Utopia Kingdoms

[Mental]

Okay. I signed up as Nevyndi. Lemme in. The graphics are doing for me what the old version of Utopia didn't.

[KluYa]

Are you guys at war?

[Julius Seeker]

No war until we have some teeth; when we have a bit more land, and large enough armies to rip through some real players. Right now we are still in the process of building large enough forces to take down inactives. I am with Sine though, a good first target would be the annoying clans =)

[Tessian]

I totally lost interest in this game days ago... but I'm still logging in daily to train or build. So boring now... everyone around me is either too small to attack or they're my size.

Why can't I attack inactive marked castles? :\ Who cares what level they are they're inactive!

[SineSwiper]

That's fine. Were you the application I rejected, though? As long as you play every day to keep up, I'll take you.

[Mental]

That's fine. Were you the application I rejected, though? As long as you play every day to keep up, I'll take you.

Probably. Lemme in, oh great and mighty forum god.

[Shellie]

I accepted you.

[Shellie]

Greetings,

We hope you’re enjoying your Utopia Kingdoms experience so far. Some brief updates follow.

Firstly, you've been asking about how Clan rankings work. Here y'go:

Clan rankings are based on the Daily Coefficient (DC)
DC = the XP gathered for the day / number of Clan members
Top 20 clans with highest DC get points each day

Points are awarded for the top 20 positions: 20 points for 1st place, 19 for 2nd, 18 for 3rd etc.

Secondly, an update on Coins. Important this one so listen up. Every new player gets 1000 coins with registration. From the 1st of every month, every player will get an additional 500 coins. This starts on June 1st.

Finally, we thought that we might try to spice things up with a little more competition. Or, in this case, a lot more competition! As you know, this world has a Round length of 6 months. So a lot will happen. Like monthly competitions, with prizes going out to the top three ranked players, as well as to every member of the top ranked clan:

Monthly Prizes
Player #1: Limited edition Utopia Kingdoms tee-shirt (we'll have images up in the forums soon)
Player #2: Slightly less limited edition Utopia Kingdoms mousemat
Player #3: Still pretty rare Utopia Kingdoms mug
Clan #1: 500 coins per member

For the end of the Round (6 months in this World), the grand prizes are:

Top Three Players: Limited edition Utopia Kingdoms merchandise (varies with round but a bunch of stuff)
Clan: Completely exclusive custom designed crest by our artists

Now, who wouldn’t want that? So if you want to be with a chance at these prizes, get playing! If you haven’t got a hope of being in the top 3, then do everything in your power to boost your clan up the charts, and there could be 500 coins in it for you. More competition info is on the forums, so check them out.

One final thing. We'll be opening a new World soon which has a much shorter Round time. Watch for more updates.

Good luck

The Utopia Kingdoms Team

[KluYa]

No war until we have some teeth; when we have a bit more land, and large enough armies to rip through some real players. Right now we are still in the process of building large enough forces to take down inactives. I am with Sine though, a good first target would be the annoying clans =)

Unlike Utopia Classic, there appears to be very little incentive for mid size players/clans to get involved in wars and tear each other down. The resources and time it takes to build (or rather rebuild) an army is pretty steep. It seems there's enough abandoned kingdoms (which probably happens a lot once a player is cracked a single time and has his forces wiped) and punished players that armies can simply milk these farms for their income as opposed to tangling with legitimate armies and suffering larger losses.

[Mental]

Just like the real world, where scavengers hurry to pick apart the bones of anyone who loses their defenses!

[Mental]

So, let me know what level I ought to get to before I start interacting with you guys in some way.

[KluYa]

I made it into the top 50 now. That's not bad for starting a few days late.

I'm sitting on this lovely army of heavy cavalry and arcanists and I've no one to crush with them because everyone around here is either really small or really active. What a waste.

[SineSwiper]

How the fuck did you get Heavy Cavalry this early? I'm still working towards my lv15 Training Grounds, and I just started attacking with my wizards a few days ago.

