aggressors(who if they are smart just dodge). HC on the other hand though it may not be able to hold on paper, with a dedicated player at the controls and sitters to remain vigilant you stand a real shot at holding out. Though admittedly there are some situations where you are going to die no matter what(In which case saving packages and running to the rim is always an option). Eventually they slow down. After a week or two of intense fighting like that where you opponent gets no real headway they are bound to get a little discouraged. Further after a week or two you can likely have most if not all of your losses paid for and in the queues ready for deployment over the next week. (Provided you held strong) And if you’re shattered, beaten, and destroyed then well you can still enjoy a lengthy game of "kill the noble." Ask Thar(Best timer ever, bar none), he held off MCD and w00t for 3 months dodging nobles. He could literally kill the nobles on a one second train(but I'm getting off topic). And no better troop can be found for such a situation as HC. They are faster and by having some in every village you give yourself multiple options in case you miss you timing window the first few attempts.

C. Offensive Strategy Obviously your offensive nukes are weakened not having LC. The comparison of HC to LC is comparable to the comparison of LC to Axes. Mathematically it would make the most sense to have all axe nukes. But because of time restraints we use LC, which in turn allows us more nukes because we can use and rebuild the nuke in less time than just to build a single axe nuke. Similarly HC give us the same option. By using HC instead of LC it allows us to get away with more offensive villages vs. defensive villages thus allowing us to put more nukes out to our disposal without sacrificing defense. Even with my 3:2 Offense:Defense villages I still have the defense better than a 1:1(by the numbers) closer to a 2:3(considering the stacking advantage) at my disposal. Further the added HC from the defensive villages and the cats(if used properly) more than make up for the disadvantage my nukes have. This strategy allows for several different strategies to be employed so it can make the enemies life of timing your attacks much more difficult.

Example 3: Straight forward clearing/nobles attacks as are 99% or real attacks. Admittedly, this is where only disadvantage(I have found) rears its ugly head. You nukes aren't as strong as they could be. Solution: Send more nukes. You have more offensive villages now, so employ them. No need to hold anything back you've got the defense still in reserve (the defensive HC shouldn't be employed except as fakes, same with the cats). The nobles can come from anywhere, defensive or offensive, and provided you don’t leave yourself completely undefended(which is a no-no no matter what strat, HC or Sw/LC, you employ) you shouldn't have any problems. In fact these situations allow you to use your offensive HC to quick support a newly nobled or newly to-be nobled village. Provided they have already identified your village "A" to be offensive they may pass it off as a fake support and discredit the entire train as fake(which has happened for me). Further, it gives your defensive villages nobling a little bite to there bark when 1k HC escort the noble making the dodge strategy a little more costly for your enemies(also happened). Now on to some of a bit unorthodox strategies. What about the catapults? Many(99.999%) people stop using catapults after initial farming stages(if they use them at all) for anything except fakes. I believe this to be a mistake. If catapults were useful then they can be useful now. First you have a near inexhaustible supply of flak fakes(those annoying 100+ fakes with random times of landing just to confuse and overwhelm). Second: Do you know what 4 waves of 200 cats can do to a cleared village? Bye bye HQ; Bye bye Farm. Do you know how long it takes to rebuild a maxed village when the farm and HQ are reduced to rumble? Over 3 months. When the farm is reduced to below the population level of the village they cant even start rebuild the wall or HQ until the farm is back to the positive. Not to mention troops. In less than 5 seconds you can turn a thriving troop producing village into a desolate wasteland good for only noble packages, killing your own troops, and farming/sending resources(unless you hit the markets and acads too). Example 4: Your going to take out player X, s/he's a pretty good fight equal points and village count. You want to make it as quick as possible but don’t really have any outside help. Outside of a bit of support you’re on your own. You launch the initial attack, to him/her it looks like a pretty straight forward attack. Good timing, less than 5 second "noble trains" etc etc. The defense is moved to counter and everything goes as planned, right until the attacks hit. The "ram, ram, noble, noble, noble, noble" attacks turned out to be nothing but 2 rams and 4 nobles(costing you a whooping 4 packages). But the 6 ram attacks in a row that just looked like a train fake ended up being 2 nukes followed by 4 attacks of 50 HC and 200 cats. Or if you got real sneaky, you split those cats up even more into strikes of 50 cats; it looks even less realistically threatening. When was the last time the village with 10 incomings at ram speed was defended when you had others with noble speed incoming?

