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.

1- Period of peace after the top league eliminated every other leagues.

While you might need to still build troops to support the emperor if you are on an emperor road server but here are the mains guideline and tips.
Build you career center to the max on every city and grab at least 2 oasis per city because on an ultimate server there is no oasis.
You can grab even 3 oasis per city if you do a mansion rotation. (Check here to know how to do it : Nomadic capital guide)

Another thing you can focus on is to grab some cities, try to grab only 15f and 9f if you are plundering a bit. Note that you might think is good idea to grab other cities with a lobbyist, don’t  do it for 6f cities or at least don’t do it too much because the city with high points are moved in the server merges (they were for U1 and U5)  so you’re better off having them has farm and because you have a city limit of 26 you should focus of having mostly 15f and 9f or 6f with good oasis placement so you can store and build a lot of unit.

Also it might be a good time to make a 15f main, you can later swap oasis after the merge if you don’t have 3 50% food oasis.

Another things that always important, be sure to have a high level of upgrade in all your cities specially those that you build most of your troop.

Always have some lobbyist ready too because you might need them (4 at least if your wei 5 for the other kingdom to take the city in one sweep) check out my lobbying guide and how to make a lobbying train.

2- Prior the merge

Once you know they’re a merge, start pumping troop over your limit in all your city.
Why ? because on an ultimate server during the 2 day of protection and 3 day of adjustment you cannot lose troop to starvation.
So pump your troop to the ceiling to give a hell of a ride to your enemies.

3- The 2 day of "Protection period"

During this period you can move your cities. I’ve made the mistake of moving all my city together at the same spot besides an enemies.
Why this is a mistake ?

1- It make you a target has well.

2- some of your city are to weak anyway to take a part in the fight, you can leave them in them main cluster or move them near another player in the main cluster that have a oasis to steal it since oasis are really hard to find on a ultimate server.

4- The 3 day of "Adjusting period"

You cannot lose troop to starvation but you can now attack so don’t be afraid to send massive troop at your enemies.
Strike those special city with it because he have to protect them since if he loses the fight he lose the city.
Demolish but with moderation because you never know your enemy today might be your friend tomorrow, wall, barrack, stable scout camp  most be destroyed,
Warehouse and granary might be a good idea, to prevent him from building back massive amount of troop.
Farmland at last resort since it can help him if someone send him support. But if he might be pissed about it and you might lose an ally in the future (or a nice farm)
After that is only survival is his league support since even if he try to rebuild you will strike him and kill his troop anyway.

5- Post war

I don’t know what happened on your merge guys but for us once one league surrendered we pretty much went back in too simcity and building troop to support the future emperor.
So since it hard to keep player playing when there no war, no action and If you’ve made this far to a server merge you probably wanna play whatever you’ve win or lose.
So be fair play and have fun.

For those who read my article about the earth seal awhile ago, the a equivalent item available right now name the Seal of terrain.

Seal of Terrain: Use to change a 15-resource field city to 18-resource field city.

Check on Koram forum here for more detail : http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=40354&extra=page%3D1

It note there other event, one that might be interesting is the one if you do 6 daily quest you get 100 jade globes

Free Items for Doing Daily Quest
Event Duration: Jun. 24th, 00:00~Jun. 28th, 24:00 (PDT)
Server: All servers
Details:
If you finish 6 or above Daily Quests successfully in a day, you will random get one of the following items:
Draft Order X 1
Jade Globe X 100
Spice (100) X 1
Trader Order X 1
Mind Game (Tiger Scroll) X 1
Note:
1. The daily Quests should be 3Kingdoms Quiz, Book of Heroes, and Morning Excercise.
2. All the items are bound and can’t be presented.
3. The rewards will be sent to your account from 00:00 to 03:00 in the next day.

Info about this event is at the same location.

Note:  after reading carefully the post, I realised that it take a freaking 10k of gold to get the seal of terrain…  10k of gold is about 375$ usd … which can buy a ps3 and a bunch of game for the same amount of money.