BTW, Seraphina was ganked by a large lv17 army with 75 Arcanists and 661 Crossbowmen. Huge numbers!

[Eric]

I made it into the top 50 now. That's not bad for starting a few days late.

I'm sitting on this lovely army of heavy cavalry and arcanists and I've no one to crush with them because everyone around here is either really small or really active. What a waste.

Yeah I'm rather curious about this too since it sounds like you're sitting on your hands, where'd you get the income to do that?!

[Julius Seeker]

Two things: Eric, have you joined us yet?

Second: I am pumping defences like a paranoid madman; working on crossbowmen and wondering if the Archer Hero upgrade effects them as well. Soon I hope to hit a nice heavy cavalry army too.

[Eric]

Two things: Eric, have you joined us yet?

Second: I am pumping defences like a paranoid madman; working on crossbowmen and wondering if the Archer Hero upgrade effects them as well. Soon I hope to hit a nice heavy cavalry army too.

Nah, you guys are too far away, and the clan I'm in is really well situated, we're like mob deep in our little corner of the map.

[Julius Seeker]

What clan are you guys?

[Eric]

Iletospnatos

[KluYa]

How the fuck did you get Heavy Cavalry this early? I'm still working towards my lv15 Training Grounds, and I just started attacking with my wizards a few days ago.

BTW, Seraphina was ganked by a large lv17 army with 75 Arcanists and 661 Crossbowmen. Huge numbers!

Okay, I'll share a few secrets. =p

It's simply about the amount of resources you can pull in. I buy the daily resources for 45 coins and I made leveling up the income buildings a priority (and maxed my Merchant skill a long time ago). Buildings that almost never actually get used have no or low priority. Also, I didn't waste time training an army early on because I never worried about defense at all and didn't care if I ever got attacked. I did train up a pile of quickwalkers so that anyone thinking about attacking me would have to do so blind and wonder to themselves what they might be walking into lol, so yeah between that and logging in as much as possible no one bothered with my quaint little kingdom and I haven't had a march against me since level 1.

I'm almost level 17 so buildings take forever to build now and resources aren't the limiting factor anymore. I'm using the time to finally train up some army units. I have enough arcanists to blow away a level 18 wall by themselves and enough xbm lbm and cavalry archers to finish off anything stronger. Then the hc roll in and mop up whoever's still breathing. Unfortunately I can't find a kingdom within 12 hours of me who wouldn't fall in half a battle round, but part of that is the arcanists being so damn slow on marches.

[SineSwiper]

Which is why I'm building up my Scout skill. I've been getting back to upgrading my buildings again, and I hope I don't get attacked too soon. It seems like as soon as you lose your army, you got to figure out a way to build back up again, without having it get ganked again.

I guess that's where patrols and protection comes in handy.

[KluYa]

Scout skill is a must. It was the next skill I mastered right after Merchant. Being attacked is nothing to fear, but being attacked and not knowing about it means the risk of having some or all of your army wiped out... which is brutal. I'm more or less able to log in often enough to know if any epic sized marches are coming my way, so that I can make sure my army and my resources have both stepped out for a stroll in the summertime. An attack would have to be timed for pretty much right before I wake up in the morning to cause me a problem, and even then a few hours resources is no big deal as long as my army is on patrol.

[Mental]

I failed to log in yesterday and got majorly ransacked...three people came and took a bite.

That's really annoying. Since this game is based around beating up smaller players than you, apparently if I don't run myself out of resources I'm going to become the prison bitch for my map.

I've almost got my Barracks, so maybe I can start putting up pathetic defenses.

[Mental]

Boy, Sine, when you said every day, I guess you weren't kidding.

The attacks were before I got up my Wall, which I just did and upgraded to level 2, but I got my first shortbowman bonus when I was 57 population short of housing for them, and the attacks wiped out the other 43, so now I'm 100 shortbowmen behind.

What should I do? It takes FOREVER to train an army at Level 1 Barracks...I guess I better upgrade that a bit first...

