Your first week, step by step.
The game’s own starting plan, in order. Most of it happens in your first half hour.
Follow Lady Aria’s tour
On first launch your royal advisor starts a guided tour of your city, buildings, general and the map. Tap the highlighted spots to follow along. You can skip it and replay it later from General, then Management.
Build up your resource fields
You begin with 800 each of wood, stone, iron and food, 1,000 money and 100 population. Upgrade the Lumber Mill, Stone Mine, Iron Mine and Cropland early and often. Production keeps running while you are offline, up to your warehouse’s limit, so keep the Warehouse ahead of your fields. You can run two building upgrades at once from the start.
Raise the Main Building
It is the best early investment: every level makes all building upgrades faster, grows your population and produces money every hour. Level 3 unlocks the Barracks.
Train a starter army
All four troop types train in the Barracks. Infantry are the cheapest and quickest way to get an army on the board. Every troop eats food every hour, at home or away (infantry 1, archers 2, cavalry 4, catapults 10), so keep your Cropland ahead of your army or troops starve.
Work through your tasks
The Task button holds a checklist that walks you through the game and pays you for it. Rewards are not paid automatically: open the task and tap Claim Reward. Early tasks give prestige and resources.
Take your daily rewards
The free Daily Spin sits on your city screen, and the Daily Gift at the bottom of the Task screen. Any upgrade or training with five minutes or less to go can be finished at once, for free.
Join an alliance
Alliances mean help, protection and company, and joining one completes a task and an achievement. Every alliance approves its own members, so apply to a few and join the first that accepts.
Beginner protection
Other players cannot attack a new account while it is under 7 days old, under 1,000 prestige, and has not yet attacked another player. Attacking another player’s city, or a tile a player holds, ends it at once. Fighting forts, oases and castles does not.
Later, Refuse War buys protection with coins. And there are limits for everyone: one attacker can hit the same player at most five times a day, and further attacks on a city already under attack are spaced ten minutes apart.
After the first week
Forts and more cities open up at Baron. How the game plays covers the map, battles, alliances and castles in full.