We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

The Zoltan and their ships are really particular in that it’s less power hungry than other ship, due to the fact that the Zoltan provide a free energy power and that the Zoltan Shield allow to redirect the normal shield power to other system. The Zoltan energy can be use to remove energy from recharging system like cloaking, boarding system, hacking and mind control simply by walking in and out of the room. Because of this it make the main reactor less a priority than usual and you can focus more on buying a system upgrade versus extra power in the main reactor.  It can be good idea to upgrade a system evens if it cannot be powered continuously. This gives you more room to juggle power distribution and meet particular demands. Another tactic that you can do with the Zoltan is to use them has bomb when boarding with a clone bay (see Layout C of the Federation Cruiser for more details on that technique).

Another side note once you get a non Zoltan crew member, move him or her into the pilot’s chair so your former pilot’s Zoltan energy can power one of the systems. Zoltan energy don’t power up sub-system like doors, piloting, camera and backup battery.

Layout A:

Unlock

Complete the Unarmed Zoltan Transport random event.
Or defeat The Rebel Flagship with the Federation Cruiser.

• Default name: The Adjudicator
• Starting Crew: 3 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Halberd Beam
  • Leto Missiles
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 12 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

This ship has one of my favorite weapon, the Halberd Beam will cut through most ship you encounter in the first few sector and it will still be useful even late game. This Weapon usually stay the whole game. Beam weapon can be somewhat tricky but if you maximize the number of rooms it you can take out most of the early ship in one beam. Remember this beam deal 2 dmg so even against 1 shield enemy you can still use it but it will only do 1 dmg instead of 2. Once you start encountering enemies with two or more shield levels, you may want to use missiles to take out their shields or use an ion weapon. It is best to time your beam shots precisely when the enemy shield is hit, rather than putting your beam weapon on auto-fire.

This ship could really use the Weapons Pre-Igniter giving you the ability to take down most ship without your Zoltan Shield going down.

 Layout B:

Unlock

Earning two of the three Zoltan Cruiser achievements will unlock Layout B.

• Default Name: Noether
• Starting Crew: 3 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Ion Blast (x2)
  • Pike Beam
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 0 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

The Noether (Zoltan Cruiser Layout B) starts with only one bar of power in the shield system, requiring 100 scrap to upgrade once and get to Level 1 Shields.

You have to rely on your Zoltan shield until you upgrade the shield for 100 scrap, speed is your friend here so you need to quickly disable the shield to be able to blast the enemies ship with the Pike Beam. Like the previous layout the Weapons Pre-Igniter can be a nice addition and later be useful when you get even better weapon. Cloaking is a nice addition too since it give your Zoltan shield extra time. Without shield asteroid field will be a problem, you might want to avoid those. Another other issue with the Zoltan in general is their lack of hp, which make them venerable to boarding (except if you have a clone bay).

Layout C:

Unlock

Getting to Sector 8 with the The Zoltan Cruiser Type B with Advanced Edition Content enabled will unlock Layout C.

• Default name: Cerenkov
• Starting Crew: 4 Zoltan
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Zoltan Shield
• Starting Weapons:
  • Ion Charger
• Starting Drones:
  • Anti-Ship Beam Drone I
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 2 Missiles
  • 15 Drone parts
• Clone Bay
• Backup Battery
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone

Starts with two bars of reactor power, requiring 30 scrap to upgrading the first 3 points.

The reactor is super low but 4 Zoltan and a level 2 Backup Battery should cover your need pretty early on. The starting combo of this ship is to use the Ion Charger to disable shields and then activate your drone with the backup battery.

Side note: the lack of need for the reactor of this ship makes Ion storms, weapons and pulsar little threat and even help you against enemies.

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

Master of Patience – Use only the Artillery Beam to destroy an enemy ship while taking no hull damage.

This achievement is the easiest to get of the three. Just upgrade your shield to level 2 and when you fight a ship not using missile just wait for the artillery beam to do is job. You can even go grab a coffee if you want while your ship finish the enemies ship with the artillery beam

Diplomatic Immunity – While using the Federation Cruiser, use your crew in four special blue events by sector 5.

Honestly this achievement is so hard to get. I’ll be brief and link to you a table in the wiki that show you all the event per alien species which will allow you to try to plan for this event.

