I found a really interesting widget yesterday at http://erkie.github.com/

Basicly you add the button on their pages in your bookmark and when you’re on another site you just click on the bookmark and a “spaceship” will appear and you can destroy everything on the site.

Some news, I’m probably out for october, I’ll try to check and awnser the comment but don’t expect new blog post. Note that in november I’ll post about each kingdom of TKO and I have some article coming for Lord of ultima, I’ve been really enjoying this game lately.

In my previous post I’ve wrote about how to create a lobbyist train.
But some of my leaguemate seem to have problems with how to build them and how to use them.

First if your completely new to lobbyists you can check koramgame TKO forum thread about them here.
I’ll summarize it for you and add some of my trick in the process.

1- How to build them

That part is easy, you need Mansion or Annexe Level 10, Drill Ground Level 20 and Command Center Level 10 to research a lobbyist. Like the pioneer you con recruit a lobbyist when the Mansion at level 10, 15 and 20, for the annexe it’s on level 10 and 20 only. Once your have all the requirement, you have to research the lobbyist in the drill ground. From my experience, if you decided that your city will recruit lobbyist it better to dedicate your city to lobbyist, so you will have to research it only once to recruit two (or 3 if it’s a mansion) lobbyist.

Note that your first cities should probably be built with pioneer instead of lobbying someone else city. Why ? Because it’s take a boatload of resources to get you city to recruit them and it takes much more time that the simple three pioneer, on top of that it’s easier to create subs that are near your main and you can chose the arrangement of your resource fields if you want to specialized your city.

2- How they work

The lobbyist reduces the loyalty of the attacking city only if it’s not the main and there no annexe in it. They typically reduce the loyalty by 20% (25% for wei), you can increase their effectiveness with a hero that have a scroll of rumors.

Note that you can only lobby a sub city and the annex must be destroyed in order to reduce the loyalty of the city.

3- How attack a city with them

Lobbying a city is three step process, first you need to clear the city from its troops, after you need to destroy the annexe (see using demo with lobbyist) and then you can send your lobbyist. Like explained in my previous article on how to create a lobbyist train it’s better to have more than one to save you from many roundtrip to the city you want to lobby.
Be careful when you attack an active player, he might rebuild troop and hide them just to kill your lobbyist. They can use the curfew command or just rebuild an annexe to prevent the lost of loyalty too.

For more tip on attack tactic here more info from my previous article :
The anatomy of a attack and other offense tactic
Using demo with lobbyist

I started to play Lord of Ultima.

If you want to check how it work here a quick video from playscope that explain the basic pretty well.

My first impression is that the game have a nice finish that other similar game don’t have, and the concept of having to place you build in other to optimize there production is nice.

I ran on another interesting article about farmville today. Cultivated Play: Farmville from the blog media common.

My favorite part : “Again: if Farmville is laborious to play and aesthetically boring, why are so many people playing it?”

Read the article if you want the awnser but for me I’ve stopped playing farmville a while ago. Still don’t understand somebody willing to pay 1400$ for this game or even get fired for playing it, but it seem that the social aspect of it is really waht drive this addiction.

So go ahead and read it here : Cultivated Play: Farmville

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.

It seem that farmville hit the news again when a kid spent around 625 pound (1400$). When the parent found out they tried to ask for a refund and zynga didn’t want to give anything back.

Should Zynga pay something back ? When something like that happen with cloth or material goods you can exchange back what was bought. But where the line with virtual good ? Should Zynga remove the virtual good from the kid acount and give some of the money back?

What your opinion on that ? The full article here.

Game can be addictive sometime and sometime you just can’t stop playing. I remember having to login at work to lauch my troop in tribal war so the troop will arrive at the same time my allies sent them. (note that’s not on my current job at least …) Or waking up durring the night in King of Chaos so I could use my cash so nobody would steal it. It seem that someone have done even worse, he played farmville during a town council and got fired for it. You can read some more of it here

It’s not the first time that we hear these kind of story, WoW was probably one of the game that really mess up poeple, like on this forum thread :

“World of Warcraft stole a year of my life and ironically got me fired from Gamestop. It will take over your life, and just one month ago, I got out of the addiction.” -PsiRedEye22

They’re even employer that instruct their recruiter to screen any world of Warcraft players.  Note, it was just on recruiters if you dig up a little, but still should you have to tell your playing online game to your employer. Here the original article at f13.net. The thread point out that online game might have the reversed effect, it might actually help you get a job like here or that it helps you learn about leadership and project management skill (more here).