[SineSwiper]

If you're getting ganked, don't bother building an army. They are just going to tear it down. Instead, build up your buildings and tech up. And get that wall up as many levels as you can. Walls need wizards to defeat, or at least a lot of cross/long bowmen.

[Mental]

Okay. That sounds lovely. I think I'll forget the army and just worry about not really having any resources for anyone to bother with (due to using them all up). It's not worth attacking me anyway if I don't have the resources.

[Eric]

Yeah, if you're getting ganked, guard stations are an option, if you build military, send it out on patrol so it doesn't get horribly wiped out.

[Mental]

The strat I'm following is:

1. Upgrade my Wall as high as I can given my storehouse limit.

2. Upgrade my resource producers next.

3. Hire no soldiers, but upgrade my Barracks and Training Grounds to try to get my advanced units faster, third priority.

4. Upgrade my unit tech in preparation for a fast buildup to a powerful army later.

5. Try to log in twice a day for awhile in order to burn through all of my resources, thus making me a very unappealing target (between the Wall and the brokeness) to get ganked.

Basically, the Kingdoms equivalent of your Starcraft/Warcraft "fast tech to tier 2" strat.

#4 is where I need advice: Which units should I start teching up? I'm Elven, so I'm plus 10% on Wizards, and I took two points of Sage and one of Merchant first (didn't know what army I'd be getting) so I'll probably be basing my army around a heavy Wizard core and taking points in Mystic later.

What tier 1 units can I work on tech for while I'm waiting to tech up to a Guild? I'm going to default to shortbowmen, but I'd prefer to have smaller numbers of upgraded units than go for a "Horde" mentality. I also understand that Wizards are good for castle sieges or whatnot - can I start trying to train myself into an eventual "bunker buster" and if so how?

What strat is good for prepping for a high-Wizard army

[Mental]

I'm guessing if I want to pump up my shortbowmen I'm going to want to pump my lumbermill too...the upgrades are lumber-heavy.

What resources will I need for Wizards?

[Tessian]

Don't worry about upgrading until later in the game... useless before then.

To see what resources units will require, just look at the Help section; it gives all the stats for each unit/building.

[Mental]

I think I'm going to shoot to end up with a base well-suited to training Arcanists and other Wizards...

Do they need a meatshield, and if so, what kind?

EDIT: I'm running a simulation or two, and yeah, it seems they do. They do a lot better with Swordsman support than with Archer support, or even Pikeman/Maceman support Maybe I'll shoot for an army based around Arcanists with a Swordsman meatshield and a few Stormcallers or Warmages for Walls.

Have people used the battle simulator much? I may try running some simulations, maybe we all should, in order to figure out good unit combos.

When it says Warmages have a "strong defense" but all their stats against everything except buildings are 0, how can that be?

And is it just me, or do Elf Lords blow? They absolutely suck against everything...unless the bonus to the War Hero skill is better than I think, I can't see why they're so expensive.

[KluYa]

Wheee... top 30 now.

Arcanists make a better support unit than basing an army around them IMO. They march a bit slow and don't carry near what the cavalry units can manage, so they're not ideal for making frequent raids. They're great however for breaking someone initially, heh.

Swordsmen are also slow compared to the other infantry units, but if your march contains wizards then this doesn't really matter anyway because they won't be the ones holding everyone up. If you want a meat shield, pick out one each of various unit types and place them in the front rather than one specific type in any numbers. Walls and unit groups of average size will only target one unit type at a time, so you'll only lose one unit for every turn your wizards blast away with this setup rather than losing potentially an entire group of for example swordsmen in one hit.

The logical assumption is that the warmage's defense is referring to it's health, but they actually have the lowest health of any wizard, so I guess that part of the description doesn't really translate into any in-game attribute. Wizards in general are a little tougher defensively than other types, just going by damage strength versus wizards from most other units and the fact that TG tech upgrades don't apply against them. Personally I have a total of 0 warmages amongst my legion of doom and don't know if I'm ever going to bother adding them.

