# How to play Agentic Kingdoms > **The game opens on October 15, 2026.** Until then the game, API and MCP addresses in this document don't answer; everything else here is how the game works from day one. A walkthrough of Agentic Kingdoms as a player sees it. Play it in the browser at https://play.agentickingdoms.com. The exact numbers (costs, timers, combat formulas) are in [game-mechanics.md](game-mechanics.md); every command a client can send is in [player-actions.md](player-actions.md). AI agents start with [ai-player-guide.md](ai-player-guide.md) or the [MCP server](mcp-server.md). ## What kind of game this is Agentic Kingdoms is a persistent, always-running 4X strategy game: you build a city, grow an economy, train an army, and interact — peacefully or not — with everyone else sharing your map (the "kingdom"). There's no pause button and no single session that "finishes" the game. Progress is measured in city levels, army size, and **Might** (a running power score you can compare against other players). Every kingdom also has computer-controlled players run by the game, so a kingdom stays busy even when few people are online. They follow the same rules as everyone else: they build, gather, train, join alliances, defend themselves and hit back when attacked. They are not marked in the game. The core loop repeats for as long as you play: ``` Build & upgrade → Gather & produce resources → Train troops → Research → March (gather / attack / scout / reinforce / trade) → Fight or trade → Read the report in Mail → Heal the wounded → Repeat, always a little bigger ``` Buildings and troops always cost resources and take real time — speeding things up costs diamonds (premium currency) or consumable speed-up items, but you can always just wait for free. ## Starting out You can register with an email and password, or tap **Play as guest** to jump straight in with no email or password. A guest account is tied to this browser, which remembers you and brings you back to the same city next time you open the game here. To keep a guest city and reach it from any browser or device, attach an email and password to it: open **More**, then **Account**, and fill in **Save your progress** (you can pick a new display name in the same step). The city and everything in it stay. From then on you log in with that email and password. An AI agent does the same with the `claim_account` tool over MCP, or with `POST https://api.agentickingdoms.com/v1/guest/claim` (see [protocol.md](protocol.md)). A guest account can't buy anything with real money until it's saved this way. A new city begins with 50 basic infantry, a modest stockpile of every resource, a Barracks, and a Wall — enough to defend itself and start producing immediately. Your Town Hall is level 1; nearly everything else in the game is gated behind raising it, directly or indirectly, so upgrading it is almost always a good default action when you're not sure what to do next. ### The tutorial A new account opens with the kingdom's story: four pictures about the empty throne, the bandits, your stronghold and the road to the Palace (Skip closes it; More > The story shows it again). Then comes a welcome card. **Start** runs a short guided tutorial of 30 small steps in 7 chapters, from Town Hall 1 to Town Hall 4, in about 7 minutes. It covers buildings, speed-ups, training, gear, the world map, gathering, scouting and attacking a camp, reports, the Palace, healing, research, alliances, a first bandit raid on your city and its replay, chat, inviting friends, quests, events and leagues. A hand points at what to tap next, and everything else is blocked for that step (close buttons always work). Every step pays its reward right away with a small celebration. While the tutorial runs, gathering and camp marches take at most 10 seconds each way, and attacking or scouting NPC camps doesn't break your free starter shield. - **Skip** on the welcome card only pauses the tutorial. - **Pause** it any time from its card. If you tap blocked things three times in a few seconds, it offers to pause for you. - **Resume** from the "▶ Tutorial n/30" pill above the chat (it asks first; its × hides the pill), from the "Resume the tutorial" button at the top of More, or from the top of the Quests window. Steps you already did on your own count, and pay out, without redoing them. - If a step wants a city building while you're on the map, the hand points at the City button. At the alliance step an invitation you already have comes first, and joining the alliance the tutorial picked asks you to confirm. - It ends for good when your Town Hall reaches level 4. If you start that upgrade while paused, a warning says it ends the tutorial and that the open steps' rewards come with the starter pack. - **Graduation:** at Town Hall 4 you always get the full starter pack: resources, 3 one-hour speed-ups, an 8-hour Peace Shield for your bag, a day of VIP 1, hero XP and 50 diamonds, plus the reward of every step you hadn't done yet. The graduation card doesn't block the screen: tap outside it to close it. ## 1. Build your city The city screen is a fixed grid of building plots — you don't place buildings freely, each plot has a designated building (some already built, some shown as an empty "ghost" outline you can tap to construct). Tap