Startup - A High Level Overview

Nauzhror

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I’m not going to play out a specific build order that you should follow. Why? There isn’t one, it’d vary too much world to world. What I will instead do are go over basics that will put you on the right path.

If you have any specific questions after reading this then please feel free to ask them and I will do my best to answer them as promptly as possible.

The primary goal during startup is 24/7 queues. This means constant troop production in your barracks, stable, and workshop alongside constant building production.

Before this is possible you will want to spend your resources in the following manner.

Prioritize stable production over barracks production, and both over buildings. Buildings however take precedence over workshop simply because it takes so much less time to make the number of rams you will want than it does to create the full amount of barracks or stable troops you will want.

Stable is the #1 priority because of the importance light cavalry and to a lesser extent scouts have in efficient farming. Farming is the secret to fast growth at startup. If you’ve ever seen someone growing incredibly fast and decided they were “pointwhoring” (neglecting troops to focus on points), they almost certainly weren’t. The fastest way to grow is to farm, a lot. Farming that much requires a lot of troops. Essentially the more troops you have to farm with, the faster you can grow.

The goal when farming is not to get large hauls, it is to get as much total resources as possible, typically this has more to do with the quantity of your hauls than it has to do with the size of them.

Typically I farm with 1-2 lc at a time. I start with the closest villages and send to the barbs in ascending order of distance until I run out of troops to send. I send 1 lc if the previous haul was non-full, and 2 if it was full. The trick to efficient farming is to attack all villages equally often. If you attack close villages more often then you attack villages farther away you are forcing yourself to farm a larger area than is optimal. ie. You should not be sending troops to a village, and then sending them again when the previous attack reaches its destination. It’s much better to have multiple attacks heading to villages at once, so that you are getting the resources the villages have generated in the last ‘x’ minutes. Your activity level will dictate what ‘x’ is. If you’re at the computer all day, you can farm each barb every 10 minutes. If you’re busy doing other things ‘x’ can be a half hour, or an hour, or 2-3 hours, etc. The key point is that you should be attacking all your farms equally often.

Barracks is the second priority – most people are probably going to opt for axes, but this is by no means necessary. You can do very well with a defensive startup, I’ve in fact never attempted it without being the rank 1 player on the world.

If you are making axes, it is often better to not actually farm with them, but to use them alongside your rams to knock down the walls in all of your farms as quickly /aggressively as possible so that your small farming parties of 1-2 lc are not hindered by walls.

If you made defense in your first village (which you should), then 2 sw/2 sp and 4 sw/sp works similarly to the 1/2 lc method outlined above. I picked these numbers for a few reasons. 2 sw/sp have a carrying capacity of 80. The same as 1 lc. Sticking strictly to 2/2 or 4/4 means you should never have too many spears or swords home and not enough of the other. If you did 2/2 and 3/5 you would have potential issues with this depending on how many of your farm runs were resulting in full hauls.

Why did I specifically say that you should make defense in your first village?

Because I’m sick and tired of seeing the scenario below:
Player A: Guys, someone is catting me, what do I do?
Tribe: Backtime him, duh.
Player A: But he is stacked by his tribe so that’s not an option as I’d just suicide my offense into the stack.
Tribe: Oh, well, uh, none of us made any defense either, so we don’t really have any other solutions. Sorry.



I’m not saying that your entire village should be defense, I am however saying that you should make roughly 500 spears and 500 swords in your first village. This is enough to help with sniping if necessary, and it also enough to stack together with tribemates to take out pesky attackers. Defending at the early stages is not a solo endeavor. You should be aiming to defend as a team and split the rebuild times between multiple people.

To some people that might seem like so much defense that they will cripple their offense and be unable to noble a player as their first target. This is not accurate. I am currently playing a world where I have 2,466 points. I currently have 73 scouts, 1,272 light cavalry, 213 rams, 500 spears, 500 swords, and 1,811 axes. Could I have more axes if I’d skipped making the spears and swords? Sure. Do I need the extra axes? No. I’ll still have plenty of axes when I reach a full noble train.

So, you have constant stable and barracks production. Now what?

Mines. There’s no set order to build your mines in, but you will probably want iron higher than the rest due to how much iron both lc and hc cost. HC aren’t a particularly great unit, but I you’re making your first village defense then you will want to make them when you are able to. Even if going defensive first village you should make lc nonstop until you are able to make HC.