Likely there was nothing there to defend, sometime they even get lazy and left an offense in thinking it would have nothing to fear from fakes. In the initial wave, those losing several nobles and the packages and time associated with their rebuild, you walk away with no villages but managed to effectively destroy 5-20% of the villages fighting abilities (depending on how you used your cats). Remember the more waves you send the cats in the less you need in each wave. 200 in a wave does a decent job, but I prefer 50 cat waves. Now that even fight just became a lot more lopsided in your favor. This offers a lot of advantages for you if executed properly. On the next wave of attacks s/he's going to be a lot more cautious of those ram fakes. You can use this to your advantage when you do come in with the real nobles as you can expect a lot less in terms of stacking. Not only that, but lucky you, you've got 30/30/30 farms(good use of those HC on defense) that can't spend resources to keep them away from you(supposing you were a bit short on packages, as I found myself often, this really helped speed the nobling process). Maybe you'll even get so lucky that they try to support the village to prevent you from farming it. No walls and no ability to make walls make it a great support trap, nice quick and easy way to kill off those pesky troops. It doesn't work real well on good players, but noobs hate to lose villages, and tribal support(especially noob tribes) is always likely. Further, its really disheartening to see your villages destroyed to the point of uselessness and can even in itself get them to give up the defense right then and there(happened several times). Lastly and most importantly you have an effective means to combat morale because of point loss. Allow me to explain. They can’t get rid of those villages, unless somebody else was stupid enough to noble them. As such they are left stuck with the 8-9k points each of them adds to somebody’s score without any of the troops building benefits those points normally mean. Hence they stay inflated with false points, keeping them up higher in the morale ranges and preventing them from using the "turtle till you're too small to hurt" strategy. Used effectively, by saving those villages to be nobled last you have a real easy way to keep this guy in your range to continue to pick off his good villages at your leisure, which is another very disheartening realization when you are on the defense. This is also a great means to stop pesky support or otherwise discourage others from assisting your soon to be annexed villages. You don’t support too much after getting hit in one or two villages this way, and in itself can really throw a question mark up for people to consider when they send out support or attacks against you. You can really slow down a semi coordinated tribe by simply adding the fact that your ram speed attacks have the potential for lethality. Further it’s great because it’s a fire and forget weapon. Once a village is cleared and razed by the cats it’s really not a threat for a couple months. As such you can move on to other villages and continue to equalize the field or assert your dominance as needed. Lastly if you have a front that you really don’t want to expand by nobling but need a little security, just destroy all the villages on the border. No troop production no worries. Really good to create a no-man's land or force players around you to quit.

D. Economic advantages Although HC cost more than swords or LC, it’s almost all in iron, which is the easiest and cheapest resource to get on the markets. Clay gets eaten by the builders as does wood. And wood is always in short supply but iron, if you have a surplus its in iron. And it’s real easy to obtain additional iron on the market. Further the high iron cost does well to balance the high clay cost of buildings and the high wood cost of axes and spears, and when you’re storing packages its iron that always ends up in surplus so it’s nice to be able to have a stockpile in your maxed villages to help rebuild the armies on your border and newly acquired villages.