Elflords are about as good as most of the other race specific elites. None of them are particularly strong in terms of stats, but they offer cumulative bonuses in battle (that apply to your entire army) to account for their training cost. War Hero is not a skill I value much personally in a game geared toward bottom feeding. One less guy I kill now is just one more guy I have to kill later, so I'm just as happy wiping them out in one go, getting the experience, and scavenging the remains.

[SineSwiper]

Unless you have a crapload of crossbowmen, wizards are your best bet for knocking down walls. Just get the scout skill uped to max.

Also, warmages are good for knocking down the wall without having your arcanists waste a turn hitting the wall. Of course, they are useless after that, except as a tank. I wish they had more HP. Wizard upgrades in general are cheap and well worth it, though.

[Mental]

Elves get Wizards at +10%, I believe. So I think I'll forego the cavalry and work up to a slow but bunker-busting army. I think what I'll do is get one apiece of the meat units (infantry) except for Swordsmen, which will be upgraded, and get a good Arcanist legion together. They have ridiculous damage against most other unit types. Eventually I could work up to Noblemen (gonna take awhile there) and Elflords and try to take over castles instead of raiding.

I'm almost surrounded by other castles, so if I get a good enough army together the slow march time won't hold me back all that much.

Anyway, looks like I won't be playing again until tomorrow, a bug wiped out my chance to buy resources for the day (for some reason it seems to have bumped my counter ahead a day, I probably need to upgrade Firefox), so with a level 4 Wall and pathetic resource stores I feel safe leaving this game alone for the night.

[KluYa]

Unless you have a crapload of crossbowmen, wizards are your best bet for knocking down walls. Just get the scout skill uped to max.

For raiding, you're much better off using crossbowmen and cavalry archers to knock down walls. The reason why wizards aren't complete shit in this game is because they attack before anything else gets a chance - including walls. This lets you wipe out some sizable armies without suffering nearly as many casualties, but if you face a wall and only a wall, then this advantage is largely mitigated (it's just about irrelevant in fact). You can simply sacrifice a single shortbowman, or a single pikeman, etc as fodder while your archers get the job done.

Some numbers to chew on:

Arcanist × 1

Resources required: Gold 125; Iron 250; Wood 625; Food 500
Population space: 6
March speed: 25 (larger is slower)
Carry capacity: 15
Power against buildings: 120


Crossbowman × 6

Resources required: Gold 300; Iron 150; Wood 240; Food 120
Population space: 6
March speed: 14
Carry capacity: 120
Power against buildings: 120


Looks like a no brainer to me.

[KluYa]

Elves get Wizards at +10%, I believe. So I think I'll forego the cavalry and work up to a slow but bunker-busting army. I think what I'll do is get one apiece of the meat units (infantry) except for Swordsmen, which will be upgraded, and get a good Arcanist legion together. They have ridiculous damage against most other unit types. Eventually I could work up to Noblemen (gonna take awhile there) and Elflords and try to take over castles instead of raiding.

I'm almost surrounded by other castles, so if I get a good enough army together the slow march time won't hold me back all that much.

Anyway, looks like I won't be playing again until tomorrow, a bug wiped out my chance to buy resources for the day (for some reason it seems to have bumped my counter ahead a day, I probably need to upgrade Firefox), so with a level 4 Wall and pathetic resource stores I feel safe leaving this game alone for the night.

I also play as Elven. If I knew anything at all about this game when I picked then I likely would have went with Troll, but Elves turned out to be a decent choice also. Arcanists are strong, but inefficient, as I showed Sine in my comparison. Generally, players can think about guilds when they produce around 300 of each resource per hour. It will be quite some time before a newer kingdom manages to invest the time and resources required to up their TG to level 10 (close to 10,000 of each resource will be used). In the meantime, I strongly suggest you make use of light cavalry. They're quick and they downright slaughter infantry and archers. Forgoing a strong LC force is to deny yourself the ability to scavenge efficiently, the capacity to carry back the resources you win by attacking another kingdom, and the strength to plunder kingdoms at or near your level who are still sitting on their 200 shortbowmen or other infantry units they've trained up.

