Knighthood Getting Started
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[edit] Knighthood Getting Started
(based on a post by Stephanie Weiss to the Knighthood Discussion Group, then updated by Julie Loya)
[edit] Welcome
Welcome to Knighthood! Here is my 'tutorial' which I hope will help you with some basic strategy.
When you start the game you are given two serfs. These are Non-Playing Characters (also referred to as NPCs). They are a gift to you from the developers of the game. You cannot delete them, sell them, or gift them. When you go to war mode, they are not able to be seized from you; and you cannot seize anyone's serfs either.
You are starting the game from the Home tab, this page is also called your Lordview. You'll see 9 tabs at the top of your game screen: Home, Capital, Realm, Attack, Market, Recruit, Settings, Help, and Discuss. .
The Capital tab takes you to an overview of your realm within the game. The drop down list you see when your mouse hovers over the tab is a list of the buildings you have in your capital; if you click on a specific building you will then be taken to the page with that building's details. The overview is extremely useful. On the right side you will find each building you have (right now, just your court and your castle) along with information about that building (such as how many vassals are there, how many it will hold, it's upgrade level, if any, and its strength or production). The left side contains a quick reference of what your realm looks like.
The Realm tab shows you the rankings of Knighthood. Only players in War Mode (WM) are listed in the realm rankings. The drop down under the realm tab shows Alliances.
The Attack tab will just give you a message that, "You cannot attack anyone! You are currently at peace." for now, it doesn't become useful until you've entered warmode and have been ranked.
In the Market tab drop down, you have five options: "buy credits", "earn credits", "hire mercenaries", "hire freemen", and "buy vassals". Don't worry about credits for now, they offer some advantages but there are other ways to raise gold and you can hire freemen that other players have sold in the vassal market - "buy vassals". You won't be able to hire mercs or buy vassals at the beginning because you need lots of gold do to those. Also, you can only buy one vassal per day.
The Recruit tab is where you want to start. Invite 5 friends to the game. Five and only five. Do not invite or capture more vassals than you can 'use' at any given time. Right now, the only thing you can do is move two vassals from the Court (where they are standing around yapping instead of working) into the Castle, and put them to work. The more power the vassal has, the faster it will build. Your friends that you invite are power 10s (referred to as squirrels on the discussion board) until they install the game. These power 10s are handmaidens and squires and disappear after 2 weeks, then they can be reinvited. If your friends install the game, they become power 20s (knights and ladies) and will remain permanently in the game, even if they immediately uninstall. The serfs are power 5s. So, put 2 power 10s in the castle. If you can't figure out how to do that without explicit instructions then this may not be a good game for you....
In the drop down menu of the Settings tab you see a "notifications" link. If you fill in your email address and select which actions you want to receive an email notification for, and then press "save changes", you will receive an email. Check that email to verify your email address. As an incentive for doing this you will receiving a Steward power 15, another NPC.
Under the Help tab you'll find links to this page, the Knighthood Reference, a FAQ page, the latest release notes, and a page about how to recover from a bad start.
If you click on the Discuss tab, you will be taken to the Knighthood Forum, which was developed by the same people who developed the game (usually referred to as the "DEVs").
[edit] Getting Started
There are only two things you can do in the castle, at this point, 1) EXPAND the castle or 2) BUILD a marketplace. Build the marketplace so you can get moving into the game. If you expand the castle, that means your increase the SIZE of the building. Increasing the size of a building means you can put more vassals into the building.
However, for right now, it is faster to build the marketplace (15 minutes for 2 power 10s) than to expand the castle (and once you have more than one building you can put some of the vassals doing nothing in the court to work). When you build the marketplace, it starts at size 2 (which means you can build 2 vassals in it). Vassals in the marketplace make gold, they make gold based on their power (i.e. 2 powers 10s in the marketplace produce 10 + 10 coins per hour).
Vassals in the castle are worth more for their time; however, building the marketplace is cheap.
Then expand marketplace to size 3: with 3 more vassals you now use 20 hammers/hour (the castle) and make 30 gold/hour (the marketplace). 1 hammer costs 10 gold, so if you spend your gold on the castle, you'll have the equivalent of 23 hammers/hour. Expanding the marketplace to size 3 will take 1 hour and you'll have 30 gold at the end (or if you hurry the construction with your gold you can expand it in around 54 minutes), now expand castle level 3 and hurry the expansion periodically with all of your gold.
Here's the order: for each expansion (3,4,5,6) expand your marketplace before you expand the castle (this method will save you 9 minutes to level 3/3, 11 minutes from 3/3 to 4/4, nearly 54 minutes from 4/4 to 5/5, but it'll take a week to get from 5/5 to 6/6 with squires so you'll probably want to move on before then.) In either order you should definitely spend the 15 minutes to expand your marketplace before you start expanding your castle. The only thing you need gold for at this point is building and helping your friends with donations (so to that extent gold is more useful than build capacity.)
