Someone have attacked a weaker league member and you want to strike back or someone have taxed your league and you want them to pay.

The first mistake new league leader make is usually to throw the name of the attacker in a league message. What happen its that people usually don’t do anything about it or attack in an unplanned, disorganized way making it easy for the defender to dodge most of the blow.

Planning a attack on one player.

If he’s stronger than most of your player but smaller than your league and he league don’t care about him you can probably taking out in 2 wave.

1-List the cities of the player

Post the list of the player you want to strike on the league forum if you have one or by sending a league message.

Each player pick a city and , if you league is small and many player attack one city a leader for the attack should be name and he will coordinate the attack with other players assign to this city.

It could be a good idea to use the legion system to coordinate an attack, assigning the leader of an attack has a legion leader and put all the members that are helping him in his legion.

2-Pick a time for the clearing wave and the second wave

This we give an idea for the league member to plan how and when they are going to deploy there troop.

Note that players that are to far should focus on sending only troop with high movement rate.

Why ? because if the members are to far, it will give a hint to the player that you are attacking and will give him enough time to message his league mate to send support and maybe to attack the attacker before the actual attack hit, stealing if food which may kill some troop if its food consumption is negative.

3-the actual attack

1st the clearing wave

Like explained in a previous article, separating your strike in wave can help to increase the efficiency of your troop.

This wave consist mostly of inf/cav with some ram and maybe demo

The goal is to take is troop and resources out and do some damage so he wont be able to have support

2nd the demo/loby wave

Still Consist mostly of inf/cav with some ram but with a lot of demo

The goal is to paralyze him by destroying all is granary, warehouse and farmland.

Without any of these his city food will be in the red he will have to destroy his building in order to rebuild farmland. More info on how to use your demolisher here.

If you’re planning to attack him with lobbyist be sure to strike a sub city and that the annexe is destroy. You can always try to steal the city in one sweep with the help of your league mate using this tactic.

Planning an attack on many player

Probably the best way is the list all the player you want to  attack and there city.

Then you proceed like we discuss for attacking one player, Your member could pick many enemies member to strike if he’s really strong or your member may regroup in team to strike a specific player and each sub team take care of an enemy.

From what I saw taking the county is a good tactic because they are easier to pick than normal city since once you kill all the troop you get the city and all troop from your league mate will become support troop.

Another tactic that seems to work well, focus on the strong player of the league, it usually demoralized the other player of the league and they might quit too.

Tell me about your tactic you’ve used to take down other player or league. Did I forgot some other strategy that worked well with your league ?

"In battles, as verbal communication cannot be heard clearly, cymbals and drums are used as commands" As visual communication and eye contact are hampered, banners and flags are used as signals. Now the purpose of using cymbals, drums, flags and banners is to draw attention of the troops and focus them for combat under the direction of the commander. Once the troops are united as one body, the courageous ones will not advance forward by themselves and the cowardly ones will not retreat by themselves. This is the art of directing larges forces in battles. – Chapter Seven, Sun Tzu Art of War

In war good, communication with your troops, allies and even enemies his the key.

In most games MMO browser-based strategy game (like Three kingdom online, tribal war and travian) they have these feature built in.

If your a veteran player you can probably skips that part for other the advantage and disadvantage of each method will be explained.

In game feature

In game message

All these game have in game message, the quickest way to got a player whatever he his online or the next time he login.

It help you to find out if the user is still active, if he doesn’t answer after a few days or week you can presume he’s out.

The main advantage of this is that it’s quick and you’re almost sure the other player will read it next time he play.

The disadvantage is that entrusted player may read your message.

League message

Same thing has above but use by leadership and elite members of a league or tribes to send a message to the mass.

While it’s great to reach all your members, if there a spy in your league he might be able to read it and like normal message entrusted member can read it to.

Chat

Some of these game have in game chat, it’s great to talk directly to your peer, but you must be aware of the issues each room have.

From TKO chat here are the different room and how to use them.

World

Everybody on the server see it, so don’t tell sensitive info or information about what time it is or if it’s day or night, because other player might use this to attack you when your asleep or working.

League

Like the league message all your league member see this, beware of spy.

Private

Standard – One on one chat, note that you might be speaking to an entrust not the real player.

Internal forum

They work differently depending on the game, but like the league message, all league member see it (accept officer sub-forum). That some of them (like tribal war tribe forum) someone with an entrust can see it.

