A beginners guide

Intro

I play as human and always have, as such you should read this as a human player, some tips might not be true for other races.

How to progress quickly at the start

Troops are divided into 3 classes, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Silver and Gold requires rare resources and are therefore very valuable. Treat them like your precious children when you fight as you will often run out of resources. Bronze troops on the other hand only cost gold and are therefore much more expendable, use them as cannon fodder.

If you lost silver or gold troops vs NPC's remember that you can retry or leave without sustaining any losses!

Focus on fighting groups of NPC's that has potions or rare resources. Skip the npc groups with few resources as this is just a waste of stamina. Do all the daily quests (marked by a blue !) as often as they pop up. 

The different potions are;

1. Yellow = Stamina, 1 stamina is consumed each time you deploy a hero. 
2. Blue = Mana, used for various hero abilities, save them for Vega's ultimate heal (cost5).
3. Red = Revive, used for removing the cooldown on dead heroes, note that the cooldown increases with hero lvl so it's best to save these for late game.

The different resources are;

1. Mithril, green, used for various melee troops
2. Crystal, purple, used for various ranged troops
3. Rubys, red, used for heavy cavalry/tanks and siege engines.

If you want to spend money on the game, get the monthly subscription. The first month is just 0.99$ and it helps a lot! Furthermore you can buy your first hero for 9.99$ which will also help speed up your leveling. After the initial packs are bought, the monthly sub is 4.99, the heroes 59.99-99.99$ and the resource packs are 14.99$. 

World Bosses;

When you fight the first 4-5 world bosses the reccomended setup is; Spearmen at front, then fill the rest with Archers + the required amount of heroes. This is usually enough to kill the first bosses. 

Later when you start to fight the dragons you might need to use some strategic silver units. The boss will always target the largest unit you have first, so one very popular tactic is to place two catapults at the back line, one in each corner. The boss will then first walk over and kill those before he attacks your other units. Note that the boss will still plow through your units as he walks over, so place bronze in his predicted path and silver on the sides. Vega's ultimate heal is really usefull and so can Avalons summon archer ability be. 

For minimizing troop losses you can retry as many times as you need without loosing any units, try to note where the boss walks and place your silver troops out of harms way. If the losses are too high, the best option is to simply not fight the boss yet and wait for your troops to be upgraded to higher levels. 

Buildings

Foucs on a few buildings first, not all are equally important. Buildings you can neglect to a certain degree; Warehouse, Magic stream. Other buildings that are more important later in game; Workshop and Cathedral.

The most important buildings are, which you should prioritize first;

1. Castle
   This dictates many things; the daily quest rewards and difficulty, the strength an enemy's army must have to be allowed to attack your city, and some hero abilities. It also allows you  to upgrade other buildings. 
2. Academy
   This is used for upgrading your troops, it is very important that you focus on a couple of troop types as it is too expensive and time consuming to reasearch everything. As a human i prefer Pikemen, Archers, Cavalery. Take special note of the bonus feat that you get when you complete a research, try to complete one tree before starting a new one.
3. Troop buildings
   This determines the lvl of your troops, focus on the same ones that you research upgrades for.
4. Outpost
   This determines how many troops you can have.
5. Hospital
   Higher lvl = faster heal and bigger que
6. Tactical-School
   Used for aquiring resources, don't run through these unless you actually need that rss. 
7. Wall
   The only thing the wall upgrade does is increase the life of your wall making it tougher to take down. When the wall is destroyed your city is sent back to the capital. In other words, this needs to be strong enough so if someone attacks you will have time to react before it is destroyed.

As to why don't you need warehouse? - because all it does i protect resources, you should never really have too much resources saved up anyway, spend it on units and buildings and don't gather too much. It is much less likely that you will be attacked if you have few resources and a strong defense.

Magic Stream used to be important when elixir was used for all types of research, now it usually just pile up so only upgrade this if you find that you actually need more elixir. 

Workshop is only used for Siege engines and Angels (if you're a governor). This isn't important before you are actually strong enough to take out enemy cities. 

Cathedral as a human player can be usefull, it depends on your tactics, more archers or healers? They are very good for PVE, but not untill you have some decently upgraded silver ones or gold.

