Chapter 3: Growing your land and building a network
Once your are settled on a good piece of land, it is important to make it grow. In order to get a prosper kingdom and to allow it to be built as quickly as possible. This chapter is divided in many sections each explaining the basic concepts found in the game and giving information about the best way to maximize their usage. The main divisions are the Armory, the Buildings, the Military, the Population, the Technology, and the Crime rate.
3.1 Armory
ShieldThe armory is used to build weapons, it is where you can give orders to your blacksmiths about the tasks they have to accomplish for the next few days. The number of weapons that can be built per day depends not only on the number of blacksmiths you have and on the number of forges you have built, but also on the number of men working in each forge. The optimal number of blacksmiths per forge is 80, if you have less your production per forge will be lowered a lot and if you have more each man will be less efficient, even though your production will still be more than at the optimal level.
The weapons produced in the armory depend on your race and so do the costs for each weapon. Here is a table presenting the different weapons for each race:
| The Weapons | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Race | Weapon | Iron | Wood | Gold | Race | Weapon | Iron | Wood | Gold |
| Dwarf | Poney | 0 | 0 | 150 | Elf | Horse | 1 | 0 | 300 |
| Axe | 2 | 1 | 15 | Sword | 4 | 1 | 25 | ||
| Hammer | 2 | 1 | 10 | Lance | 1 | 3 | 20 | ||
| Crossbow | 0 | 3 | 30 | Bow | 0 | 4 | 40 | ||
| Plate Armor | 6 | 0 | 175 | Caragous Armor | 7 | 1 | 200 | ||
| Chainmail | 3 | 0 | 125 | Light Armor | 4 | 0 | 100 | ||
| Gnome | Poney | 1 | 0 | 250 | Human | Horse | 1 | 0 | 350 |
| Plank and Nails | 1 | 15 | 70 | Sword | 3 | 0 | 15 | ||
| Spear | 2 | 3 | 10 | Spear | 2 | 3 | 5 | ||
| Sling | 1 | 1 | 15 | Bow | 0 | 3 | 10 | ||
| Chainmail | 6 | 0 | 175 | Plate Armor | 7 | 0 | 200 | ||
| Leather Armor | 2 | 1 | 125 | Light Armor | 3 | 0 | 125 | ||
| Orc | Wolf | 0 | 0 | 50 | |||||
| Axe | 2 | 1 | 20 | ||||||
| Spear | 1 | 3 | 10 | ||||||
| Sling | 1 | 1 | 5 | ||||||
| Enforced Leather Armor | 2 | 1 | 125 | ||||||
| Leather Armor | 1 | 1 | 100 | ||||||
3.2 Building
In order for you to fully use your land and its resources, it is important to construct as many buildings as possible on your land. There are many different building types in Thardferr and most of them are crucial for your survival; it is up to you to choose which one are the most important and to build them.
Among the different buildings is the castle. It is very special in the sense that it affects your kingdom in many ways. Being the most important building in the game, it guaranties your survival: a kingdom without a castle is considered dead. As the center of command, it would be impossible for you to govern your kingdom if you did not have a castle. The castle also provides many advantages: it increases your income, your unit production (+1 per day per castle) and your maximum population. It also affects the power of some spells, gives you more control over your army, and, as said previously, provides good protection from the different attacks you might have to face.
However, castles do have a few bad effects. First, castles divide your defense, that is, you will not have your full army to defend when you are attacked. This topic is discussed in Chapter 5 of the guide. Another flaw of the castle is that it increases your minimum crime rate by one, which can be a problem for some kingdoms.
