Ok, this is a WIP guide. More I will learn more will add. Need also time to insert images. Read t and enjoy!
Introduction
Here we go. With a little presentation. I’m Danyjia a swiss player that enjoy Nikea games. I play 3Kingdoms and Orpheus Story (a similar game, that fits in the same trilogy, but with Greek mythology involved). So, that’s all ^^
Now, a little note on this game. There are microtransactions. The more you pay the more you receive advantages. But you can have fun also as a f2p gamers all you have to do is perseverance and a lot of patience. Things that are needed in both cases. Buildings take a lot of time to be built. Units take some time to be drilled and so on.
Tip
Try to understand what type of player you are. If you want to be a top player (who I’m not) you have to spend a lot of time in this game. And like some people do, also some money.
But If you like the story, the mood, chatting a little with friends about game mechanisms, and the magic when you light up your phone just to see if Cao Cao has to come to your tavern, you are more than welcomed!
Basics
For the basics, please, go to the Nikea forum. There you will find all the info needed. From the UI to the explanations about the buildings and so on. They did a pretty good job so, take your time and go read it! (press on the title to be redirected on the website page)
Town
Will show you how your town and his UI works.
Buildings
Will explain building by building how they work and what they do.
Map
You get info about the two map systems (City and Region) and how they work.
City
Here will be explained the City UI and a little intro to a crucial part of the game: villages. But we talk about them later.
Region
Here you will get info about the big map and how to read it.
First Steps
Have you read the basics and the relatives links? If so, let’s start.
Follow the main quests and they will let you know how to construct buildings, drill units and so on. But let’s speak about the buildings and the resources (from now « rss »).
RSS
There are four types of rss: food, wood, iron and silver. With those rss you can do, nearly everything in the game. Construct buildings, drill units, research, move legacy and train heroes and so on.
The most important? Maybe silver, because it’s harder to get it. If you followed a little the main quests you will know that you can research technologies. With researches you will find a way to improve a lot the food, wood and iron production but it’s not the case for silver.
To this add that if you want to buy rss needed you have to get silver. Converting other rss cost a lot of taxes (30% for every step).
Example.
You need 1.000.000 iron to drill some Heavy Infantry in their shiny armours. But you own only 700.000. You look at your rss and you will see that you have10.000.000 food, cool! But you can’t convert it directly. First step you must convert food into silver, and then silver into iron. Here comes in play taxes. As explained in the basics guide there is a 30% tax. So, if you want 1.000.000 iron you will have to pay 1.300.000 silver. And how much food is needed to get 1.300.000 silver? You must add 30% of 1.300.000 to itself so it will be 1.690.000 food. Don’t worry, the game does all the calculations for you.
Based on the example it’s clear that if you own a lot of silver you don’t have to convert rss and in this way you save 30% of other rss when you are in need of a precise rss.
Tip
There is a way to gain silver and it’s trading but it’s not the moment to speak about it.
Incoming Rss per Hour
Rss are added every second to your total but all the calculations are based on an hourly income. You can find how much rss you are gaining per hour by clicking on the rss bar on the top of the screen. Doing this you will see something like this:
Immagine Incoming rss
Those numbers are the result of various factors.
Buildings
The first one is the level of the building where the RSS is produced. Higher the level of the building higher the profit. At level 20, for example, an Iron Mine will gather +65200 iron.
Hero in the building
As you progress in the game you will find heroes that have special bonus if placed in the right facility. For what concern rss buildings you can have a % given by the hero itself and then bonuses given by TALENTS and LEGACIES.
Lord
Lords have a very key role in the game. But what they do in regard of rss? As explained a little before they can have TALENTS and LEGACIES that boosts the income. Other than that, there are three attributes that help you boost the income and they are: intellect, charm and politics. Higher these attributes are, better will be your income.
INSERT INTO LORD EXPLANATION From what I can see the most important is Politics
Research
There are many researches that can help you increase the income. At first, they are:
- Logging
- Farming
- Mining
Tip
The research window Info is quite simple to read. There are 3 keys info
The effect
The Max Level
And what is required to unlock the research
Crew
It’s a crucial part of the game even more if you are a f2p. Crew can make your journey easier. Why? Every people that you add to your crew will add a 1% BONUS of your income BUT ONLY IN YOUR MAIN CITY ! But, at a condition. They will have to be persistent players. If your members crew log in every day, they grant you the bonus but if they don’t connect for several days in a row the begin to give you a +.5% and finally if they stay disconnected from the game for a long time, they will give you 0% bonus income. How can I see if my crew members grant me good bonuses?