Note : This a post I wrote on the koram forum, I just wanted to share it with you.

After playing for awhile in the server 14 a merge with server came and that really wasn’t a good time for me since I was getting married about a week before the merge and was on my honeymoon during the merge.

Fearing losing it all I shared my account too some friend.

When the merge came I only logged to move my cities. My fate was then in the hand of my friends, thinking, since our server is older so we will squash them anyway.

When I came back online a week after the beginning of the war the top league (KokuryoElite) of server 20 and it’s sub league was waging war against us and we were in very bad shape.

My troops were decimated, one of my friend and sitter had to leave because he had to go on a business trip, and my other sitter switched to the other side. Behind in constant attack and after a few defeat our league was starting to lose ground and county.
I asked my aggressor to stop attacking me considering I missed the fight, they kindly accepted if I joined them. One told me this simple but funny message: "Ah you were a good farm, but considering the fact that I destroyed one of your city and lobbied another I think I’ve harm you enough.
I’m now member of the great KokyryoEliteII and I learned a lot about this experience.
In the defeat I’ve grew wiser and learned a lot about how the merge work and how to take advantage of it in the next merge.
Thank you for your time, let me know what you think.
My next post will be about the tactics and strategies I found during the merge.

Any of you have any funny story about your merge ?

I just noticed what the best feature of the TKO 2.6 upgrade is.

Look at the heroes screen : 

You can now upgrade directly from the left list and you see all your heroes that need to level up.

I LOVE that feature.

A little close up if you don’t see it :

So what is your favorite “new” feature of the version 2.6

There will be an upgrade to v2.6 on most server on the 22th of march, I think S1, S47 and S48 already got that upgrade.

There many nice feature to keep the game interesting even though I was king of losing interest since nothing was happening on my server.
If you want a detail review you can check this post on the Koram forum.

There a lot of nice thing there my favs are probably going to be the hermit house, the super field and the capital outpost.

The Hermit house:

 
Finally a way to get epic without paying,  you can recruit them in the hermit house and you have to do quest before recruiting them.
Note : You could get epic heroes by fighting epic guardian too but I think you already knew that…

Super field
There will be new field spawned around the map, 18f (like the item we talked about here) 17f and 16f. They are heavily guarded (min of 50k of troop there).
The number is really limited, and I think that suck because you will have a whole server fighting for them and I think that stink for the gold player who paid a boat load of money from the previous event to get a 18 farm fields city.

Capital outpost

(more in this post : TKO update Preview III:Capital Outpost )
This upgrade was almost necessary since the number of city is capped and not everyone was able to get those capital city.  There a forum post that explains well how it work.

There other bunch of nice stuff in this upgrade: new unit, better unit management, league features,  etc …
What did you like and what do you hate about this upgrade ?

Even I knew about the list before. Our leader in our league sent us the link today, I though you might be interested in it.

It’s the list of all one to three star heroes, their stats at lv 100 and their ability.

Here the link: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=tKP0zj3wI93rSPPFbMfBDxw&hl=en#gid=0

It incomplete so if you have a hero that not there feel free to add it.

Since my wedding and honey moon I haven’t write a lot (only one post …)
but I’ve been trying some new games recently and played less of the others.

Clash of Kingdoms

I’ve started playing this in November in server 2, I’m greatly surprised by this game on many level.
First the game really focus on helping your kingdom, giving to the landmark, improving the cities, fighting other kingdom on the battlefield to grab other cities, which creates a dynamic much more fun than other MMORTS.
The draw back is if you have a bad premiers or if people are not involve enough in the kingdom you might think the game is going nowhere.
Another thing I really like is that they removed a bunch of stuff that annoying in MMORTS. Plundering, building new city … stuff that I found boring in other mmorts.
That game definitely deserve a reviews and probably a few guide, more to come in 2011.

