As you progress in level you will notice that you get attacked more often, both by the AI and other players. Today we’ll discuss a bit about how we can handle this and other useful things.
I’m attacked by a more powerful foe, what do I do?
This is certainly annoying, and can be really costly at times. I myself got attacked by 4 other players well over my own level, they killed every creature I had, even at higher levels, and stole a lot of my resources. I tackled this in three ways:
1) The bully wins: The first one was at a much higher level, so I contacted him and asked if he would be willing to friend me instead. He told me all he was after was my primordial ores. Since I rarely use those, we came to a trade agreement, where he would spare me if I sent him as much as I could spare if and when he asked for it. I saw this as a sortof schoolyard tactic, where the bullied kid hands over his lunch money and gets spared, but it worked.
2) Forever friends: The second one was also a higher level than me, but this time he contacted me. After having attacked one of my expansions, he finally attacked my main dungeon. After some talk, it turned out he was just testing his army to see his limits, and my 5 lvl 30 warlocks killed one of his high-level creatures, so he was afraid of retaliation… Let me take this again: Someone of a much higher level, with creatures that kills ALL of my creatures in one attack was afraid I would retaliate against him. He friended me, and now we are even trusted friends, meaning no more bloodshed. Try to see if you can talk your attacker into becoming a friend and see if you have something in common to strengthen the bond.
3) Pacifist rules: Resources are a lot easier to protect than your creatures and your creatures require resources to level. There is a button on the lower-right toolbar that lets you set all creatures in that dungeon to passive, meaning they won’t try to defend the dungeon. If you click this and see that it is unchecked (it gets darker and more transparent), the attacking enemy can just stroll in and take all resources you haven’t put in safe storage. If you are left unattacked for long enough to build some safe storage for all three of your main storage rooms (Storage for minerals, Tavern for food and Elements Confine for primordial and mystical ores) they won’t get as much per attack. If you get enough safe storage, their attacks won’t be efficient enough and they will eventually stop attacking you.
Leather? Hate? I hate leather!
Ok, leather is a rare commodity early in the game. Even at my ripe 27th level I find that I’m always short on leather. This is what settlements are for! As you might have figured, killing AI gives you leather, thou early on you only get a short amount of leather. You need to kill higher level AI creatures to get more leather, or simply kill more of them. This is where HATE gets useful. For every attack you make on a settlement, even a non-military one, you will generate hate from that settlements protectors against the attacking dungeon. The more hate you get, the likelier it is that a military settlement will attack your dungeon. Do not fear, most of these attacks are dispatched with no sweat at all, even by low-level creatures. However, they will leave behind some leather, roughly 100 leather for each attacking creature.
If you can generate enough hate to have the AI attack you several times per day, you won’t need to raid settlements to get a steady supply of leather. Let the leather come to you!
What’s the point of an alliance if I can’t get to the other players?
As you might know, The Torch have our own alliance (search for Alliance of The Torch ingame to join) and we are spread over several regions, meaning we can’t actually see eachother or help in any physical way. However, the chat alone makes it worth it to be in an alliance. Also, if you are in an alliance, other players are less likely to attack, fearing retaliation from other players of the same alliance. However, as you progress in the Overlord Mastery branch of research, you will eventually learn Stonegating. This allows you to move through the regions in the game and you can either move a dungeon or just the creatures from a dungeon to other regions.
With Stonegating you can reinforce other players dungeons, trade with others or help them in coordinated attacks, even if they are in another region. It takes time and effort to get that much research (it takes a total of 147 125 research points, if you only research Overlord Mastery technologies), but if you are in an alliance or if a friend is in another region, it is worth it. Heck, it’s even worth it just to be able to raid other players in other regions, since at lower levels it is less likely they will have this ability themselves, so they cannot retaliate.
Level your creatures, ALL your creatures!
The higher a creatures level, the more efficient it becomes. A higher level creature will have more hitpoints, higher carrying capacity and their possible special effects will increase in efficiency. A thief will be stealthier, a warlock will research faster, an ogre will pillage more and so on. Once you reach lvl 20 with your overlord, you should have at least one dungeon with at least one type of creature capable of leveling to lvl 30. Level your creatures as much and often as you can, as they will only take food and money from you without giving much back if you don’t. At higher levels (every 5-10 levels, depending on creature) they will require more to level and their upkeep will be higher, but it is worth it if you utilize them properly.
Have every square possible converted to library squares, level the library as high as you can and have your warlocks at the highest possible level to research quicker. Don’t neglect food production, but you don’t need to have all production in the same dungeon. I have one “attack” dungeon with all my raiding creatures and two “research” dungeons with huge libraries. The two research dungeons don’t require as much food, but I still have large food production there to send over to the attack dungeon, to keep those creatures happy.
As usual, I will come back with more if I find more tips to give you. In the meantime, feel free to join Alliance of The Torch and if you have tips you want to share or questions you need answered, feel free to drop a comment.
Thanks for the tips. I am an avid GK player and am level 24 atm. Your tips are really useful and will follow them as much i can. If you can maybe do a tutorial on dungeon building plans… what to build in what dungeon. Like you said 2 research and one raiding.