Knighthood Tutorials

As a new player, DO NOT go to war with a few good power 20 vassals and dozens of squirrels. If you do, your good vassals will be stolen from you and you could very well be put out of the game. Squirrels are useless in attack or defence in war mode apart from testing for trappers and trapper bombing so you only need half a dozen of them. Aim to go to war between power 40 to power 60 if possible, no higher, where you will be among other new players and where you will be have a chance to learn the game. If you have a lot of squirrels, don't worry unduly about releasing them as you can recruit them again anytime.

At most, for your first time in war mode, try to limit the number of Knights and Ladies in your kingdom to say 15, with no more than half a dozen squires and handmaidens. That would give you a power of between 50 and 60 and would mean you could staff your Wall, Watchtower and Palisade with 7 vassals each. However, to go any higher would only launch you in among more experienced players and you probably wouldn't enjoy seeing your vassals being stolen from you while you try to get to grips with the game.

Another idea might be to go to war with ONLY 10 power squires and handmaidens and a couple of Raider Freemen. That way you can get to grips with the mechanics of the game without worrying too much about losing good knights and ladies. If one of your squirrels installs the game and becomes a knight or lady, you can gift them to a friend for safe keeping. The only way you can lose good vassals this way is if someone seizes a squire or handmaiden from you and then the squire or handmaiden installs the game while with the other player.

To go to war go to your Garrison and click on - Gather your Armies. To get back to peace mode, simply go to your Garrison and click on - Disband your Armies. If you're kicked out into war mode unprepared, Disband your Armies in your Garrison and head back to peace mode (see important note above).

Arm your vassals with weapons. You can do this by going to your Attack screen, your Garrison, or by clicking the Arm these Vassals button that appears on each building's main page. Don't go to war without all three weapon shops and the ability to arm your vassals with weapons.

To find out if anyone you plan to attack has weapons, pillage their defences. You will find Axes in the Watchtower, Swords in the Wall and Pikes in the Palisade. If they have no weapons and you do, you now know you have a major advantage over your opponent.

Don’t have all your vassals spread all over your kingdom. If you only have a few vassals, keep them in your strongest column as this will reduce the chances of them being seized. Perhaps the best column is your Wall, as that is where your Tower is, so everything in the middle column would be the strongest defence to protect your vassals. If there are no vassals anywhere in a defensive column, no vassals can be siezed from that column. So stock your Wall with your best vassals and then your Tower. As you seize vassals, continue to man your Wall and Tower until they are both full of good vassals.

If you seize a vassal it will go to your Court. Ensure you move them out of there quickly as they are easy to rescue and seize from there. If you have a Tower, this is the best place for them as the Tower makes it more difficult for their Liege to rescue them and they will also help to protect your gold.

If you have a Blockhouse (again in your Wall defensive column), you can assign vassals to protect your best vassals, making it much harder to seize them.

Try not to go to war with lots of gold as this can be stolen from you. You will need a reasonable amount, say 5000 to 8000 gold. If you loot too much or sell someone in the market or otherwise find yourself with too much, send the surplus to someone you can trust who is in peace mode who will return it to you when you next return to peace mode. Try to go to war with a war mode liege who is in war mode. That way they can supply you with gold as and when you need it. Skype can be invaluable in this regards.

If someone has a trapper, try to avoid attacking them until you understand how they work. If you're not sure if someone has a trapper, attack with a 10 power squirrel as your lowest attacker as Trappers only trap your lowest power attacker. If you successfully raid or attempt a seize a couple of times using a squirrel, you can then replace him with a higher power Knight. Remember though, that if your opponent is online while you're attacking they could suddenly man their trapper without warning and capture a good vassal. You can usually tell if someone has a trapper by reading through their activity log before attacking them.

Once you have your Wall, Watchtower, Palisade, Trapper and Tower fully manned with good vassals, you will be much more in control of things.