The description of this achievement is rather vague, it is important that only blue event choices that arise as a result of having particular alien crew members aboard count towards this achievement – thus other blue event choices (for having specific system upgrades, augments, or weapons) do not count. Note that even if the event says “by sector 5” it’s actually, before entering sector 6, so the very last place you could conceivably get your final blue option in is the exit beacon for sector 5.

To increase your chance of receiving this achievement you get a Long-Ranged Scanners augment has soon has you can. Why ? Because the majority of blue event options for crew will be found within normal or distress beacons it will save you time to choose a beacon more likely to have a event. Another important point, it’s really important to diversify your crew, the layout A is probably the best for that part since its start with 4 different race. Zoltan are mostly found in Zoltan controlled world , Lanius can be a nice find to in the abandon sector and slug can be hired in their home nebula. You can get new members from slaver ship or by boarding and killing all the crew, you might find survivor that will join you in that case.

Has for the event per say here are the link to the list of all possible event per race: http://ftl.wikia.com/wiki/Diplomatic_Immunity

Artillery Mastery – Get to sector 5 with the Federation Cruiser without upgrading your weapons system.

This achievement is actually not to hard to get. Upgrade a the artillery beam, shield, engine and try to supplement your ship with cloaking, hacking or Drone control with a defense drone. The last three is to dodge those nasty missiles. Just wait for your Artillery beam to take care of the rest. The layout  A can be a good ship to get that achievement since the Burst laser II can really help. You can’t upgrade your weapon but nothing prevent you from buying weapon either. Some bomb can be very useful to blast an annoying system (shield then switch to burst laser or blast the pilot or engine so they won’t be able to run away)

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

The Federation Cruisers are the only ships with the Artillery Beam.

The Artillery Beam’s path follows a specific algorithm. It finds the centers of two rooms and forms a path between them, with no limit on the length between them. It bypasses all shields and does one damage to each room hit.

Layout A

Unlock

Defeat the Flagship Construction in the Rebel Stronghold sector to unlock this ship.

Alternatively defeat The Rebel Flagship with the Engi Cruiser

• Default name: The Osprey
• Starting Crew: 1 Human, 1 Mantis, 1Rockman, 1 Engi
• Starting Weapons:
  • Burst Laser II
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 5 Missiles
  • 2 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Artillery Beam
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

The main advantage that the federation ship has its  the Artillery Beam. This system is a weapon of is own that ignores shields and does a lot of damage. One build for this ship is to focus on beefing up the defenses (shields/engines) and let the beam it do the work. This needs patience, but is worth the wait. If possible, destroy the enemy’s missiles promptly (or get defense drones), as they bypass shields and pose a threat to the hull, cloaking can be an option too if you are playing the advance edition.  Hacking could be a good system too, hit the weapon system and wait for your artillery beam to take out the ship.

This layout start with a decent weapon, the Burst Laser II, so you don’t necessarily have to go the upgrade only the Artillery Beam route. You can work it with a teleporter since the starting crew (mantis + rockman) is good for boarding. Just be careful not letting the Artillery Beam kill your crew or destroy the ship whiles they are on it.

Bomb can goes well with the Artillery Beam, your Burst Laser II can take care of Zoltan shield, the bomb neutralizes system that might cause problem likes weapon if they have missile, piloting if they are trying to escape right away or hacking it they hack your shield, pilot, engine or artillery beam.

Layout B

Unlock

Earning two of the three Federation Cruiser achievements will unlock layout B.

• Default name: Nisos
• Starting Crew: 1 Human, 1 Slug, 1Zoltan
• Starting Weapons:
  • Dual Lasers
  • Leto Missiles
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 9 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Artillery Beam
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

Layout B is very similar to layout A, they have the same module, 50 scrap more upgrade on the layout B and a smaller crew. The Dual lasers are less power full than the Burst Laser II but are very power efficient. The leto missile is useful but 1 damage is pretty low for a missile weapon, you might use them in the first few sector but you should try to either rely on the artillery beam instead like we explained for the layout A

Crew members of the layout B aren’t very useful for boarding so you might want to wither skip the teleport upgrade or hire better boarder along the way.

Layout C

Unlock

Reaching Sector 8 with The Federation Cruiser B and Advanced Edition content enabled will unlock Layout C.