Did some of you got the same problem? Tell us your story.

Xian from koramgame three kingdom forum posted a post about a combat simulator that calculates how much units you might lose here..
I’m trying to understand how it’s work, so far I seem to give a good idea if I win or lose but I don’t see my lost.
If you have any questions go check with the owner on the TKO forum while I try figure that thing.
If you find something interesting on it feel free to comment.

Some players seem to struggle how to grow there city and increase the level of their heroes. Here are way to help your city to grow everyday, you probably know them all but I list everything here so it can help you: If you have any other suggestion feel free to tell me.

Note : why the hero xp is there, it’s because your hero can have a huge impact on your resources output and your army depending on is stats, item and level.

Everyday

So here what you can do once a day to increase your resources and your hero xp.

Noble’s Stipend

Each day in the daily quest you can claim your noble’s stipend, how much you get depend on your nobility rank and your resources output. For example, if your a baron your reward will give you around 50% of your hourly output

Morning Excercise

Between 8:00 and 12:00 in the morning, click on the Faction Map on the left hand panel and select a Faction Camp. Then pick out a hero for a duel. It’s will give you around the same amount of the Noble’s Stipend. Note for those that are working during these hours (like me) if you can somehow send the hero to a duel during these hours, your can collect you reward anytime during the day.

Hero trial

When taking the Hero trial, your hero accomplish incridible feat that gaive him huge amount of xp. You have a free try everyday, you can always pay a extra 5 gold to send more heroes but I’ll rater keep my money in my pocket. The amount of xp receive depends on the level of the hero that undertake this mistic quest. Keep in mind that the hero will be out of town for 6 hour so finish your league quest and duel before sending him to this long journey.

Every hour

Here what can be done every hour to increase you resources and xp.

Meet your hero

In the gouvernor house you can meet your hero and they will receive xp from your advice. You can only meet a hero while he’s in the city, if he out (heroe trial, attack or quest) you can’t meet him.

Hourly quiz

In the quest window you can receive a random reward, the reward seem to depends on your resource output and the question (some question give more than other)

Book of hero

This one is kind of counter intuitive at first but here how it’s goes : First go to the gouvernor house and click face of the advisor. He will give you a hero name, take note of the name (on a paper or copy it to your clipboard). Go to the quest screen, then go to daily quest. In the book of heroe quest fill the blank with the name the advisor gave you. It will give you 100 of every resource or if you make more than 1000 it give 10% of your hourly output.

Inspect

From the governor house again you can send a heroe to inspect your city, it sometime give you some resource. The reward seem random but higher if you have a high ressource output and some time you even have to give away ressource (this is rare though) Note that you can recieve ressource in every city you inspect so it might worth it to inspect them all.

Duel and scrimmage

(the number of time depend on your hero stamina): From the faction map you can send your hero fight the commander or footman of a faction camp or attack some troop in the camp. You won’t lose any soldier doing so and it will give your hero xp and you will reveive training point that you can use to recruite you unit faster.

Escort guardian
(the number of time depend on your hero stamina)

This will give extra xp and new item needed to have a powerful hero . Note that unlike doing a scrimmage, fighting the escort guardian will actually cost you troops

Other way to get ressources or xp each day

Impose tax

From the Governor house you can impose a tax, it doesn’t give a lot of ressource and reduce your loyalty and it available every 6hr after the first tax. It’s not really worth it, except when you really need that extra money now.

War mode

From the Governor house you can put your city in war mode. It’s double your your output for 5hr and the next 24 hour you don’t receive any food. That might be use full when your supported by many other player. Note that the Governor house must be upgraded to level 5 to execute that command.

