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.

When I started playing a three kingdom online on server one I realized that many of my league members were struggling with there city.

Since most of the attack that happens in this game are plundering attack.

Other more potent attack with demolisher or lobbyist happen much later in the game so we won’t talk about them for now.

Since plundering attack are made only to steal your resources and destroy your troop here a few steps you should follow

1- Build a hidden warehouse to level 10 and once it’s at level 10

Build another one (or three other one), this should prevent them from stealing your cash.

Side note once you have a building level maxed out (like granary, warehouse, hidden warehouse) you can build that building more than once so you could have one hidden warehouse level 10 and two other both level 5.

2- Use your special item in time of need

If you’re under attack and you still have the bronze shovel or the emperor order, use it. They both increase to effect of your hidden warehouse by four. (like I said in  a previous post don’t use it to complete the quest, using these item at the right time can save your butt)

3- Hide your cash in your other building

You can put extra resource in your market and theater too and they can’t steal it. If your afraid they will steal your resource, just put them in the market or in your theater. The market is better since you can get the cash back after the attack has landed.

4- Build a decent city wall.

I’m always surprised when I’m entrusted with someone account that they don’t even have a level 10 city wall.

Why build a city wall ? Because
1- It’s raise the defenses rating of your troop
2- You can build defensive traps
3- You can build a higher level tower with it
4- It’s doesn’t cost that much to build and it’s doesn’t require iron at all (note It’s seem it cost iron now, but on server one it’s didn’t cost any iron leveling your wall.)
5- When other people support you they won’t get pissed that there troop were killed because you didn’t have a good wall.

Side note :In your main your city wall should always be maxed to level 20.

5-Build Archer and put them in your tower

If you happen to have archers or crossbowman put them in the tower, in the tower the attack of the archer = def vs infantry so a auto cross bow man got 120 of def vs infantry, that part of why I was able to wash 1800 guardman with only around 300 acher in the tower.

6- Run away

If you expect to lose all your troop you can always schedule attack on a empty town near you one minute before there attack land. So you won’t lose any troop.

7- Upgrade your unit defense

Upgrading your unit defense can make a big difference in the outcome of a battle. each level increase your defense by 1.5%

8- Upgrade your unit attack

Since your archer attack = def vs infantry in the tower, it’s might be a good idea to upgrade there attack.

9- Heroes

Your hero statistic can help your army in battle, Leadership and Strength have a effect on the heroes usefulness in battle.

Leadership is probably the most important, one point Leadership will increase the attack and defense of your army by 0.2%. and the Strength affect of your heroes combat skill in battle. The initial attack and defense of the hero is 100 + is Strength so a hero with 35 of Strength will have 135 of attack and defense.

10- Always build troops

Plain simple, if you have troop you should hurt your enemies enough that they might leave you alone

11- Your defence formation

If you know what kind of attack your attacker is going to use, use the one that counters it. Here how to know which to use against which:

Formation of the fish is strong against formation of the bird but weak against formation of the moon.

Formation of the moon is strong against formation of the Fish but weak against formation of the bird.

Formation of the bird is strong against formation of the moon but weak against formation of the Fish.

12- Ask for help

Ask your league mate and allies to send you some support.

Beware not receiving too much support you can handle, if you don’t have any food and you food output is in the red, the support troop will die of starvation once they arrive in your city.

13- Send a email

While this tips doen’t really increase your defense, it can save you a lot of trouble. You can always send a nice email to your attacker, you never know he might leave you alone. Sometime they are attacking just because they think your inactive.

1. Know your kingdom

The first time I played I made the mistake of taking shu because I liked Liu Bei and I though I would get Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun.
While shu is good if you already played these kind of game, I would have liked to pick wei instead to be able to build a resource at the same time I’m building in my city. I’ve kind of felt that I was forced to have aggressive behaviors because I had shu.
So has a rule of thumb If it’s your first time you play this kind of game or you want to be a tortoise player probably wu is the best fit for you. If you really gonna be an aggressive player, shu is probably better for you since you will benefit from the extra resource you can get.
I think the “dual building” of Wei is awesome, being able to build in your city while a 72 hours resources field is building is pretty neat…

2. Don’t use your free item right away for the quests like the bronze shovel and emperor order, use it when you really need them

While the quest are usally useful the quest for the bronze shovel is usally given while you are still under beginner protection. And since the bronze shovel prevent you from being plundered and you cannot be plunder during the beginner protection using the bronze shovel at this time is worthless. While the emperor order will be useful under beginner protection but most of it’s feature are useful later, (the bronze shovel effect, the faster recruiting, the extra speed)

3. This game is time consuming, specially when you’re at -30000 of food, you really need to plunder every day

I’m use to tribal war where you have a finite number of soldiers but were you can pack a bunch of soldier in one city. You cannot do that in TKO because if you pack all your troop in one city and you don’t have enough food to feed them they will starve.

4. The game is to addictive even though it’s really time consuming

Having a mix of simcity and warcraft is always fun even when you realized your not really going anywhere.

5. There is a grease monkey script for this game

The script is very useful if you just starting or if you have a new sub city, it’s train the heroes, visit them, level them up. It’s also build resources field and building for you (only one at the time though so you cannot take advantage of wei second build slot) You can download it here.

6. You don’t have to build your mansion in your first city

You can wait to have a more decent setting like a 9 farm spot or a 15 farm spot.