Here is a list of the different buildings and their use:
| The buildings | ||
|---|---|---|
| Name | Description | Effect |
| Advanced Training Center | The advanced training center is used to build the most powerful and efficient units. Here is a list of the units trained there depending on the race. | Race units built per day: *Dwarf: Shieldbearer 1 per 4 ATC. Runner 1 per 5 ATC. Heavy Crossbowman 1 per 5 ATC. *Elf: Mage 1 per 7 ATC. Caragous 1 per 5 ATC. Elite Archers 1 per 3 ATC. *Gnome: Catapult 1 per 8 ATC. Rider 1 per 5 ATC. Balista 1 per 7 ATC. *Human: Knight 1 per 6 ATC. Heavy Infantry 1 per 5 ATC. Mounted Archers 1 per 4 ATC. *Orc: Shadow Warrior 1 per 6 ATC. Wolf Master 1 per 5 ATC. Axe thrower 1 per 5 ATC. |
| Farm | Farms are used in order to get food, they however required a good portion of your population to work there therefore preventing them from working in other more useful areas. | 100 food per farm per day at optimal level Orcs get a 15 food production bonus at at optimal level The Optimal level for food is 60 people per farm Six peasants will require 1 food unit per day, check the unit page for the food for units. |
| Forge | The forge is the place used by your blacksmiths to build their weapons. The more forges you build, the more weapons you will be able to build each day as long as you provide enough men to work in there. | The Optimal level for weapon building is 80 people per forge |
| Guard House | Providing housing for your men is very important. In fact, guard houses are essential if you want to maintain a good army. Without them, you cannot train a very powerful army. | Provides housing for 40 soldiers per house, 60 for Gnomes (Increased by 25 with Barrack technology). Reduce crime rate by one. |
| Guard Tower | Guard Towers are very effective way to protect your kingdom from ranged attacks. Even if they are only useful on defense, they can greatly help you when fighting armies consisting of many ranged units. | Reduce ranged attack by 40 damages per tower (max 2 damages per unit). |
| House | Houses are used to provide your population some housing. Even if your people can live in non-housing areas, building houses allow a lot more people to live on your land. | Provide housing for 100 person per house instead of 10 for other buildings. |
| Market | Markets are a good way, used by many great leaders, to increase your kingdom revenue. A land with many markets will provide a lot more income and will be much more prosper than one without any. | Increase income by an amount affected by the number of markets and your population.Having more than one market per land will give no further advantage. |
| Medical center | Medical centers are the best buildings if you want to save your men from dying after a though fight. In fact, medical centers allow your wounded units to be healed at the end of a fight and therefore to reduce your maximum combat losses. The number of troops healed depends on the number of centers you have per land; you will be able to heal up to 10% of your wounded units per medical centers per land. That is, if you have 1.5 medical center per land you can heal up to 15% of your units, this bonus is limited to 20%. | Decreases close combat damages by 50 per center on attack (max 1 damage per unit). Decreases close combat damages by 75 per center on defense (max 2 damages per unit). |
| Mill | Mills are use for your kingdom to chop wood. A land with many mills on it will be able to produce the tons of wood necessary to build your kingdom. | 5 wood per mill per day at optimal level Elves get a 1 wood per mill per day bonus and Orcs get a 2 wood per mill per day bonus at optimal level The Optimal level for wood is 85 people per mill |
| Mine | Mines are your best iron provider, they can be very useful when building a large army since most weapons require iron to be built. Some buildings will also require you to have a load of iron before being built. | 4 iron per mine per day at optimal level Dwarves get a 1 iron per mine per day bonus and Orcs get a 2 iron per mine per day bonus at optimal level The Optimal level for iron is 100 people per mine |
| School | Schools are useful if you are trying to build a good magic network. In fact, schools are used to train the wizards required to cast powerful spells and to increase the chances of successful spell casting. | Five schools can train one wizard per day. Provides housing for 40 wizards per house, 60 for gnomes (Increased by 25 with Barrack technology). |
| Training Center | The training centers are used to train the basic units of your army. Here is a list of the units trained there depending on the race. | Race units built per day: *Dwarf: Hammer wheilder 1 per 4 centers Axeman1 / 5 centers Light Crossbowman1 / 3 centers *Elf: Swordman 1 per 3 TC. Lanceman 1 per 4 TC. Archer 1 per 2 TC. *Gnome: Infantry 1 per 3 TC. Militia 10 per 1 TC. Rock Thrower 10 per 1 TC. *Human: Infantry 1 per 3 TC. Pikeman 1 per 4 TC. Archer1 per 3 TC. *Orc: Rusher 1 per 3 TC. Slother 1 per 2 TC. Slinger 1 per 3 TC. |
The number of buildings one can build depends on two main factors. First, there is a limit of 10 buildings per 1 land acre. Then, there is a limit on the number of buildings per castle. Even if one is not limited on the number of lands per castle, it is impossible to be able to manage more than 450 buildings per castle because of the range at which the farther buildings would be from the castle. It is therefore not allowed to get more than 450 buildings per castle. However, if you are attacked and only non-built land is taken, you might find yourself in a position where you have over 450 buildings per castle. If that happens it is highly suggested that you try to get a new castle as soon as possible because even if your castles might be able to protect and manage them for a little while they will be a lot easier to take by your enemies.