• Default name: The Fregatidae
• Starting Crew: 1 Human , 2 Zoltan , 1Mantis
• Starting Weapons: None!
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 5 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Unique Ability: Flak Artillery
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Emergency Respirators

Layout C is quite different from the 2 other layout,  It has an Artillery Flak Gun instead of an Artillery Beam, which unfortunately don’t go through shield like Artillery Beam and can be dodge, but is very useful to shred a Zoltan super shield then teleport your crew on the enemies ship.

This ship is a boarding ship and the synergy of the Zoltan with the clone bay can have amazing effect. Warp zoltan on the other ship make them explode, your clone bay will bring your Zoltan back to life, send the mantis with a resurrected Zoltan to finish the job. You might want to upgrade the  Cloning Bay and the teleporter to Level 3, to maximize the effect of this tactic.

What can be annoying with this ship is other rebel ship that are charging their FTL drive right when the fight start. Since the only thing you got to attack is your boarding team and the artillery flask gun that take forever to charge, there always a good risk that they might run away with your crew on it and increase the rebel fleet progressing by on jump.

Note , that the Artillery Flak Gun lacks the shield-piercing capacities of the Artillery beam, meaning that it’s essentially a slower-cooldown or more power-hungry version of the Flak Gun II. This make this layout not viable to rely purely on Artillery, unlike Layouts A and B.

Since you have only a limited number of normal heroes you want to make sure that you make the most of the ones you have. Not all your cities need governors and if you don’t have epic heroes it will be better to keep most of your heroes together so you can duel with them easier and treat them with a nice banquet. Having your governors at level 100 will give your cities the best production bonus. If you have Epics or heroes with skillbooks that boost food production, you want to make sure that they are in the important cities with your governors. They do not have to be governor for you to get the bonus but only the highest bonus from a hero applies in a city.

So which cities should have governors?

Your Main city obviously should always have a governor. If you have any County or State capitals they should also have a governor. Your capital outpost and any 15c should be good candidate because they will produce more food.

Other way to increase the output of your governor ?

Go in your civil and assign them to positions that increase their politics. Equip them with equipment that raise their level. Raise their level, add skillbook with the farm skill.

What equipment should your governor have ?

The basic minimum your governors should have is a Cloud helm and Welfare of the People equipped and are assigned positions that increase their politics. If you don’t have welfare of People in hand you can always use a Cloud enforced lance which usually increase politic too.

What skill and skill books make good governor ?

At level 50 some epic heroes get a farm skill that give up to 25% food output. Sun Quan, Liu Bei, Cao Cao and Zhou Yu all have a 25 % Farm bonus while Zhang Cheng (from the hermit house) have only a 9% bonus. You can give skill book that have the Farm skill, this will increase your output too. Note that the farm skill from the heroes level 50 bonus and the skillbook stack together but if 2 heroes have the heroes level 50 skill only the best bonus from both heroes will be taken, same thing go from skill book.

Engi cruiser  is the easiest ship to get, you just need to get to sector 5 and you’ll get it. Is achievement are easier than the Kestrel, so you will probably end up unlocking the type B with the Engi cruiser before the Kestrel. Finishing the game with it unlock the Federation Cruiser.

Layout A: The Torus

Unlock: Reaching the fifth sector with any Kestrel layout will unlocks the Engi Cruiser.

• Starting Crew: 2 Engi, 1 Human
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Engi Med-bot Dispersal
• Starting Weapon:
  • Ion Blast II
• Starting Drone:
  • Anti-Ship Drone I
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 0 Missiles
  • 15 Drone parts
• Slots: 3 Weapon, 3 Drone

The Torus can be hard at first to play and you will rely mostly on your anti-ship drone to do damage to enemies ship at the beginning. The Ion Blast II is one of the great weapon of the game it’s fast recharge rate make it perfect to take down most shield with constant firing. Combine with laser & beam later your ship will be a force to recon with and will minimize your drone part usage.

Another key addition to this ship are bomb-type weapons. Ion Bombs are great later in the game against enemies with more than 2 shields, including the Rebel Flagship. The Ion blast and bombs can keep the shields down while your drones and lasers work on the hull. A Small Bomb or other type of launcher can help too, you can selectively take out systems as needed. This ship is one of the ship where the Drone Recovery Arm augment work great, it will allows you to use your drones without the fear of missing drone part. If you can grab extra anti-ship drone ship, specially a mark II, you will witness how powerful multiple attack drones can be has they tear down ship with more than 2 shield. You can get even 3 anti-ship drone and watch them go through even the most powerful shield and let your weapon finish the job

Upgrade:

Doors are probably a necessary upgrade on this ship because of the Engi weakness in hand-to-hand combat unless you have the opportunity to get Rock or Mantis crew, do so. Mind control can be a nice system to add to compensate Engi weakness in combat.