Build mines and nothing but mines until you can afford to have constant building queues. Again, buildings are your third priority, you only build them with resources leftover after a constant stable and barracks queue is assured. The only exception to mines is that you will need to raise warehouse and farm occasionally. You build those when you need them. When that is will vary person to person. If you are playing solo and your warehouse is overflowing overnight when you sleep then your warehouse is too low – raise it.

As far as buildings, I’d advise raising your mines as high as needed to run constant queues alongside farming. There are no set levels to recommend. Once that is obtained raise HQ to level 20. Higher level HQ levels allow buildings to build faster, this accelerates the rest of your village, and indirectly impacts your troop production as well by increasing the speed at which you can build barracks and stable levels.

Be careful not to raise your barracks or stable too high. This might seem counter-intuitive. You want more troops, right? Therefore you need a higher level barracks and stable? Not necessarily. There’s two major caveats.

It only matters how many troops you do make. How many you could make is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if a level 25 barracks makes troops faster than a level 20 barracks does if the level 25 barracks isn’t being ran 24/7. We’re dealing in actual results, not hypothetical ones. If you can’t afford a constant queue after raising your barracks or stable you shouldn’t be raising it. Even if you can afford a constant queue, you still shouldn’t necessarily be raising it. The goal is to have more troops on your account. That doesn’t necessarily mean having more troops in your initial village. Noble rushing is a very underrated strategy.

A level 25 barracks makes troops twice as quickly as a level 13 barracks does. A level 20 stable makes troops twice as quickly as a level 8 stable does.

I typically begin rushing for nobles with a level 15 barracks and a level 10 stables. Someone with a level 25 barracks and level 20 stables will make troops 79% faster than me. This doesn’t mean they will have 79% more troops than me though, because until they exceed my targeted levels they won’t necessarily be making troops faster than me at all, and even once they do they won’t be making them 79% faster till they reach 25/20. The problem is that by the time they have reached 25/20 I will have numerous villages, most likely at least 3 villages, quite possibly as many as 5 or 6.

A level 15 barracks and a level 11 barracks will outproduce a level 25 barracks. The noble rush path especially gains on the full nuke before nobling alternative once the person going for the full nuke reaches a full nuke. When they hit the population cap on their first village the other person who is still building troops in their initial village will have already had more troops than them on an account-level, but they will pull much farther away from here on out.

Many people believe that the merits of noble rushing depend on your area – they don’t. In any area noble rushing is good.

Lets say you have a very fast growing neighbor near you. It’s optimal to beat them to academy and noble them before they can get a second village. This helps remove a threat from your area, and most likely a farmer from your area, resulting in more future income for you.

Now, instead lets say your area is terrible, and there are no good noble target available to you. If you’ve managed to grow to 4,000 points and obtained a noble train by the time your neighbors have reached 1,000 points, do you think it’s in your best interest to sit around and wait for them to grow their villages to a larger size? No. Absolutely not. Bad noble targets are always bad noble targets. They are in fact going to become worse noble targets as time goes by. It is better to noble them as soon as possible, because the sooner you noble them the sooner you can begin growing their village at a more acceptable rate, and also the sooner you can begin creating troops in it.

It’s better to noble a 1,000 point village and grow it to 4,000 points and make 10,000 troops in it over the next two weeks than it is to noble a 2,000 or 2,500 point village two weeks later.
 
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DeletedUser6833

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Up to what level of wall in barbarian villages can you send 2sp/2sw or 4sp/4sw that you recommend as farming unit for defensive villages? in a simulation a level 1 wall kills them
 

Nauzhror

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Those attacks only work vs. wall-less barbs. I scout all yellow/red reports, and then immediately ram the walls down before resending to that particular barb again.

If you want to ignore level 1 walls, I'd only farm with lc.

You need 2 lc to survive level 1 walls on some worlds, 4 on others, walls seem to have been buffed sometime around a year ago without being announced.
 
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DeletedUser6833

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why is it different whether there are archers or not in a barb village? are walls different?
 

Nauzhror

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why is it different whether there are archers or not in a barb village? are walls different?

The entire formula used for all combat is different. In non-archer worlds all troops die in equal ratios, in archer worlds that is not true.
 

DeletedUser6833

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The entire formula used for all combat is different. In non-archer worlds all troops die in equal ratios, in archer worlds that is not true.
thank you very much. as you can tell from my questions I lack a decent amount of knowledge on game mechanics. Is it possible for you to provide a link where I can read up on it? Preferably one that works for worlds with the new paladin system.