Go under Social tab, press it and then go to Crew.
Here you will see a list of the member in your crew, where their main town is placed on the map and the Lord who is managing now, and VIP level.
Selecting the Manage tab you will see the same list, but it shows you two key things:
If they are active (green light), if they are inactive by a little amount of time (orange light) or if they are inactive for a lot of time (red light)
The little icon with the two coloured humans means that you added this player to your crew! If not present it means that they added to their crew. Why is this important? You have a little amount of people that can be in your crew and it’s based on your VIP level. Reached that amount you can’t add more people but other player can still add you! So, knowing this can let you decide if risk and cancel inactive players so you will have a chance to invite another player, or let him in a corner, hoping that he will come back in the future!
Tip
If a crew member buy Sycees (the currency in which extra trades are done) you have a chance to get a little amount of Sycees too!
Other ways to gather RSS
Palace
Owning the Major Palace have some advantages. In the palace you will get some rss and you will get taxes (based on the rate you fix) on the all the players trade. You will get a good amount of silver if all the spots are taken and the players have good boosts!
Quests
Main, daily, side and weekly quests can give you extra rss.
Peddler
The peddler can sell you rss at cost of some sycees.
Advertising
Advertising can give you a lot of things, between them extra rss at cost of 30’ of advertising! Pay attention that the amount change as the story progresses and there are always two amounts of rss!
Villages
Villages gives you SPECIAL RSS and a fixed amount of rss per hour. It’s not added to the hour income but given to you every hour in the CITY REPORT.
Patrolling
You can get extra rss from the heroes you send to patrolling
Attendance Awards
Every day you will get an attendance reward. It may happen that today you will get a rss crate! It will be kept into the storage items tab.
Black mountain / Yellow turban cargos
Sometimes you will get cargos. From quests, from attendance rewards. It works like rss crates. When you receive it, it will be stored in your storage and you have to open it and maybe you will get extra rss.
Looting
Attacking other players is a way to gather rss. At the beginning try to not attack everyone. You will lose reputation and maybe a few crew members. Try to attack inactive players (how to know if they are inactive? If they are members of your crew you have to know how to check it).
Tip
If you have a neighbour that it’s not in your crew, and you want to know if he’s inactive try to look at the trade post. If your neighbours don’t trade with you anymore maybe it’s because he stopped to play…
And Tricks
If you want to loot players from the same city or a member of your crew, low is LIKE-O-METER to zero or nearly zero or you will lose reputation!
And another trick…
Bandit Camps are like candies for children! Every active player will try to get some of them. If you don’t see other players flags, maybe, they stopped to play. PAY ATTENTION that there are players from all over the world, maybe they play when you sleep so you can’t see if they catch bandits camps!
Bubble trick
If you are under protection in the first 7 days of play, pay attention that attacking someone else will end the effect of the bubble!
Trading
Trading is the best way to get silver income. When you build up your trading post you will be able to trade. You send out goods from your town to your neighbours. They will receive it and the send it back to you (if they want and have a good to send). When you receive their good and you accept it, you will have an extra silver income!
There are few rules to follow.
Good production
You produce a certain amount of good per day (you can see how many in the trade post building). Several factors can influence the number of good produced.
- Level of your trade post
- Hero present in the trade post (and all his boosts)
- Researching (More Goods)
- VIP level
Good price
The price of the good is linked to five factors and these factors are:
Silver income in the town you are doing the trade
Silver income in the town you will trade with
Like-o-meter. If you open up the trade post and go the Neighbour tab you will see all the player that currently own a town in the same city as yours. Every player has displayed: his name, coordinates of the town (domini), Like-O-Meter and Reputation. How does the like-o-meter works? Every time you trade with a player, this parameter will go up. Every time you cancel a trade, or you attack (from the same city) it twill goes down. Higher the number, higher the income, simple.
The omnipresent VIP level
And the omnipresent researches. In this case the first one you will encounter will be:
Process goods picture
Tip
We told that the amount of silver you get from trading is linked with your town income. Easier to understand that in your main town you will get a lot more silver then in other towns! (at the same heroes’ buff increases and buildings levels and hoping that you have a little crew).
