Knighthood/Tactics

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Contents 1 Defensive Tactics 2 Scouting Tactics 2.1 Reading the Attack Screen 2.2 Raiding 2.3 Reading the Lordview 3 Offensive Tactics 4 Rescuing

[edit] Defensive Tactics

• You don't have to do anything special to keep your vassals safe until you build a Garrison. You cannot be attacked in any way until that moment. However you will need to build the garrison anyway if you want to start upgrading buildings as it is a requirement for the workshop, so it has to be done sooner or later. Just keep in mind that before you build your garrison, it is recommended that you expand all your defensive buildings at least twice (better if three times - size 5).

• After going to war, ALWAYS keep all of your vassals in regions which are protected by defensive buildings with a bigger size than your Army Size (2 sizes more preferred), and with the maximum possible number of vassals in them. Players can only attack other players with similar attacking and overall power, so make sure that you yourself would be unable to seize a vassal from you without a huge effort and an overwhelming number of attacks.

• You may not have enough vassals to fill all your defensive buildings. If that is the case, you can leave entire regions fully empty (that is, no vassal in any of the buildings of the region, including the defensive building). The drawbacks of leaving regions empty is that attacks against them always succeed and it will be easier to guess where vassals are for seize or rescue attempts. However they will not be able to seize vassals from there, because there are none. They will only steal money (which you can steal back later from someone else), or if you are sovereign, they can conquer you more easily (which is no drama, because it doesn't really affect your game play).

• If you have really few vassals, consider keeping them all in only one region, the one of the castle (if you are building or expanding something) or the one of the workshop (if you are upgrading something instead), and then do not build and upgrade at the same time. Use gold from raids and selling seized vassals (always keeping enough to attack and defend) to buy construction and upgrades and only man the castle or workshop with one P10 or even a P5.

• For those of you who like exact numbers, the 2 lvls higher defense than Army Size still might not do it. Try to keep your defense 2 times your TAS (2xTAS) this will keep you reasonably safe at the lower levels of play. Never let your defense in an area where you have important vassels fall below 1.3X your TAS or you might as well just not even have defenses. 1.5xTAS is acceptable at lower levels of play, but always try for 2xTAS or better.

• Every defense can be broken regardless of how much it is expanded and upgraded. Your main defense is your alarm and to seize more than you lose. At a lower TAS if you have a working outpost, say you babysit it til your alert is 25, if they attack to drop your defense to 0 it will take 20 attacks so now your alert is about 45 so for them to seize a 20 will require a TAS of minimum 85 (or they have to wait for the mobilization to drop) so they will need to use churched vassals to succeed. If they succeed your alert will jump by another 40 points so the chances of losing a second vassal are next to nil. So the main thing to remember is if you are going to drop your alert then seize 3+ vassals and you will gain more than you will lose. Don't drop your alert just to retaliate against someone who is attacking you.

• For those trying to keep vassals they just seized, it might be an idea to utilize the tower to defend against rescues, or the guardhouse (if you have garrison 5) to help defend against rebellions, and to put the blockhouse also defending those vassals in dispute.

• If you steal folks that are less powerful than (or equal too) the weakest of your attack force, you won't rise in the attack brackets, your progress slow and steady. Don't bother with the squires/handmaidens, though, they'll disappear after a 14 days (for those of you that didn't notice this message in a previous portion of this article, go back now). Fill your defenses with 20s, then with 30s, then 40s.. don't be in a rush to increase your army strength before your defenses and some other buildings are full.

• If you have weapons, and you should get them as soon as possible, distribute them in as balanced a way as possible amongst your defenders in each column.. admittedly, this is far easier if you have say 6 P20s in a defense (2 with axes, 2 with swords, 2 with pikes) than if your size 7 defense is filled with P30 P25 P22 P20 P20 P20 P10 but do what you can. An attacker can take advantage of any imbalances.

[edit] Scouting Tactics

Keep an eye out on your attack screen for players who obviously have not checked the game for a few days, so in other words they will for instance be a Baron with 40 power and only a few vassals and a high defensive alertness. It is obvious in this example that they should have a) plenty of gold sitting there, and b) their defenses will be weaker because they have lost a lot of squires / handmaidens. If they have not checked it in a few days, they might not again, so get in early for their gold and vassals.

• Target players with the most vassals relative to Power.. if a player has all P10s and only one or two good vassals, they are easy pickings but they may not have a vassal you can use. Large gaps in power between top and mid-power vassals point to weak defenses, so does having a ton of P10s.

• If you're very new, don't target highly aggressive players until you are one. If the player has lots of activity in her logs, many timered vassals from seizing, and - possibly - many recent messages from different people on her wall, she may be a tougher target than less active players. For an aggressive, active player with good defenses, these people may be their preferred targets since a timered vassal is preferable to seize.

