My friend Simon Princeton decided to test a theory he had for Game of War, the popular mobile MMO with legions of fans. His theory was to create a tunnel visioned-empire of Stronghold Level 18 (SH18) that excelled in Troop Training and sacrificed everything else to get there. The goal was to use that tunnel vision to profit from events and earn in-game rewards.
The good news is that it works. Using the following methods, he has been able accumulate hundreds of thousands of Gold—one of the main currencies in Game of War—without spending real money on Gold Packages. The sacrifice was that every building that did not help train troops or research had to go, and that means postponing many other aspects of the game.
With this technique, you will have no Forge, Marketplace or Hall of War—that means you can’t craft items, donate resources to anyone else (including your Alliance City), or rally. You also won't have a prison, altar, or embassy, and that means no taking prisoners, no executing prisoners, and you can't be reinforced by other players if you are attacked or rallied.
In exchange for sacrificing these buildings, you will have an Academy, four Barracks, and 20 Villas, the building blocks of a profitable troop training empire. When coupled with the right research and the right Hero skill points, you have the basis for creating a very large Tier 3 (T3) or Strategic Tier 3 (ST3) army, and actually profit from it in the process.
Note: until MachineZone—the publisher of Game of War—changes something, you can use this formula to accumulate a million Gold (or more, depending on your patience). You could certainly accumulate enough Gold to get your Level 21 Academy and research to T4 troops without buying Gold Packages, as shown in the screenshots below.
SH18 Screenshot with 658K Gold
For "Spenders," those players who finance this game by spending hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars on Gold Packages, 658,970 Gold is nothing. For the vast majority of players who don't spend, that's an undreamed-of fortune of in-game Gold. Yet it was all accumulated legitimately—no cheats or other scams were involved—over the course of three weeks of figuring out how to maximize troop events.
But, this isn't magic, and it's not fast. This method will earn several thousand Gold per day in profit, meaning it will take weeks to accumulate the Gold you need. If you want to spend real world dollars, Gold Packages remain the fastest way to level in this game.
Utilizing this system requires you to have the patience to set goals and keep working until you achieve them. If you want T4 troops but don't want to spend, this will let you do it.
Next: Requirements and Your Goal
Page 2 - Requirements and Your Goal
Requirements
The system Simon worked out is designed around an SH18 stronghold. You can utilize it while leveling up to SH18, but it will not work at level 19 or above. That's because the in-game Events in Game of War shift significantly once you cross that mark.
Not only are the rewards less profitable at SH19 and above, you would need to train T4 or ST4 troops to meet the point requirements for troop training events. The resource (RSS) requirements for doing so are so high as to make it impractical for long term activity unless you are Spending anyway and have RSS coming out of your ears.
In other words, if you are higher than SH18 and want to follow this method, start a new account.
For your hero you will need to max your troop training skills in Troop Training and Troop Training II as shown in the screenshot below. This will require you to level your hero high enough to get deep into the Hero Skills Tree. Your remaining skill points can be invested in any way that suits you.
Troop Training and Troop Training II Hero Skills Maxed!
For research, you want to take the following researches as high as you can:
- Troop Training Speed - Combat Tree
- Troop Training Speed II - Hero Tree
- Troop Training Speed III - Restorative Tree
- Troop Training Capacity - Restorative Tree
For extra credit, make gear that gives you Troop Training speed boosts. That's easier said than done, however, because those gear items are made from mats that are the hardest items to get in the game, namely Fire Age Materials. There are two items—Hades Helm (Helm) and Prometheus's Boon (Accessory)—that are random gifts and can't be made. Those will help immensely, so keep your eye open for them.
Your Goal
Your goal is to get your four barracks to where they can train approximately 8,400 T3 troops in 24 hours, a mark you should hit at approximately 485 percent Troop Training Speed boost. In our tests, 485.5 percent Troop Training Speed boost resulted in 8,400 T3 troops needing 23:54 hours.
You can see your total boosts by looking in your Profile and tapping Boosts, as shown in the screenshots below. Note that this number will be different from the Hero Boosts screen you can pull up in your Hero menu. The Hero Boosts screen shows only the boosts associated with your Hero (skills and gear), while the Boosts screen in your Profile includes those boosts, as well as boosts from Research and buildings.
Profile Boosts
At 8,400 T3 troops per 24 hours, the Troop Training events become profitable. That 24 hour mark is key because the Speedup rewards from events—and the Speedups contained in the Speed Chest under Items -> Treasures—include 24 hour units. If you get your training boosts so high it takes less than 24 hours to make a full batch of troops, take out a Villa and replace it with a Barracks to get your batch level back to 24 hours.
