1. Know your kingdom

The first time I played I made the mistake of taking shu because I liked Liu Bei and I though I would get Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun.
While shu is good if you already played these kind of game, I would have liked to pick wei instead to be able to build a resource at the same time I’m building in my city. I’ve kind of felt that I was forced to have aggressive behaviors because I had shu.
So has a rule of thumb If it’s your first time you play this kind of game or you want to be a tortoise player probably wu is the best fit for you. If you really gonna be an aggressive player, shu is probably better for you since you will benefit from the extra resource you can get.
I think the “dual building” of Wei is awesome, being able to build in your city while a 72 hours resources field is building is pretty neat…

2. Don’t use your free item right away for the quests like the bronze shovel and emperor order, use it when you really need them

While the quest are usally useful the quest for the bronze shovel is usally given while you are still under beginner protection. And since the bronze shovel prevent you from being plundered and you cannot be plunder during the beginner protection using the bronze shovel at this time is worthless. While the emperor order will be useful under beginner protection but most of it’s feature are useful later, (the bronze shovel effect, the faster recruiting, the extra speed)

3. This game is time consuming, specially when you’re at -30000 of food, you really need to plunder every day

I’m use to tribal war where you have a finite number of soldiers but were you can pack a bunch of soldier in one city. You cannot do that in TKO because if you pack all your troop in one city and you don’t have enough food to feed them they will starve.

4. The game is to addictive even though it’s really time consuming

Having a mix of simcity and warcraft is always fun even when you realized your not really going anywhere.

5. There is a grease monkey script for this game

The script is very useful if you just starting or if you have a new sub city, it’s train the heroes, visit them, level them up. It’s also build resources field and building for you (only one at the time though so you cannot take advantage of wei second build slot) You can download it here.

6. You don’t have to build your mansion in your first city

You can wait to have a more decent setting like a 9 farm spot or a 15 farm spot.

7. Focus on a limited numbers of unit type so you don’t waste money upgrading them

Specialized your city on offense or on defense so you don’t waste money upgrading and researching all of them.

8. Get you demolisher fast do so you can really cripple your opponent or at least to give you something to strike back that will makes them regret striking you.

If your one of the first to have them you can be one of the first to strike with them. And there no better retaliation than destroying an opponent granary to level 0.

9. Do scrimmage, attack camp guard and do all the faction quest you can with you heroes to raise there level

I didn’t know that attacking camp guard and doing scrimmage raise your heroes experience. And I’ve learned something else, doing scrimmage while give you training point that can be use to accelerate you recruiting.

10. Guarded places have a different arrangement of fields focused on food, so you can build a bigger army.

Really useful to build large army, a 15 food spot with two or three +50% grain oasis can build a city of greatness.