External to the game communication that might be useful.

External forum

The external forum solves most of the issues player with an entrust, only the player who registered can access it.

It can be useful to coordinate with ally too, an ally can have is own section of a forum and each tribes/leagues can share a section forum.

The main disadvantage is that you lose most of the feature of the in game forum, like writing the coordinate wills create a link directly to the in game location, this don’t work with an external forum.

IRC

You can always set up a IRC channel for you league. The advantage is that user can access it even if they’re not logged to the game and you can have control over who can be in the channel with a bot.

IM

Instant massaging can be useful specially the conference or group chat, you can talk to your buddy evens if they are not online (which can be annoying too if they are always poking you when the see you online).

Collaboration systems

like google wave, wiziq

I honestly haven’t planned anything with google wave but I did with wiziq and it really cool, you can have a draw  board and put the map on it and plan the attack and have a visual representation of the situation. It takes some effort to setup though but it might worth it.

Does any of you have use other method of communication to plan an attack or to plot something with your allies ?

The art of war is over and it seem that I’ve won the first prize!
They were some great post by other players, here some of my favorite :
What city/cities to place your mansion or annexe.
Great guide to have a city of 400000 k of troops.
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6839&extra=

How to defend your city:
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6832&extra=

General guide by Chris soon
It’s cover pretty much everything
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6800&page=2&authorid=135650

Guide per kingdom and a good intake on each unit of all the kingdom
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=7454&extra=

Great spreadsheet with the analysis of each kingdom
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=8154&extra=

Hope it’s help and happy TKOing.

It’s a tricky tactic that can help you take a city before the defender can realized it and prevent him to use the curfew command.
To make the train work you need 5 lobbyist (4 for wei) or ask player of your league to help you by attacking with some lobbyist too.
The train is quite hard to do since you only got 6 schedule deployment and you have to have 5 different attack with a lobbyist, your clearing wave and your demolisher wave.

First : check when your lobbyist and demo of all your city take to get to the target. If the difference of time is less than 10 minutes you should be fine to launch them at the same time.

Second: Pick a time that you want the attack to land or just launch the attack that from the city that the farthest from the target, note the times of that attack will land

Third: Time your clearing wave and demo wave to hit before this time, the clearing wave first and the demo wave a few second after. Make sure to hit the annexe and that you have enough demo to clear the annexe.

Fourth  : Launch all the other lobbyist attack so the land after the other attack by less than 5-10 minutes, if you have enough schedule deployment left use them.

If everything go fine you should have the city in one sweep.
To increase your chance you can always fake a train by using fake attack of demolisher since they have the same speed.

Another variant you can do : attack normally with a clearing wave and a demo wave and clear annexe of their cities. And after send a train with a clearing wave since that only 5-6 attack it’s easier to do, but since you’ve cleared there annexe they probably think you want to steal there city.

Hope it’s help.

Today is another post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online. Today it will be about “Offense tactic” 

A traditional attack usally have a Clearing wave and Demo wave, here how they work how to counter them and how to use them effectivly.

Clearing wave

The clearing wave constitute mainly offensive troop, a mix of infantry and cavalry.
It might be a good idea to include ram in it to minimize the effect of the opponent city wall.
Defensive Counter : Dodge the attack if you expect to be overwhelmed by the attack or stack a lot of unit in the same city to minimize your lost if you expect to win.

Preventing the counter : Fake attack or Timing your attack (see below)

Demo wave

(more in my previous post)

A mix of demolisher and infantry or even only demolisher for maximum impact.
Your offensive level and number of demolisher should be high enough to be able to target to building.
Defensive counter: Defensive troop good vs infantry, if it a only demolisher attack just defensive troop is enough they are very weak when attacking alone.

Preventing the defense counter : Timing your attack with the clearing wave.(see below)

Lobbyist

The lobbyist must arrive after the clearing wave and have some offensive troop with him, so he won’t die when it’s attack land.
The annexe must be destroyed too in order to reduce the loyalty of the city.
Defensive counter:Dodge the clearing wave and have troop in your city before the attack hit. Curfew command, relieve if you’ve been hit by a lobbyist

Preventing the defense counter : Timing your attack (see below)

Fake attack

If you opponent have many city, it can be a good idea to mix thing up, send a bunch of fake attack to one city while launching a full attack to another city. That way he won’t know which city defend.

