Building Guide

Section one: Starting out

Lets begin shortly after the starting tutorial is complete. (Which you should be allowed to skip by the way, hint hint.) Now what? What do I build first? What do I build at all? Where do I place it? Here is the ideal setup for your primary castle, the main castle.

Village:
x8 Military Tents
x8 Hospitals
x5 Sawmills
x5 Farms
x5 Iron mines
x4 Mithril mines

Your Hospitals and Military tents are your most valuable buildings in the village, and vital to your efforts. Personally, I upgrade my Hospitals first, followed by the Tents. Hospitals will save you millions of resources and weeks of training time. The Military tents not only allow you to train more soldiers, however they also add a % speed boost to training.

*Remember there is a slider bar for the numbers of troops training in one batch you can adjust, and Camped troops die in combat, they do not become wounded.*

*Click the more information button under details when a building is selected to see if the next tier offers any real benefit, and if so, is it really worth it at the next level. If not, it can wait until later, allowing you to spend resources on other things.*

Keep your like buildings with like buildings, the Farms and Sawmills should be easy enough to cluster together, and depending on how you personally build your own structures, the Hospitals, Tents and Mines should be almost fully clustered together as well.


This may not be vitally important, however it makes upgrading more organized and is easier on the eyes.

In the early days, VIP is very useful for speedily constructing buildings with the instant build. Get all the buildings you can upgraded to the instant point, then start the slower but still to quick to effectively afk (Away from keyboard) process of working your buildings up to around an hour to finish.

Castle
x4 Military buildings clustered together. Your stable is forcibly placed during the tutorial, place the barracks, archery range and siege engine factory in the slots next to it. This allows for fast access to your troop training facilities for recruitment without scrolling around.

The Drill ground, which is important but actively produces nothing, should be placed north of the military buildings, in between the Lucky wheel Tavern and Castle Citadel.

Your College should be placed to the right side of the courtyard, along with the Fortress, (That makes your traps) the Wishing well, and the Blacksmith. All of these facilities perform active functions, but are not used as often as the troop training buildings and are logically clustered together.

To the Left of the Traveling Merchant/Trade caravan, in the space between the Castle walls, place the Embassy and your Hall of War. Lastly, to the right of the Merchant cart, place your own Market building.

This building setup is Optimized for performance within the game.

Upgrading Priority:
1-Drill ground: Inside the Castle this is the most important building to upgrade. Larger Marches means more successful fights and customization of troop types in combat, more troops safe inside a ruin, more troops that may be deployed to safety if under attack and you do not have or do not want to shield, and more resources collected at once particularly from Alliance super plots,
2-Wishing well: The Wishing well is a valuable ally. Well it is a gamble, a wish could earn you x many times the base amount of resources, and has payed for entire batches (x4) of troops, research and building upgrades that would have cost me resources from another source. Also, after using up your free wishes, I would recommend using gold to earn resources up to a cost of 10 coins per wish every day, its cheap, in fact it can be quite profitable.

After these, it is quite situational as to what building you upgrade next.


If you troop buildings will not offer you another Tier of troops when upgraded, it is best to save those resources to upgrade other buildings first especially since they are quite expensive. If a new tier is available, priority is Infantry. Others debatable.

If you are involved in combat often, your Embassy, Hall of War, Depot and Watchtower should be high on your list of Castle buildings to upgrade. Keep an eye on the Watchtower to see if upgrading it will offer any real benefit, 15, 17, 19, 23, 25 and 27 do not offer any extra features atm, and should be saved until you have spare resources. You can see these under 'more information'.

The College is variable, if there is important research you need to do, then you would want to upgrade it. If you still have plenty of research to do at the current College level, then it can wait.

If you offer resource aid often, the Market can be important.

Upgrading Turrets to level 3 or 4 is cheap enough, other then that I have never seen them save the day, so well you should feel free to upgrade them, don't make them a priority.

Last on your listing are the Blacksmith and Fortress, well useful they are unlikely to be used often enough to be prioritize over the other buildings, unless you have the spare resources to put into mass producing level 3 and 4 traps.