Fighting, PVP vs PVE

When you fight it is important to know these things;

1. PVP in your own kingdom:
   Removes all real risk on your side, your troops will be injured 100%, but won't die, thus the only real risk is a long time healing in hospital. NOTE! - this is not true for mechanical units (dwarf) or undead units (lich) as some cannot be healed. 
2. PVP in other kingdoms:
   You have all the risk, your opponent has 100% injury rate and you have the standard 70% + any modification from Vega or Elena's skills. This means if you are defeated you will loose 30% of your army while 70% will be sent to hospital.
3. PVE:
   The rules for PVE are the same no matter what kingdom you are in, 70% injury rate + modifications.

Knowing the points above, you should never use Silver or Gold troops when you PVP in other kingdoms unless it is a really important fight, like capturing a city. Often you can do plenty of damage with just Bronze troops and your heroes. Because of the 1 hour defeat cooldown though, the best option though is usually to just retreat.

Troop setup

For PVP as a human  player i prefer to have on row;

1. 4 sets of silver pikemen, they stun the enemy front row and stunned enemies take 30% more dmg, which your cavalry will make good use of.
2. 4 sets of archers or 3 sets of archers + 2 sets of healers
3. 2 sets of cavalry on each side, 3-4 heroes in the center (Bane, Jaque, Avalon, Virion, Elena, any hero that needs to be in reach of enemy lines or any hero that can take a beating)
4. 2 sets of cavalry in the center, 2-4 heroes on the sides (Vega, Gazul, Mako, any ranged or vulnerable hero)

For PVP as lich the most common setup is Silver Scorpions, then Gold/Silver Spiders at the back together with heroes.

For Dwarf it is mostly mech soldiers in front, rocketeers in the back with heroes.

For Rakan i'm not really sure.

Heroes

In PVP all your heroes stats will add up to a sum. This sum, if greater than that of your opponent, will give you a boost to; Life, Attack Speed, Attack Rating or Magic Damage reduction. This is extremely important so in PVP you should always deploy as many heroes as you possibly can.

For human players the most important heroes and abilities are;

Avalon

Archer Mastery = more life and attack for archers

Ardent Aura = more life for all humanoids

Natural Leader = lets you deploy 1 more unit and increases your Bronze Cap, focus on this last.

Note that adding Command to Avalon increases the % gain although how much is not known.

Vega

Favour of the Sun God = heals all your troops for X seconds depending on the lvl.

Saving Lives = increases your injury rate, which in turn means less rss lost when you pvp.

Note that adding Magic to Vega increases the amount she heals - this is extremely important for human players as they usually have low health and that needs to be kept up to get the moral boost. 

Favour of the Sun God should in most cases be the first spell you cast in a pvp battle and because of its importance I reccomend you give all +magic cards / tomes to Vega before giving any to Avril. 

Elena 

Retreat = lets you save X troops depending on the lvl from the battlefield, really handy to have 1 point in this as it can let you save your most valuable troops from being destroyed in an unfavourable battle.

Saving Lives = increases your injury rate, which in turn means less rss lost when you pvp.

Cavalry Specialist = increases the life and attack of your cavalry

Magic Resistance = reduces the amount of magic dmg your troops take, this is extremely important vs Avrils Blizzard and vs Lich Spiders. 

Note that adding Command to Elena increases the effect of Cavalry Specialist. Command should be split between Elena and Avalon.

Virion

Light's Safeguard = lets him surivive longer, put 1 point in this

Crusader Shield = when your troops get a morale boost they take x% less dmg depending on the level, this is very important and goes hand in hand with Vegas ultimate heal.

Virion also has swordmen mastery which is nice if you are focusing on swordmen over pikemen, I would still reccomend pikemen.

Raiding cities

Pay attention to these parameters when you search for a city to attack; 

1. The strength of the player
   This gives an indication of the level of the defending troops.
2. The amount of troops defending and if there is a green +
   Be VERY carefull when there is a green + next to the number of troops, this indicates that someone else is defending that player and you do not know for sure who that is. 
3. The strength of the wall, this will determine how many % of the resources you get when you hit the wall.

The best tactic is often to use a scouting party first, meaning use bronze troops to determine the strength of the defenders.