Timing your attack

So you launched a attack like a noob and the clearing wave was dodged and the demo wave was destroyed because he had enough time to bring is troop back before the demo attack hit.

Here how you can prevent this

Schedule your demo wave to arrive just one second after the clearing wave. If you really confident that your clearing wave will clear is troop, send the demo wave one second after. So if he dodge the attack he will pay for it and if not you will probably clear is troop and demolish is city.

if you have specialized your city with specific kind of unit (like only offense or only offense and demo) it pretty easy to time your attack with the schedule deployment feature.

Pick a time and make a schedule deployment in your clearing wave city that will arrive at this time and schedule a deployment in your demo city that will arrive 1-2 second after the first attack.

If your city consist of only the kind of troop for the attack, set the schedule deployment to deploy all troop if there are troop missing.

Use your defense for offense

Piking

This tactic is simple, you send troop to defend a city you know your opponent is plundering.

Since the attacker only launch part of his troops to plunder, you can actually do some pretty good damage.
While this tactic used to worked well in tribal war where you don’t know who is supporting the city. In Three Kingdoms online, since you know who is supporting the city you’ve attacked this can be considered has an act of war.

I’m trying something with my Lobbyist, and if it’s work I’m gonna tell you about it. Do any of you have other tactic that could be include here?

There a new version of TKO comming here the update:

New Hero Coalition System

It’s nice to be able to use more than one heroe when attaking, thoug it will help the player that have epic heroes (like they need help…)

Fortify Order and Cultivation Token

I don’t really get what the fortify order do, but the cultivation Token is nice … depending of it’s price in gold …

Share the battle report

Nothing big here but at least it give the fonctionality other browser game had.

Rename the league

Finaly we wanted to rename our league to become a state league but we couldn’t. At least it won’t be a problem with the next version.

More on the TKO forum here.

Today is another post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online. Today it will be about “Using your demolisher effectively” 

Planning where gonna be your demolisher city.

Since the demolisher use six grains a hour, you will need a city that can produce a lot of grain or you will have to reduce the number of other unit you have.

Option one: in your main

Since your main can have resources at level 20 that mean your main will probably have a lot of grain so it can sustain the extra food required for your demo.

Step to have it :

During beginner protection focus on your field and completing quest for the extra cash, try to have 200 of pop by the end of beginner protection because that will give you around 300 of your base unit, you will need this to plunder. If you manage to build 500 soldiers by the end of beginner protection that’s even better.

By the end of beginner protection your field should be at level 5-6 and drill ground at level 5 at the very least.

With your soldier plunder all those zero point cities around you, they hold 800 of each resources so that mean you have to send 54 militias, 80 swordsman or  107 spearmens. And they refill to 800 every 2 days, so attack them every 2 days.

1st step build your drill ground to level 10

Now what, alternate between your ironwork and drill ground until they are level 20, you will have to upgrade the warehouse from time to time.

I you can build some unit to in case of an attack and to plunder.

You will discover something magical is that with the demolisher if you have it and they don’t you can juste prevent them from growing be destroying there building.

A city dedicated to demolisher

Instead of you main you can build a city just for demolisher or a mix of infantry and demolisher.

Pure demolisher city

This is probably insane, you will expect you other city to defend this city.

You build it the same way has explained for the main city except that you need to build some troop to so you can plunder at the same time your building.

The best spot for demo it’s probably a 4 timberland with 5 stone and 3 iron tend to require mostly stone, but that not entirely true since building the ironwork required a lot of iron

A city that have mix of infantry and demolisher.

Since infantry unit are slow the are a good fit with the demolisher and while your leveling your Ironwork and drill ground to level 20 your infantry can plunder surrounding cities.

Depending on the kingdoms the build look like this
Shu
Glaiveman + demolisher
Wei
Guardsman + demolisher
Wu
Sheild Infantry + demolisher

They all require a more iron but since the demolishers require mostly stone and wood probably 4 spot for every resource is better while 3 wood, 4 stone, 5 iron might work, demolisher usually need 900-950 wood each so you might be a little low in wood.

Where to aim

Aim the granary and the warehouse first, so he won’t be able to have the food for support and not enough resources to rebuild.

Aim the farmland after, his city food output will fall in the red and he won’t be able to produce any troop.

Note, if planning to take the city with a lobbyist here what you should do.

Aim his annexe, if you want to steal the city, don’t aim the mansion – It’s worthless, you won’t destroy the resource fields that are more than level 10 or more by destroying the mansion and you won’t be able to lobby is city if you destroy the mansion. Why because you’re confusing main city with city with a mansion.