Once you built the marketplace, in your castle you will see new building options, the watchtower, wall, and palisade. These buildings are your defensive buildings. You can build these buildings, or expand the castle or the marketplace.
As you go, invite one more friend each time you have a space available. AT NO TIME fill your court with unused vassals as before you go out to war they are doing nothing, and once you go to war they will be stolen from you and they will be excess power which will cause you problems in the attack brackets. I promise you that's how it will happen. Concentrate rather on persuading your friends to install the app and become Knights and Ladies. (20 power and much more use to you!)
Once you build each of the defensive buildings, you will notice your castle now has the option to build a garrison.
[edit] Garrison
As of the most recent deployment, building the Garrison and having 4 'real' vassals (not including the serfs or the steward) will throw you into WAR. Unless you have prepared carefully for this, you can expect to have all your gold raided away, and probably some of your vassals seized. So don't do that without preparing. If you accidentally build the garrison anyway, you can escape certain peril by having 3 or fewer REAL vassals. Real vassals are real people, i.e. your friends that you invited to the game, or vassals that you have purchased. This means the NPC steward and serfs are not real vassals.
If you are sovereign and wish to participate in battles, it is highly recommended that you swear loyalty to a nice liege who can use you. When you find a liege you wish to swear to, click "swear to (their name)" on their lordview page. That will trigger a notice for them that you wish to swear to them, and they must accept you as a vassal before you are listed as one of their vassals. This is an important thing to wait for, as if your request has not been accepted before you enter WM, you can still be conquered until it is accepted.
If you have 4 or more vassals, and build the garrison, you will be ranked. Ranked mean you can attack and be attacked (it takes 10-15 minutes to get a ranking after your gather your armies). But it takes 24 hours to completely disband your armies and return to peace mode. So if you go this course, and some have, your next recruiting needs to be at least enough to fill each defensive position immediately, and you can only invite 8 friends per day -- a Facebook limitation -- unless some of your friends install the application.
Before going to war mode (gathering your armies), you should have at least one defensive building expanded to SIZE 5 or larger (if you have at least 3 friends that installed that application, and/or are actually playing -- i.e. 3 20s or 3 20+s). You can get away with smaller sizes (size 4+ defenses) if you have only power 10s.
- NOTE: Your garrison, during war mode, is where extra vassals-in-training are held for your defensive buildings. So if you have a vassal stolen from your watchtower, wall, or palisades, a vassal from the garrison is immediately transferred to the void they left (so your defensive building is still full). Also during war mode your garrison protects a certain portion of weapons, from raiding.
[edit] The Workshop and Upgrades
Once you've built the garrison, you will be able to build a hospital (useful for healing your vassals when you are in war mode) and a workshop (which UPGRADES the buildings with LEVEL increases).
The Workshop makes workers in the upgraded building 5% more efficient with each upgrade.
You can get away with less vassals and expansions if you do LEVEL upgrades too, to make the people in the building more efficient, so that is also recommended.
LEVEL upgrades through the workshop make the building 5% more efficient. So if your wall is a size 4, level 2 (written as 4/2) and you fill the building with power 10s, your defensive strength would be (10+10+10+10)+((10+10+10+10)x(2x0.05)) = (40)+(40x0.1) = 40 + 4 = 44
As an example of how this works, 5 20/20 vassals in the palisades (100 defense strength) with a level 4 upgrade is the same as adding one more whole vassal (20% of your total strength). Without even fighting anybody. Upgrades = free strength. (If you have all 100+ vassals then you should not be reading this tutorial & it's not for you anyway.)
As a knight/lady, you can attack with 3 vassals. Following the only power 10s example, your army strength would be 10+10+10 = 30. As you can see 44 is not greater than or equal to 2x30. For your defensive strength to be greater than or equal to 2x30 (your army strength), you would need a 4/10, or a 5/4, or a 6/0 watchtower, wall, and palisades.
As a knight/lady, if you have only 3 20s and the rest are power 10s, your army strength would be 20+20+20 = 60. To have a defensive strength of at least 2x60=120, you'd need at least, 6/7 or 7/4 watchtower, wall, and palisades, and given that you only have 3 20s you wouldn't be able to reach 120 defensive strength in all three buildings.
As a knight/lady, if you are fortunate enough to have 9 20s and the rest are power 10s, your army strength would be 20+20+20 = 60. To have a defensive strength of at least 2x60=120, you'd need at least, 6/7 or 7/4 watchtower, wall, and palisades. If you decided to run a single column defense (you'll notice from the capital overview the buildings are set up in rows and columns), having all the vassals in one column, you could have a 6/0 or 5/4 defensive building.
