Today I’ve decided to review a game that I played about a year ago on server 12 and 13 and started a new game on server 51.

Game description

Tribal war is a slow spaced strategy browser game, where you’re the leader of your village and your goal are to grow your village and build troop to attack and take control of other village.

Gameplay

Managing your city

First there is the ?"Sim city" part of this game that is typical to all these game.
You building have a pre-selected place were you can build them and upgrade them.

There no building placement like some other game of the genre have (tko, travain, Lord of ultima)
Another interesting thing is that there only 3 resources instead of 4, food is replaced with a farm which limits the number of troop you can build (like in warcraft or barrack in lord of ultima)

Building your army

All armies are the same for every player, you have the infantry and the mounted troop.
One really nice feature of the game is that depending on your server setting the type of you unit and upgrade you have changed, so be sure to check what your server is about before choosing one.

Unit description

Infantry
Spearman : good vs cavalry, good for harvesting barbarian village, cost more wood, weak attack
Swordman : good vs infantry, slow, small carry load
Axeman : offensive infantry unit, very low on defense
Archer : More balanced vs cavalry and infantry than the sword man and spear man
(available only on some server)
Cavalry Unit
Are more mobile than infantry unit but usually have a high cost vs stats ratio compare to infantry
Scout : Give you intel on your enemies when you attack with them
Light cavalry : offensive cavalry with low defense
Heavy cavalry: mobile defensive cavalry,
Mounter Archer: mobile offence cavalry, strong vs archer (available only on some server)

Paladin

In addition to your main army you can recruit a powerful paladin, the paladin can find item when attacking other village which can increase certain unit attack and defense when fighting the paladin.

Map

The map system is more efficient that some other game, it let you see who near you, and the right map give you a bigger picture of what around you.
By default the villages are colored by your alliance with them (your tribes/allies/enemies)
With the premium account you get a larger map and you can set specific colors to other players and tribes.

Expanding

While in other game you can either grab someone else city or build a new one in TW there only one way to expand,
It’s by grabbing other player or barbarian village with a nobleman.
When attacking with a nobleman, the enemy village slowly lose loyalty (around 20-30%  each attack) and when the loyalty hit 0 the village is your.
The village regains loyalty every hours.

End Game

The server closes to new players when the rim (see rim in the unique section) is filled.
After that any player whipped out is out of the server.
The server end when all other tribe is either removed, merged or whipped out.
The game seen to take awhile before we can see any kind of end game.
I dropped server 12 like 2 year ago and the server is still running.

What make tribal war unique

The RIM

One of the unique feature about TW is that the server start in the middle of the map and
when new players arrive they are placed around that main cluster.
This section around the main cluster is called the rim and
when a player lose all is village he gets a second chance by starting back on the rim which is far from the middle.

Moral

The moral system is a neat protection for new player or player with less point than other
It gets calculated from the points of attacker and defender. A player usually attacks with 100% morale, but if you attack a player that is much smaller than you, you will get a penalty. In an attack with 45% your troops only attack with 45% of they usual attack strength.
If a smaller player attacks a much bigger player, there is no bonus on the attack. The maximum morale is 100%.
It give small player a chance to survive or inflict more damage to biggers players making them think twice before attacking them (or send more nuke :P)

Forum

The main strength of this game compare to other game is it forum.
It’s interface is really smooth, it’s integrated with the game and it’s easy to add in game links like a player, a village coordinate or a tribe.
The tribe forum can be shared with other tribe, which make it easy to communicate with your ally and sisters tribes. A feature that other game don’t have.

The Community

The TW community is huge and there a lot of help site that can help you understand the game when you start.
They’re the tribal war forum where you can see what is going on with your world (http://forum.tribalwars.net/index.php) They’re the TW wiki where you can find a lot of useful information and tactic.
And one of my favorite it the tribal war stats site (http://www.twstats.com/) where you can find all sort of interesting information there. Like the point progression of a certain player, which tribe he was before, an attack planer to plan your attack from different to arrive at a specific time to enemy village. There a map tool to check the size of your new ally or to see which tribes should be scaring you.

That’s it for today
In my next post I’ll talk about what I hate and love about this game.
And some tips and strategy post are coming to.

I’ve been laying a lot of starcraft 2 lately, so I found that video particularly funny.

They should make one on dodging in browser war game, I always found it stupid that you can pull your troop out for like 10 second to let the enemy hit your city and then come back to stop the other. Why when you pull your troop out the enemy  troop don’t attack them before hitting the city.

Koram announced that they have baked a new game based on the Greek mythology named Mythopolis.

I started playing the game today and my first impression is :
Is Mythopolis a new game or just Three Kingdom online with new clothes ?

The same game really ?

Just when starting the game you get to chose your zodiac sign (equal region in TKO), your city (which is the equivalent of the kingdom)

If we break down each city with there TKO kingdom we got

Athen = Wei Sparta = Shu Troy = Wu

The units are the same it just that the name has changed.

Mytho

TKO

Oasis are the same except the unit defending are mystical creature instead of yellow turban

Building are the same there name have changed and the tech tree is a little different.

Mytho

TKO

The concept of placing your building is the same too. This list can goes on and on, it’s kind of normal since the game seem to be built on the same game engine. Let check what’s different for fun

New and Improved – Top things that have changed compared to TKO

1- New interface

Mythopolis arrive with a brand new interface, easier to manage, faster access to yours heroes and less cluttered than the one from TKO.