E. Epilogue There you have it, my entire strategy. 4th ranked in W4 at one time(though it wasn't 100% committed too at the time) and took 100 villages and 1 million points in less than 5 months from scratch after being essentially rimmed following the 4th place. Sorry it’s so much a book, but it’s pretty involved and I wanted to lay it out explained well enough that both newbs and vets could understand. I don’t care about the n00bs, because they won’t read it anyhow. Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope I have enlighted a few of you into the world of HC. Also, many thanks for the many who credited me with the strategy. Though not all of its due to me, Thar deserves much more than me. The most important reason to learn the HC strategy is that sooner or later you will be targeted in a war. Once that happens, you won't care about ratios and strategies. At that point the only thing that matters is how much defense per hour you can accumulate to replace your losses. The absolute fastest you can build defense points is by building spears, HCs and cats all at once. As the war progresses, you are going to find yourself with lots of spears, HCs and cats, even if that wasn't your initial plan. This strategy teaches you how to use them effectively.

IX. Fake Attacks I know that some who are reading this may not yet have mastered timing an attack but once you get that down you will want to further your skill with fake attacks. There are three basic kinds of fake attacks, used with different intentions. Swarm : These fake attacks usually are made up of 5-250 scouts and 1 ram or cat. Since they move slowly they may be mistaken for an actual offensive attack. They may get info, usually they just all die. Swarm Fakes are usually launched 1 or 4 from a village (4 may be mistaken for nobles from a larger 6000+pnt village ) by everyone one in the tribe from every village. They are launched 1-5 hours before a main assault begins. Swarm Fakes main purpose is to confuse and overwhelm the opponent. What would you do if you had 10-500 incoming attacks from a tribe? Decoy : These are fakes launched by people not involved in an assault but timed to land as if they were. Decoys usually have the same makeup as Swarm Fakes (scouts and a ram/cat) but aren't launched before an attack randomly. These are precision timed and focused on large villages. Decoy Fakes are launched on targets that have more than one large village to hopefully have the target spread his def troops too thin or defend the wrong village in an assault. Fanged : By far the most advanced and evil fake. These fakes are launched to land close to immediately after a large scale attack. They are focused on villages that have already been hit by "nukes" or other clearing forces. These fakes are usually used on large scary targets that will take a while to defeat or in a large scale war when the target is member of an enemy tribe especially if you do not have enough nobles available to rim him. Fanged Fakes usually consist of 25-100 scouts and 25 cats. They are sent in 1 or 4 after an offensive army to mimic nobles but instead demolish Farm Buildings. This way troops that have been killed of the targets cannot be rebuilt quickly leaving the target vulnerable and unable to send help to his tribe mates. Learn these well. They are the second most important thing, after timing, to winning against skilled opponents.

X. Personal Alliances

Personal allies can be a very valuable tool in TW as well as a great way to pass the time. But how do you pick the right PA? How many? And how/when do you find them? While there is no "right" way(nothing in TW has a "right" way sadly) there are a lot of pointers we can give as to the subject. Don’t be in a hurry to get PA. And don’t accept just anybody as a PA. Like alliances between tribes it needs to be of mutual benefit and things take time to develop. A hasty PA agreement often times ends up in you supporting a weaker player. You really can’t get a good judge of a player until farming is well under way. Don’t get too many PA. While there is no magic number, there is a real possibility of having too many. Like allies can block in a tribe and prevent expansion, too many PA can have the same effect. It’s much better to have 1-2 Personal allies that you know you can count on rather than 5-6 questionable ones. Quality over Quantity. High points don’t mean s/he's good. Don’t be fooled. Your better off waiting to see if that "good" player really is good rather than just going with what looks good. Get a PA you can work with and communicate effectively. This may cover login times, languages, strategies, or any number of issues. Bottom line a PA shouldn't be extra work. When mailing your prospective PA (This really goes for mailing anybody) be respectful and try to make a good first impression. You only get one chance at a first impression, make it count. For example in the applications I wasn't too concerned with content, or what your prior experiences were so much as how you communicated and whether or not you took the time to write intelligent mails. First impressions made up 50% of my decision as to who to bring in. This includes: Capitalization -You know who you are Spelling and grammar (doesn’t have to be perfect, just good) Paragraphs -solid blocks of text are a strain to read, break it up Well thought out responses - don’t just spew generic or copy/paste crap RESPECT -->The best way to earn a player's respect is to return it in kind.