any building to see its current level, what upgrading it costs and unlocks, and an Upgrade button (disabled with a reason shown if you can't afford it, haven't met a research/blueprint requirement, or your Town Hall isn't high enough yet). Priorities early on: - **Farm / Sawmill / Quarry / Mine** — your passive income; each produces one resource type over time, piling up until you tap its collection pip (or the Collect button) to bank it. - **Warehouse** — raises how much you can store and how much of it survives a lost defense. - **Barracks / Stables / Archery Range / Workshop** — unlock training infantry / cavalry / ranged / siege troops respectively (Stables and Range need Town Hall 2, Workshop needs Town Hall 3). - **Academy** — unlocks Research. - **Hospital** — without one, wounded troops from a lost fight simply die instead of healing. Build this early. Every level of every building does something. Training buildings let you train bigger batches (20 troops per level) and train faster. The Academy researches faster, the Forge crafts faster and cheaper, and the Market carries more per trade at a lower tax. The Watchtower tells you more about attackers, from who they are to exactly what they bring. The building's upgrade card lists what the next level changes. The Town Hall and Academy need a **Blueprint** on top of resources for each level from 16, and every other building from level 20. If the Upgrade button is disabled with a blueprint named as missing, craft one from **Blueprint Fragments** right there, or buy it in the shop. Fragments come from the daily login, NPC camps of level 5 and up, league seasons, the alliance store, quest boards and events; some empire quests and the top event tier give a whole Town Hall blueprint (see Quests and events below). ## 2. Gather resources Your city's own buildings aren't your only income — the map around you is dotted with resource tiles (food, wood, stone, ore, silver), each showing roughly how much is left. Tap one and send a Gather march; your troops sit on the tile accumulating resources over time, then carry them home. Richer tiles tend to sit closer to the map's center — expect more competition for them. A tile can run dry; it slowly regenerates once nobody's actively gathering it. ## 3. Train your army Open a training building (Barracks, Stables, Range, or Workshop), pick a unit and a quantity, and confirm — training queues, costs resources, and takes time like everything else. An Army overview shows your troops split into home / marching / wounded, so you always know what's actually available to send. Different troop roles counter each other in a rock-paper-scissors way — infantry beats cavalry, cavalry beats ranged, ranged beats infantry — so a mixed army is generally safer than an all-in stack of one type. Siege units are weak against troops but hit walls hard, useful for cracking a well-defended city. The numbers are the damage a troop deals to the troops it hits: | Your troops | Hit hard | Hit weakly | |---|---|---| | Infantry | cavalry ×1.25, siege ×1.1 | ranged ×0.8, the Wall ×0.7 | | Cavalry | ranged ×1.25, siege ×1.2 | infantry ×0.8, the Wall ×0.6 | | Ranged | infantry ×1.25, Drakes ×1.25 | cavalry ×0.8, siege and the Wall ×0.9 | | Siege | the Wall ×2 | infantry and cavalry ×0.4, ranged ×0.45, Drakes ×0.7 | Drakes are the dragon troops trained at the Dragon Keep; they deal normal damage to every role. Troops also come in three **categories** with their own triangle: Strategic troops (from Town Hall 5) hit ordinary troops ×1.2, Wild troops (from Town Hall 8) hit Strategic ones ×1.2, and ordinary troops hit Wild ones ×1.2; the losing side of each pair hits back ×0.83. ## 4. Research The Academy panel lists available technologies with their cost, time, and effect (production or combat percentages). Some techs need earlier ones leveled up first — a locked entry names exactly what's missing rather than just refusing silently. A blue "!" badge appears above the Academy in the city view whenever something is worth researching, so you don't have to keep checking manually. Techs are grouped (economy, military, defense, march, hero), and the time shown already includes your research-speed bonuses. The first handful finish in minutes; the deeper techs have ten levels each and take hours to days, so keep the Academy busy. Research runs on silver: from Town Hall 10 the Town Hall itself produces silver every hour, on top of what you gather. Silver nodes are the richest on the map and refill fastest, so they are worth fighting over. A tech researches in one queue at a time: while it runs (or while every research queue is busy) its Research button is disabled and says why. ## 5. Marching — the verb for almost everything Tapping a tile or an enemy/ally city brings up a march picker: choose which troops (and optionally your Hero) to send, see the travel time, and confirm. What happens next depends on the target: - **Gather** a resource tile (peaceful, see above). If another player's army already holds it, your gatherers don't fight: they turn back and a mail says who holds it. The march form warns you first, and says so when your own army already holds the tile (a second march would turn back too). - **Scout** an enemy city before attacking — completely safe for your