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.

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)

I just came across this article about Zynga CEO that knew he was scamming user on mafia war and farmville but didn’t care at the time. The article was written in october 2009 and you can see the evolution of fix and ban that zynga have got for there game since the article from techcrunch.

The best part is probably the quote from the zynga ceo found in this article.

“I did every horrible thing in the book just to get revenues,” -Mark Pincus

There a lot of game that use to have these stupids offers, I never bothered to check them except when it was just an offer that say “check that website”, you click and then got the money.

Here the techcrunch article and all the update if you want to know more about this.

Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell

I came across a make over of the super mario bros game a while ago, it’s call super mario crossover from Exploding Rabbit.

You probably already founded it but if you don`t you should try it here. I must tell you that it’s really hard to play on a keyboard. I really need to found my gamepad somewhere.

My favorite character so far is simon with is double jump and is axe that destroy bricks. Mario look really boring compare to the other caracter … 😛

For those who had tried which character is your favorite ?

I founded something fun today you can play nes game from your browser at http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/ it’s seem that the best browser to play is chrome 3 acording to this article.

Note that this is not really new since you can play NES in facebook, but it’s always fun to play those old NES game.

For those living in a cave or that didn’t go on google today, google has a new doodle and it’s to celebrate pac-man 30th birthday. You can actually play the game from the doodle which is pretty awesome.

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 ?

It’s not a web browser game but is a really nice desktop game.

Is you want to play a really nice free mech game try Armored Legion. It’s play directly from your browser and you can buy gun and everything.

Here there links :

Mechwarrior 4

Armored Legion