• If you see an active higher titled player in your bracket, and you see that they dumped a bunch of high titled vassals into a trapper all within a few minutes, or someone has gifted them a high titled vassal and they havent accepted yet, do not attack that person, he is surfing below his natural power, which doesn't in itself make him dangerous, but if you attack he can accept the gift vassal or pay 1 gold ransoms on the trappered vassals and use their higher power to attack you back. This only works if you've attacked him first so he gets the pink target lock on you. Not all higher titled players are dangerous, you have to read the logs.

[edit] Reading the Attack Screen

Opponents in your attack screen have a similar TAS score and similar power levels to you. Knighthood so far has not explained how these opponents are selected. The attack brackets now vary in size, so you may have only one opponent or even 100 opponents. Variation in TAS may exist in the attack screen, but these differences are minimal at lower (knight and baron) brackets, becoming much more marked at higher brackets.

Title: Title indicates a player's base power (BP.) For each title, BP goes up by 10 points. Knights/Ladies have BP of 20, Baron/esses have BP of 30, and so on. Know the prerequisites for title. Title is permanent, so anyone with a title above their current power suggests that this individual has gotten large assistance in past battles, and therefore might muster larger forces than they currently have if you steal the wrong vassal.

Power: The power indicates the opponent's total power. By subtracting BP from power, and multiplying that number by ten, you will know the total power of vassals your opponent possesses, and you can then guess at how much of that could fit in any one defensive structure.

Vassals: By dividing the total power of vassals by the number of vassals, you can determine the average power per vassal of your opponent, which should suggest how well defended their walls are, and whether they are likely to have any vassals that can be easily stolen.

Average power per vassal equal to 10 indicates an opponent full of squirrels. Average power of about 20 usually indicates at least one high ranking opponent, and a few knights or ladies. Higher scores suggests vassals who have been somewhat active in the game at one point, generally within the last week.

Alarm: 1 point is added to alarm after each attack against someone (this is called the Mobilization Alarm, and will decrease at the rate of 1 per minute). After each stolen vassal, Alarm is increased by 2x the stolen vassal's max health. Outposts can increase alarm until they attack, make a movement of vassals, and reset alert to 0. The area defense of an area is augmented by its own soldier's HP + (HP*Alarm bonus) [HP=Health Points] when defending against attempts to steal a vassal. Alarm scores that increase usually mean that an opponent is being attacked by someone else. If the alarm jumps by 20+, a vassal was stolen, and you may want to act quickly to try for one yourself. If your TAS is 60 you can never be successful in seizing a vassal at power 40 UNLESS the defenses are completely worn down, and your final attack uses vassals with zeal points (Churched).

Sovereign: A sovereign opponent will have the "conquer" button appear as an option when you click on their box for attacking.

[edit] Raiding

Raiding is a bit easier than capturing. To raid, your forces must have exceeded that of the enemy forces, so this can suggest the maximum defense located in a particular area. Raiding also suggests the total amount of gold in the enemy's treasury. Most sources suggest that each raid will net somewhere between 8-13% of their total gold. Multiple raids over time may allow you to estimate the power of vassals within the marketplace, and thereby the power of vassals that should be within the palisades to defend them. Many players may like defenses that are approximately equal, at least between the wall and palisades, so this is valuable information, although as guesswork, it is not so reliable.

[edit] Reading the Lordview

Each player in KH has a lordview page. These pages all begin with http://apps.facebook.com/knighthood/LordView.aspx?lordid= followed by the user's unique nine or more digit facebook ID# (You can see this by clicking on your profile page in FB) With a little cut and paste you can therefore see either the lordview, or the facebook profile, assuming their privacy settings allow this.

Recent Activity: The recent activity will show about the last three things that happened. That much is useless. Click show all. The Activity log is a goldmine of information regarding the user's recruitment, promotion of vassals, theft of vassals, reconquest of vassals, changes in allegiance, etc.

Trappers: Trapper activity in the activity log proves the existence of a trapper, and thus a level five garrison, and level five guardhouse. Attack with extreme caution, or avoid completely. Lots of releasing and pledging allegiance suggests alliance-like behavior, so be prepared to have serious reprisals if you take the wrong vassal. If the opponent rebels often, you can guess their liege will not do much to help them. A recent capture of the opponent's vassal suggests where defenses may be weakest. Try to attack there. A recently captured vassal will not be loyal to your opponent, and the loyalty period will be shorter once you capture them anyway. If the opponent's recent activities include weeks of vassals stolen from them with nothing happening in response, they have probably stopped playing, and you can do whatever you want with them. Raid them for money, steal everyone you can from their wall and tower, see if you can get their big players, or conquer them outright. You can also go to the first page to see when they started recruiting, and how long after that before they got into combat. This allows a good estimate of their defense size, and whether or not they read the help files.

Vassals: You know your army size and TAS. (Your TAS is now displayed on the Capital screen stats as 'Army strength') You also know that your opponent must have a "similar" TAS. Just what that means is somewhat uncertain. Most assume it is within a few points of your own, but up to 20% difference in higher brackets.