3.3 Military
There are many different units in the world of Thardferr, some are strong, others are weaker, but all of them as its use and can be a great addition to your army. Before presenting them, it is necessary to give a little background information concerning war strategies. First, in a combat, there are three main combat phases proceeded in the following order: the long-ranged attacks, the short-ranged attacks and the melee or close combat attacks. This means that first all long-ranged damages are dealt, then the remaining units can deal their short-ranged damages and the close combat finishes the fight. As you can see having many long-ranged units can be very useful since you it allows one to kill enemy units before they can deal their damages.
If you are interested in learning about the different abilities of each unit, you might want to visit the unit page. Please note that it is highly suggested you try to understand the different units before choosing your race and before training too many to make sure your army is well balanced and powerful.
3.4 Population
BlacksmithThe population screen let you manage your people and tell them in what area you would prefer them to work in. The first number you should look at before changing your population occupation is the total population you currently have in your kingdom. Your population will often depend on the number of houses you have, how many land you currently control and the number of castles you have built so far. Obviously, the higher your population is, the better it is for the kingdom.
Once you know how many peasants you have under your control, you can direct their work in certain areas presented below:
| Your Population | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Occupation | Allocated in | Optimal level | Production |
| Miners | Mines | 100 | 4 iron +1 for dwarves +2 for orcs |
| Lumbers | Mills | 85 | 5 wood +1 for elves +2 for orcs |
| Agriculture | Farms | 60 | 100 food +15 for orcs |
| Building | N / A | 150 workers per building. (110 for orcs and gnomes) | 1 building per 150 workers. |
| Training | Training centers Advanced training centers | N / A | 1 soldier per man. |
| Blacksmiths | Forges | 80 | Production speed depends on race. |
| Explorers | N/A | N/A | Depends on number of land1. |
1The more people sent, the higher the chance to find land, but the chance decreases as the your total land increases (to prevent snowballing). Field-glass tech doubles the effectiveness of exploration, and Farseeing spell gives three extra exploration attempts. You get 3-6 rolls each tick (farseeing active or not), and each roll has a chance (based on population percentage committed to explore and modifiers like Field-glass) to discover 1 land. So you can possibly get a max of 3 land normally or 6 with the spell.
The productions refer to the production per building at the optimal level, so if you do not have many buildings and need a lot of production in a specific area, you might want to have more people in that.
3.5 Technology
New technologies are what make you more powerful than your opponents and enable you to defeat them with minimal losses. Each technology give valuable advantages to your units and to your kingdom.
There are eight basic technology trees available to all races, four of which improve your combat ability and the other four having varying effects depending on the level of research.
The first combat technology increases the damages dealt by blade weapons, each level in this technology will increase by one the damages dealt by all units using bladed weapons (arrows are not considered to have blades).
The second combat technology improve your long-ranged attacks range by creating better bows, changing the shape of throwing axes or by creating more effective slings. This allows your men to attack more often before close combat and therefore to deal more damages. This technology is pretty expensive and only has one level, but can be very useful for an army consisting mainly of archers and long-ranged men.
The third and forth combat technologies have basically the same effect and improve your army defense. Each armor type can be improved using this technology, but the lower level ones can usually reach a higher level. Like the blade technology, each technology point in armor resistance will increase your defense by one point.
The next four technology trees are listed in the table below, and each technology can be researched only if all the technologies preceding it in the same technology tree are researched, that is, each tree must be researched in order. It is important to note that all technologies are cummulative and that if you research a higher level technology, the ones already researched will remain active.