*The Fortress is a great way to use up that little bit of food you might have left over after setting up troops to train or donating to Alliance Science, 4, 7, 5 traps adds up over days and days.*

The Wall should always be saved for when you are getting ready to advance Castle level, except under certain circumstances, such as if you just looted 12 million wood and should dump it fast. (Which you should, if you have enough resources for your most expensive upgrade, do not save it. I see level 5 castles with 8 million of each resource, and I ask myself, why? Then again, they might have kingdom jumped, but if you are a level 13 castle with 17 million wood, 12 million food and 1.2 million iron stored away, you deserve to be looted.) Or if you are a trap nut, and need more space for traps I suppose.  Yes, the upgrade receives more hit points, but that does not make much of a difference over the current tier.

Section Two: Survival and Advancement

First of all, the best way to advance is to not be noticed. Everyone wants the level 6, 7 and 8 resource zones right off, close to the throne, however, those areas are smaller and more compact then the outer regions and will be contested. The times I have been in a Hive in these zones, war was immediate and often. Early on war is bad for growth. And why? When you are just starting off you do not have enough troops to finish off a level 1 resource plot in one go and the throne battles takes a bit to open up.

The prime resource zone is 5, up until level about 19 castle upgrade gathering is quite manageable, but 4 is also just fine up until about 15, and even then your management makes it work.

Level 1-3 is perfectly fine for your first 10 Castle levels as well.

*Never bother your active neighbors unless your ready to move, save them for the killing event stage.*

Resource gathering:
Order of resources to be gathered wood, iron, mithril, food. Food is always last because of the upkeep, especially when your eating 800,000 food an hour, trust me.

The poor mans way to use the gathering bonus is to collect everything else normally, and then use the Gather Bonus just for food. 8 Hour gather bonuses are invaluable if you actually wish to sleep through the night, so use the 8 hour during the day. Stack the Gathering bonus with the Reduced upkeep when gathering food.

*Pro tip: You just got speed rallied and your troops are all dead or hospitalized. One, teleport out of there so they don't keep farming you. Guess what? Your upkeep is gone! Now is the prime time to gather enough food for a Castle upgrade or research upgrade, the wounded can wait. Heal your siege engines only or train Bricoles (Tier 1 Siege units) with Farm/Well wish food. Get enough troops back to hunt monsters for food crates, and later you can use those to heal your troops. *

Resource gathering:
Order of resources to be gathered wood, iron, mithril, food. Food is always last because of the upkeep, especially when your eating 800,000 food an hour, trust me.

Resource gathering:
Order of resources to be gathered wood, iron, mithril, food. Food is always last because of the upkeep, especially when your eating 800,000 food an hour, trust me.

The poor mans way to use the gathering bonus is to collect everything else normally, and then use the Gather Bonus just for food. 8 Hour gather bonuses are invaluable if you actually wish to sleep through the night, so use the 8 hour during the day. Stack the Gathering bonus with the Reduced upkeep when gathering food.

Resource gathering:
Order of resources to be gathered wood, iron, mithril, food. Food is always last because of the upkeep, especially when your eating 800,000 food an hour, trust me.

The poor mans way to use the gathering bonus is to collect everything else normally, and then use the Gather Bonus just for food. 8 Hour gather bonuses are invaluable if you actually wish to sleep through the night, so use the 8 hour during the day. Stack the Gathering bonus with the Reduced upkeep when gathering food.

*Pro tip: You just got speed rallied and your troops are all dead or hospitalized. One, teleport out of there so they don't keep farming you. Guess what? Your upkeep is gone! Now is the prime time to gather enough food for a Castle upgrade or research upgrade, the wounded can wait. Heal your siege engines only or train Bricoles (Tier 1 Siege units) with Farm/Well wish food. Get enough troops back to hunt monsters for food crates, and later you can use those to heal your troops. *


On my first account, I made it to level 20 Castle with no alts. That's right kids, there was a time when alts were not common place, or teleport attacking, we actually marched long distances or minded our own business at distances outside 100km or so. Nowadays, things are different. How many alts you can have is based on how much time you want to spend on this game. Well the best setup efficiency wise would be 2x food, 1x everything else, your most important would be a food account at least.

Do not feel like managing tons of castles? Use throwaway alts. These are castles you never get past level 5, you complete all the quests you can, open all the crates you have, earn bonus gold for binding and joining an alliance and buy more crates, and loot the resources with your main. Unbind, and repeat.

