Introduction

Rise of Kingdoms is a MMO strategy game taking place. The main difference from most similar games is the possibility to chose between different civilizations to start with and rather than having a setting in one time frame it plays through history. The main focus is on building troops and ultimately subdue enemy alliances with superior forces, but there is a lot of focus on growing your own city with a very elaborate set of buildings with each their own function, and using research to make you stronger.

Civilization Selection

When starting the game you get to select your civilization. You can change your civilization later, and all civiliations have their own benefits, so it is not like you can make a fatal mistake, but it might be good to have a look at the possibile civilizations and chose one that suits your game play. Looking at the possible choices I favor Korea (for the research speed boost) or China (for the building speed boost), but actully all boosts are quite small.

Tutorial

After the civilization selection the real game starts. You will start with the Counselor character taking your through a tutorial. For first time players it is good to walk through this slowly as the game can get complicated because of its many different features. The tutorial does a reasonable job of explaining the absolute basics, but there is just too much functionality you should know to understand this game. This guide should help you further.

Bind Your Account

Do not forget to bind your account. Even if you do not spend any money on the game, it can be quite addictive and it would be a shame if your phone or tablet crashes and you no longer have access to your game. In the Player Profile window (accessible by clicking on the avatar at the left top), there is a button to access the Settings page at the right bottom. Here you can click Account to bind your account. On iOS this can be done to Game Center and Facebook. Besides the Link button to bind the account you can also Switch accounts here.

Alliance

An important step is to find a suitable Alliance. Via the Alliance menu (in the Player Profile window or the menu at the right bottom) you can apply to join an alliance or join one of the alliances that are currently open for new recruits (or create an alliance). As with other games with alliances it is important to find a likeminded group of people. Don't be afraid to switch to another alliance if you feel your first is not a good fit, or if either leaders or other members are not active enough. Make sure you have an active group of people. Not only the number of members are important, but also how many are actively playing as a lot of players tend to lose interest after playing a short time. In some other games it is possible to check when alliance members last logged in, but I haven't found this option in this game yet. A good way to check activity is to see how fast you get helps when starting a building upgrade or research project. I'll explain more about those terms below. If you are intending to play for a long time, the social aspect is important for many people as well, so check how active the alliance chat is and whether the people active there are people you want to socialize with.

Beginner Teleport

When you join an alliance for the first time you get a free Beginner teleport (I had two when I checked, not sure how I got them, but you should have the same after joining an alliance). You can use this to teleport close to your alliance, but be careful about using it. The game can suggest you to move to a location, but this might not be the location your alliance wants you to teleport to, just where your leader happens to be at that time. Ask about it in the alliance chat first. The beginner telepotrs expire after 10 days, so no need to wait too long. Later if you need more you can also acquire an advanced teleport for 1500 gems. This is costly so you should aim at using your beginners teleports to locate yourself in the hive (location) of your new alliance.

Academy

One of the buildings in your city is your Academy. You can build the Academy once you upgrade your City Hall to lvl 4. Once you have it, you should basically try to make sure you always have some research project active and you should make your research speed as fast as possible. The Economic Technology research category contains important projects to increase your resource production and gathering, and your building and research speed, the Military Technology research category contains projects that provide boosts to your troops and that unlock higher tier of troops.

Training Troops

There are 4 buildings relevant for training troops: Barracks, Stable, Archery Range and Siege Workshop. These buildings have menu items where you can start your troop training of the respective 4 types. By upgrading the buildings you increase the training capacity for that type.

Upgrading Buildings

The game suggests some order of building and upgrading buildings, you don't need to pay attention to that. There are some things to consider. One building to upgrade as fast as possible is the Alliance Center (unlocked at City Hall 3), it increases the number of Alliance Helps you can receive. Especially early on in the game, when timers are not that long, it can make a huge difference if you can receive many Helps (and you have an active alliance that provides those Helps fast). Early on I also tend to focus on upgrading buildings that are requirements for the next City Hall upgrade first to make sure I can start the next City Hall upgrade when I go offline for a while. All the buildings have their own importance, the Academy unlocks new research project levels, the Barracks, Archery Range, Stable and Siege Workshop increase the amount of troops you can train, the Farms, Lumber Mills, and Quarries increase your resource production rate and capacity . After you start an upgrade do not forget to click the item above the building to request for Alliance Helps.