Lord of Ultima

While the game is fun, I basically stopped playing.
Managing 30-40 cities is boring and take too much time.
Yeah the barrack take like only half-hour to build level 10 but for the 5 first level which takes 5 minutes to build you have to build them and wait. Yeah you can go to other city and to the same thing there but after cycling through your 40 cities 2 hrs you get bored pretty easily.
And another thing I liked in this game, that I realized was somewhat lame after I saw what other players do with it.
I am talking about the fact that if there no castle in your city it cannot be taken. So what happen, when a small league dominates a continent a bigger league want to enter the continent, it simply put city everywhere there free land on the continent but without building a castle then with they cram some city with troop, turn them into castle when they have enough troop and conquer all there small league castle.
The game is still fun though but not has much when I started playing, I’ll try to post some strategies and tips I found around the web later this year.

Grepolis

(a Ikariam clone)
I barely play (about a day or two), so here what I discovered about this game.
You start on a Island and you build you village like other MMO RTS. You can build boat to attack other island and there a special “resources” that the gods flavors.
I honestly even played that much (about a day or two) you can always check other sites review for more info.  There some features that seem nice, favors of the god, building ships and having only your island to worry at the beginning, but since most other game have either these feature to or better graphic I tend to try other game first. Maybe you’ll see something about this game later …

Mythopolis

I stopped playing the alpha test, basically because the game was the same has TKO not that a bad game it’s just I don’t have time to play like 6 games at the same time…

Tribal war

I’m currently playing a turtle there, sometime I’m a week without playing.
This one is pretty old school they something have new features but not on my server.
I’ll check if I can post a list of tips I found on the wed later.

Three Kingdoms Online

Still playing this one, after getting squash when we merged.
I’ve posted a few articles on koram forum and I probably will post a few things about the merge.
You can check my article here.

That all for today folk I hope you doing well and happy gaming for 2011

Koram have gone crazy, there now a new item (the Earth Seal) the turn a 15 farm field city in a 18 farm field city.

You’ve read it, 18 farm field ! That mean all the field of your city will be for food.

So what a 18 farm field city look like ?

Let’s do some math here :

level 20 farm = 4500/hr

Let compare the 15f vs a 18f (only 3 farmland more):

Base food output
4500 x 15farms = 67500/hr (excluding bonus)
4500 x 18farms = 81000/hr (excluding bonus)

Mill Bonus
67500 x 25%mill bonus = 16875 (15f)
81000 x 25%mill bonus = 20250 (18f)

16875 + 67500 = 84375/hr (15flag city total output excluding oasis and politic)
20250 + 81000 = 101250/hr (18flag city total output excluding oasis and politic)

Oasis
with the 3 50% oasis = 150%
67500 x 150% = 101250 (15f)
81000 x 150% = 121500(18f)

101250 + 84375 =  185625 (w/o politic) (15f)
121500 + 101250 = 222750 food/hr (almost 40k more than the 15 flag city field)

Wow 222750 of standard food output…

If we keep the idea of a old post from the art of war, with some gold you can have some thing real nice
(original post here : http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6839&extra=)

With emperor’s order (treasure bowl or token of rain), Cao cao, metal alchemy scroll and the level 10 league resource bonus you can boost you food output even more.
- emperor order provide 25% food bonus.
- Cao cao could provide another 30% food bonus because of his max 150 politic (base = 100 + 30 pol bonus generalissimo + 20 pol history of han) 
- Cao cao have a skill that increase food output by 25%
- league level 10 provide 10% bonus food output
- Metal Alchemy scroll give 5%

So  25% + 30% + 25% + 10% + 5% = 95% food bonus
222750 /hr x 95% = 211612.5/hr
222750 + 211612.5= 434362/hr

Note : that I don’t know if heroes can stack skill book with mid skill, if they can Cao Cao could have a farm skill to increase the food output even more.

Almost 450k of food per hours, with that and let say you go in the red by -150k you have a army of 600k soldier

Official news here

Note : you need to have like 10 three star epic hero to win the Earth Seal, so that mean a lot of gold …

Edit : Like Bazzz pointed out the bonus mid skill don’t stack so I modified the gold section.

Edit : Fixed the math wiht Morenzuul comment that the % bonus are always applied to your base output

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 ?