Also why are HC considered bad by many players? I know they are expensive and weaker than equal pop infantry but they are faster to build. So a 10k/10k sw/sp or sw/archer is stronger than 8k/2k sp/hc but the latter is faster to recruit and can withstand most nukes except a 19500 axe 230 ram attack

Most guides I find are at least 4-8 years old
 

Nauzhror

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HC are considered bad specifically because they cost more, and are weaker.

You build offense to use it up quickly, kill it off, and rebuild it. Defense on the other hand is often built and then not immediately used, which makes build-time less important than with offense. I still think HC are important at the early stages when you may be lacking defense, but once you have lots of defense villages and aren't in desperate need of more immediate defense then the usefulness of HC rapidly declines.

I'm not aware of any guide or post that outlines the differences between archer and non-archer worlds, but if you have any specific questions regarding anything TW related feel free to message me ingame, or on skype/discord.
 

DeletedUser6833

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I am on Greek servers so I can't pm you ingame. I currently am at 2.1kish points with 22/22/20 mines, and about 800sp/800sw/500archers/10cats only got 1 village, no academy and 17/10 barracks/stables. Should I get my smith 12->15 and get HC ? I have sent most of the units I listed to help defend tribemates. What should my "final" troop arsenal look like so I can have nice balanced defenses for my single village yet be able to assist my tribe? would the aforementioned 8k sp/2k hc be a good build for a first village or should I do it after x number of villages ?
 

Nauzhror

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17 barracks and 10 stable are likely far higher than I'd suggest, simply because they're probably not being ran 24/7? Raising their level when they won't be constant afterwards is just wasting resources. Better to spend that res directly on troops or mines, as those are both direct investments. I wouldn't really aim for any specific # of troops, I'd just keep queues constant and whatever you have when you reach academy is just fine.

I only tried a defensive first village twice, both times I made lc as per usual alongside spears and swords at the early stages, and then rushed for hc and began making hc instead of lc once I was able to.

HC are something I'd typically make in my first 10-15 or so defense villages. Past that I should have enough "fast" defense to focus on building stronger defense, at least when not in largescale wars.
 

DeletedUser6833

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I alternated between troop training and building upgrade since my income is only mine production. So if I understood right HC is actually good/decent because speed is more useable both in train time and deployment as defenses until I get a cluster of safe defensive villages that can afford having the slower to train yet stronger defensive armies? Safe I mean villages located practically so far away that they are unreachable by enemies until they are ready to assist others or defend themselves?

Also with the new paladin skills are archers weaker or stronger considering cost compared to spears? My paladin has 15% increased sword and spear defense atm
 

Nauzhror

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I alternated between troop training and building upgrade since my income is only mine production. So if I understood right HC is actually good/decent because speed is more useable both in train time and deployment as defenses until I get a cluster of safe defensive villages that can afford having the slower to train yet stronger defensive armies? Safe I mean villages located practically so far away that they are unreachable by enemies until they are ready to assist others or defend themselves?


Yeah, keep barracks and stable levels low enough that you can make troops 24/7. There's no benefit to having your barracks and stable higher level and running a smaller portion of the day, tat doesn't actually result in you having any more troops.

And yeah, HC are good when you are vulnerable, and in need of immediate defense, less good when you are not vulnerable.
 

DeletedUser6833

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Final question what would be a good amount of troops and level of mines before I even consider upgrading smith to 20 for academy? also cats in defense yay or nay?
 

Nauzhror

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I really don't tend to aim for any set #'s. It's really just all about constant queues. If your queues aren't constant raise mines till they can be.

As a very rough example though, I'm currently playing a world where I just reached academy, I have ~4k points and my farm looks like below:

Current population
Buildings (includes the building queue) 1461
Troops 12697
Troops in production 28
All 14186
 

DeletedUser7087

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Barracks is the second priority – most people are probably going to opt for axes, but this is by no means necessary.

Hi nauz, I have a question.

You talk about how you don't need to go for axes when starting to get a queue on barracks, but wont you miss those axes to rim small players when trying to get more farms?
 

Nauzhror

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I don't clear people pre-nobles. I find active players typically make bad farms. They call militia, they spend res, they dodge troops till they can kill farming parties, etc.

I just stick to barbs and inactives mostly, but I also use tribalwarsmap.com to monitor the ODD of my neighbors so that when someone near me clears a farm I can swoop in and steal the res from them.
 

DeletedUser7601

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Would you recommend following the in-game quests in the beginning? Since these seem to build the necessary base troops / buildings + give you a fair amount of resources.

Also, does this mean you noble your first target with one nobleman going back and forth?
Doesn't this bring the risk that someone else nobles that village?

Great guide!
 
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