2- New quest section

There a brand new quest section and its much easier to understand than the one from tko,
Quest are grouped in category and each category you can complete a group of quest from that category, they are even bonus when you complete a certain group of quest that let you can give a gift to your facebook friend. More information on that on the Mythopolis forum : Quest System

3-New heroes management

Instead of having to go the the unintuitive left menu for hero quest, you directly access all quest and feature related to the hero directly via your hero menu.
So the training labyrinth (tower of trial), the zodiac (faction map), stadium (arena) , meet your hero (previously in the governor house in tko) are all the same place so you won`t forget anything about heroes, how many times did I forget to meet my heroes for the extra xp.

4- They made a little cleanup

The messengers are gone, I’m not sure if we should be happy about it but it give the casual player more chance against hardcore player.
There no more daily quest, quiz, book of heroes and faction quest. Which is good for those who can’t log everyday, The one I really happy about is that they removed the book of heroes, it was really annoying having to go to your governor house get the name and paste it in the quest section every hours.

5- Facebook

They made a huge facebook integration, quests that ask you to invite your friend for bonus, gift for your friend when you complete a group of quest and ask your friend for help to accelerate your construction.
While the concept is great, something I actually felt that I was harassing my friend, even facebook blocked the games because I was posting too much stuff with it.
More information on the forum: Facebook Special Interactive Function

Other thing they left out

There seem to be no King of the hill, no emperor road and no escort guardian.
They are probably replaced by something else that we have yet to discover.

MYTHOPOLIS might be pretty much a Three Kingdoms online clone with a greek setting, but the new and improved interface, the cleanup might make the game worth it and give a new experience.

Did I miss anything in the new section ?
So what are you though about the change ?

At some point you will want to maintain a larger army even have a negative output to have a army larger that you can hold.

1- Granary

Granary are essential to keep your extra food, specially when you plunder a lot those extra grain must go somewhere.

2- Satellite city  

Satellite cities are a great way to store you extra troop near you city specially those 9 and 15 food field. Store your troop there while your maxing your granary and get them back with you have to attack or defend your self.

3- County, state capital or Luo Yang

If you have a county, state capital or a member of your league has one, it can be a good place to store your unit and food, since they have a large food output and a lot of food storage space.

Plus your help your league by defending it.

4- Hide troop in other city

At some point in the game, those small city around you won’t be plundered at all, since you know their food output you can put that exact amount of troop in it.

For your information, Starting village usually have : 12 of food /hr (18/hr if you kill there starting hero)

5- Rank

Your rank increase your granary storage capacity, so do a lot of duel and scrimmage to get the items for the court quest.

Other tips for managing food from the koram forum

The Art of war – How to build a large army and support it.

How to build a main city on a 15 food field.

By the way, keep your gift voucher to upgrade high level ressource field (specialy if your shu or wu)

Managing your food supply is probably the most important thing you have to do in most war game.

These apply mostly to Three kingdom online since it’s the game I played the most but can probably be applied to travian to since both games are almost the same.

They two main thing to think about to manage your troop food

1- Maintaining a high food output

2- Storing your surplus & reducing your consumption without reducing your troop.

Today article is about what are the primaries source of food.

1- Farmland

Farmland are the primary source of food in the game so it’s very important to upgrade them.

Later in the game you can try to switch you main to spot that have more farmland that the average six farmland spot.

You can increase your output through oasis too, three +50% oasis double your farmland output (and almost triple it if you have a decent hero with the farm skill.)

More of that in my city placement guide and in one entry from the koram forum on how to build a great city.

2- Plunder

Aggressive player (called wolf) heavily depend on farming other city, this his essential to keep a healthy amount of food in your storage when your cities have a negative output.

At the end of beginner protection, your output is probably somewhere between 400 and 800 per hours, plundering completely a 0 pop population give you 800 of each resources in about 15 minute for a city besides you. That mean plundering a city give you 1 hours ahead of someone who don’t so those who plunder quickly get ahead of those who don’t.

At some point plundering will be your primary source of food (specially if your shu)

3- Trading

Since player usually get more food than the other resource from farming and that unit and building cost more of the other resources than food, food than to sell at 1.5 for 1 on the market. Than mean you can get 15000 food for the price of 10000 of the other resources. (note that note always the case, on server 14 most user I was farming were wei and I tend to get more iron than other resources so sometime I had hard time selling my iron for food, probably because the players on our server were in the same situations.)

When you’re not trading between your cities it can be a good idea to trade on the market your excess resources for food.

4- Heroes

Governor with high politic can increase significantly your resources output. You can add the farm skill to your heroes and increase you food output.

Epic heroes can have special unique skill that give them a better food output, like Pang Tong 25% food bonus, note that these bonus stack.

Finally they are items that can be equipped to your the heroes to increase your food output.

5- Other sources:  Item, tax, quest

There more way to get food most of them are already in my checklist

There are other item that worth mentioning that are not in the checklist :

• The tax license (uptained in the King of the hill event)
  Good old emperor order and dragon bowl (a extra 25%)
• Rotation order (Actually reduce your food consumption and is very expensive)
• Alchemy table (expensive, don’t increase food that much but last forever and you get your gold back)

More in part 2 – Storing your food and way to reduce your consumption

Link on this page :

The three kingdoms online checklist

I wrote awhile ago an article about oasis but I didn’t wrote about how to grab an oasis from another player because I never got the chance to try it.

I seem that it takes awhile before you can grab an oasis from another player not like they say in the forum thread.

When you attack an occupied oasis each time the loyalty of the oasis is reduced by somewhere between 0% and 35 % not 35% like they say in the forum thread.

It seems to depend on how many troops you’re using and if you have a hero or not.

My last wave had two heroes in it and they took the oasis, but I don’t think it’s really matter the just attack constantly and the oasis will be yours, after a while.

Note that the oasis does regain loyalty each hours so be swift with your attack.

Here some link for more info on oasis:

My oasis guide 

The oasis information in the beginner thread

And another thread with more info on the oasis