XI. Scouting

First. You have one village with scouts. 3k in the first months will do, then try to increase it little by little. I never had more than 8k, but you can go as far as you want. this is for real scouting, against big villages, heavily supported or against offensive players that cover themselves with scouts as they are too exposed. Second. Defensive scouts. depending on the position of your villages, you should protect them with 50 -400 scouts, maybe more for very exposed villages. It is true that you can send some from your scouting village(s)but there are some problems that show of with the increasing number of villages. You forget to send in some places, you get them killed and you again forget to resend and so on. But if you go to recruiting area and you do not see the scouts, and decide to build scouts in every village, you always know that you have to have them. Another problem is that you begin to drain your scouting villages making them less effective. When you attack with scouts, your losses depend on the discrepancy between the 2 amounts. The more-the merrier. And if you care so much about farm space, with defense it does not matter, you build a little more in a scouting village if you want to even the numbers. Third and very important. Scouts used as offense. In the attacking villages if you put something between 50 and 200 you will get bonus information that has great price for you, even if you win the combat: troops in transit, resource levels, resources in warehouse and so on. If you lose and they survive and they do a lot of times, you at least know what is left there. So, for attacking villages, scouts are a must to build in that village. So. the main reason for scouts is gathering intelligence - something more valuable than troops and sometimes skill. So use them at their best. *Note: Bear in mind that much of this is written with old units in mind and the old scouting rules. With new scouting rules and the inability(without paladin) to see outside units and the fact that it allows for general dodges to effectively combat scouts it severely lowers the effectiveness of scouts.

XII. Good Tribes

Whether you’re looking for a tribe or trying to lead one yourself, you need to be able to identify what a "good" tribe is, and what qualities you should be looking for in it.

A. In a word: Activity Nothing can happen without activity. If the members and especially the aristo aren't active you’re sunk. I don’t care if you have 100 of the best TW players to ever grace the game, you will have a failure of a tribe if they don’t log in. This may seem like a no brainer, but you would be surprised how many tribes have numerous yellow or even red players. I'm not just talking early world either, late in the game when players start becoming bored it becomes even more prominate. A million point account doesn't do your tribe any good if there isn't anybody at the helm to control it. As a leader you need to recognize this and kick the offending members. Find a new active player who will fill the void. It may not be the best for the tribal rankings, but when it comes wartime you will be much stronger and much more capable. Further having active players will keep your internal forums more active and better maintain the attention of the players within a tribe. Dead forums will often translate into a dead tribe. Further this activity is necessary for further tribal needs like effective communication and ability to war. Next thing that is key for a tribe is to make sure it's tactics and strategy matches your own play style. An active aggressive player isn't often going to be happy playing in a K tribe that recruits or merges its rivals rather than wars with them. Likewise a defensive player isn't often going to be very comfortable in a spread out aggressive "elite" tribe. This also includes such things as proximity of tribe members, coordination between players, and forum(in game and world) presence. As a player you need to find the sort of tribe you want to play in. Make sure your tribe's goal matches your own. If your in this game to have fun play in a tribe that will allow for that. If you’re in it to dominate and outlast the server, join a tribe with similar goals. There are many ways to "play" tribal wars successfully make sure your tribe works with the way you want to play. I'm not here to argue that one type of tribe is better than another. Just be sure that the type of tribe you join matches your playing style. If you don’t enjoy your tribe it’s going to be very difficult to enjoy the rest of the game. As a leader you need to recognize it and recruit the type of players that match your tribe's "style". Next big thing for any tribe to do well is communication and along with that the community of the tribe. If tribe members don’t enjoy one another company they aren't going to stick around or be very willing to support and coordinate with one another. You want the desire to assist one another within the tribe to be a natural response because of a friendship within the game, not because the duke or war commander or whatever ordered it. Whether that communication occurs over igm, forums, IRC, msn, skype, or any other number of places doesn't matter. What does matter is that the tribes members get allow and want to see one another succeed. As an aristo there isn't a lot you can do about this. Either its there or its not. The only real influence you have is in recruiting the "right" players for your tribe and in arbitrating internal issues before they tear the tribe apart.

