How to play guide for Art of Conquest

CURRENTLY UNDER UPDATES BY AcidBurning 22:12, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

This page will serve as a basic how to play guide for . Feel free to edit this guide with any tips, tricks, and suggestions.

Basic gameplay
Art of Conquest is a Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy Game. The objective is to gain enough power to defeat your enemy. Gather and spend resources on training troops and upgrading their abilities. It is important that you can manage your time, resources, and people, as these three things are key to survival in the Art of Conquest. If you accumulate resources without having a good defense you will lose those resources to enemy players as they can and will steal from you. Having strong allies who can aid in your defense and offense is the route to success. Remember, whatever you can do alone you can do better with friends. No General can win a war alone, though some will try.

Controls
The game is very simple in its controls but very deep in its gameplay. To get around you simply tap where you wish to go. Tap on buildings to access them to build troops etc. It will take you an hour or so to learn where everything is. If it is your first time playing then spend some time tapping on everything to see where things are. You can also tap on the cyan i's in the top right of a unit's icon to see more detailed information about that unit.

As you complete the tutorial and make it to your kingdom's capital you can start making buildings and producing your own units. To do this tap on the new "Home" button in the bottom left of your screen.

There is also a button called quests marked by an ! in the bottom left corner of your screen. Follow it to learn the basics of the game. It will ask you to build certain buildings and units and kill monsters.

Choice of Kingdom
Starting out when you open a game it will show you a map with six kingdoms on it. Those six kingdoms are Athaly, Neferak, Icarum, Hyral, Skarn, and Dunwulf. Each kingdom has a different position on the map and choosing one will determine where you start in the game which team you will play on and what you will have access to early on. Each kingdom has its advantages and disadvantages such as position on the map, to availability of certain mercenaries or even boss spawn positions. I will go over what each kingdom is where it is located and my thoughts on how powerful that kingdom is overall.

Athaly (Teal)
Athaly is the teal colored team located in the northeastern part of the continent. Athaly is a powerhouse of a nation having early access to the Silver III mercenary Orcs a very powerful frontline unit which will allow you to dominate the early game, these mercenaries cleave their way through any unit that is below Silver IV. Besides this major advantage that experienced players will use to the fullest Athaly also has the best location the map with its early game borders stretching to most of the medium and large cities on the continent which gives Athaly an advantage when going to capture these cities. Another thing to take into consideration of Athaly is Escort time for resource carts, time are usually short because Athaly is usually in the center of the action.

Neferak (Yellow)
Neferak is the yellow colored team located in the eastern part of the continent. This kingdoms position is very favorable as it is easily defendable with only having one competing nation on its early game borders. Neferak like Athaly has early access to the Silver III Orcs in Davos, which allows them to aggressively expand their borders early. Before the change of increasing Quest cooldown timers, Neferak was king with its position, but now it has lost its number one spot to Athaly. Considering the escort of resource quests Neferak is a poor choice as most of its cities are extremely far away from everything which makes the escorts over ten minutes in most cases,

Icarum (Purple)
Icarum is the purple colored team located in the southern part of the continent. This kingdom has a strong position starting out if it can manage to block the advance of Hyral (green) coming from the west. Icarum has access to Bronze II sylphs right off the gate. These units are not strong, but they have the ability to apply a slow effect on things they hit. These units are very good at helping you kill a boss as it slows the boss to a near halt allowing you to kill the boss before it does any real damage to your army. Like Athaly, their position is fairly good for escorting carts as they tend to reside in the center of the continent.

Hyral (Green)
Hyral is the green colored team located in the western part of the continent. Hyral has a very hard starting position as it is surrounded with only a narrow escape into the rest of the continent. This position may seem horrible at first but to an experienced player it is actually a good position because of how the map opens up Hyral actually has early access to most of the large and huge cities early on and this allows for experienced players to contest any and all cities that are being captured besides the far off ones between Athaly and Neferak. I would recommend not playing Hyral unless you know a large amount of experienced player will be playing that team. It is very easy for Hyral to get cut off and pretty much die out within a few days of play and that is a quick way for a new player to lose interest. Hyral has access to Goblin Raiders as their mercenary this unit isn’t very good unless you plan on doing a lot of early game player vs player combat.