Yes when you build a mansion in a city this city become your main city, but if the mansion is destroyed the city remain the main city. And the main city can’t be converted by a lobbyist.

The only way to change the main city is to build the mansion in another city.

Other Tactics

Destroying surrounding cities
If your planning a war or they are to strong to strike, you can always send your demolisher to destroy the granary and warehouse of the cities that you know he is farming.

Cutting him this source of revenue will slow down is unit production. and give you time to prepare for war.
Not that if they found out, they might get angry…

Countering the demolisher

Demolisher are actually very easy to kill if you have some defensive unit.

If you know that he is sending a clearing wave before sending his demolisher (it’s obvious when the attack come from a county since a county cannot build demolisher). Just pull your city army out before the clearing wave hit and return your army before the demolisher hit.

Note that demolisher cost a lot of resource and are slow so if you have a lot of offensive cavalry unit, you can attack his city and steal his food.

Your cavalry might even arrives back before the attack land and if your enemy food consumption is in the red a bunch of is unit will die.

The monitor office reduces the effectiveness of the demo so if you can build a monitor in every city (how to here).

Heroes can have a skill and an item that can help by increasing the durability of your building (like Lord Lu’s secret script)

Today it’s a post that Thungbard gave us on our Forum, it’s a great tips to be able to build tougher sub city and have extra oasis.

The Basic Premise of the Strategy is simply to NOT have a Capital, letting your Capital Float from town to town as needed. The obvious downside is that you can’t have above level 10 Resource Fields in any of your cities, Other than that, the Benefits are practically endless.
Here’s a Step By Step Guide, let me know if anything is flawed in the concept, or if you need further clarification on something.

Step 1 : Demolish all of your Mansions and Annex’s

Yeah as crazy as that sounds, that’s the first step. Clearly you don’t need to do it all at once, and if you’re close to accomplishing one of the other steps in this guide you probably want to do that first.
Note: you might not have to do that if your starting on a new server, some of the step can be done at the same time.

Step 2:Build a level 10 Annex at your new villages

A level 10 Annex can build 1 new city, just the same as a level 10 Mansion, except the Annex is cheaper to build. If you demolish an Annex or Mansion you still keep control of the Cities it’s built, so pretty much once you’ve used a city to build a new city the Annex is useless anyway, since it’s a lot easier to build a new Annex at the new city than to bring the Current Annex up to level 20 in order to create another city.

Step 3: Build a level 5 Library … Everywhere

Sounds easy enough, all you need to do to accomplish that is make sure you have a level 10 Drill Grounds everywhere.

Step 4: Build a level 1 Mansion

Doesn’t matter where, as long as there’s a level 5 Library. Congrats, you’ve now got the criteria for Step 5

Step 5: Build a level 1 Monitor Office

The Monitor Office once upgraded to the max doubles the durability of your buildings in that city, which will double the number of Demolishers that your enemy have to send at you in order to beat your city into the ground. The Monitor Office lvl 1 can only be built at a city that possesses a Mansion, but … if the City loses it’s Mansion or even become no longer your Capital, the Monitor Office remains and isn’t automatically destroyed like resource fields above level 10 are. Please Note that a level 1 Monitor Office is enough, since once it has that, the city CAN upgrade the Monitor office even if it’s no longer the Capital, it just can’t build the first level unless it’s the Capital.

Step 6: Build a level 15 Career Center

That is the requirement to capture a 2nd Oasis for any city that has a Mansion. If your Mansion isn’t in the city that has the Career Center, simply Demolish the Mansion where you built the Monitor’s Office, and rebuild it here. Then go and Capture the Oasis … Just like Monitor’s Offices, if this City is no longer your Capital, you still maintain control of all of the Oasis’s it has, this way you can get your SubCity to actually Own 2 Oasis’s without having to bring your Career Center up to lvl 20. A Level 20 Career Center is mighty expensive, so I haven’t had a chance to test whether or not your SubCity can actually own 3 Oasis with this method, but it certainly can own 2 without a lvl 20 Career Center … ’cause mine’s doing it right now.

Note : The level 15 Career Center is required for the 2nd Oasis for the main city, so even if the mansion is destroyed the city remain your main city until you build a mansion in another city.