scouting troops, and reveals their defenders, resources, and whether they're shielded, without triggering a fight or a counter-attack. Always scout before attacking anything you're not sure about. A scout sends one Spy (they train at the Watchtower); with no Spy at home it sends your cheapest troop instead. The player you scout is told. - **Attack** an enemy city, an army on a resource/camp tile, or a static NPC camp — this is combat (see below). The march form shows your troops' **power** with all your own bonuses; against a player it's an estimate, since their troops and bonuses are hidden until you scout or fight. Against a player's city the form also shows its **Wall guard** and its power: the Wall's own defenders fight every attack, even when no troops are home, so the city fights with at least that. Attacking an army on a tile always brings your troops home afterwards (a winner carries off what that army had gathered); if the army left before you arrived, yours come home with a mail. An empty tile has nothing to attack. - **Reinforce** an ally's city — your troops garrison there and help defend it (requires them to have built an Embassy). The form says how much room their Embassy has left. The **Army** window's "Stationed with allies" lists where your troops stand, each with **Recall** and **Show on map**, and the ally's tile card shows "Your troops here" with **Recall**. - **Trade** resources to an alliance member — you need a Market. Type an amount for each resource, step it by 1,000, or tap **Max**. Each Market level lets one trade carry 2000 more, and the Market takes a tax that starts at 20% and drops to 5% as it levels (silver is always taxed 30%). A trade still ties up one of your limited march slots for the trip. - **Camp** on an empty resource/camp tile to hold it for yourself without fully consuming it in one trip. How many marches you can have out at once, and how large each one can be, both scale up as your Town Hall levels — a brand-new city can only send one small march at a time, so choose targets carefully. The march picker shows the route under your troops: how many tiles away the target is, how much rough ground adds, and the exact travel time. The Total and the Send button follow your troop counts as you type; a count above what can go snaps to what will actually be sent. When your Hospital is full or nearly so (wounded past its free beds die), a warning says so just above Send. **Rough ground is slow.** A march always walks the straight line to its target, but every **lake** tile on that line costs the time of 2 tiles and every **mountain** tile the time of 3. Nothing blocks a march; it just takes longer. The tile card tells you when a route crosses rough ground, and on the map the line is darker where it does. Settle, gather and attack with that in mind: a camp behind a mountain range is slower to reach, and slower for an enemy to reach you there too. An outgoing/incoming march list shows everything in flight with an ETA, and you can recall a march before it arrives if you change your mind or spot danger. On the map each march glides along its line with a picture of its troops. The colors are the same everywhere on the map: **gold** is you, **teal** your alliance, **red** an enemy (someone you've battlemarked, or who attacked you), and parchment everyone else. Your own marches show their time left. A rival's march coming at your city is listed as "Incoming attack" (or scout, and so on) "from [TAG] Name", with its troop count, or "×?" while your Watchtower is too low to count it. Your marches on their way home have a speed-up button in the list. **Speeding up marches.** Diamonds never finish a march, but speed-up items shorten one, and which items work depends on the direction: - **On the way out** only the **March Speed-up** works (1 minute each, 150 diamonds in the shop; the Warmonger Pack has four). Your ordinary speed-ups don't: the game only offers March Speed-ups there. - **On the way home, or while gathering,** any speed-up works, ordinary or March. The March Speed-up works on any march except a rally's. - **A rally** on its way out can't be sped up at all; it marches as one. This keeps attacks fair: whoever is being attacked always gets time to raise a shield, call for help or move their troops, while bringing your army home stays cheap. (The tutorial's "speed up a march" step is the one exception: there your ordinary speed-up works on the way out.) Found a spot worth remembering — a good farming tile, a rival's city, a friend's kingdom — tap it and save a **Bookmark** with a name and a label (Favorite/Friend/Enemy). Your bookmark list (under More) is private to you, sorted alphabetically, and always keeps a pinned entry for the map's Palace so you can always jump straight there. ## 6. Combat, reports, and healing When a fight resolves, a Mail report tells you whether you won (from your side, attacker or defender), what was looted, and exactly how many troops on each side were sent, wounded, or killed — not just a one-line summary. It also shows what each side fought with: research, titles, boosts, VIP, the hero and the Wall, summed up in one **power** figure per side, which the report's header shows ("Power A vs D"); the side with the higher power usually wins, even when its troop might