Skarn (Blue)
Skarn is the blue colored team located in the northwestern part of the continent. This Kingdom much like Hyral can easily be cut off by other kingdoms and left to die out. Skarn has more breathing room than Hyral as Dunwulf has Athaly to deal with to its east which usually allows Skarn to freely expand south into Hyral with little worry.

Dunwulf (Red)
Dunwulf is the red colored team located in the northern part of the continent. This kingdom has a lot of starting space to work with and doesn’t really expand into the rest of the map until the mid-game, which can hurt the kingdom for the long run. Dunwulf like Athaly and Neferak is a safe bet to play on as it has a lot of space to work with and little to contest with if you expand west towards Skarn early to cut them off and force them south.

Choice of hero
After selecting a kingdom, the game will ask you to choose one of three heroes. The choices you are given are Avalon, Avril, and Rufio. Each hero has their pros and cons and all three are balanced so there is no wrong choice here. You will also receive another one of the three a few minutes into playing the game so choosing only prevents you from having one of the three heroes. I will discuss the heroes further in a later section of the guide.

Avalon
If you choose Avalon you will also get Avril a few minutes later into the game.

This is either the best choice or second best choice depending on a lot of factors, but personally I always choose Avalon because of what he provides to your army and I place Crowd control high up on the level of useful things to have in an army so Avril to me is more useful than Rufio, but others will argue that Rufio is a powerhouse if used correctly and I won’t deny this as it can be true.

Avril
If you choose Avril you will also get Rufio a few minutes later into the game.

You will be able to get Avalon a couple of days later in the game in the void depending on your growth. To not forget, Avalon is LITERALLY the most important one to have of the three starting heroes as early as possible. He has the ability to field 3 legions while every other hero in the game can only field 2 legions, summons multiple archer legions (depending on Avalon command stat) and also gives a bonus to your archer and his own summons. For these reasons, he is the best starting hero and one of the must-have heroes in the game.

Rufio
If you choose Rufio you will also get Avalon a few minutes later into the game.

In my opinion, this is either the best or second best choice. Having Avalon is critical for any army while Avril is great, she can also be useless depending on how experienced your enemies are: if they use Elena, Avril's damage will be nearly zero and thus Rufio would be a better choice.

Gold
Gold is the primary resource in the game, you use gold for almost everything, such as training troops, upgrading troops, research, buying mercenaries among other things. This is the resource you will probably have the most of and the resource you will spend the most.

Elixir
Elixir is the blue bottle icon resource and it is used to produce some units and research upgrades in the academy. You will likely have an abundance of Elixir unless you play lich as some of their units cost Elixir to produce instead of gold.

Lumber
Lumber is primarily used to build buildings and upgrade buildings, but it is also used to research some upgrades in the academy. This resource is very important as later in the game buildings cost a lot of wood, and it is very difficult to keep up with demand. People will attack you over this resource.

Blood Diamond
Blood Diamonds is the red secondary resource which is used to build advanced units such as Silver and Gold tier units. Blood diamond is common compared to its sister resources of mithril and crystal. This is due to the fact that most of the units built by blood diamond are not staple units for any race and thus everyone usually has a ton of blood diamond laying around, which is great if you specialize in the units that do use blood diamond.

Mithril
Mithril is the green/turquoise colored bar icon resource. It is the rarest of the three advanced resources. This is mostly due to how few mithril mines there are in the early game and how far away the late game ones are from the capitals, thus making the mines a long cooldown. The other reason why Mithril is so rare is due to it being needed by every race to produce their frontline units. (the most likely unit to die and need replacing) You will find there will be mithril shortages and players will attack you to plunder all and any mithril you have.

Crystal
Crystal is a fair balance of being needed for staple units while having a lot of mines to produce it. I don’t find there is a shortage of crystal-like mithril but it is also not super common like blood diamonds.