Research:
Every Research is useful. I prioritize offensive military research over all others, down to Legion II is easy enough to complete, vital in fact.

Other important sciences not under the aggressive military tree include:
1-Supply Carts
2-Medical Facilities
3-Loop Hole
4-Battlements
5-First Aid
6-Animal Plow
7-Whipsaw


Hiding Troops:
When going AFK:

1: Hide a march in a ruin for 8 hours, depending on how long you will be gone remember you can always recall them if needed, if you will be away for a while find an 8 hour ruin across the map through the black earth, send rams with them even. Instant recall can always be used if you vitally need them suddenly.
2: Hide a March in a Alliance resource plot
3: Hide your other marches in gold mines across the map
4:Camps can work but remember, deaths from Encampment fights are not wounded, they die

*Keep your resources low during the Kill Event for crying out loud.*

Section Three: Managing Combat

I'm going to let you in on my biggest secret. I figure I mineaswell, that secret? Shhh, come closer...*Whispers* Infantry. Well, more specifically, Infantry stats. See, one of the largest whopping lies in COK is that Infantry are weak, low priority, and for defense only. Starting off and seeing them die in droves when you try to attack would make that seem right, right? WRONG. *room shakes*

You see, where the issue lies is that Infantry units are your front line units. This means, they bear much of the damage. Because of this, they tend to die quickly, making them seem weak. There is a way to circumvent this, however its not as easy as it used to be since the skill tree update. The key is boosting your Infantry stats as high as possible, with more focus then other units. They need to be able to absorb more damage because they are faced with more damage.

Another includes hitting a castle with 77,000 units with 50,500, and winning 8 to one in my favor. That fight was same Castle level same unit types.

*Disclaimer: Results may vary according to unit types, mutual sciences, alliance boosts, item boosts and skill boosts, and again what Tiers are involved and numbers of each user is responsible for the after math of all attacks and defense procedures not me. Hitting a 22 Castle with Tier III troops for example would be unwise.*

Types of units:


*This comes from months of experience fellas, and tons of fighting and observation, use it or don't.*

Sword Unit: Sword Units are your front line Infantry, their role is to protect your other units from all units except charging Calvary it would seem, but they are great at combating Archer/Crossbow type units in particular. Sword Units are vital for the survival of Spear Units against Archer/Crossbow units. Without Sword Units serving as the backbone, your army will take heavy losses.
Spear Unit: Spear Units are devastating once their attack gets high enough. Even the humble Tier V Pikeman can butcher Tier VIII Calvary if his attack is 40% or higher and the enemy stats are middle of the road. Their main role is to stop Calvary units, but their attack bonuses combined with enough percent increase makes them often kill 2x to 3x their own number in combat well sustaining minimal losses. Because of their specialties, the Pikeman and Heavy Pikeman can break the defense of pretty much any unit once their attack % is high enough. They are vulnerable to Archer/Crossbow units however.

Infantry Goal: Reaching 40% Attack with either 28% Defense and/or Hit points ASAP

Archer Unit: Your first good Archer type unit is the Archer Guard, tier VI. The rest beneath that are clearly inferior to their Crossbow wielding counter parts. Archer type units have the advantage of fast fire rates for lower damage, with a bonus toward non Infantry units. Archer units become a balanced part of your morning conquest by Tier VI for taking out non Infantry, maybe 5000 in your wave.
Crossbow Unit: Ahhh, I love these guys, you gotta, you just gotta.  They have higher attack, critical, and range then Archer types with a Defense bonus. When protected by Infantry, they get to fire off more salvos. Hard hitting for attack and defense. Love them. Cherish them.

Ram Unit: Blagh, never liked these. Ram type units have a few specialized uses only: They are good for gathering because of their load capacity, they do have high defense and hit points, are useful for evading Castle Traps when looting a Troop-less castle, (although the losses are minimal, and might not be worth the extra traveling time) and can be used to give you an extra four hours of safe troop time by sending a march with rams across the map through the black earth to keep the troops out of your castle.
Catapult Unit: Win, the better option. They are DEVASTATING for attacks with long range and they still have decent load well being faster then the Ram.