To get back to peace mode, click on your Garrison and click Disband your Armies. This takes 12 hours (or 6 hours if you have a Messenger Freeman, available to buy with credits and sometimes available to buy with gold in the market) so check your seized vassals and don't disband if their timers are over 12 hours otherwise their former Lieges will be able to reclaim them with a simple click of a button.

You can't send gifts of vassals, gold or weapons to anyone in war mode from an account in peace mode, so make sure you have all you need before Gathering your Armies. Better still, have a war mode liege who knows how to play the game and who will be there to help. Peace mode lieges make awful lieges if you want to learn war in Knighthood.

Study your opponents before attacking them. If one opponent only has 2 or 3 Knights and Ladies and a host of squirrels as opposed to 20 or 30 Knight and Ladies, you will find it much easier to seize a vassal from them.

TAS and Defence

TAS (Total Attack Strength, Theoretical Attack Strength or your Total Army Strength) is involved and intricate in higher levels of play but for beginners here is all you really need to know. If you are under power 60 your TAS is the value of your three top vassals added together. If you're over power 60 it's your four top vassals added together. So if you are under power 60 and your top three vassals are power 20 vassals, your TAS is 60. Fine, but what about defence? For a defence to be effective it MUST be AT LEAST 1.5 times your TAS. Aim for 1.5 or higher. Your TAS, or army strength can be seen in the Stats column of your Capital page. On the same page you will be able to see your defence strength listed in each defence building.

In this example, the army strength, or TAS, is 92, which is the value of the four top vassals of this player. Knights have 3 attackers, Barons (over power 60) have 4 and Viscounts (over power 150) get 5. In this example, each defence is size 6 level 4. To arrive at the defence value you add together all the vassals in that defence structure and to that add 5% for each upgrade, in this case 20% because each defence has been upgraded to level 4. There are six power 20 vassals in the Palisade, so that's 120. To that you add 20% (5% for each level upgrade) which is 24. The defence therefore is 120 + 24 = 144. Now take your calculator and if you multiply 92 x 1.5 you will find that this particular defence is just over 1.5 times the TAS, which is fine at this level of play. Obviously, the further a defence is expanded and the more vassals you can get into it, the better.

But what if you only have 4 Knights and Ladies? What then? Obviously, you can't defend all three columns with only 4 power 20 vassals! Put all 4 in one column, preferably the Wall, along with your steward if you have one, and then put the rest of your squirrels into your Tower. Your Tower protects some gold, so you can ride out an attack without losing all your gold simply by having the centre column stacked with vassals. I've seen attackers Raiding for 0 gold when I've had over 3500 gold in my account at this level because of the strength of my Tower.

As you seize more vassals, fill up your Wall and then your Tower. Once they are consolidated you can think about manning other buildings, like your Castle for example so you can continue building or your Hospital so your vassals will heal faster. Once you have enough vassals to man a second defence, get it filled up. I'd recommend the Watchtower to bring your Trapper into play. Then get your Palisade filled up. Once that's done, you will be much more in control of things.

If you Lose Vassals

If you lose a good vassal you can attempt to rescue them by going to your attack screen and clicking on the Rescue Vassals link at the top. Do not attempt to seize vassals to rescue them. Rescuing works differently and alarm isn't a factor during rescues so always rescue from your Rescue Vassals page.

You can attempt up to 10 rescues. When a vassal is seized or trapped it goes to the Court, which is in the Watchtower column, so you would rescue trapped vassals from the Watchtower. If it is a good vassal it will usually be put in someone's Tower, which is in the Wall column. Keep an eye on the messages as you're rescuing. If it says you stormed a defence but didn't find your vassal there, they are not in that defensive column.

If you have used up all your 10 rescues your next step would be to ask for a ransom. Find out if the person is willing to ransom and if so, for how much. Or click on your Vassal and offer a ransom.

If someone has two of your vassals, rescue one of them 9 times and then stop and rescue the second one. That will give you 20 rescue attempts to weaken their defences. If you get the second one rescued, immediately go back and rescue the first one.