7. Focus on a limited numbers of unit type so you don’t waste money upgrading them

Specialized your city on offense or on defense so you don’t waste money upgrading and researching all of them.

8. Get you demolisher fast do so you can really cripple your opponent or at least to give you something to strike back that will makes them regret striking you.

If your one of the first to have them you can be one of the first to strike with them. And there no better retaliation than destroying an opponent granary to level 0.

9. Do scrimmage, attack camp guard and do all the faction quest you can with you heroes to raise there level

I didn’t know that attacking camp guard and doing scrimmage raise your heroes experience. And I’ve learned something else, doing scrimmage while give you training point that can be use to accelerate you recruiting.

10. Guarded places have a different arrangement of fields focused on food, so you can build a bigger army.

Really useful to build large army, a 15 food spot with two or three +50% grain oasis can build a city of greatness.

In my previous post I’ve talked about city and where to build them and how to increase you resources outputs with an oasis.

A nice spot should always have at least one oasis you need, from the eight type of oasis the hybrid ones are probably the best you can grab. By hybrid I mean the one that gives food and another resource (iron, wood, stone) or a 50% grain bonus. Like this:

Requirement successfully to take an oasis :
First be sure to have a career center that gives you the right to have an oasis here the rule took from the previous post :

Career center in a city  with a Mansion

Level 10 career center = 1 oasis
level 15 career center = 2 oases
level 20 career center = 3 oases

Career center in a city  with a annexe

Level 10 career center= 1 oasis
level 20 career center= 2 oases

An oasis can only be attack with the plunder mode and once you destroyed all the troop in the oasis the oasis is your. If you don’t fulfill the first requirement the oasis will be left empty but will not belong to you, the army wills recover randomly every day.
Note: it seems to be an increase of 5-10 of every type of troops everyday but that was just an observation.

Tips

-The oasis can only be attacked in your 7×7 area of your city so you might want another city near it and have that oasis in it 7×7 to be able to help you strike that oasis.
-Since the building the career center to level cost a lump sum of resources why not build it to level 15, build a level one mansion and then grab an oasis.
you can destroy the mansion once you got you two oasis and you don’t have to level up your career center to level 20.

Note : It seems that the number of troop an oasis can have top at 200 of each except for the yellow turban and the swordsman that seems to top at 50 of each.

The strength of the unit in the oasis and how to grab an oasis from another player can be found here.

Update :

I added a thread about how to grab a oasis from another player here.

Many players ask me how to build a city and how did I manage so many city. So here a quick tutorial about how to build a city.

The basic :

What a sub-city and what’s a main city ?

The Main city is the city where a mansion is built. You can only have one mansion so choose your main city wisely. The other cities are called sub-city and have an annexe instead of a mansion in it.

The main city have many advantages compare to your other city:

1- you can build your resources field to level 20 instead of level 10.

2- you can build a monitor office to increase the durability of your construction in a city with a mansion

3- you can have three oasis instead of two oasis

4- you can build three cities from your main city instead of 2.

Since it cost less money to build an annexe level 10 than build a mansion to level 15 and to level 20, the last point is not really important.

So how does it work by level ?

Mansion

Level 10 mansion= 1 sub city
level 15 mansion= 2 sub cities
level 20 mansion= 3 sub cities

Career center in a city  with a Mansion

Level 10 career center = 1 oasis
level 15 career center = 2 oases
level 20 career center = 3 oases

While a sub city can only accumulate 2 sub cities

level 10 annexe= 1 sub city
level 20 annexe= 2 sub cities

Career center in a city  with a annexe

Level 10 career center= 1 oasis
level 20 career center= 2 oases

Where to build your city ?

Once you get your mansion or annexe you need to recruit three pioneers.

Then you choose an empty spot where you want to build your city. Each empty area has its own unique resource configuration on like… 4 5 3 6, 5 4 3 6, 5 3 4 6 which means…

That for a 4 5 3 6, It has 4 timberlands 5 stone mines 3 iron mines and 6 farms. (like on the previous image)

Guarded empty place (where there a guard standing on the map with a 9 and 15 number on them)

The guarded field have a slightly different configuration giving less resources but more food, the configuration might be 3 3 3 9 (which mean 3 of each resource field 9 farm field) or 1 1 1 15 (which mean 1 of each resource field 15 farm field). Those fields are perfect to build large army since they provide more food.

How to choose the best spot for your city ?

You can choose a resource configuration that suit a type of troop you want to build, like for defensive city for shu would be a city with pikeman, lancer and auto-crossbowman which require a lot of wood, so a 5 timberlands spot might suit you well. You can always cope your lack of certain resources production by grabbing some oasis.

The oasis can only be attacked in your 7×7 area of your city so you might want another city near it and have that oasis in it 7×7 to be able to help you strike that oasis.

I will make another post later on “how to grab” a oasis but for now you can always check that link on the TKO forum.

Note :

You can build your city anywhere has long it’s a empty spot, so it’s mean it can be outside your 7×7 area and yes it can be in another state.

You don’t have to build a mansion for your first city, instead you can wait to have a better spot or even if you feel adventurous on field with more food like a 9 or 15 farm field. Imagine having a main city with a 15 farm field level 20, you would have almost a force that could wipe most of other cities.

If you want more information you can always go check the information on city on the forum here

There a other way to grab a city, and that’s with a Lobbyist, but that will be in a other post.

For now you can always check the forum information on that here.

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.