Step 7: Rinse, Lather, Repeat

Repeat the above steps until all of your cities have Monitor’s offices and own Oasis’s long before they should be capable to. One of the Beauties of this is even if they start attacking you with Lobbyist’s you can move your Mansion to any City you want in under an hour to protect it, without having to invoke the ‘Curfew’ command.
Like I mentioned earlier the fundamental shortcoming is that you can’t have above level 10 resource fields because they’ll be downgraded to level 10 once you change the location of your Mansion, but having an extra Oasis at all of your cities probably evens out the resources you could be gaining from larger resource fields. Plus at any point in time once you’re satisfied with your number of Cities, you can leave one as the Capital and start upgrading your resource fields above level 10, and still reap the benefits of extra Oasis’s and Twice as tough Buildings at your other cities.
It’s just every extra village you do this in the more versatile and durable you’ll be. If we had a large portion of people doing this,

Your enemy will now need twice as many Demolishers as we’ll need to flatten their cities and you’ll be more protected against Lobbyists.

Today is a post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online.

Today it will be about “What city structures are useless after a certain time.”
It will be the part 1 of 2.

Useful

First of all there building that you absolutely need like the granary and warehouse, the barrack is pretty essential since you need it to build unit in it but you’ll probably will let it at level 3 for a while since at the beginning it’s hard to recruit more unit than the barrack can recruit for the same amount of time. The command center is important too, it’s required for other building and to recruit messengers if you are planning on plundering a lot.  Note that if you don’t have a Command center you can’t send attack or support to other city.

Useless

There are three buildings that are rarely needed, the Bunker with is ridiculous amount of unit it can hide,  is almost only built for the quest that asks for it and to store pioneers while you’re recruiting the other pioneer. The League Flag might me useful if your league is really active  and your league mate want to move away from an enemy and be near you, but to move away from an enemy the state token give more bang for the buck so the league flag is rarely used. Finally the theater, can be an useful building  to store extra resources but since you can take the resource from every city you only need one so you can builds it in a sub and use the extra space in your main for something else.

The others

For the other struture it can depend on the player stance and the stage of the game.

If you’re a very aggressive player that plunders a lot then you will have a lot of troop so probably you won’t really care about a protecting them in a bunker, protecting your resources with a hidden warehouse or increasing the resistance of your building with the monitor office. You’ll probably rather spend all these resources on units and upgrades.

But if you don’t play often and you fear you’ll get attack or other players are plundering your city often, building 2-3 hidden warehouse in your city make sense like we already talked about in my previous article tips to increase your defense that your can see here.

Note that hidden warehouse might be very useful at the first month of the game or in a newly built city but using a city space to protect a 1000 of resources when your city produce around 2000 to 4000 of each resource a hour is pretty wasteful, so once you get to that point you can destroy the hidden warehouse and build something else.

There are other building that can always be destroyed later once they served their purpose, once you researched all the unit you needed in your drill ground you can always destroy it you won’t lose the unit you’ve researched.

The same idea can be applied with Armorsmith, Weaponsmith and Valor camp, but If you badly needs that space they’re probably a league flag, bunker, hidden warehouse or theater that can be destroyed instead.

So this is the end of part one the next part will talk about the other building and which building can be removed for specialized city (offensive city, defensive city, demolisher city)

There on new contest going on the the TKO Koramgame forum called the Art of War.
The contest start the first of april and end the first of may. The rule are simple, you have to submit a article that cover one of the topic listed .

City

Where to place a new city.
What city/cities to place your mansion or annex.
What order to build city structures in.
What city structures are useless after a certain time. (Part 1 and part 2)
Using the best strategy that is suited for each kingdom.

Resources

Is one resource more valued over others in a certain kingdom?
Managing resources effectively to maximize army potential.
Is there a best order to upgrading resources/units?
Is it worth your time and effort to capture a capital city and why?
How to stack resource bonuses for maximum effectiveness.
How to effectively manage your food supply.

Heroes

Hero progression, should he/she be a str/ldr/pol/int hero?
How to make a “super hero” from stacking abilities and scrolls.
How to win the Warrior’s Tournament.

Defense

How to defend a city successfully.
What units give the best defense? Is upgrading your armorsmith effective?
Supporting another city

Offense

How to build a large army and support it.
How to use rams/demolishers effectively.
What units to recruit first.

I’ve already some article about some of the topic but the contest certainly give me idea to write some new articles. If you want to check it out, participate or use those tips to crush your oponent you can go here.