B. Aristocracy: The aristocracy of a tribe can make or break a tribe just as easily as the member base can. Even quicker at times depending on the situation. There are several things to look for when determining the strength of the aristocracy. First the aristocracy should be developed out of the leadership of the tribe, not the other way around. That is to say that just because you give a player "baron" status it doesn't make them a leader. It’s the respect the members have for said player and their willingness to follow that makes them a leader. Leadership leads to the aristocracy, the aristocracy doesn't make you a leader. That being said it also is common that there are several leaders within a tribe that don’t hold official rank yet are very involved in decision making and policy within the tribe. Often times these players are some of the best leaders in the tribe and can hold more "power" over the membership than even the duke. Further the aristocracy should realize that they are there for the member’s benefit and that without said members they wouldn't have a tribe. Many a good player becomes a bad duke when they take the reins of a tribe and try to act supreme overlord. It seems somewhere they forget this is a game and those people playing the account are doing so for entertainment, not to further inflate some over sized ego. The leadership should listen to members concerns and not make selfish decisions in disregard for the membership of the tribe. All it leads to is alienation of your player base and in the end you will likely cause a split within the tribe. That isn't to say that you need to have a "democracy" within the tribe. In fact I have found that most democratic tribes have the worst leadership of all. They are slow to react and, without central leadership, often incapable of properly coordinating themselves. The leadership needs to be strong, respected, and above all active. If the aristo isn't around can’t lead. And a tribe that isn't lead will inevitably fail. The leadership is there for a reason, being primarily, to coordinate and unify the tribe for developed goals. If any part of that is missing the leadership is failing for the tribe, and the tribe will in turn fail for the leadership.

C. Diplomacy In diplomacy a tribe shouldn't have more allies than it needs. While a long list of friends who will "fight" for you looks powerful it has very negative consequences that many don’t weight properly before they develop an alliance list. Further many tribes don’t consider the lasting ramifications of said alliances when they are first signed. What looked good 2 months ago can often change overtime. First each and every of those "allies" is a war waiting to happen. Those allies are inevitably going to cause conflicts as they expand into outside tribes and eventually they are going to call on you to join them. You’re obligated through the agreement to back them up. Oftentimes it will be at one of the worst times, while you yourself are fighting your own wars of expansion. But in all but the rarest of circumstances of this scenario you’re looking at a situation where you just earned yourself a new enemy. If you refuse to enter the war then often you’re looking at even worse consequences in P&P and backlash from your former "allies".