Helping Alliance Members with Research and Construction

You and your alliance members can help each other with research and building upgrades. Before you have build your Alliance Center you need to go to the Alliance menu to Help, once you have the Alliance Center there will be a shortcut icon above the Alliance Center to Help All. The number of Helps you can receive is determined by the Alliance Center level. Each help deducts remaining time from the building or research timer.

Using Gems and Speed Ups

During the game there are various ways to get Gems and speed ups, but they are not that easy to come by. Once your timers start to be more than just a few minutes you might get tempted to use these to speed up research, construction and troop training. My general advice is don't just use these for anything, save them up and there will be opportunities in the future where you can benefit from increasing power, as is common in these type of games.

Power

Although the power of a player has no direct meaning for your strength in combat, it is often used by players as a quick measurement of strength anyway. Typically alliances will set certain power requirements for their players which increase over time. As such it is important you get your power up as well. There are four basic categories of power: Building, Technology, Troops and Commander. You can see your power breakdown by clicking on your avatar at the left top of the screen, followed by clicking on the More Info button at the left bottom. It is an extra reason to always have active research projects, building upgrades and troop training. Your commander power increases by getting more commanders and leveling up your commanders. A bit more about commanders in the next section.

Commanders and Tavern

In the Commander menu at the right bottom you can access your overview of your Commanders. Initially you get two commanders and you have a chance of getting more from the recruitment in the Tavern building. In the Commanders overview you can upgrade your commanders XP level with available Tome of Knowledge items, and the number of stars. When you upgrade a commander you can also assign points to talents. There is also the possibility to upgrade skills. Each of this can be done for a total of 28 different commanders, so this is clearly a quite complex part of the game. As a beginner it might be good to just focus your effort on one Commander that you will use for all attacking. Whenever you have a chance you should open the silver and golden chest in the tavern. This potentially gives you a new commander, but also many other useful items, such as Sculptures and Tomes of Knowledge which are necessary to improve your commanders.

Barbarians

Attacking barbarians can provide you with some rewards. Attacking them cost Action Points, which will recharge. If you have time it is advisable to attack many barbarians to get different rewards. You can use the magnifying glass at the left bottom of the screen to find nearby barbarians of a certain level.

Alliance Technology and Donations

In the Alliance menu there is a Technology button that opens up the Alliance Technology feature. Here you can select a project to donate to. This costs you resources or Gems, I tend to only use resources as gems are harder to come by. The donations help with researching alliance tech which helps your alliance grow in various ways, a very important one if by increasing the maximum number of members of an alliance. One project should be starred by the leaders of the alliance to indicate what the leaders want to focus on, use that one. There is a timer, you cannot donate unlimited, after some donations you will have to wait until the timer cools down.

Daily Objectives

When clicking on the scroll item at the left of the screen you will see two items. The quests are one time tasks you need to do to grow your account. The Daily Objectives are recurrent tasks that can provide you with all type of rewards. You get individual rewards for reaching each objective, but you also get points for each objective you reach and rewards for the amount of points you reach. Try to reach 100 points each day, the rewards for it are nice.

Gather Resources

Gathering resources is an important way to get extra resources. Make sure before you log off to send out your troops to gather.

Check List of What to Do When You Log In

Most of the things in this section we already mentioned, but it might be good to have a reminder of what you should look at as a minimum when you log into the game:

• Click on the Alliance Center Help icon to Help all alliance members with research and construction
• Look at the Scroll in the right top to see if there are any rewards to claim (or activities you might want to focus on)
• Attack Barbarians until Action Points are depleted
• Start a research if none is active
• Start a building upgrades is none is active
• Start a troop training for each type of troops if none is active
• In the Alliance Tech donate the maximum
• Claim the completed Daily Objectives
• Claim completed Quests
• Send your troops out to gather resources
• Read your e-mails and PMs (note that Alliance e-mails from the game might have gifts for you, you need to click Collect in the e-mail before it moves to your items)

If you have more time consider:

• Working more towards completing your Daily Objective milestones
• Discuss with your alliance members whether there is some nice targets to attack or other things to collaborate on
• There is actually plenty more to do, but I wanted to keep the Beginner's Guide limited, just explore the map and your city and have fun!

Conclusion

I hope this helps you getting started. If you have questions, or if you have other suggestions for beginners, please share in the comment section.