Honor
Honor is used to increase your rank to unlock new types of buildings, acquire free heroes and to change your race via your castle building. Honour is also used to buy item pattern designs near your capital or gamble it at the black market to gain items. I recommend to only use the black market when you bought all your title needed and the item pattern that you need. You gain honor by doing quests and by engaging in player vs player combat. (This includes plundering other player castles and guard towers).

Player Ranks
The ranks are as follows.

Page 150 honor required – Unlocks Vega (adds 20 bronze supply)

Squire 250 honor required – Unlocks Stables or race equivalent. (adds 20 bronze supply)

Knight 400 honor – Unlocks Grimms, ability to change to the Dwarf race (adds 20 bronze supply)

Baron 800 honor – Unlocks the siege weapons building (adds 20 bronze supply)

Viscount 1500 honor – Unlocks Gazul and the ability to change to the Lich race (adds 20 bronze supply)

Count 3000 honor – Unlocks Priest, or race equivalent (adds 20 bronze supply)

Marquis 5000 honor – Unlocks the final free hero Virion (adds 20 bronze supply)

Duke 10 000 honor – Unlocks your race’s super unit, such as the Angel (adds 100 bronze supply)

Prince 25 000 honor – Unlocks the greater tier of super unit. (adds 100 bronze supply)

Notes: Baron rank and above require you reside in a city that is not your capital or have your castle level equal or higher than the one required to use those buildings and supply, the heroes will still be available even while in the capital.

To be a Duke, it required to be a governor of any city. As for Prince, you need to be governor of a Big or Giant city. To become a governor you need to ask the leader of the house to appoint you.

Building your Castle
To upgrade your castle buildings you need two things, time and lumber. It is simple to build all and any buildings and just go at your own pace as you play. To get ahead of the other players and to stay competitive with the top end players of your server you will want to think ahead and choose which buildings you want to prioritize.

For example, if you do not plan on being a player who breaks other players castles down there is little reason to build a siege works (catapult building) as this would be a waste of time and resources. You can just borrow these weapons from players who do invest in them as a primary unit.

What you want to do is always aim to upgrade your main castle building first, so if you have the choice of upgrading your castle to level 10 or upgrading your walls you should build the castle, not the walls. To gain the highest advantage possible is to always build your main castle building over any other because this unlocks higher level buildings, units, and research which is critical.

Quests
There are two types of quests, battle quests, and escort quests.

Battle quests and where you fight an NPC army and upon defeating it you are rewarded with resources experience for your heroes and maybe an item or two. You want to try and always complete these quests with the fewest heroes possible (ideally 1 or 2 heroes) this is to conserve energy as energy is the limiting resource for you to play this game.

Escort quests are where you escort a slow-moving cart of resources to your city.

Houses
Houses are like guilds or clans in other games, a group of players collect under a name and banner and fight together in a smaller group than say the kingdom. You can make your own house if you so wish, but I would advise against it unless you are an experienced player as it is hard to maintain and lead people if you have no idea what you are doing. Joining a house is almost mandatory in this game as it allows you to unlock things much faster if you reside inside a city and to live in a city you must join a house.

To join a house, go to a city that is player own and tap on the city banner in the top right of the city screen and tap on the join button. If you joined a new server where no city has yet been captured then you will have to search for a house in the house menu on the bottom of your screen indicated by the people shapes. I would suggest if you do not plan on capturing a city and owning a house for you to just wait until someone captures a city and joining their house.

How to capture a city
To capture a city, you have to first clear out all the strongholds in the city, to do this you siege each one until it is destroyed. Upon destroying all the strongholds, the button on the top of the city screen will change to green and you can tap it. Once you tap on it the hexagons will light up indicating for you to tap on one to move to that hexagon. Once you do a flag will be placed down on that hexagon you most hold that position for ten minutes and you will capture the city. Players will attempt to stop you by dueling you, if you lose the duel you will be kicked out of the city.

I would advise when capturing or attempting to capture a city, to bring friends as it is impossible to do so alone, you will wither yourself to thin resources wise either by lack of energy or loss of troops.

Heroes
Depending on which hero you pick at the start you will be missing either Rufio, Avalon or Avril from the seven free heroes, each player will get six heroes for free the rest will need to be bought. This includes the starting hero, you can buy the starting hero you are missing if you so desire, but I advise you to buy another hero unless it is Avalon you are missing.