Second every one of those "allies" is one more group of players you can’t expand into. Not that its always bad, but if you have prime targets in an allied tribe it isn't often your going to be allowed the opportunity to take them. This will in turn force you to attack less opportune targets. As a result proximity and relative power should be considered when making alliances. You need to pick tribes that will offer you more benefits as an ally than as a target. If you could easily take them over they are likely not a good ally and you better off putting those villages under more capable tribal affiliation, namely yours. Next you need to make sure your allies get along, with each other and with you. A lot of damage is cause with relations when you are forced to pick between 2 allies because they went to war with each other. Few can play the "neutral" card and still be respected in the end. Further even if you and your allies don’t all get along its going to make coordinated efforts much more difficult and further inhibit the war effort. If you can’t count on support between your tribes because of political issues then they certainly aren't the right sort of allies. Enemies are just as important as allies. You always want to have somebody your tribe is attacking. Idle time for a tribe is death. Players get bored and will leave, and in general you will see your tribe fall quickly into decline. You need to grow and attack to remain a top tribe. If your leadership is always waiting for others to try to take them on they will fail. Further a tribe that always grows through mergers and assimilating players they will rarely maintain a good member base that knows how to handle wartime situations. Because when you get down to the bottom of TW its war. In picking enemies you need to weigh several factors. You want an enemy that’s near enough your tribe can attack easily. You don’t want to have to launch attacks halfway around the world. Further if they are near you they will offer more strategic territory that will assist the tribe in the future. A tribe with a single large core will have an advantage over tribes with many clusters. Further your tribe is going to lose interest if they are all blued in. The fighting is what makes the actual game fun. You also need to weight the allies of the target and their forum presence. A tribe with more allies and a better forum presence will bring in more outside assistance. Likewise you need to evaluate your own allies and forum presence to make sure that you can handle your enemy. It’s not unknown in TW for a tribe to wipe out another in a war but to then be destroyed in the following months because of the targets allies and forum support. Also you need to weight the skill of the players of the target tribe vs. your own. Understand that although a tribe may not have the points of a larger tribe their smaller tribe can often consist of much more skilled players. Never underestimate a tribe because of their member count or point total. Evaluate you target carefully. Nothing will destroy a tribe morale and forum presence like a large cocky ranked tribe loosing a war to a small elite tribe that knows how to handle itself.

XIII. The Importance of Queen

Don't listen to what these so called "Vets" tell you, about what you need to succeed as a player, they're all horrifically wrong! Ever wondered how players such as Jamm and Thargoran, even that n00b Openeye have managed to do so well in past worlds? They listen to Queen! That's right, I'm about to reveal the most hidden secret in the history of TW! Now, it's imperative that you pay attention to this part of the thread, as it's more than likely to be the most useful information you'll ever receive as a TeachU, or even TW, member. You can't just listen to any Queen song and expect to do well, oh no! The song has to match what part of TW you happen to be doing at the time. Here are some examples of TW scenarios, and what songs you have to listen to (the links are to YouTube movies): Scenario 1 - a continent tribe attacks you, you battle them off, then in one night you're set to strike back and rim several players in one blow, and cripple a few more. To win, you have to listen to this song whilst sending your attacks out. Don't Stop Me Now Scenario 2 - you're asked to spy on an enemy tribe. You get in, and start passing down information to your tribe leader. Naturally the tribes you're spying on discover there has to be a leak. To prevent being caught, this song must be played. The Invisible Man Scenario 3 - you and your tribe mates (or perhaps just you) are pressed up against a wall of enemy villages. They've stacked their front line of villages. Using some crazy strategic plan you confuse your enemy into breaking their stacks and calling back support. You and your tribe then strike into their wall of villages. This song must be played. Headlong Scenario 4 - you have to describe Openeye to another player, or even a family member (I believe I actually wrote one of my exam papers on the guy when they asked me to write about someone I respected). This song will help you out with your description. Killer Queen Scenario 5 - you've sent out more farming raids than you can count. Play this song to ensure any troops in the villages you sent your men to get slaughtered. Another One Bites the Dust Scenario 6 - you want to dominate the entire TW world, all by yourself. This will help you achieve this incredible feat. I Want It All Scenario 7 - you're fulfilling a vital part of your tribe's attack plan on an enemy. If this fails, you're screwed. All your tribe's attacks will be in vain. What's more your enemy will be in a perfect position to strike back at you and inflicting some serious pain on you and your allies. This song will help you to get through it. Under Pressure (can't find a non-live one.) Scenario 8 - your tribe is about to fall under a massive attack. You need to find a way to restore moral, else your tribe doesn't stand a chance. You send them all this song. Who Wants To Live Forever There are many more Queen songs, which can help you out in different scenarios, but I'll leave you to find out some for yourselves. Remember, without Queen you WILL fail at TW.

A Passionate Guide, for the Development of TW Player Ability, Written by Lord Hellz Bottom line: Have fun; this is a game after all.