It's your choice of course, but I'm speaking from experience.

[Mental]

The problem with light cavalry, Klu, is that I'm surrounded by stronger kingdoms that are literally right next door to me, and there isn't much worth raiding in the cavalry-ish range. March time's not going to be a big deal, what will be a big deal is trying to get myself up to the point where I can compete successfully with these castles who have a head start of eight or nine levels on me.

And, the thing about Arcanists over shortbowmen is, if you manage them right, you're not going to lose them in battle, at least that's what my experiments with the battle sim are telling me. Shortbowmen give you the same bang for less buck, but they take up population units and get killed and have to be retrained at additional cost. When I've been running these simulations, with the right Swordsmen/Arcanist combo you can keep the very expensive Arcanists without losing any. And it means you don't keep butting up against a population limit. I'm thinking a wizard/infantry combo might be the basis of my strat for awhile.

[Eric]

Infantry is worthless

Calvery or go home.

[KluYa]

The problem with light cavalry, Klu, is that I'm surrounded by stronger kingdoms that are literally right next door to me, and there isn't much worth raiding in the cavalry-ish range. March time's not going to be a big deal, what will be a big deal is trying to get myself up to the point where I can compete successfully with these castles who have a head start of eight or nine levels on me.

And, the thing about Arcanists over shortbowmen is, if you manage them right, you're not going to lose them in battle, at least that's what my experiments with the battle sim are telling me. Shortbowmen give you the same bang for less buck, but they take up population units and get killed and have to be retrained at additional cost. When I've been running these simulations, with the right Swordsmen/Arcanist combo you can keep the very expensive Arcanists without losing any. And it means you don't keep butting up against a population limit. I'm thinking a wizard/infantry combo might be the basis of my strat for awhile.

I said crossbowmen, not shortbowmen. Shortbowmen don't have a range advantage versus walls and therefore can't be protected while they attack one. I've never lost a Crossbowman in battle, ever.

As I pointed out above, a single arcanist takes up 6 population. Focusing the vast majority of your training on them will in no way save you from butting up against a population limit.

Arcanists are great units - I wouldn't employ a whole ton of them if I thought otherwise - but it takes a good 2 weeks before they even become available. Sitting on your hands in the meantime doing nothing in terms of raiding resources from weaker kingdoms or scavenging the battlefields of stronger kingdoms is a colossal waste and will slow your growth immensely. I can relate to starting out behind the 8 ball, being surrounded by kingdoms at least 6 or 7 levels stronger. I never would have caught up by leaving all of those potential gains on the table for someone else. I took advantage of it and now have well over a million points of experience, so it's worked out pretty well. I scanned your area of the map and there are plenty of kingdoms in the 2 to 8 level range. Waiting around for arcanists of all units before going about pulling in resources from other kingdoms to fast track one's development makes very little sense to me.

I still think, or rather know is the word I should use, that when you're eventually able to amass a decent sized army of arcanists, they won't serve very well as the primary composition of your force. Not much point in sending out an attack if you're only able to carry back a small fraction of the resources that you win. It will be difficult to catch up to nearby kingdoms if they're making twice as many raids as you are because their armies travel twice as fast. You'll never win the resource race without utilizing various unit types to complement the arcanists - unit types which incidentally you won't need to wait around 2 weeks in order to train.

Do what you will, and good luck with your kingdom.

Infantry is worthless

Calvery or go home.

Indeed, sir. =p

[Mental]

Okay, in that case, how do I go about getting information on my neighbors? A lot of the weaker kingdoms have 0's for every item, which I don't understand. The help pages are having server issues, so I can't look them up.

Is this what espionage is about? In that case, what's the best way to start spying on people?