(Note: Army strength assumes vassals to be loyal, even if they are not yet so may not be a true reflection of your TAS if you have seized a high level vassal - i.e. one that was greater power than your current attackers at the time.)

[edit] Offensive Tactics

Squires: Bearing in mind that Squires and Handmaidens disappear after 14 days, do not bother attacking and trying to seize them. The best result would be to have a rather useless person who will disappear after a few days. Now with that in mind, usually your court will have a few squires or handmaidens. So if no-one (apart from a newbie) is going to attack here for a vassal, defense on your watchtowers is not that important. The only thing you are likely to lose here initially is a bit of gold. So not that important.

• Raid or pillage to wear down defenses in one area before trying to seize. Raid all three areas, then, if you just want gold, keep raiding wherever you get it, if you want a vassal, raid the strongest defense area.

• Alarm adds to defense, at lowest brackets you want to target people with an alarm of 0 but at higher brackets people start manning their outposts and you may want to target alarms that are greater than 0 but less than your TAS minus double the power of the vassal you want to seize.

• Always include a squire as the weakest attacker, trappers have become common and it's better to lose a P10 to a trapper than to lose your third or fourth best vassal. If you lose a vassal to a trapper either stop attacking or learn to squirrel bomb.

• Squirrel bombing, or trapper bombing, is done by deliberately losing 3 or 4 squires/handmaidens (P10s, squirrels) in the defender's trappers then performing rescue attempts, up to 8 per squire (saving 2 til the end) on the watchtower until a rescue succeeds then rescuing all the squires and any higher powered vassals. Save the higher powered vassals for last, once the Watchtower is worn down. This tactic doesn't work well if the defender is online releasing your trappered squirrels, moving your good vassals, and healing. There are some variations on this technique.

• While a good even balance of weapons is best for defense, after wearing down a defender with a few attacks, one weapon should be more of an advantage than the other two. If you think a seize should work but it isn't, try arming all your attackers with one weapon and seizing, if that fails try another weapon.. the weapon that gives you the lowest healing costs is the best weapon for the job. Healing costs at knight levels should remain constant, about 30 gold (1 point of health per attacker), but above Power 60 or so there may be some variation.

By that same token, those who choose the dark side and don't defend their vassals properly, well they are asking for it. If your defenses are strong you can attack with relative impunity.

[edit] Rescuing

First, do nothing. You get an alarm bonus of 2 x the power of the vassal seized, so consider if you really want to lose that protection while the attacker is online.. if you are inexperienced, weak, out of gold, you may lose another vassal, so just let your alarm defend you while you plan your course of action.

Best way to rescue is to match attack brackets with the captor, spam his defenses down with raids, then rescue once raids are succeeding. You only get 10 tries or 3 days, whichever comes first, so don't waste rescues futilely. Rescues ignore alarm, so attacking while their alarm is high isn't a bad strategy, maybe they're offline.

If matching brackets isn't practical, go for negotiations. Talk to the captor, offer a ransom or, if the seized vassal is a friend, ask if you might exchange another vassal of similar power for your friend. Negotiations work better before rescue attempts are exhausted, usually 2 or 3 attempts may be overlooked, but if you've used up all 10 you have no bargaining power.

If your vassal is active and willing to help, get him to rebel! If possible, coordinate your rescue attack/s with the vassal who is trying to escape at the same time through the same set of defenses (so choose either the wall, palisade or watchtowers). This way unless the new liege is online you can lower the defenses of that area quickly, and you will not use so much of your own gold / time in the attempt.

Continuing on with the rescuing vassals issue, whereby you have both 3 days and only 10 attempts to rescue your vassals it becomes much more important to plan before doing anything. First of all, if you are out there seizing anyone and everything you are going to need to make certain your defenses are good. This will make alliances more popular, and more necessary at higher levels. Having friends who swear loyalty so you can rescue people has become commonplace. With the introduction of Beta 3 those who swear loyalty cannot be released for 24 hours so it is therefore essential to get those defenses in order as you will be 'stuck' with the would be rescuer until they can be released. Also I would suggest not attacking just before you log off for the night, that way if they are online at the time you can do something about it (and yes that was more important before when they could spam attack to get vassals back).

Now concerning those of you who need to rescue vassals (firstly get your defenses in order), you will need to plan and co-ordinate your rescue attempts. There is no restriction on the number of times that a vassal can attempt to rebel. Use this to your advantage. Get the vassal in dispute to spam attack (I can't believe I just said that) one area of the defenses. Send them money if you have to so they can be wearing down the defenses. Get other friends involved to swear allegiance to you to raise your attack power (watch your defenses when you do this because it might put you up attack brackets into dangerous territory) and when you think you should be able to, go for the rescue. Note that while Alarm generated by Outpost doesn't affect rescues or rebellion, Mobilization Level works against rebellion but not against rescue.