Recently the game has made it so you have to be a certain level to learn hero abilities, as this makes battles a little more balanced it also means it is harder to focus on certain skills to make a niche army.

The level requirements are as follows

Ability Rank Requirements
Rank 1 – no requirement

Rank 2 – Hero level 3

Rank 3 – Hero level 10

Rank 4 – Hero level 15

Rank 5 – Hero level 20

Rank 6 – Hero level 30

Rank 7 – Hero level 40

Rank 8 – (Have Rank 7 and the item that gives +1 to that skill equipped)

Final Ability

Rank 1 - level 10

Rank 2 – level 15

Rank 3 – level 25

Rank 4 – level 35

Rank 5 – (have rank 4 and the item that gives +1 to that skill equipped)

Hero Equipment
There are six types of gear in this game: common, rare, epic, legendary, divine and flawless divine. Stats from each item can vary of ±1.

Common items have a green background and usually provide only small bonuses to your hero.

Rare items have a blue background and are still pretty common but provide a fair number of bonuses.

Epic items have a purple background. These items can really make a difference early in the game such as the Golden Staff a weapon that provides +7 magic. Epic items are rare to get until you get into the later mid game. Eventually, you will have your heroes fully geared out in Epics by the time you start getting a fair amount of legendary items.

Legendary Items have an orange background. These items provide amazing bonuses and make a huge difference early in the game and the months after, these items are very rare until you get to the late game. You will likely only have one legendary item by the time your first hero reaches level 20.

Divines items have a pink background. They are nearly impossible to get early in the game even when buying hero chests. These items provide huge bonuses and make a tremendous difference when pvp-ing early in the game and a huge difference for the next 3-4 months of the game. But, if you are growing fast, you might have 1 without paying via crafting after a month.

Flawless Divine items have a red background. These items are the best you can have and can provide 1 character worth of rare gear as stats. They are only obtainable via crafting and luck with the flawless system.

Flawless system: Each item have the chance to be crafted as flawless, giving more stat than the original one and upgrading it by 1 tier (Green become Blue and etc). This only depends on your luck to get them.

Set Items: Each tier have some set item which gives bonuses for the hero wearing it.

Here's the Items list with set items. [Under Construction]

Important General Information (harder to find) about heroes
Heroes also provide a passive buff to your army depending on what stats they have. The four stats of heroes are Might, Magic, Stamina, and Command. The amount of the buff is calculated as the following: the sum of all stats of your heroes you fielded in battle is pooled together for each stat. the same is done for the enemy player you are dueling. If you have more stat than the other player in that particular stat you will gain a buff, and that buff increases as you have more of that stat over them.

For example, if you and your opponent field 6 heroes (the standard amount) and your heroes have a total of 50 might between all 6 and your opponent has 40 you have 10 more might than them. This means you gain the buff. This is calculated for all four stats the buffs you receive are as follows.

Might – Gain 0.5% physical damage to all units per point of might over the enemy (includes heroes).

Magic – Gain 0.5% magic damage to all units per point of magic over the enemy (includes heroes).

Stamina – Gain 0.5% max health to all units per point of stamina over the enemy.

Command – Gain 0.5% attack speed to all units per point of command over the enemy.

The buffs cap at 60 points over your enemy giving up to a 30% stat bonus.

The following stats also give benefits to your heroes outside of battle.

Magic – Every 5 points of magic on a hero provides +1 Max Mana

Stamina – Every 5 points of magic on a hero provides +1 Max Energy

Tips and tricks
Boss Tips

Bosses give a lot of experience so fielding all your heroes is advised even if you don’t need to use a full army.