Cooldown
You can’t trade all your goods in a second. You have to wait some time. But there are two ways to speed the process.
Sycees (if you are asking yourself about sycees, yes, as told you at the beginning if you pay you will get advantages and can buy nearly everything)
And researching, it’s obvious! Here we are with the research needed:
TDK (or Trading Kingdom)
A trading Kingdom is a city where all the players PIONEER to trade with each other’s. This is a good way to get a good amount of silver! Not to tell you that if you are the major of the city, you will get a lot of silver! So, create or pioneer to a good tdk to see you silver income increase like a crazy!
Tip
When you are the owner of a Major Palace, with a handful of sycees you can promote your tdk, so other players will see and maybe pioneering at your city!
Promote image
Building
The trade post has a good feature. All the money that come from trading can be shared with all your towns that have a trade post built! Oh, and if someone will come to loot you, no problem, you can protect a little money based on the level of the Trade post and with the good research (not displayed here, it’s a bit advanced).
Champions
Champions are special heroes that helps you fight against the Yellow Turbans and other players. You will find them in the tavern.
Attributes
For the attributes of the CHAMPIONS please refer to the forum guide.
Hiring Champions
Let’s start from here. A lot of players ask, « How can I get good rated heroes? ».
Taverns
The answer is simple, and, in part, it is written in the guide on the site. All you have to do is increase your fame and the number of visiting champions. And the list of things that you can do is:
- Increase the level of the taverns
- Build more taverns. Bonuses of every tavern will stack with other taverns but ONLY FAME GIVED BY THE BUILDING, AND THE BOOST OF + VISITING CHAMPIONS GIVEN BY THE LEVEL, THE BOOSTS OF THE CHAMPIONS WHO ARE PLACED IN A TAVERN COME INTO PLAY ONLY IN THE TAVERN YOU LOOK AT FIRST WHEN CHAMPIONS VISIT THE BUILDING THEN THEY ARE SHARED ON ALL THE TAVERNS.
Every 10th level of a Tavern, will give you an extra visiting champion, increasing the chance to get a good hero. - Place a champion in the tavern WHERE YOU DECIDE TO WATCH AT, that gives you bonuses on FAME
- Place a champion as a LORD who will give you bemuses on fame AND/OR incoming champions at the taverns
- Buffs (rerolling, increasing number of heroes, extra buff like weekly or extra events)
- Research (not researched yet)
- VIP level is crucial here. The higher the better heroes…
- Luck
- Champions visits your taverns every two hours so be sure to be there!
Example
Let’s try to explain it with an example.
In this example we don’t calculate VIP level and any kind of extra buff others then the champions buff and we have a situation where we own three towns and every town has a Tavern builded in it.
Situation
Base fame
So. The only thing that doesn’t change are the bonuses given by the building themselves.
Summing up the numbers we have a “base fame” of 54000
This number is given by adding the total Fame in all the Taverns
Base incoming champions
We have a base boost visiting champions of +2, given by every 10th level of taverns builded (Max boost per tavern is +2 at level 20). In this case, adding the two +1 we get a total of +2
Champions Boosts
Now comes into play the champions boosts.
This situation will evolve like this if we sum up the champions boosts at the same town:
Results
So, here we are. Remember that the results will be based on the first tavern you check so this will be:
It is clear that if you want to maximise the results you will have to check your heroes at the tavern of the Town A.
Tip?
Not sure but maybe the luck of the champion placed into the tavern will give a little increase… who knows…
Tip rerolls
I know I know we said that higher the fame higher the chance of a good champion will appear but… We start saying that rerolls will refresh the champions visiting the taverns so it give you a chance to get the good ones. if you choose to do rerolls you can choose between two roads.
- Reroll with all the taverns intact
- Rerolls destroying all your taverns
Why the hell I have to destroy all my taverns? This will bring my fame too much! Rerolling at the tavern will cost you as many reroll tickets for every tavern you own. So, if You own only a tavern you don’t have problems. You have 30 reroll tickets you can refresh 30 times. But if you own 5 taverns you can reroll only 6 times! Five time fewer, that’s mean that, talking statistically, you have low chances to get goo heroes. Tried it couple of times with 100 rerolls. On 100 rerolls with 5 taverns got maybe a 6*, destroying the other taverns having 100 rerolls gave me way more 6*. So if you choose to reroll keep this in your mind 
Attendance rewards
Sometimes you can get heroes as attendance rewards!