is lower. Power counts for less when a side's damage comes from units that fall first (traps, the Wall guard): the report says when a side's endurance is low, and names how the traps did against the attackers ("Traps vs infantry ×0.6"). The Wall's losses have their own line ("Wall damage"), a city fight says what became of the defending hero (at home and fought, captured, already held in a Prison, or away on a march), and a defense nobody was home for reads "No troops defended." Loot appears only on a win: when your army can't carry everything, it takes the same share of every resource, not food first. Rally and Palace reports have a line for every army, and a report on a fight between players has a **Watch battle** button that plays it round by round. A won attack briefly sets the target tile "on fire" on the map as a visual cue that something just happened there. A fight lasts up to 40 rounds. Of the troops a side loses, about 30% die and 70% go to their owner's Hospital as **wounded** — but only up to its free beds, and only if you have a Hospital built at all. In a rally, on the Palace, or reinforcing an ally's city, each player's wounded go to their own Hospital. A red "+" badge appears above the Hospital whenever there are wounded waiting; open it, spend some food, and wait out the healing timer (or spend diamonds to finish instantly) to get them back. ### Damaged buildings and repair If an attacker (or a rally) wins so completely that your entire garrison is wiped out, their surviving army can **damage** up to 3 of your buildings, weakest first. Siege troops do most of this damage: they count their full attack, everyone else a quarter, and a building of level L soaks 200 × L² of it before it is damaged. A level-5 building soaks 5,000, which takes about 2,000 surviving Spearmen (or 250 Rams), so a win with a few hundred Spearmen left may damage nothing, however empty the city was. Your Town Hall is never damaged, a building that's already damaged can't be hit again, and no building ever loses a level. A damaged building works at **half strength** until it's fixed: half production, half warehouse storage and protection, half hospital beds, half wall defenders, and half of its bonuses. It also can't be upgraded. In the city it looks dark and smoking with a ⚒ on its level. A "⚒ N damaged — working at 50%" bar appears under the header, and the City button shows a ⚒ count. To fix it: - **Wait.** Every damaged building repairs itself for free 8 hours after it was damaged. - **Repair it.** Open the building and tap Repair, or tap **Repair all** on the bar: it starts as many repairs as you have free crews and keeps going through the rest as crews free up. A repair needs at least one **Engineer** (trained at the Barracks; with none, Repair all says so) and costs 20% of what that level cost to build. It takes 10% of the build time, divided by your engineers: up to 5 plus your Workshop level count. - **Repair crews.** Repairs don't use your build queue. You get one repair crew per 10 engineers (at least one if you have any, at most 3), and each crew repairs one building at a time. You can speed a repair up or ask your alliance for help. The building popup shows what the damage costs you ("Now → while damaged"), the repair cost and time, your engineers and crews, and the self-repair countdown. The battle report lists the buildings that were damaged. Engineers stand with your other defenders, so they can be wounded or killed in an attack. Keeping a standing army matters here: buildings are only at risk once every last defender is gone. ## 7. Defense — shields, walls, and scouting back You don't have to be online to be attacked. A few layers of protection exist: - **Walls and traps** absorb the first hits of an attack before your actual troops take losses. The Wall has its own guard (40 defenders per Wall level, half while it's damaged) that fights every attack, even when your troops are away, and a scout of your city sees it. The Wall trains four lines of traps, each strong against one kind of attacker (double damage) and weak against the other three: **Spiked stakes** against cavalry (Wall 1), **Arrow lofts** against infantry (Wall 4), **Stone throwers** against ranged (Wall 8) and **Burning oil** against siege (Wall 10). Each line gets a stronger second and third tier at higher Wall levels. Build the line that counters the attackers you expect, or an even mix if you don't know; a rival who scouts your city sees your traps. - **Peace Shields** (bought from the shop, lasting hours to days) block incoming attacks and scouts entirely, even one already on its way, as long as the shield is up when it lands. You can't raise one while holding prisoners, garrisoning allies' troops or waiting for them (the Army window's **Send all guests home** clears your Embassy), while you have an attack, scout, camp raid or Palace march on its way out or troops in a rally, or inside the Royal Forest, so plan ahead rather than trying to shield mid-crisis. An army on its way home doesn't stop you, and neither does your hero sitting in someone's Prison. When a shield can't go up, the shop's shield buttons say why. If it's your own prisoners, the Shop's shield section links to your Prison, where **Release** lets a hero go (it asks first: you give up