If they refuse to ransom or you don't have much gold and your vassal is active, your vassal can go into war mode and rebel and break free from their captor. Once a captor enters peace mode, an active player in war mode can abandon them at any time.

If you go to rescue a vassal and the button reads Reclaim, that means the Captor has gone back into peace mode and you can now simply click the button to have your vassal returned immediately.

Bear in mind that seized vassals have a 3 day timer on them and any rescues will have to be executed before the timer runs out.

Negotiating for seized vassals is part of the game and will make you many new friends. You may be surprised at how easy it can be for seized vassals to be returned if you strike up a friendly conversation and open negotiations.

Weapons

With weapons think stone, paper, scissors. Pikes are better than swords, swords are better than axes and axes are better than pikes.

To be able to build, stock and use weapons you require the following buildings:

Pikes - a size 5 Church.
Swords - a size 5 Tower
Axes - a size 5 Guardhouse

You will need all three weapons shops before going to war or you will be at a serious disadvantage. Don't worry too much about expanding and upgrading weapon shops at this stage as weapons are easy enough to pillage and Lieges will send you weapons before you go into war mode. You just need the basic weapons shops to be able to use weapons in game.

After attacks against your kingdom, remember to rearm all your vassals. You can do this by going to the Attack screen and selecting Rearm Vassals.

Trappers

There is a lot to trappers and for the beginner they can be a Knightmare so here are a few tips.

A trapper will only trap your lowest attacker so if you're not sure someone has an active trapper, attack with a 10 squirrel. If you lose a squirrel to a trapper it's no big deal. Once the two weeks are up and the squirrel leaves the game you will be able to recruit them again anyway.

When selecting a target to attack, check their activity log to see if they have an active trapper that's working. If they do, it usually shows up in their log. If you're still not sure, again, for your first few raids use a squirrel to be on the safe side. If the squirrel doesn't get trapped and your raids are successful, try for a seize once with a squirrel as your weakest attacker and if it doesn't get trapped go for the seize at full strength.

A better idea could be to use a Man at Arms freeman, which you hire for credits or buy for gold from the market. This 15 power freeman gives you an attack force of 35 and comes with 20 rescue attempts built in. This makes it ideal for dealing with trappers. If you don't have a Man at Arms, use a squirrel in your attack line up.

You can often defeat trappers by 'bombing' them with squirrels. If you lose a squirrel to a trapper you can try a rescue 8 times, which weakens the Watchtower defence. Then raid again using another squirrel. If it gets trapped, do another rescue 8 times and then raid again. If a squirrel doesn't get trapped this time and a raid is successful, try a seize using a squirrel. If it gets trapped, rescue it, which should be successful this time, and then rescue your other squirrels, wait 10 minutes and then try raid again to make sure the defence is still down and then attempt a seize. You may drop out of their AB (attack bracket) and if this happens you might have to be patient until the Knighthood application levels things out and you're back in the same AB again.

Folks sometimes leave trappers unmanned and then suddenly fill them up when they are attacked so be wary if your target in online.

It is not a good idea to leave your trapper manned while you're not playing the game as it leaves you open to all sorts of problems from surfing expert players. Never leave your trapper manned if you're not around, regardless of how much alarm you have.

If someone bombs you while you're on line and you see a squirrel get trapped, release the squirrel immediately so they can't rescue it.

Trappers don't work when you are rescuing so always rescue at full strength.

Alarm

Alarm is quite involved but to simplify it so you can get started Alarm is basically added to a person's defence rating. However, if all their defences are down to 0, all they will have is their Alarm as defence.

If someone's defences are strong and they have a high alarm, it might be better to look elsewhere to seize vassals.

If your Alarm is higher than your TAS (total attack strength), no one should be able to seize vassals from you at this level of play (this isn't so at higher levels of play where you will require at least 2 times your TAS to be relatively safe).

Vassals in your Outpost add considerably to your Alarm.

When you attack your Alarm is reset to 0.

Before quitting for the day, place some good vassals in the Outpost for a while to get your Alarm up.