Fortune Cookies
If you are lucky enough in the fortune cookies that you receive when you get a PATROL message you can find a random hero card!
Events
Events gives you the opportunity to get random heroes cards!
Coup a coffee
Also, in this way you can get 2 bonus heroes. One 6*+ hero and one 7*+ hero! It’s up to you if it’s worth it.
Categories
For now, we can divide champions in three main categories.
- Lord types
- Buildings boost types
- Fighting types
Lord Types
Lord types champions are lord that help you into the town management. They boost stats that will help you.
At the beginning you will have lords that boost the main income. In the guide you can find that three main stats increase the resource yield,
- Intelligence
- Charm
- Politics
The higher these stats are the higher your income will be but the main stat, the one who increase mostly the income, is POLITICS. So, try to hire a CHAMPION who have high politics or look at their TALENTS and LEGACIES. There are also other TALENTS and LEGACIES that have positive boosts on your lord heroes like:
- Management (gives you a fixed amount of each rss per hour boost)
- Virtue (add a fixed number of heroes visiting you tavern and also fame)
- More Intel (help you scouting and prevent scouts from other players)
Tip
Look at the talents of the champions and at which level will be unlocked! Hiring a CHAMPIONS with a VIII politics TALENT that unlock at level 50 and pretending to assign him in your mansion right now it’s a bit hard.
Buildings Boos types
Some champions come with talents and legacies that will help you improving the buildings results. Look for talents like:
- Farming (help produce food)
- Logging (help produce wood)
- Mining (help produce iron)
- Fame (help produce fame)
- Drill (reduce drilling time in barracks)
- Advanced Drill (reduce drilling time in arsenal)
- Study (reduce the study time)
- …
Fighting type
We want war! So, Fighting type are good as generals for fighting. Here it depends on what strategy you want to apply and who are you attacking. Catching bandits camps? Try to hire a champion with high speed attribute or legacy. You will get the bandit camp before other players! You want to attack a neighbour or Yellow turban palace? Try to get someone who have good control attribute because this attribute will rise the damage of your units. Here there are so many combination and strategies that it’s impossible to cover all in few rows.
Legacies
LEGACIES are a very important part of the game. They are a type of skill that can be transferred between heroes. This kind of operation is done into the academy and it have a cost.
You can pay some silver but there are high chances that the champion will be lost during the process and a low percent of success. Or use sycees, in this way you keep the champion and you are sure that the transfer will be done! The cost of the process is linked to the stars of the champion involved and the LEGACY itself. More powerful LEGACIES will cost more to transfer.
Tip
Look at the little draw of the LEGACY, legacies of the same type can’t be stacked if you transfer them! They can coexist only if they are already present on the champion!
Tip exp
Try to level up your champions because it will give you advantages. How?
- let them work into building (if they have a TALENT or LEGACY linked with the building you will have also gain a boost) but only at the early stage. First levels will be gained faster then the gain will be useless.
- catch those bandits camps! Use faster champions to get more bandits champs!
- fight against Yellow Turbans Champs and Palaces. In this way you will gain more exp!
- merge champions (advanced tactic to gain exp). If you find “useless” champions, try to level them up and then merge their exp with the chosen ones! It’s very effective when you merge legacies and the donating hero doesn’t disappear, use his great xp to let another better hero level up!
RESEARCH
Research is a big part of the game. Into the lab you can research technologies that will gives you advantages. These advantages will go from more rss production, to higher damage for you champions and even get fame!
The researches, into the lab screen, are categorized under 3 tabs
- basic
- industry
- military
BASIC
Basics technologies will help you research more advanced stuff, they don’t give you bonuses they are meant to unlock other technologies and also new unit types to drill!
INDUSTRY
Industry research give you the ability to improve buildings. From improving rss gathering, to gain more fame, produce more goods, gain more silver and so on.
MILITARY
Military research will give you boost linked to units. The boosts range from speed of the units to gain damage, have a better Intel level to gain more xp for your CHAMPIONS during battles!