Hacking could be a nice addition but it unfortunately use drone part too unless you have Drone Recovery Arm augment.

The Teleporter is not advised on this ship, unless you are getting the system for blue storyline options.

Cloaking is always a great add, since it help dodge those nasty final attack of the Rebel flagship.

Side Note from the Wiki:

The Wiki have an interesting side note about how to level up the skill of your crew on this ship. In the first few sector you will probably encounter ship that can’t do anything to your ship so you can take advantage of that and level up your weapon, shield, piloting and engine since the ion blast is a non-lethal weapon.  Having these skill max will be huge later and will make it easier for you to spend your scrap on other systems.

Layout B: The Vortex

Unlock : Earning two of the three Engi Cruiser achievements will unlock Layout B.

• Starting Crew: 1 Engi
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Drone Reactor Booster
• Starting Weapons:
  • Heavy Ion
  • Heavy Laser I
• Starting Drones:
  • Anti-Personnel Drone
  • System Repair Drone (x2)
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 0 Missiles
  • 6 Drone parts
• Slots: 3 Weapon, 3 Drone

I have to be honest with you, I really have a hard time with this ship. It’s decent enough to cover you base the first 2 sector, but it has a lot of flaw. Heavy Ion +  Heavy Laser I combo cover you base until you hit a ship with 2 shield, even before that the Heavy Ion is so slow to fill that the enemy might be able to hit your weapon before you even fire. Upgrade to a better ion weapon quickly or complement it with bomb/missile since it won’t do it for ship with heavy shield.

Starting with only one crew is one of them, it’s make you pretty vulnerable to boarding and event that might kill your only crew. Once you upgrade the doors the Anti-Personnel Drone can handle the hostile boarders on the ship while you empty the oxygen out of every room except the medbay and helm. The initial drone and augment will get useless pretty quickly since you probably want to fill this ship with anti-ship drone and defense drone instead of repair drone, and have a crew instead of just one lonely guy.

The only thing I can say that good about this ship is that the layout is somewhat good, easy to go around and system that go well together are next to each other like the teleporter and medbay which might make it a decent boarding ship if you get the right crew. There not much empty room though, so each hit will probably damage something important.

If you want a challenge that ship is for you, you can do a decent job if you get lucky but I get real hard fast if you don’t get lucky with your drops and shops.

Layout C: Tetragon

Unlock: Reaching Sector 8 with the Engi Cruiser Layout B and Advanced Mode enabled unlocks layout C.

• Starting Crew: 1 Lanius, 2 Engi
• Starting Augmentation:
  • Defense Scrambler
• Starting Weapon:
  • Dual Lasers
• Starting Drone:
  • Beam I
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 0 Missiles
  • 25 Drone parts
• Clone Bay
• Hacking System
• Slots: 3 Weapon, 3 Drone

The ship layout is pretty neat but the main problem of this ship its is constant use of drone part by the hacking system and Beam Drone. If you can get your hand on the drone recovery arm you might save a lot on drone part there.

Later, this ship will mostly relies on it’s hacking and massive drone army to destroy the enemy ship. The Defense Scrambler will takes care of those nasty Anti-Combat drones and defense drone so you shouldn’t have problem deploying offensive drone and you could add missile weapon to be able to target specific systems that are causing you trouble. Drones destroy Zoltan shields pretty easily so that not an issue here. Mind Control, Teleportation can be nice addition to this ship too since your Lanius is a pretty good boarder specially if you can get another Lanius crew.

This is a follow up of the latest Nobility post, this one is mostly base on the in game guide.

Title Beyond Generalissimo

These are special titles. Only one title is available on each server. These titles are the ultimate honor in the world of Three Kingdoms.

Emperor

Once a player has taken control of the Imperial Capital and 4 State Capitals, has more than 2,234,400 Contribution Value points, and the State Capital has opened for more than 30 days, then the player will be allowed to build an Imperial Palace in the Imperial Capital.  When the Palace reaches level 5, you will under attack by NPC troops every time when you upgrade it.  There will be a final wave of troops attacking when your Palace reaches level 20.  If you survive in these attacks, you will get the title of Emperor.

