For Beginners - How to conquer a Shard

Hello, I'm Jwolff and I plan with this guide try to help new players presenting a simple strategy to conquer shards. I'm not a professional player, and I'm making this because for too long I don't see any new material with good tactics.
Even the tips and guides that we find on the Internet are too vague and not didactic:
EG

Originally posted by Random guide writer:

Hire a wizard, level up him and use dragonform to turn an ally into a dragon!

"HOW DO I DO THAT ?! F*CK"

    Another important factor to stand out in this guide, is that English is not my native language, so many grammatical errors will be present here. If you want to contribute, send me a message showing where errors can be found and I will correct them. Constructive criticism is welcome, trolls will not be feeded.

When I started playing, believe or not I was a lot more noob than I'm now! I had no Idea how to play, so I picked my shards by their size (always tiny or small). Now I'm not so afraid on battling bigger shards, since the dinamic is the same.


At the beggining, yes it does. The units guarding a province are stronger by the distance this province is from your capital.


On the first shards, focus the ones that reward you with constructions that ensure gold income and troops. Being able to recruit Swordsman and Crossbowman, you can conquer tiny shards and with a little more effort the small ones too.

As soon you gain access to Tier II Wizardy building, Fireball and Lightning magic can guarantee the conquering. After those, Keep focusing the shards that give a bigger Mana income and/or the ones that give Good Karma troops or better magics!

I always choose the Scout as the First Hero, since he can do pretty well at the provinces next to your castle without too much effort or money (no need to spend on equips or troops early)


Every level your hero gains, you receive 3 skill options to choose as the skill you are going to level up. We are going to Focus on 3 skills of the class Scout.



ALWAYS pick one of those 2 skills. If both are present as one option, have this in mind:

MARKSMAN 3 > ARCHERY 3 > MARKSMAN 5 > ARCHERY 5

So, what did you learn? Try as soon as possible get 1 more range, then bypass some armor, then focus again on range and then again on bypassing more armor!

If marksman or archery aren't a pick up option, you should pick Reaction


Archery, Marksman and Reaction are the usefull scout skills! I like to pick up 3 levels of scout when I dont have any other option, but it doesn't matter. All other skills beyond those 3 aren't as usefull.


As soon you enter the Shard, you have 2 chances of getting your first skill! Save the game and hire one Scout. If he gets Archery or Marksman, keep him. If not, reload the game, buy one building at your castle and just then hire one scout. If you still didn`t get Archery or Marksman, try to see which attempt had Reaction. If noone, you just went unlucky, pick whenever of the 2 options you got and move on.

At my campaign, I'm conquering my 20th shard. As you can see, this one provides me +12 mana and 1 really important building (III tier wizardry building).

The first 6 turns are REALLY important to ensure newly conquered provinces Mood! I ALWAYS construct those buildings at castle and in this order!

Resuming this part of the guide:
Hire a Scout, start attacking provinces next your castle and build in this order:
TAVERN => GRANARY => INN => SHOW BOOTH => LIBRARY => THEATHER

Hired one Scout (With Reaction skill), constructed one Tavern (at castle) and moved to a free settlement

As you can see, the game mechanics says its too hard to conquer this free settlement. I went anyway and won without loosing a single hitpoint. Scouts are really OP early game.

Even without the lucky of having Marksman or Archery skills. Plus This is a Forest world (terrain that gives +2 ranged defense)

Contructed a Granary (at castle) and went back to castle to repair equipment

Constructed an Inn (at castle) and a Pub (at 1st province) and moved to 2nd province

Constructed a Show Booth (at castle) and a Pub (at 2nd province) and moved to 3rd province

Constructed a Library (at castle) and a Pub (at 3rd province) and moved to 4th province

Constructed a Theater (at castle) and a Pub (at 4th province) and moved to castle to repair equipment

At this point, you finished the buildings that give a boost to province mood and is finishing to conquer the first ring of provinces (1 hex from your castle).
As you can see, you drained almost all your gold, and its time to explore some locations to farm gold before going to conquer the next ring of provinces (2 hexes from your castle).

Constructed an Workshop (at castle) conquered last province. To ilustrate how things should be around this round:

Constructed Carpenters Guild (at castle) and Pub (at 5th province). Moved my Hero back to castle to repair items and start farming at locations.

WHY CARPENTERS GUILD?
Because you have to build those constructions that give +5 gold on provinces depending of their terrain. Since this is a forest shard and I have several provinces with forest terrain, i choose Carpenters guild for the sawmill


At those turns constructed on Forest provinces sawmills and Taverns.
At Castle constructed Swordsman School, Crossbowman School, Forge, Stable, Farmers Market, Merchant Court and a Carpenter's Shop.
Hired 2 swordsman and 1 crossbowman

You know you are good with gold income when you built enough gold income constructions (both at castle and provinces) and your gold income is Higher than 50 per turn.
At this point you finished crossbowman and swordsman schools (or you are finishing). To expand to the second ring of provinces, it is good to have:

• 1~2 swordsman
  
• 1~2 Croosbowman
  
• AND/OR Bought a heavy crossbow and heavy arrows (both from Journeyman Carpenter building)

Don`t mind how many turns you take to achiev a good gold flow income, just remember to keep your gold income between 40 and 80. You can keep building others constructions like Magic Well to give more gold income.

By the way, this isn't any recipe (diferent from the first 6 turns strategy), you can recruit troops, advance on the second ring provinces or anything like that at any order. Just keep in mind to priorize your gold income while developing your kingdom.

After achieving everything (or almost everything) listed before, you can move to the last phase on the shard: Building a Wizard and defeating others masters on the shard!

By the time your Scout is about to reach level 10, you should have again a good gold income, even with 2 crossbowman and 2 swordman. By then, you shoul hire a Wizard and fill all first circle magic slots with Magic Arrow.
Try gaining some levels to gain access to 2nd circle magic slots. Then build one Wizardry Guild to unlock Fireball spell and Lightning. The first one is for crowd control, and the second to finish strong enemies.


Farm some levels on locations and/or exploring and march DIRECTLY and STRAIGHT to one enemy castle. Avoid trying to conquer everything, since you can spend too much time on it and receive some ambushes.

As you can see on the next video, I went straight to one enemy, and when i found her, I declared war immediately! Next turn I was invading her territory to reach her castle and begin a Siege! Remember to hire some guards on bordering provinces.


Then marched toward the last enemy. His army was way stronger than mine, but since i was rushing, he could not contain me.

(Still editing video)

This section is for future questions. :)

And this is it. I know this isn't a good guide, but I tried my best to give some tips to others newbie players. Sorry my bad english. Since i don't speak well, I could not explain everything i wanted, but I hope even those little tips could help someone on some random fact they didn't know.

Feel free to add me on your friend list to give suggestions on gameplay.

And please, give a good rating or upvote it if it helped you! Even if it is crap for you because you are a pro, I still took a lot of time doing this :/