- NOTE: Level upgrades to the Garrison affect how many weapons the building the hold/store/protect; they have no effect on your army strength.
[edit] Guardhouse, Tower, Church
Once you have built your Garrison to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build a Guardhouse. Your guardhouse helps protect you from rebellions (i.e. when you seize people, and they don't want to be your vassal, they can rebel against you to leave you if you and the unhappy vassal are both in war mode. If you are in peace mode, and your unhappy vassal is in war mode, he/she can just abandon you. If you are both in peace mode, he/she has to ask to be released (or go into war mode to abandon you) in order to leave you.
Once you have built your Hospital to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build a Tower. Your tower is where you put seized vassals, because it makes it twice as difficult for them to be rescued there. Your tower also protects a certain amount of gold while in war mode.
- Tower protects gold formula = (sum of power of vassals in tower) x (20 + LEVEL of tower)
- Example: You have 3 20s in your tower, it is upgraded to LEVEL 4,
- Tower protects gold formula = (sum of power of vassals in tower) x (20 + LEVEL of tower)
- (20+20+20) x (20+4) =
- (60) x (24) =
- 1440
Once you have build your Workshop to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build a Church. You can send vassals to the church to pray for 24 hours, which gives them a ZEAL bonus. The ZEAL bonus tops out at their power, i.e. a power 20 can have a zeal bonus of 20. The zeal bonus is good for only 1 attack. This means for 1 attack your power 20 has the attacking strength of 40.
- Church upgrades make the 24 hour time for maximum zeal faster.
1st upgrade saves (24 x .05) = 1.2 hours (1 hour, 12 minutes) less; thus it takes 22 hours and 48 minutes 2nd upgrade saves (24 x .1) = 2.4 hours (2 hours, 24 minutes) less; thus it takes 21 hours and 36 minutes 3rd upgrade saves (24 x .15) = 3.6 hours (3 hours, 36 minutes) less, thus 20 hours, 24 minutes. 4th upgrade saves (24 x .2) = 4.8 hours (4 hours, 48 minutes) less, thus 19 hours, 12 minutes 5th upgrade saves (24 x .25) = 6 hours less, thus 18 hours
[edit] Trapper, Blockhouse, Outpost & Weapon Shops
Once you've EXPANDED the Guardhouse to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build a trapper and an axeshop.
Once you've EXPANDED the Tower to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build a blockhouse and a swordshop.
Once you've EXPANDED the Church to a SIZE 5, you will be able to build an outpost and a pikeshop.
Once you build the weapon shops you need to put vassal in them to make weapons.
Weapons can be used in combat. Each vassal can have as many weapons as their power, but can only carry one type of weapon.
Weapons fight rock-paper-scissors style: axes beat pikes, pikes beat swords, and swords beat axes. Any weapon will give a +50% bonus against a defender with no weapon.
[edit] War Mode (Gather Your Armies)
OK, if you have followed the instructions thus far (which you probably won't because you want to battle and then you'll whine about losing all your friends to people who did follow the instructions), then you should have a castle, marketplace, palisades, wall and watchtowers that will each fit four people. You have been DYING to click on the "gather your armies" button, and now here are the conditions for which you may do that.
The minute you click on that button, you will have an "army strength" equal to the sum of the powers (or strengths) of your top 3 vassal (again, the serfs and steward don't count because you cannot attack with them). So if you have, say, six friends each with 20 strength, your attack strength will be 60 (top 3 x 20). This will place you in an "attack bracket" for fighting with everyone else in the game who has approximate army strength of 60.
What we learn from this is that any vassals behind the watchtowers, wall or palisades must be protected by a strength of at least double 60 (i.e. 60 x 2 = 120). So if we use that same example of 6 friends @ 20 attack, you can put six friends on the wall (120 defense) and power 10 friends (or the two serfs and the steward) in the castle (behind the wall) and still build or expand buildings while you are smacking other people who didn't read the whole tutorial.
So if you only have three 20s and 1 power 10 (minimum needed to gather your armies), how many need to be on the wall? ALL FOUR. And that means your defensive strength (for the wall) 20 + 20 + 20 + 10 = 70, which is only 10 higher than your attacking strength. This means you will likely have your gold easily raided from you, and your vassals will likely be stolen. Oh, you could put one 20 on each defense and the squire/handmaiden somewhere else,but then you will be whining about how unfair the game is because one of your 20s got stolen because your defensive strength was weaker than your army strength (thus you are vulnerable to attacks). They could only seize 1 vassal because once you have less than 4 real vassals your rank will disappear (until you invite a 4th friend again). So don't do it.