• Bonus:
  • Recruiting speed in all cities increase by 20%
  • Every time you donate tokens to the court, you can earn extra 20 point of Contribution Value points
  • Attack and Defense value of troops is increased by 15%.

Prime Minister

If you have 1,396,500 Contribution Value points or more, when you occupy the Imperial Capital, you will gain the title of Prime Minister. If lose control of the Imperial Capital, or one of your 2 State Capitals, you will lose the title as well.

Lord of Wei

Player who occupies Pu-yang, the State Capital of Yan, and increase their Contribution Value to at least 1,396,500 to become the Lord of Wei.
Bonus: Attack and Defense value of troops increase by 15%.

Lord of Shu

Player who occupies Cheng-du, the State Capital of Yi, and increase their Contribution Value to at least 1,396,500 to become Lord of Shu.
Bonus: Attack and Defense value of troops increase by 15%.

Lord of Wu

Player who occupies Jian-ye, the State Capital of Yang, and increase their Contribution Value to at least 1,396,500.
Bonus: Attack and Defense value of troops increase by 15%.

Lord of Qin

The Lord of Qin is a noble rank which players can fight for once the server starts. The player with the highest Contribution Value over 2,234,400, will gain the title of Lord of Qin. This title will be re-calculated at 24:00 every Saturday, and will not change for a week.
Bonus: Attack and Defense value of troops increase by 15%.

Position for Heroes
You can appoint a office position for each hero of yours. The position can increase his status. There are 4 types of positions, each can increase one of their status. You must have certain nobility to appoint the corresponding position. Another request is your hero should reach a certain level.

We are doing a series of posts on FTL and  we hope you like them. If you want us to do more of this let us know in the comment or by mail at jack at onlinesgamestips.com

The Kestrel Cruiser is the starting ship of the game. It’s a pretty well balance ship that start with very powerful weapon. The burst laser II with 3 laser will take care of the early sector and the Artemis missile will help you remove those nasty shield. The burst laser II is so good that I never had to sell it or get rid of it in all my gameplay with this ship.

Layout A: The Kestrel Cruiser

Unlock: Unlocked by default

• Starting Crew: 3 Human
• Starting Weapons:
  • Burst Laser II
  • Artemis Missile
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 8 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

Starting weapons of that ship are some of the best in the game, you’ll probably will likely keep one or even both for the whole game. Burst Laser II is simply amazing, it’s only 2 power for 3 laser shot making it probably one of the best damage output for that amount of power. If you manage your way well this weapon should be to cruise through the early sector where enemy ship usually have 1 or no shield. The Artemis will help you to take out those shield, 1 power for 2 damage it’s quite good the only other missile using 1 power is the leto and it does only 1 damage.

One tactic with this ship is to add beam weapons, due to this ship’s high shield removal capabilities. Pike beam or halberd Beam will fit quite well on this ship. Another amazing setup I managed to get was to get two extra Burst Laser II (one found the other bought) and I cruised through the game with them. Weapon pre-igniter fit well on this ship, specially if you manage to get beam weapon, extra burst laser or better missile (Pegasu, etc)

Layout B: Red Tail

Unlock: Unlock that ship by earning two of the three Kestrel achievements.

• Default name: Red-Tail
• Starting Crew: 2 Human, 1 Mantis, 1Zoltan
• Starting Weapons:
  • Basic Laser (x4)
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 5 Missiles
  • 0 Drone parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

The Basic Laser isn’t really good alone but four of them can make significant damage and will be very effective for early and even mid game. They are pretty good at leveling up your crewmember weapon skill. You will need replace these lasers with better lasers or support (bombs, missiles, beams). Already having a mantis might make it worthwhile to by a crew teleporter earlier than usual.

Layout C: The Swallow

Unlock: Unlock that ship by surviving up to sector 8 with the Red tail (the kestrel layout B)

• Default name: The Swallow
• Starting Crew: 2 Human , 1 Lanius
• Starting Weapons:
  • Dual Lasers
  • Ion Stunner
• Starting Resources:
  • 16 Fuel
  • 4 Missiles
  • 3 Drone Parts
• Slots: 4 Weapon, 2 Drone (requires system)

I haven’t had the chance to try this ship yet but it’s hacking system combine with the ion stunner make a good combo to prevent enemies from repairing their systems specially their shield, add the hacking stun augment and they won’t repair anything. It can be use to take down the Med bay or oxygen and prevent them from repairing them. I really like its layout, the oxygen system can be drain out of oxygen surrounding it forcing them to move elsewhere.

