If you ever want to know if someone is online before attacking just try whispering. If they are offline it says message was not sent, they may be offline. If they are online it goes through. So just send a simple message you don’t mind if they get or not. Also, if you put a space in your name you can’t be whispered too and you can’t whisper to people with spaces. For instance, no one can whisper me because my name is El Oso Blanco but if my name was El_Oso_Blanco they could whisper me because there are no spaces.

This question is hard to answer. Some players want to train enough troops before they un-hide their troops; other players open the gate when they have trained one unit. There are several factors that go into making a good decision for yourself. Questions you should ask yourself are; Is my main goal to get as many tks as possible? Do I have resources so valuable that I need to protect them? Can I win the incoming attack? and Could this be a trap?

My first recommendation is to hide when offline; If I’m going to let my troops die I at least I want to see it and be able to make an informed decision. When I am online and there is an incoming attack I will always try to find out what level the attacking hero is, how big the incoming army is and what kind of troops (t1/t2/t3) are in the attack. The watchtower  can gather that information to help you make an informed decision if you see the attack coming. Depending on that information you can decide to:

–          Hide to avoid risk of being zeroed by superior force. Resources over the vault/strong box level and all your gold will be stolen but you will not lose your troops. In this situation try to transport goods to a second city or other alliance members to avoid the plundering.

–          Hide your troops because the attack is not worth taking the risk of un-hiding your troops. Situations where there is a possibility that a follow-up attack may quickly come with a bigger army, especially with the use of speed ups, you may want to do as above and transport excess goods.

–          Un-hide your troops because you feel confident and want kill the incoming army. Just remember to assign your hero to training in your great hall.

–          Un-hide your troops because you want to at defend your city no matter the outcome because you know you city hold goods valuable enough to defend to the last man. Such as an alliance bank.

If there is a battle you can not win on your own but you want to send a message to incoming attacker remember to ask other alliance members to send reinforcement armies. Your city can then be defended by your troops AND the reinforced armies. The higher the level of your embassy, the more reinforcement armies you can support. Remember reinforcement armies can’t be hidden so two things you should do when receiving reinforcements (reins) is first: un-hide your own troops (the one for all and all for one concept) and second, assign your highest level hero to assist  not only your troops but the reinforced armies. When sending reinforcement armies, send your lowest hero available because they are of no use in the defense of the city you are reinforcing. Also, the reinforcement armies you send should contain as much t2/t3 troops as possible to provide extra bang for the slots allowed when reinforcing as t1 troops are weak when used as reinforcements. Hope this helps, happy hunting.

Training troops quickly becomes an important part of the game. There are two ways for you to enjoy this game, growing might or killing others. Either way you need to train troops quickly.

Tier 1 troops produce 4 might and requires 4 food units per hour upkeep.  These troops are the quickest to train, easiest killed,  and most expensive to upkeep per unit of might. These troops are for soaking up damage. Use these troops to dismantle wall before sending in bigger troops and send along with t2 and t3 units when attacking other troops so that all your casualties are t1 troops. T1 troops develop faster and actually add might faster than t2 or t3 troops on a might added per hour training basis.

Tier 2 troops have the best might to upkeep ratio. Therefore a greater total might can be achieved by building an army of t2 units without as high of upkeep. This is important if you only have one city and don’t want to run as negative in your food production while optimizing your might. They require substantially more time to train though.  Because the training time is so steep, you will want to protect these units with at least a 1 to 1 number of corresponding t1 units in battle. T2 troops are the “all arounders”, they can defend a city pretty well and do a good job during attacks.

Tier 3 units are very expensive and take more than twice as long to train as t2 units, using might as a metric. But they are ass kickers in battle and move fast! By the time you unlock these units, you probably rely almost solely on farming lower lvl players to sustain your growth. These units move 50% faster than t2 units, allowing you to farm a greater range without as high chance of being noticed. T3 troops are my supporting troops; they join t1/t2 troops during attacks to give the last kick to an enemy but I do not want to sacrifice them lightly.  They are great when used to defend your city or can be sent in as reinforcement troops. Dont build these troops if you are trying to be a high might player but build them when you want to hurt other players.

Wall units are mostly useless, but only mostly.

First off, large quantities of wall units will attract bigger players looking for tks (total kills). I personally love to look for wall because I can kill millions in might and only sacrifice a few t1′s. However, a  little amount of wall is useful to stop porters, carts and wagons from easily farming your city/cities. So its alright to vent excess resources into a wall  after every other method of spending those resources has been exhausted. You can store resources beyond what you can protect by queueing wall units and canceling the build. Also, you can cancel production of a wall unit to temporarily boost your population, even beyond the population limit, and increase the number of troops you can queue. I like to build small walls to attract attacks when I feel like fighting as well.

My main point is don’t count on walls for protection. Be smart and happy hunting.

In your research hall heroes can be assigned to either Training, Research, Production or Construction. You only need to have one or two heroes assigned at all times to maximize your efforts and avoid paying the cost of heroes in gold. When you are about to do research or build something put hero on Research or Construction and then select the building or research you want to do. This helps speed up completion times. However, the hero does not need to remain. Once the objective is started remove hero from research and construction and don’t put back until something new is needed to be done. Do the same if needing to train troops and you will want to leave hero on Training to help defend against incoming attacks with troops unhidden.  

Go and register at tapjoy.com and download apps to get free mithril. I don’t pay to play this game but I was able to download enough apps to get  a 212 or three. It takes a long time to acquire that much mithril but it beats paying for it.

I thought everyone knew this but apparently some people did not. To get an extra gollum token everyday click on the share button on the bottom bar. Then click on email. Cancel the email and save as a draft. Do this ten times or so and you get a free gollum token everyday.

Players that have bubbles or that have used protection runes may still be attacked under certain conditions. When inactive players don’t go into their account their protection lingers on if you try to attack from your map screen. This can be sidestepped however if you attack from your muster field. Go into your muster field, type in the coordinates you want to attack, and go for it. If their protection is still valid you will not be allowed to attack but if their protection had ended since last login you will be. You can use this flaw to your own benefit as well. Say before bed you need to use a protection rune, well you could use a 2 hour protection ruin for an entire night if you are not logged in. No need in wasting a 12 hour ruin when you can get by on 2 hour ruin. Hope this helps.