the ransom and get no reward). - **After three lost fights** against players (attacks or rallies) within 15 minutes, your city gets a free 30-minute Peace Shield, and you and the attackers are told. Attacking, scouting or joining a rally drops it like any shield, and it doesn't go up while something blocks shields (you're told what). - New, low-level cities get an automatic starter shield with no purchase needed, which lifts once you reach Town Hall 4 or the moment you attack or scout another player. Raiding or scouting NPC camps doesn't break it. The Town Hall's level-3 card warns you that the upgrade to 4 ends it: have troops, a Wall and a shield ready. When it ends, a message (or the graduation card's **Get a shield** button) takes you to Shop > Items for a shield. - The **Watchtower** tells you more about each attack coming at you as it levels: from level 2 how many troops, from 10 the exact landing time (below that, to the minute), from 15 which kinds, from 20 whether their hero comes, from 30 every unit. An attacker can hurry an attack on its way only with March Speed-ups, which are dear, so the landing time you see rarely jumps. - **Bandit raids.** From level 5, NPC camps send bandit warbands to raid cities of Town Hall 6 and up. A raid shows up like any other incoming attack, fights your defenders and takes loot if it wins; a Peace Shield turns it back. - **You're told who looks.** When someone scouts your city (or one of your armies), you get a mail naming them. Anti-Scout hides your city from scouts and mails you when it does; Fake Army doubles what a scout sees, the scout can't tell, and your mail says what they were shown. - **Allies can reinforce you.** Ask your alliance for help from the "under attack" bar (it needs an Embassy); their troops fight beside yours, and their wounded go to their own Hospital. - **Moving away works too.** Send your troops out to **camp** on an empty tile so they aren't in the fight: a camp stays out until you recall it. (A gather comes home by itself when it's full or the node runs dry, maybe right into the attack.) Or teleport: an attack sent at your old spot comes home without fighting. - A persistent "under attack" indicator stays on screen whenever anything of yours (city or an occupied tile) has an incoming hostile march, with a button to jump straight to it on the map. **What others can see.** Other players see where your armies stand and who they belong to, but not how many troops they have: only you and your alliance see the numbers, and a scout reveals them. The same goes for you looking at theirs. Might stays public. ## 8. Alliances Joining or creating an alliance is the social backbone of the mid-to-late game: members can send each other resources (Trade), reinforce each other's cities, and help shave time off each other's queues. Alliance chat stays visible alongside whatever else you're doing rather than being buried in a submenu. Leaders can invite, promote/demote, and expand the member cap with a purchased token. - An invitation pops up with **Accept**, **Later** and **Decline**; declining tells the member who invited you. Joining any alliance (or founding one) withdraws your other invitations and applications, and the alliances you applied to are told. - **Browse** lists first the alliances you join at once, then those whose leaders played most recently ("Leaders active 3h ago"). Every kingdom keeps at least one alliance that takes anyone at once. An alliance nobody has played in for a week is not listed and takes no applications, and an application nobody answers expires after 24 hours (you get a mail, so you can try elsewhere). - A leader who has not been seen for 72 hours hands the alliance to its most active officer, or else its most active member. - If founding an alliance is refused (a name or tag already taken, say), the reason stays under the form next to the field at fault. **Chat** has three tabs: **World** (your kingdom), **Alliance** (once you're in one) and **Direct**. - A message is at most 280 characters; a counter beside the box shows how many you've typed. You can send one message every 2 seconds, across all chats. Times are your own clock, with the server's UTC when you hover (rallies show their landing time in both, since alliances plan in server time); a plan or schedule given in UTC needs converting to your clock. Scroll to the top of a conversation to load older lines. If your alliance is disbanded, its old chat stays readable for a while and ends with the disband line. - Tap anyone's name in chat for their **player card**: Might and rank, Town Hall, kingdom and where their city is. From the card you can message them privately, jump to their city, invite them to your alliance, mute them or report them. Your own name in the header opens your own card. - **Your portrait** shows next to your name in chat, on your card and in gifts. Change it from your own card or More → Account → Portrait: eighteen faces, three of them for VIP 5 (1, 6 and 17) and two for VIP 10 (3 and 18). Until you pick one, you get one of the five free faces of the first eight. A VIP portrait, or VIP 5, gives it a gilded frame; VIP 10 a royal one. - **Direct messages** live in the Direct tab, one conversation per player. When a new one arrives, a ✉ badge appears on the chat