Next to Infantry, I prioritize my Siege Engine stats.

Armored Calvary: These Units do add a extra damage absorbing 'oomph' to your army, and can flank to attack ranged units, assuming they get past the Spear Units. They can dodge damage and absorb more damage in general then Archer Calvary. The first truly worthwhile Armored Calvary unit is Tier VI.
Archer Calvary: They have similar features to Armored Calvary, but their range and resource war bonus make them deadly attackers. Invaluable in hitting resource plots, although not as good at avoiding or absorbing damage as armored Calvary. Expect high kill counts from them.

Tier I-VIII Unit Guide:

Tier I: Everything but the Bricole is useless, only good at dying. The Bricole is a very useful unit for gathering resources, their load to upkeep and cost ratio is the best especially for your farming alts. And in a pinch, they can kill Tier III and maybe Tier IV units decently enough.

Tier II: Run, escape, get to III as quickly as possible, but out of these, the Infantry unit offers your first front line defense, and the Light Calvary unit offers good speed for killing low level monsters.

Tier III : Ah, here you have your first decent combat units. For their Tier, every unit is useful. Spearmen and Mangonels are not replaced until Tier V troops become available. Heavy Calvary replace Light Calvary. Crossbow men have high critical.

Tier IV: This Tier offers your first real backbone of front line defense, the Swordsmen. Invaluable until Tier VI, the Swordsmen will save countless lives with his own. It also offers you a Unit not fully replaced until Tier VII, the Arbalester! The Arbalester is an effective and cheap killing unit, highly effective if protected by Infantry. The battering ram is..meh, see Ram Units for more detail. The Horse Archer is quite superior to the Heavy Calvary unit, in fact almost oddly so, but still an 'awkward' type unit being instantly replaced by Tier V.

Tier V: Here you have three excellent unit types. The Heavy Mangonel is not replaced until tier VII, the Pikeman until tier VIII, and the Calvary shooter until tier VII. All of them are worth having. Then, there is the Elite Longbow...basically, the Elite Long bowmen is a Mall cop, and the Archer Guard is a SWAT. The Elite is an 'awkward' type unit more expensive then the Arbalester, and, as I have seen so many times, less effective. My advice? Skip them, train more Arbalesters. Sadly you still need to upgrade the range...

Tier V: Here you have three excellent unit types. The Heavy Mangonel is not replaced until tier VII, the Pikeman until tier VIII, and the Calvary shooter until tier VII. All of them are worth having. Then, there is the Elite Longbow...basically, the Elite Long bowmen is a Mall cop, and the Archer Guard is a SWAT. The Elite is an 'awkward' type unit more expensive then the Arbalester, and, as I have seen so many times, less effective. My advice? Skip them, train more Arbalesters. Sadly you still need to upgrade the range...

Tier VI: Here, you have three good units once more, yet tier VI is still a strange setup, and has one odd man out. The Noble Swordsmen is the much needed replacement for the Swordsmen, but the noble is also Awkward, because of how decidedly inferior he is to the Guard unit. Still, train as many Nobles as you can as fast as you can. The Archer Guard is useful and worth having in moderate numbers, but does not fully replace the Arbalester. At this point, they work in conjunction. The Knights Templar is also useful, but again, must work in tandem with the Calvary shooter. The Demolisher has a cool name, to bad its just another ram. His high defense might be useful during sieges. Heavy Mangonels are still your main siege unit.

Tier VII: YES, OH YES finally, no problems here, no awkward units, nothing out of place, this is tier nirvana, like Tier III.  Everything is great. Prioritize Guards, the rest is up to you, though I like Trebuchets.

Tier VIII: Again, everything here is worth having, the Heavy Trebuchet replaces the Trebuchet, and the Heavy Pikeman replaces the Pikeman (Finally), however, the Eagle Archer and Royal Knight only work with the Heavy Calvary Archer and Heavy Crossbowman, they do not replace them.

I personally have never had past Tier VIII, sorry, but I'm going to assume the same principles as seen here apply for the last two tiers.

*Need a helping Hand? Most people know about resource alts, but I also like having a Battle Alt, a secondary account not made for farming, not specifically, but instead, he is setup like main and used for rallies and reinforcement. *