SPECIAL RSS
Now, let’s talk about special rss (from now srss). Srss are special rss that cannot be gathered like rss. You can’t produce them, but you have to search them. There are 5 types of srss:
- bamboo
- salt
- oil
- silk
- ginger
They are a key aspect of the game because most of the research need srss and as the level of the research goes up also the need of srss will rise, sometimes drastically! But if I cannot produce them, how can I gather them?
ADVERTISING
Yeah, advertising can give you some srss but don’t expect so much, it’s just 2srss.
BANDITS CAMP
Bandits camps (and even Yellow Turbans camps) will be your main source of srss. Destroying them will let you give a good amount. It’s CHAMPION level based so, higher the level of your CHAMPION, higher will be the reward!
Tip
Pay attention that the higher the level of your champion, higher will be the amount of enemies that you will encounter so at some point sending only the hero from himself will give you a defeat!
VILLAGES
If you go into the city map you will see some small villages. You can conquer them sending champions. When you conquer a village you will get hourly bonus rss (you can find them in city reports) and daily srss. Srss are assigned this way:
- Mining Vil give you Salt (+1500 wood and +3000 Iron)
- Farming Vil give you Oil (+1500 silver and +3000 food)
- Industrial Vil give you Bamboo (+1500 food and +3000 wood)
- Trading Vil give you Silk (+1500 food +1500 wood +1500 iron)
- Commercial Vil give you Ginseng (+3000 silver and +1500 iron)
- Wealthy Vil will give you only rss (+2500 of every rss)
The number of villages that you can attack and conquer is linked to the research Diplomacy. For every level of the research you gain one more village to control!
Tip research
Try to rise your basics and the industry researches. Increase the level of researches that give you bonus on the silver income (like accounting and Good Processing) this way you will also gain a boost in trading income!
Tip research time
You have to wait to research. You star a research and then you have to wait some time. This time can be reduced by:
- Level of the lab (every lab of every town you own will add to the others, so two labs at level 10 will sum together their bonus)
- Champion chosen to work into the lab (talents and legacies will help but also high intellect stat will give you a boost, note that as the taverns the boost of champions is given only at the lab you start the research!)
- Research (researching Study faster will help you shorten the researches, every level will reduce by 2% the research time)
- Under 30 minutes you can research/complete the research for free, so use it!
- Using Sycees you can instantly finish the research (it cost 1 Sycee for every 30 minutes left: 2h 15 min hours left will cost you 5 sycees to end it)
Tip research more
You can get more research slots. Mostly by buying them (under the store into the Special Tab there is a Study Limit +1 at cost of 100 Sycees (please note that the more you buy, the more you will pay). There also the option to buy it daily but it’s not recommended. With cup-a-coffee you will also get a Study Limit +1 at low cost. And with quest you will get a Study Limit +1 when you reach lab lvl 20 (and also be at the required quest).
REAL MONEY
With real money you will buy the ingame money that is called Sycees.
You can buy Sycees with a fixe amount rate or buy a sort of “subscription” that will give you 50 sycees and 5 VIP point every day for 30 days. To know the prices, go under the STORE menu tab.
With Sycees you can buy nearly everything. You can buy, but not only:
- Speed up productions (units drilling, buildings creation, instant research)
- Some sort of buffs (you can see what they do if you go under the Buff tab into the store, they are well explained)
- Special things like Build limits, Study limits, Drill limits and Rerolls Tickets for the tavern.
VIP LEVEL
Business is business. The more you spend real money the more advantages you will get in game. Every microtransaction will give you some VIP points. These points will rise your VIP level giving you extra boosts (extra production, more crew member slots, more fame for the tavern and other buffs). You can find all the VIP levels and their buffs if you click on the little icon near the character that is placed into the town you are viewing. The more you spend the higher will be your VIP level and higher the bonus you receive.
Tip Sycees without paying
Haha not talking about cheating. You can rise your sycees without spending a single cent. Advertising, doing quests, patrolling, and even bandit camps can give you some sycees sometimes. It will be a slow process but as told… this game need patience! Oh, and for sure, do contests!
Tip f2p
There is a way for f2p or mixed ones, to rise your VIP level too. You can buy VIP points by the peddler, the secret merchants that have is own icon in the bottom right corner of the city UI.
ENJOY THE GUIDE
That’s it for now. Hope to have some more time to add other stuff (units, champions, palace conquering, leagues…).