Here are the technologies divided in their respective trees:
| Tree 1 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Effect | Level | Research time | Cost |
| Field-glass | Doubles exploration efficiency. | 1 | 30 | 50000 |
| Convertion | Increases the number of peasants joining your kingdom after capturing land from an enemy. | 2 | 50 | 300000 |
| Transport | Reduces attack time to 18 days. | 3 | 60 | 500000 |
| Leadership | Increase minumum Basic Army Strength to 0 and gives natural Basic Army Strength growth (there is small chance that BAS will increase every day). | 4 | 40 | 400000 |
| Improved Law System | Reduce crime rate natural growth and reduce maximum crime rate to 25%. | 5 | 70 | 500000 |
| Tactical Knowledge | Greatly improves chances of victory in combat. | 6 | 100 | 2500000 |
| Tree 2 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Effect | Level | Research time | Cost |
| Habitation | Increases the number of peasants per house to 115. | 1 | 40 | 200000 |
| Commerce | Increases gold production. | 2 | 60 | 300000 |
| Animal training | Increases animal weapon production by 20%. The animal production increased depends on the player’s race. | 3 | 15 | 100000 |
| Blacksmithing weapon name | Increases weapon production by 20%, there is one technology for each type of weapon. | 4-8 | 15 | 100000 |
| Carpentry | Increases building construction speed by 50%. | 9 | 60 | 400000 |
| Barrack | Increases the number of men that can be housed in a guard house to 65. | 10 | 50 | 300000 |
| Training techniques | Increases unit production speed by 25%. | 11 | 100 | 1000000 |
| Fortification | Decreases enemy attack power by 5% when defending a castle. | 12 | 125 | 400000 |
| Tree 3 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Effect | Level | Research time | Cost |
| Irrigation | Increases the number of food produced per farm by 15. | 1 | 150 | 50000 |
| Machinery | Decreases the optimal worker level for Mines to 85. | 2 | 175 | 200000 |
| Wood Recycling | Increases wood production by 1.5 per Mill. | 3 | 240 | 300000 |
| Tree 4 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Effect | Level | Research time | Cost |
| New Spells | Adds new spells to your spellbook. See Chapter 4 for more details on these spells. | 1-4 | 50-110 | 150000-900000 |
| Insight | Decreases wizard rest time. They will rest at a rate of 2 per school per day. | 5 | 150 | 100000 |
| Magical Instruments | Greatly improves spell casting success. | 6 | 100 | 2000000 |
The research time and cost for gnomes is 10% lower than these numbers.
The last technology depends on your race and is unique to each of them. The table below will give you the different technologies depending on each race.
| Technology | ||
|---|---|---|
| Race | Technology | Effect |
| Dwarf | True Silver | Researching new materials for shield creating has been found to help in many great armies. It is believed that many dwarven leaders found a new metal called True Silver that is one of the most resistant material ever found. With this metal, they were able to create thougher shields for their shieldbearers. |
| Elf | Magic Field | This new technology consists in researching a new spell for your mages allowing them to cast kingdom spells (as wizards normally do). Note that mage spells are identified by a * in the spell casting options. |
| Gnome | Explosive powder | This technology allows you to build explosive projectiles for your catapults, increasing their attack radius. |
| Human | Clerical Magic | This new technology allows your trainers to include clerical magic in the knight formation allowing them to heal your wounded units in combat and to reduce your combat losses. The damages dealt to your units will be reduced by 0.5% per percent of paladins in your army, but never by more than 25%. For example, an army of 100 paladins and 300 other units would have it’s damages reduced by 12.5%. |
| Orc | Cloacking | This technology will provide your shadow warriors equipment suited to hide in different areas more effectively, decreasing the chances of being found by 15%. |
It is important to keep in mind that one should not research new technologies unless he can really afford it because not only are these new acquisition very expensive to research, but they take a lot of time to get. However, they can be very good long term investment.
3.6 Crime rate
As you build your kingdom you might encounter serious problems with your population. Among these problem is the most important one, the crime rate. Crime rate is a very important factor some kingdoms forget to consider while expending their land. In fact, the bigger you grow, the more difficult it becomes to make sure your population does not turn into a criminal society. In fact, not only is it important to feel they are living in a peaceful kingdom, but the higher your crime rate is, the less people you will be able to work with. Even if this does not reflect directly in the number of men you can assign in your population management screen, the higher your crime rate is, the less people will work and the lower will be your production. In fact wood, iron, food, gold production are affected by high crime rates as well as your chances of exploration and military performances.
In order to maintain a decent crime rate, one must understand how it works. First, it increases and decreases every few day as time passes and your population evolves and changes. Even if the general tendency will be to a very slow increase if you do not do anything, the crime rate should be maintained fairly constant every day. There are a few factors affecting crime rate. First, every castle built or acquired by any mean will increase crime rate by five points. Also, because attacking sometimes cause population to revolt, every attack has a chance of increasing crime rate. Let the revolt be caused by the amount of people killed in these slaughters or by the peasants living on newly conquered land who might not like the way you manage your kingdom, these revolts can quickly become a problem to some kingdoms. In order to maintain a peaceful kingdom, one will try to build more security and enforce authority forces present in your kingdom. Building guard houses will therefore reduce your crime rate by one point.
A kingdom’s crime rate can vary between 2% and 45% (25% with Improved Law System technology)., however, a kingdom with rate above 25% should really do something about this or it might cost him a lot of resources. The number of castles one has also increases the minimum crime rate by 1 point, therefore a kingdom with 4 castles would have a crime rate of 4% or more while one with 10 castles would have a crime rate of at least 10%.