This "attack power" concept is CRITICAL to enjoying the game, so please be sure you understand it before you hit the "gather your armies" button in the garrison. (Some folks who are not big risk-takers may want SEVEN on the wall as even more insurance against modified attacks. That's where you sort of have to decide your level of risk.)
After have hit the "gather your armies" button, you wait 10-15 minutes for your attack tab and rank to appear. It may take up to an hour, before anyone can attack you and/or you can attack anyone. Again, assess your risk quotient here and leave folks on your walls if you are a nervous type.
[edit] Your First Battle
You have been itching to do it, so now your grace period is over & you can attack. Your attack screen will show you a variety of people, including some whose rank is substantially higher than yours. THIS DOES NOT MATTER!!
Every person on that list has the same-ish attack strength as you. However, those with much higher rank will likely have incredible defensive strength -- which means if they seize a vassal from you, you *will not* be able to get it back. This is why we took the time to build out all those walls & make sure they are full of enough vassals to withstand an attack from yourself.
You can be sure that there will be others at/near your level range who did not read this tutorial & have left vassals sitting in the court. Thus, the best place to snitch vassals is the Watchtowers. Duh. Go grab a few, up to the limit of what you can defend. If you snitch more vassals than you can defend, do not whine about the fact that someone snitched 'em back.
The attack for math is -- and someone will correct me if I'm wrong -- that you have to be able to overcome all the defenders + 2x the strength of the vassal you are trying to snitch, + the alarm (and the alarm goes up 1 point for each attack).
So with your 60 attack power do you have a shot at getting a 20 vassal in one try? Well, if the person is really ignorant & left the vassal sitting there, then you have a shot. Otherwise, you have to smack through the 120 on the wall + the 40 of the vassal. Oh, suddenly this is hard.
It is not impossible to seize a 20 with only power 10s, you just have to have 6 power 10s. Church up 3 of them, raising their power to 20 each (for only one attack). Then pick your target, someone with 0 alarm, raid each area once with the NON-CHURCHED 10s. Each attack takes 1 heath point which costs you 10 each to heal. Therefore if you have three vassals attacking it will cost 30 gold to heal after one attack.
Note: When you reach higher attack brackets, attacks may cost more than 1 point of health per attacker and you will be able to roughly gauge the strength of each defense, and perhaps guess the location of vassals, based on healing cost.
If you can't get through, that's probably where the vassal you want is. Keep raiding the repelled area until you are successful, then raid once or twice more for good measure; then attempt to seize using the CHURCHED vassals. This should be successful. If you have more than 6 power 10s, church all but 3 or 4 of them, so you can attempt to seize more than 1 20 per day.
Another way to seize a 20 with only 5 power 10s is to go on crusade twice, this raises your army size by +1 per crusade, so your Army Strength increases from 30 to 50 for one hour beginning with the start of the second crusade. You need an attack of 40 to seize a power 20, so with your temporary army strength at 50 you can seize over defenses + alarm of 10 or less. Crusading is risky, since your attack strength may lift you into brackets that are hard to defend against, but if you have only squires/handmaidens you have nothing to lose.
[edit] Recovering from a Bad Start
If you are just now reading this and thinking, "Oh sure *now* they tell me. I was just about to quit because I built the garrison too soon and now all my vassals are stolen, etc."
All is not lost. Just go back into peace mode (go to your garrison, click "disband armies" and wait 24 hours). If you have fewer than four vassals of Power 20 and above, you may drop out of war mode temporarily by releasing squires, if you have fewer than 4 real vassals you drop out of war mode until a fourth vassal is added.. so don't add vassals until you've disbanded armies in the garrison and waited out the full 24 hours.
At this point, there are several things to do: EXPAND YOUR DEFENSES, UPGRADE YOUR DEFENSES, BEG YOUR FRIENDS TO INSTALL THE APPLICATION. You can Expand and Beg, and go single-column with your wall (thus you won't need the watchtower or palisade); or you can Upgrade and Beg, and go single-column with your palisades (thus you won't need the watchtower or the wall).
Meanwhile, pare down your retinue so that you look very small & insignificant. Also, swear fealty to someone kind and friendly so you don't have to deal with all the 'conquer' attempts.
It *is* possible to overcome a too weak defense and having gone to war mode too soon, but it requires a view to the long-term, because you got a lot of building to do.
[edit] Related Information
- Knighthood - a more detailed overview of the game, including information on building types and calculation of attack and defense numbers for various situations.
- Knighthood FAQ - answers to commonly asked questions
- Knighthood Calculator - An Excel spreadsheet that models many of the Knighthood calculations.
- KHStartersGuide.pdf - An illustrated guide to getting started
- knighthoodies.org - A web site devoted to beginner information, strategy and tactics.
[edit] External Links
- [1] The Knighthood Application Home Page
- [2] The Knighthood Discussion Board
- [3] The Book of Alliances
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