[PLAYER GUIDE] Troops, Recruitment and Battles (Update October 2025)

This guide reflects the author’s personal experience and the game’s content as it exists at the time of writing. Future updates may alter features or introduce new content.

Troops (research to unlock, stats, formations, marches)

Troops are unlocked through research, and once completed, research cannot be undone. Each research increases your account power, which directly affects matchmaking in events. More power means stronger opponents, so research choices must be made carefully. For new accounts, unlocking T3 troops should be a top priority and can usually be achieved within a few days of starting the game. The only higher priority is upgrading your castle to level 25.

● Production Tree

The production tree does not affect battle stats directly but is required to unlock T4 troops. Even though it has no combat value, it will need to be maxed eventually.

● City Defense Tree

The city defense tree is weak and inefficient, giving very little benefit for the power it adds. It is best to avoid this tree completely as the power gain is not worth it.

● Military Tree

The military tree is the core of combat research. It unlocks troop tiers from T2 to T4 and also improves troop stats. While the stats are more important for rally leaders, everyone needs to progress through this tree to unlock higher tier troops. To reach T4, both the production tree and the Master’s Tower must be maxed. The recommended strategy is to rush T3s within the first few days and then continue toward T4.

● Expedition Tree

The expedition tree is one of the most important research lines in the game but not related to combat. It enables you to kill higher level rebel leaders by increasing damage and motivation. Since rebel leader chests are the main source of speedups and resources, this tree directly accelerates account growth and allows you to join stronger alliances.

●  Advanced Defence Tree

This tree boosts fortifications, but at the moment, fortifications are most useless. The tree adds power without meaningful benefits, so it should be skipped.

●  Advanced Military Tree

The advanced military tree provides several quality of life upgrades, such as reduced troop recruitment costs and additional marches. Unlocking more marches is especially useful for hiding troops and for greater flexibility in combat. This tree becomes valuable after you have unlocked T4 troops and have built up a strong rebel leader killing capability.

●  Formations Tree

The formations tree gives you access to different troop formations for attack and defense. Early on, it is only necessary to unlock the first two formations, which, when combined with the default one, cover almost all scenarios. The latter research is expensive and not a priority until much later.

●  Commandership Tree

The commandership tree has some decent upgrades overall, but it is not important during the early game. It can be safely delayed in favor of other research.

●  Refinement Tree

The refinement tree provides bonus combat stats, making it one of the best research for all players. Refinement upgrades require grinding the Expedition Beyond feature for gems, so this tree becomes very important in the long run.

●  Iron Defense Tree

Iron defense is mostly useless except for a few upgrades deeper in the tree. It is primarily designed for players who want to defend against city rallies. Most players can ignore it entirely to avoid unnecessary account power.

●  Great City Military Tree

This tree is focused on Castle Siege events and works only in great city battles. While it can be useful for some, it should not be prioritized.

●  Strangely-Garbed Army Tree

This tree unlocks T5 troops, making it a crucial long-term goal. However, it requires special resources and a very long grind. Players should expect significant time and effort before being able to fully unlock T5 troops.

●  The Alliance Conquest and Siege of Winterfell trees are exclusive to those events. They provide strong advantages in their respective “arenas” but are irrelevant for regular gameplay, so they can be ignored until you decide to focus on those events.

In conclusion: unlocking T3 and then T4 troops should be your highest priority. When deciding what troop types to build, the most important factor is what your alliance needs. Since you will often send troops to join rallies led by stronger players, matching their preferred troop type will make you more valuable. If most leaders favor Spears, then focus on training Spears. If Cav is the preference, train Cavs instead. If your alliance does not have a clear preference, the safest approach is to build a balanced mix of infantry, spearmen, and cavalry. This way, you will always be able to contribute effectively to rallies, regardless of the leader’s formation.

Troop Recruitment

Having T4 soldiers and using them in alliance events has become the standard for most alliances, although top alliances are starting to only recruit players who have unlocked T5s. Players who have not unlocked T4 yet will have to use T3 instead. This makes unlocking T3 and T4 as quickly as possible a top priority. Once unlocked, it is important to analyze how many soldiers you actually need. Many players make the mistake of overproducing troops, and if you forget to stay bubbled or get rallied by a stronger player without being able to empty your castle, you risk losing a large part of your army. 

The smarter approach is to produce only as many soldiers as you need for events and hold on to your training speedups and resources for rebuilding in times of need. A good rule of thumb is to keep enough troops so that you can empty out your castle with a 50% scroll in a reasonable amount of time. More experienced players with faster reaction times can send out more marches and hide troops quickly, but each player has to find their own sweet spot. At a minimum, you should always have enough troops to reach your maximum deployment limit for events. 

In short, produce soldiers until your army size matches your practical needs, and save your speedups and resources to rebuild when necessary rather than maintaining an oversized standing army.

Battles

There are a few rules you follow to minimize troop loss during battles:

●  Whenever you are not fighting on the map use a truce from the Sept of the Seven to protect both your army and your resources. Truces can also prevent an ongoing attack on your castle if you do not have fervor. You may also appoint a friend as your protector, allowing them to activate truces for you when you are away or busy.

●  In active combat make use of your shelter to hide both your troops and your lord when you are away. Troops and your lord inside the shelter are fully protected. If all of your troops fit into the shelter, you will not lose any soldiers even when attacked, though resources will still be vulnerable if you cannot hide them. There is also a shortcut button for quickly sending troops to the shelter.

●  When engaging in combat with other players, have alliance members set up 8-hour rallies on rebel camps and open all troop types. This allows everyone to send their soldiers to an ally’s rally, keeping them safe from attacks. Be aware that once rebel camps reset, the rallies are cancelled and troops will be returned.

●  Upgrade your hospital and altar capacity. Healing troops is far cheaper and faster than training new ones, so hospitals are one of the most efficient ways to protect your investment in troops. Altars are designed to work like a get out of jail free card, allowing you to resurrect some dead droops without resources, only using its own Energy resource.

●  Use reinforcement or garrison features to keep troops safe. Reinforcing or garrisoning a player with a long truce or a very strong account ensures that your army cannot be targeted. If you garrison another player, you can also place your lord in safety. To reinforce, go to the world map, select a friendly player, and choose the reinforcement option.

● Higher-level accounts can hide one additional army in a Mentor Rally, but this requires the account to have at least 100k personal score, so it won’t be an option early on.

●  Only take out resource items from your inventory when you need them for a building upgrade or research. If you hold them openly, you risk being attacked and losing them.

●  If you cannot afford bubbles or are attacked frequently, another strategy is to limit your troop numbers so they all fit into your hospitals. This way you avoid losing troops permanently since they can all be healed.

Special thanks to Chronicler FatCom for creating and sharing this guide with the community.