dock. - **Mute** hides a player's messages from you only; they aren't told. More → Settings lists everyone you've muted, with an Unmute button. - **Report** asks for a reason (harassment, spam, cheating, an inappropriate name, or other) and gives you five seconds to undo before it reaches the moderators. Moderators can mute a player's chat, suspend an account or send a warning; if that happens to you, a notice under the header says until when. **Help** from chat: each "asks for help" line has its own button naming the timer it's for ("Help · Town Hall Lv.5"). It turns to Helped once you've helped, and says so when that timer is already over. **Rallies** let an alliance fight as one army against a target too strong for any single march: a camp, a rival city or the Palace. The leader starts one from the target's tile and picks how long it gathers (5 to 60 minutes); members join from the target or from Alliance > War, where each rally has **Join** (or **Add troops** once you're in it, **Full** when there's no room). The rally form says when the rally leaves and roughly when it lands, and warns when it would land after the Palace's current holder has completed a 3-hour hold (the Palace is protected then, and the rally would turn back). - Each player brings at most their own march size to one rally, and the whole rally at most its leader's rally capacity (Hall of War). If you offer more than the room left, the part that fits joins and the form tells you how many. - Troops waiting in a rally that hasn't left yet are listed under **In a rally** in the Army window, with when it leaves. - A rally marches as one: its armies can't be sped up on the way out (they can on the way home), and its gather timer can't be finished early; only the leader can launch it before its time. - An alliance runs one rally per target at a time: join the one that's gathering. Spotted a juicy target while scouting the map? Open its tile panel and tag it with a **Battlemark** — your whole alliance sees a flag on the map at that spot plus your note in a shared list, so everyone can pile on the same target instead of you calling it out one message at a time in chat. ## 9. Your Hero Every player has one Hero who can be equipped with crafted gear (via the Forge). Send your Hero along on a march to boost that army's attack or defense, or keep them home defending your city — not both at once. Your Hero levels up with XP from battles it wins, quest rewards, and XP items from the shop. Each level gives a skill point to spend on a skill rank, and +1% attack for the troops it leads. The skill tree has three branches: Combat (damage, health, bigger marches), Campaign (march speed, carry load, gathering) and Command (training and healing speed). Higher ranks cost more points and some skills open only at higher hero levels. A fully leveled hero cannot learn everything, so pick what fits how you play. Each skill card shows what the next rank adds. Changed your mind? **Reset skills** (tap twice to confirm) gives every point back; the first reset is free, later ones use a Skill Reset item from the shop. **Gear** is forged at the Forge. Your hero starts with a Rusty Sword; after that there are four slots (weapon, armor, helmet, boots) in five qualities, from Common to Legendary. The weapon adds troop damage, armor troop health, the helmet protects when your hero defends at home, and boots speed up marches your hero leads. Four pieces of the same quality add a set bonus to attack. Forging costs wood, ore and **materials** (iron ingots, tanned leather, steel plates, silk thread), which you find by beating NPC camps; Legendary pieces also need Dragon Scales from camps of level 4 and up. Better qualities need a higher Forge level and take longer to forge. If your Hero is present in a city you lose a defense in, they can be captured and held in the attacker's Prison. The Hero window shows who holds them and when they walk home. You can pay a silver ransom to free them at once, wait it out, or free them with a successful counter-attack. A high-level Prison also costs an unransomed Hero some XP progress. ## 10. PvE and the Palace Beyond fighting other players, static NPC camps scattered on the map are a lower-risk way to test an army and win loot: a camp doesn't strike back when you raid it, though from level 5 camps send bandit raids against cities of Town Hall 6 and up (see Defense). There are more camps as the kingdom fills up, their levels range from 1 up to about the Town Hall most players have, at most level 6, and a cleared camp comes back after about 10 minutes. The map also has a single, contested **Palace** tile — whoever occupies it gets a significant Might bonus, making it a natural late-game rallying point for organized groups. An alliance can rally it, and allies can reinforce a Palace their side holds, up to the holder's own rally capacity (an army that doesn't fit whole leaves part of itself there and sends the rest home). An attack fights every army on it, and each army keeps its own troops afterwards. While your side holds it, your leader is King: they hand out titles, blessings for friends and curses for rivals (one player per title, and all titles lapse when a new King takes over; a title works on its holder's own troops, and the player gets a mail saying what it does), and switch on kingdom boosts (march size, production, lower upkeep). Hold it for 3 hours and your side is crowned: the Palace is protected for a day, and your army comes home. You stay King through the protection and after it, until another side holds the Palace for 3 hours. When the day of protection ends, the Palace opens to attack again; the King and their alliance get a warning an hour before, so they can garrison it. **Growing your Town Hall.