Plunder

Attack abandoned cities around you (less that 50 of pop usaly yield no soldier) the first time you might lose some troop but once you killed all the soldiers, heroes and removed the traps your soldier will bring back a good bounty every day. If you don’t know how much soldier to send and when to send them, you can use a simple rule for town with less than 10 of pop. Cities of this size usally have only 800 of warehouse capacity, it take around 54 militia or 80 pikeman to take all of them. Since a starting city start a output of 17/h for all ressource it take 2 days to refill the warehouse and you can reattack again.
Plundering is the fastest, easiest and best way to have cash, you can get in half a hour about 3 to 10 times the amount of resources that you normaly get with your standart resources output. You might hit city with nothing though, that probably mean somebody have already plunder that city today or that the city have a hidden warehouse max out (or even more than one). Later you might want to hit bigger player, the best way is to send a group of scout or just take note of the size of there city and check if it has grow a few days later.

Hope this help, if I forgot anything feel free to add it in your comment.

Being a huge fan of the romance of the three kingdom series and destiny of an emperor I though I was going to re-live these amazing game here.

It’s actually not really like them but the game still bring element of this romanticized period of Chinese history.

Brief historical setting :

During that period, China was divided into three kingdoms and they fought one another to unify the country. The Three Kingdoms period (169-280AD) was a time of war, alliance, treason and great heroes that has inspired historian, literature and gamers. The book The Romance of Three Kingdoms was publish in the 14th century has turned this part of Chinese history into the most famous piece of literature. Countless game brought this period to life has well and Three Kingdoms Online is one of the latest installment.

The Game

The Basic

If you familiar to tribal war or travian you probably already know how it work.
At the beginning your are given the choice of one of the three kingdoms and where to start. Each kingdom have there own units and advantage and disadvantage.

Shu : By far the most aggressive kingdom, since his main advantage come from attacking other player. Shu have the ability to plunder more than the other kingdoms by reducing the hidden warehouse effect by half and their units are much cheaper and faster to recruit than the other kingdoms. The draw back it’s that their units are usually weaker in defense and shu wall his easier to destroy.

Wu : Know for is defensive stance wu advantage come from is wall which is the hardest to bring down and there hidden cache that holds twice the number of resources it usually hold. They have the fastest unit in the game which make them good to send quikly support.

Wei : The more balance of the three kingdom, their units are more powerful than the other but also more expensive. Their other advantage is that, they can build a building and develop a resources field a the same time which really give an edge later in the game.

Your city

Like many real-time strategy game of the same genre, the player has to harvest resources by building resource gathering buildings outside is city and he can build buildings inside your city which you can recruit troop, research technologies, command your troop and much more.

While managing and balance between resources, infrastructure building and military development you will have to wait until it’s done so you probably can go do something else and you come back later when your building is completed you have enough resources.

Heroes

One of the innovation that three kingdoms online bring to the table, is that you can recruit heroes. (note that tribal war do have the paladin but the heroes system is more elaborate that the former) These heroes can help you perform task, increase the viability of your city and increase the power of your army.

Quest

Another interesting feature that in 3ko is that you can be rewarded for doing quest. Some of them act has a guide and tutorial to the game and give you extra money or item for doing them. While others raise your nobility rank and increase your reputation to the faction of the three kingdom

My personal opinion about the game

What I really like in the this game is that they gave each of the three kingdom unique abilities and  units. Because of that, you may change how you play when you’re using another kingdom. Like shu basic units tend to use a lot of wood but wei tend to use a lot of iron, shu unit are way cheaper than wei too.

The heroes are pretty neat, even if sometime I found myself wasting my time trying to send them all to scrimmage, duel and faction quest so they can level up.

They increase the effectiveness of your troop, increase the output of your resources fields. And you can do side challenge with them like the grand melee or the faction quest.

There stuffs that annoy me in this game though.

Having to plunder every morning and every night because I don’t have enough food for my armies make me really sick, especially that when I wake up at 7h00(EST) there a server maintenance, so I have to wait until it’s 7h30. Another thing that annoy me, is that there so much to do in this game that it takes so much time when you play, plundering can sometime take half a hour and you have to come back two hr later to do another round, leveling your heroes, managing your league. Note that can be perceive has a good point but to much of the same thing is not fun.

Another thing might be annoying, too much stuff to buy in the mall and all the items there are overprice. Seriously did anybody bought a styrax bolus for 799 gold when it just an item to activate the third ability slot of ONE hero ! At 4.99$ for 55 gold, each stylax bolus cost about 72$, I’ll rather buy a PlayStation or X-box game for that amount of money.

Finally I really like the game but I don’t if I’ll stick to it for more than a few month. I don’t have enough time to maintain my self to the level other are going.