Get Sylph archers these units have an added slowing effect to their attacks this will cause the boss to lose 50% movement and attack speed. This is HUGE and will literally be the difference between losing or winning, even using bronze II sylphs is worth it that’s how important it is. You can buy sylphs around the map at mercenary points, you are also likely to get Silver Sylph archers in your daily loot box on the 3rd or 4th box (from free ones, the ones that are once every 24 hours)

The boss A.I is designed to focus Giant units over all other units followed by heroes. This means you can actually Cheese boss fights by using a Siege weapon or a spider or Tank. You can also use Rufio in the same way. The idea of this is to place a Giant unit in a corner and the Boss will run straight to it while all your units just kill it, this is twice effective if you use Sylph archers. You can go even further by having Rufio heroic leap to the position of the Giant unit as it dies and the boss will continue to stand there turned away from your army and attack Rufio.

This is even more effective now as once a boss is slain all the bosses supporting troops will flee making this the most viable strategy to killing bosses, this strategy works for any boss.

If you are still having trouble killing the boss Ask a Dwarf if you can borrow some Riflemen from them, these units have a chance to land a headshot which deals 50 times damage, which means you can almost one shot the boss, and as this is an NPC battle you can repeat the battle until you get a lucky string of headshots and kill the boss instantly. Happy Hunting!

I'll also advise to do the bosses inside friendly territory, to minimize the losses and have only injured unit unless you are already prepared to lose bronze troops.

One last tip, it is not always advisable to kill a boss the moment you unlock it, as it could kill a lot of your troops or worse you could already have a lot of resources and you don’t want to gather too much otherwise players will attack you.

Upgrading Castle Building Tips

When upgrading buildings in your castle you want to focus on production buildings and the main castle build above all else, and have walls as a second priority. There are times where you will have to pick and choose which buildings you want to upgrade first or never upgrade at all.

To be most efficient about leveling your main castle build which is your number one objective to gain power is to focus your army on a few units rather than all units, this also applies to research.

For example, If I can upgrade my spearmen building or my swordsmen build and then I have enough prosperity to upgrade my castle I should only pick one or the other, but which do I choose? Well, you should choose the one you focused on in research as it will provide you with the most power. Do this for all buildings and you will stay ahead of most players and probably be in the top 100 of your kingdom.

Never upgrade passive resource buildings except the Gold one (and only if you are on a gold bonus tile in a city) also never upgrade your warehouse (unless you get raided a ton, but you should be attempting to keep your resources low anyway)

Research Tips

When researching you should only focus on researches that will benefit your army so if you use swordsmen but decided to not use Spearmen than DO NOT bother upgrading Spearmen as it is a waste of Time and resources. It is better to focus on a small selection of units and make them more powerful than it is to cast your net wide and have mediocre units all around.

Try and pick researches that will finish around the time you will be playing next, for example I could research level 1 and 2 of x which takes 30 minutes just before I sleep for 8 hours and waste 7 hours and 30 minutes of research time, or I could research level 10 of y and it will finish by the time I am about to get to my office and I line up a new research to finish around lunch or dinner time. This will help you stay ahead even if you don’t play much.

General Tips

This is a game about resource management, this means you want to keep losses to a minimum. To do this the #1 loss you will incur overtime is from being raided. To keep these losses low invest your spare resources into your garrison, the stronger your garrison the less likely you are to be attacked, the fewer resources you have because you spent it on research or the garrison will mean you are less likely to be attacked. Do this always and you will be in good shape.

Before doing every overworld battle focus on the ones that provide potions especially the orange (energy) potions as they are the most critical to have, as I said above this game is about management and efficiency you do not want to spend more resources than is absolutely required of you. This is doubly so for Hero Energy as it is the #1 limiting resource in the game for you to do anything.

For example, it is better to attack a player’s castle with 2 heroes twice than it is with 4 heroes as if you are plundering as it will cost the same amount of energy but will net you more plundered resources, thus it is more efficient.

You can borrow units from other players in your house this is very powerful and can save you a lot of resources. To do this go into the house menu go to members tap on a member’s name and then tap on request to borrow. They can then send you two legions of troops for you to use in battle. This is almost required in the late game to duel whales or to break high-level castle garrisons.

Advanced Tips

Spacing your cavalry. If you have your cavalry back to back then they will charge into the enemy nearly at the same time, this is ineffective because the charge stuns the enemy for a second or two, to maximize this effect space the cavalry by one or two full squares or behind another legion of units, this will make it so you can charge the enemy twice for more damage and stun uptime.