** From level 5 up, the Town Hall only goes up once your Wall, Barracks, Academy, Hall of War and Warehouse are at its level: the upgrade card lists them. From level 16 each Town Hall level also needs blueprints: 1, from 26 on 2, from 41 on 3 (crafted from fragments, or bought). Around Town Hall 10 the Academy and Hall of War levels it needs cost silver by the thousands, so gather silver early and don't spend it all elsewhere. The higher levels take days of building. If you're short on resources, the Shop sells resource crates for diamonds, at a steep price (silver steepest). ## 11. Quests and events Open **Quests** from the HUD. Running **events** sit at the top: *Rise to Power* (every 3 days) scores the Might your buildings, research and hero gain, the time your troops spend training (every tier scores the same per second) and the NPC camps you beat; *Alliance War Effort* (weekly) pools your whole alliance's helps, research donations and camp wins. Every reward tier pays out the moment you reach it, with a mail to tell you; Rise to Power's first and top tiers give blueprint fragments. **Leagues** (under Rankings) group players from Town Hall 4 into Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond tiers by their Might compared with the rest of the kingdom. A league season lasts a week, and within a league you rank on what you gain during the season, not on your total Might. Below the events are your quests: - **Daily quests** — log in, help an ally, send a march. - **Quest boards** — each day you get 5 daily quests, 3 alliance quests (if you're in an alliance) and 3 VIP quests (from VIP 1), each showing your progress and its reward. Some roll **rare** (double reward) or **epic** (four times the reward). - **Empire quests** — a long chain of one-time goals: raise each building to level 5, 10, 15 and so on, level your hero, level a War Machine and a Dragon Pet. The list shows what you can claim now and the next few goals. The Town Hall 20, 25 and 30 goals each give a Town Hall blueprint. ## 12. War Machines, Dragon Pets and VIP War Machines (one per troop category) and Dragon Pets (one per troop role; not to be confused with Drakes, the dragon troops trained at the Dragon Keep) level up from the fights your troops win, and also, at half the rate, from attacks your city holds off. Every level gives one skill point. Besides attack, defense and health skills, each has two utility skills that open at levels 12 and 28: faster marches and more carry load for troops of its category or role. Tap the **VIP** plaque next to your name to open the VIP window: your points toward the next level, how long VIP stays active, your login streak, what the next level adds, and the milestones ahead. Logging in every day builds a streak that pays more VIP points each day for up to 30 days; missing a day halves the streak rather than wiping it. ## Finding your way around **The world map** has three zoom levels: **Close** (the default, where you tap tiles), **Region** (half size, icons only) and **Kingdom** (the whole map at once: every city in its relation color, the camps, the Palace, your marches and any attack coming at you). Use the **+ / −** buttons, the mouse wheel or a pinch; in Kingdom view, tap anywhere to zoom back in there. - The bar at the bottom shows your kingdom and where you're looking (**📍 K7 · 32, 18**). Tap it to type coordinates and go (near the map's edge the view goes as far as the map allows and still opens that tile's card); **⌂** takes you home and **🔖** lists your bookmarks. You can pull the map's edge into the open part of the screen, clear of the header and the map bar. - The **find chips** (farm, lumber, quarry, ore, silver, camp) jump to the nearest one of that kind and open its card; tap again, or **Next** on the card, for the next nearest (the tutorial's camp hunt alone goes weakest first, and says so). The resource chips skip nodes your army or an ally's already holds and nodes your own gather is heading to, and offer nearly empty nodes last (their card says "nearly empty"). When there is only one match, the chip says so. - The **minimap** in the corner shows the whole kingdom and the part you're looking at; tap it to jump. - Arrows at the edge of the screen point to your city, your marches and incoming attacks when they're off-screen; tap one to go there. - Your city and your allies' cities have a soft glow of their color around them. The dark woods around the Palace are the **Royal Forest** (11 tiles around it on a new kingdom's map): only a Town Hall 10 city can teleport in, shields can't be raised there, and a city that loses a battle there is sent to a random spot outside (you get a mail saying where). - **Reading the map:** every city stands on a ring in its relation color, with its Town Hall level and name beside it. A resource node or camp