If you don’t have FTL: Faster Than Light on iPad click here and to buy it.

Source : The FTL Wiki Kestrel Page, The Wiki Ship Strategies and my tear and sweat trying to unlock those damn ship.

I’ve been playing Powerplay manager for a while now and wrote a bunch of article about it.

I’ve decided to write a post  to sum up all of them so you can access all the post in a more convenient way.

Original review

Beginner guide

The beginner guide was a 4 part guide that focused on the more important part of the game when you start playing. Staff / Player and Arena are your bread and butter of ppm, player fill up the arena and bring cash, arena allow you to get more cash and the staff takes care of the arena and players.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

More Advance post

These are the most advances post I’ve wrote, they’re not actually super advance and I think are very important to understand how to win game and win even if you are against a better opponent.

Line composition

What is a balanced player in PPM

Friendly challenge

Tactic

Tactic seem to be the most misunderstood part of the game, I’ve did a 2 (3 coming soon) post talking about that particular page.

Part 1: Game importance, style of play and Powerplay/Penalty Killing tactics

Part 1.5: Powerplay/Penalty Killing tactics reloaded complete counter against each (Coming soon)

Part 2: Line & changing goalies.

Hope it helped and there so much more to the game.

If you have an idea or want to write a post about a particular topic about the game, leave me a comment below or drop a mail (jack@onlinesgamestips.com)

King of the Hill is series of battles between leagues to occupy and hold different locations for a specified period of time. It is the only way to receive the kingdom tax (regional and national) and other prize.
From the beginner guide: (http://forum.koramgame.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3771)

• King of the Hill lasts for 30 minutes for both regional and national wars.
• Regional War: Starts every Saturday at 10:00-10:30 (PST)
• National War: Starts every Sunday at 19:00-19:30 (PST)
• The first attack may be sent out at exactly 10:00 and 19:00 respectively
• NPCs will defend the city first. When the NPCs are destroyed, players will defend the city.
• Players from opposing leagues will attack each other.  (Does not matter if the league is a "sister league")
• Players from the same league will help defend each other.
• King of the Hill is where players can receive a tax license.
• Capitals are defended with units that have the high defence.  Units that have a lower defence rating than your main defence unit already defending the capital will be sent back to your city.

Other thing they forgot :

– The time provided here is not always true, they sometime change the time to accommodate players who cannot play in those hours.

– Troop deployed to a King of the Hill target (KoTH) will take the same amount of to reach the city, you troop speed, heroes ability and upgrade have no influence on the time. However you state location have an influence on how much time it will take to arrive at destination. It for minute if you are in the same region (north, east, west, south) than the capital and 8 if you are outside.  here how north, east, west, south is separated :

– Regional KOTH targets can hold up to 2,000 player defending units. National KOTH targets can hold up to 5,000 Player defending units.
– They are 6 prizes per city in the regional and 9 for the national war.
note that only the following player that achieves the following goal will receives a revenue license (tax) (among other prize).

Master of Marching: Player who occupies the target city for the longest time.
Lord of Slayer: Player who have the most Kill
Lord of War: Given randomly to any player who occupied the KOTH city during the event.

On revenue license (tax permit) : Regional war give the tax permission for your region and national war give it to the whole server. When you have it you need to chose a league to tax.
You get a lot of resources when you use it , it always depends on which league your tax but it always a decent amount my lowest was around 150k of each resources and highest 500K-600k.

Tips and tactical note:

I noticed player knock out the troop then leave to prevent lost, so that mean you can always try to send from you sub and you might be able to grab a city (this happen specially in the regional)
Just by occupying the city you can get the lord of war so it might worth it.
I haven’t really try any fancy tactic, most of the time there not much players that are doing it any way since for some of us its during office hour or in the middle of the night.
Most of the time if you’re in the top league you’ll end up hitting your own sister league or supporting your league member if you arrive late, so try not to be late.

However if you have a huge force it can help you get kill and become Lord of slayer, then withdraw your troop to prevent lost.

Hope it help and check those guide with image and stuff for more info on King of the hill.