[Shellie]

You need quickwalkers. The map shows whats available for scavenging, not stealing after invading. Send some quickwalkers and they will come back (if not killed) and tell you what they found.

[KluYa]

Yeah quickwalkers are the only unit capable of spying, and you'll need a stables to train them. A single quickwalker sent out to a kingdom without any of their own will report everything about a kingdom's army, infrastructure, and current resources. Most kingdoms up to around level 6 or so don't have any quickwalkers yet, so it's easy to peek in on people without any problems.

Later on in the game when everyone has tons of quickwalkers, just send out your forces to crush anyone who's been idle for at least 10-12 hours, because you know they'll have a lot of resources stocked up.

The help pages are extensive and definitely worth a read through when you find enough time. I learned a lot of interesting tidbits going through them.

[SineSwiper]

Haha, don't quote me the numbers, dude. I've got them all:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... b30Uqb4WtQ

Wizards are better than Crossbowmen when you have the wizards upgraded, and the Crossbowmen aren't. Wizard upgrades are really cheap compared to CBM. Now, when you have those CBM upgrade, yeah, they are a better unit, but the wizards are still useful for the first attack, and much latter, the building destruction.

Don't ever use Cavalry Archers. They suck. Bad.

[Eric]

Gimmie access you bastard, and are you taking unit cost into account when you say x unit is better? Tier 3 & 4 Wizards may destroy buildings and have #1 priority on attacking, but they cost a freakin arm and a leg, and their battle prowess is inferior to the Arcanist.

[KluYa]

Haha, don't quote me the numbers, dude. I've got them all:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... b30Uqb4WtQ

I posted those numbers to make a point you didn't appear to understand, dude. I don't know if posting a link I don't have permission to access was meant to prove something, but I'm going to take your word for it that you've at least looked at the stats available in the help documents anyway... in which case it should be painfully obvious to you that I'm right.

Regarding the Cavalry Archers - if you make use of the rituals, you're going to end up with a number of them whether you like it or not, in which case you might as well put them to work for you because leaving them sit there to rot is pretty dumb.

[Don]

Does this game have any kind of combat simulator? Seems like you're just playing blind until someone attack you and then you either totally win or totally lose.

[Shellie]

yes there is a battle simulator which you can run a few times to take randomness into account.

[SineSwiper]

My bad. Didn't realize it wasn't shared. Try it now.

Eric, unit cost is definitely taken into account. And there are sets of figures accounting for HP and no HP. Which set you use depends on if it's going to be soaking up damage or not.

[kali o.]

It's still a stupid game...why argue about the mechanics behind a stupid game?

I made mistakes, I should have focused less on an early army and picked easier targets. Now, villages I've cleared and farmed all around me are either too small to hit or orange in protection.

I'm telling you, it's smart they don't have a delete option, otherwise I would likely hit it. PS - Someone recruit some players near(er) me please.

[SineSwiper]

I've recruited my players around me, and they have recruited others. My sector has the highest population of clan mates. I would recommend sending mails to people in your sector to see if they will join. I've got some canned messages in the clan forum.

You just have to spy around for people below or near your level. First, though, you need some wizards and a 500 pop army. Then you'll be able to invade other castles with walls. Be sure to have lv10 in mines, though.

[kali o.]

I've recruited my players around me, and they have recruited others. My sector has the highest population of clan mates. I would recommend sending mails to people in your sector to see if they will join. I've got some canned messages in the clan forum.

You just have to spy around for people below or near your level. First, though, you need some wizards and a 500 pop army. Then you'll be able to invade other castles with walls. Be sure to have lv10 in mines, though.

I'm well beyond needing that brand of advice, I know how to convert people to farms (and my army is over 1k, hopefully 2k full by tomorrow). It's trickier to break those that are active and my size at this point, so I'm considering spiking some of my nearby farms -- though I need to investigate that option more thoroughly.

As for recruiting, meh, not interested. Unless someone else does it, it won't happen. ANd if you recruit someone, at least 1 full grid screen away (buffer) please...