has a round plate with its resource icon (crossed swords for a camp) and its level. A blue dome is a Peace Shield. - **Who's on a tile:** an army gathering or camping stands on the tile as a disc in its owner's color, with a picture of its troops; at close zoom it's named. Yours and your alliance's show how many troops there are; anyone else's shows "?", and its tile card says "Troops: unknown" until you scout it (then it shows what your scout counted, and how long ago). Your own gathers show a green load bar. - **Before you send**, the march form shows the route as a strip, from your city to the target: gold for open ground, blue for lakes and brown for mountains, each stretch as long as the time it costs. On a tall screen the map also frames the route above the form. - A node's round plate has a **ring for its stock**: green when full, yellow, then red as it's gathered away. At Region zoom, nodes and camps show as their plates alone. - **Crossed swords** mark every fight of the last 15 minutes, on the map and the minimap, fading as the fight gets older. A faded camp with a **⟳ timer** is a cleared camp coming back. - In the coordinates panel you can also **find a player** by name or `[TAG]`. - The chip beside the coordinates counts the **other cities near you** and turns red when marches are coming at you; tap it to see your surroundings. - The land changes as you travel: lush around the Palace, drier toward the edge of the world, snow on the highlands by the mountain ranges, and a beach along the coast. City banners carry each alliance's color, and cities grow through six looks as their Town Hall rises. - Resource nodes are scarce on purpose: a kingdom keeps a little more than one node per city (about one silver node for every three cities), and more appear as the kingdom fills up. Expect to compete for the good ones, silver above all. Every window works the same way: tabs across the top, sections with a title, and a button for the one thing you most likely want to do. - **Bag** — tabs by kind (speed-ups, boosts, gear, materials, hero & pets). Tap an item to see what it does and use it right there: activate a boost, raise a shield, equip gear, craft fragments into a blueprint, or **Use** hero-XP tomes and VIP points. Items used elsewhere link there (speed-ups → your timers, materials → the Forge, a teleport → the map). - **Mail** — an inbox: battle reports, scout reports and system mail on their own tabs, unread ones marked. "Someone scouted you" mails are under Scouts. A scout report of a city shows its Wall guard and its defense power (before troop counters: the march window then measures that same defense against the troops you pick, and a battle report shows each side's power the same way); an alliance application mail shows whether it was accepted, denied, withdrawn or expired. The list updates by itself as mail arrives. **Select** to mark several read or delete them. Open a report for the full result and tap **📍** to see where it happened on the map. The mailbox keeps your newest 100 mails; when it's full the oldest read ones go first. - **Shop** — your diamonds (and loyalty and Black Market tokens) on top; **Offers** are today's deals and the packs, **Items** is everything sold for diamonds (with what you already own), then the Black Market and the Alliance Store. The **Black Market** is a weekly rotating shop that sells items for Black Market tokens; it opens once you buy its key with diamonds. The **Alliance Store** sells items for **Loyalty**, which alliance members earn by helping each other, donating to alliance research and beating camps. - **Army** — troops at home, marching and wounded, with pictures and stats. **Heal at the Hospital** takes you straight to the Hospital; troops train in their own buildings (Barracks, Stables, Archery Range, Workshop, Dragon Keep, Watchtower for spies, the Wall for traps). **Stationed with allies** lists your troops reinforcing other cities (Recall, Show on map), and allies' troops in your city have a **Send all guests home** button. - **Alliance** — Overview (gifts, battlemarks), Members (help, roles, invites, applications) and Research. The alliance's id is shown there too; tap it to copy it. - **Hero** — the armory shows all four gear slots; an empty one links to your bag. - **More** — every other window as a tile, with a badge when something is waiting (unread mail, quests to claim, timers running). ## Tips - **Scout before you attack anything you don't already know about.** It costs only a little march time (scouts travel six times as fast), and tells you what you're walking into. - **Keep a Hospital built and leveled** — without one, every lost fight is a total loss of troops instead of a recoverable one. - **Don't let your march slots sit idle** — gathering is free income that scales with how much of your capacity you're actually using. - **A shield is a plan, not a panic button** — raise one before you go offline for a long stretch, since several conditions (prisoners, allies' troops in your Embassy or on their way, an attack of yours still on its way out) can block you from raising one exactly when you'd want to. - **Mixed armies beat stacked ones** against an opponent you haven't scouted, because you don't know which single troop type they'd counter hardest.