Original post on KOTH on koram main site

Beginner guide to KOTH

Gehrshi On King of the Hill

I noticed that there not much information about how to obtain Epic heroes so I build up a quick guide from what I found on the web (mostly on the TKO forum)

Heroes summits

The easiest way to get heroes is probably with the heroes summits.

First you get a level one Liu Bei/Sun Quan/Cao Cao once you get a level 9 resources fields, which is great since they have farm (increase you food output by 25%) this will help you create a super capital if you followed my guide on how to build a city of 15 slot of food or even 18 slot of food.

The heroes you get depend on your kingdom (most of them lv1):
For Shu: Liu Bei,
one of those 3 one star heroes: Liu Feng, Wang Ping, Huang Chengyan
one of those 2 two star heroes: Ma Dai, Jiang Wei
And when you have 14 cities:     Guan yu (lv 100)
For other kingdom it the same here the heroes I got with my other account:
Wei: Cao Cao, Xian hou Dun, Wei Xu, Dian Wei (lv 100)
Wu: Sun Quan, Zhou yu(lv100), Gan Ning, Meng Huo

Hermit house

You can recruit Epic heroes at the hermit house, it might seem a bit more complicated than the Heroes summits but once you know it actually easier since it doesn’t require to do much.
First go in your quest tab then select Hermit house

Do all the quest you can to have flag for different faction
the easiest are probably using the forge and battle arena, the other quest you need to to have stell ship for another quest (you get this from disenchanting item in the forge) and the last quest is to hunt and win vs a escort guardian.

Once you got all the you need for a specific hero you can challenge him, if your hero win you get the heroes at level one, you can recruit up to 5 epic heroes that way.

More on Hermit house  & Heroes summits

Note

If you are wondering which hero to chose I would suggest to take the hero that will have farm has a middle skill. There actually 2 heroes that have farm : Zhang  Cheng(farm 9%) and Liao Hua (7%) . I think Zhang  Cheng is a must since he have 73 of politic too, making him a excellent governor.

If you want the list of all the heroes in the hermit house you can look at that thread.

Career Center

The good old career center can give you epic heroes too but that require you to pay gold.
There 3 way to recruit

Wandering heroes
It is said that some time the are heroes that appear in the wandering section of the career center, however this only happen in capital city.
Note is happened once that Koram made a special event and there are wandering heroes in your city that you can hire for gold, it usually a ton of gold (like 2k…) so it’s not the most cost effective way to recruit.

Basic search (1gold)
Probably the most cost effective way to search but each search have low chance of giving an epic compare to the advance search, you can have an epic if your lucky according to these link below but I personally never got anything via that search. Weirdly I never got any epic with this using gift voucher.

Advance search (10/50 gold)
Most who have tried it don’t recommend the 50 gold search, some tried it once and regret it.
Save gold by doing 10 gold searches rather than 50’s.

Note that for all the search increasing your court rank helps to have more epic heroes in your Career center.

Even to Count / Duke will help your chances more.
If you really pump money in and get to Infante or above then roll the 50g searches as these will produce more.

You can get more info on the forum here, here and here.

Note that advance search even have complaints.

Escort guardian

This is another great free way to have epic heroes, but the ode a super sucky
I fortunately got a lot of good heroes with this and what really cool is that they arrive level 100.
So far from that I got Zhang Bao, Guan Xing, Zhao Tong, Li feng, Wen Yang, Jiang Ji and Yan Yu.

I do about 8-10 escort guardian a day and it happen around every month or so that I get a Epic so you do the math 🙂

Epic soul

This is not really a great way to have heroes but if you need to attack and have  extra heroes for you coalition or to defend or to grab a oasis from another player, soul are a great way to do that.
It can be a way to defend your city and protect your real heroes while will you getting attack too.
They are unfortunately gone after a certain amount of time (usually 6hr, it’s written beside the soul name)

Other ways

Special event: Black flag camp
There use to be a special event call the Black flag camp where you can get a heroes if you manage to destroy all the troop in the camp and have a special item in your inventory (Intelligence letter).
The heroes guarding the camps are Pang tong, Taishi Ci and Yan Liang.
The camp require massive amount of troops to kill and there only a 50% chance of having the hero but in all case your league will receive a prize even if you don’t get the hero.
More info on this in the forum.

If you know any other way to recruit epic please let me know, I’ll try to keep the list up to date.