Next: Events
Page 3 - Events
Now that you know what to do, it’s time to hit the events. Just as is the case with playing and winning casino events in Game of War, you must only attempt an event or combination of events that offer rewards exceeding your investment. This requires math—you need to understand what the event will cost you in Speedups and RSS and know what that would cost you in Gold. When the Event rewards exceed the costs, it's profitable.
Here's how to figure it out: most Solo and Inferno event offer 5 points per T3 troop. At 8,400 T3 troops per 24 hours, you earn 42,000 points per 24 hours of Speedups used. Broken down further, that's 1,750 points per hour of Speedups.
When you review the events, note the thresholds for rewards for the Kingdom Event, Solo Event, and Inferno Event, including the points needed to hit them. Take that total, and divide by 42,000 and you get the number of 8,400 batches you need to complete the event. When you know that, you will know precisely how many 24 Hours Speedups (or combination of smaller Speedups) you need to complete the event(s).
Note that new Kingdoms might not yet have Kingdom Events. In addition, events are different according to the age of your Kingdom. Study your events carefully and make sure the math works for you.
Here's an example from an actual event. The inferno event needs the most points of all 3 events, 950,000 points. So we bust out the calculator and find that 950,000/42,000 = 22.6. In other words, we need 22.6 batches of 8,400 T3 troops to complete the event. That breaks down into 542 hours of Speedups.
The rewards for this Inferno Event come out to 248 Hours of Speedups and 20,000 Gold. That’s not a bad result, but if we also add the Kingdom and Solo events, things get even better, as shown in the image below:
Training Event Screenshots
(Click for a larger image)
In fact, let's add them all up:
Kingdom Event Rewards: 144 Hours of Speedups and 5,000 Gold (plus RSS, Energy, a Chest, and Casino Chips)
Solo Event Rewards: 6 Hours of Speedups and 4,000 Gold (plus chest, RSS, and a variety of boosts)
Inferno Event Rewards: 248 Hours of Speedups and 20,000 Gold (plus chests)
Total Rewards: 398 Hours of Speedups and 29,000 Gold (plus a bunch of other stuff).
If you look at just the Speedups, we have a net loss of 146 hours. But we also have Gold! Convert that Gold into 24 Hour Speedups at 1,500 Gold per and we 464 Hours of additional speedups!
Tip: You could sometimes purchase Speedup Chests (Items -> Treasures -> Store), which offer 173 Hours of Speedups for 13,000 Gold. It's not as good a deal as buying straight 24 Hour Speedups, but it gives you a mix of little Speedups you might need.
That means our new total for completing these events is: 398+464 = 862 Hours of Speedups.
Congratulations, you just made a profit of 320 Hours of Speedups. You are so far in the positive on Speedups you won’t need to buy 13.3 of those 24 Hour Speedups, meaning you just added 20,000 Gold to your bank. Plus, you trained more than 184,000 troops. Not bad.
As you can see in the screenshots above, completing all 3 events (Kingdom, Solo, Inferno) is highly profitable. But even if you already completed the Kingdom Event, the Solo and Inferno Events are still profitable when done in tandem. That's why you see so many points in this Kingdom Event. In that one cycle, we were able to the Solo and Inferno events three times, which was enough points to push us on the Leaderboards for even more profit.
Next: The Research Side of the Equation
Page 4 - The Research Side of the Equation
There is another side to this picture, some of the speedup rewards were in 3 Day Speedups, useless for our 24 Hour Troop Training formula. They will need to be "converted" into smaller speedups, and you can do this with another kind of event. To the research-mobile!
First, hold off until there is a research-only event—no troops, then let loose with your heavy hitting researches when you find an event that offers many 24 Hour or lesser denominations of Speedups. A lot of Gold works, too. Follow the same formula you did for troops and only do the event if the rewards are greater than the investment.
Once you have this down you have created a cycle that allows you to keep on training and winning. You will use these larger speedups for research events that give you (generally) smaller speedups and more Gold, which you convert back down to the 24 Hour or lower Speedups, which you will then use for troop training events.
The cycle begins and will lead to great rewards!
Still Real
One note on research: it isn’t as clear cut as troop training. Different researches have different power rewards for the same time invested. We can not stress enough the importance of knowing what you will research and the costs involved before starting a single research. We speak from experience after making many costly mistakes.
You will make mistakes, too, so be prepared and understand it's part of the learning process.
Plan ahead and use the Research and Building Calculator at Inside Game of War and the excellent Research Tree Guide at Appsorium. They will both help you minimize your mistakes.
Footnotes
1.) We only purchase 24 Hour Speedups or the middle Speedup Chest for 13,000 Gold for this system. While not quite as cost effective as the Advanced Speedup Chest for 24,000 Gold, all the speedups you get from the Speedup Chest are 24 hours or below, which is perfect for training!
2.) As you tweak your empire, get gear and level your villas to max you’ll find that it takes significantly less than 24 hours to train 8400. Your choice is to build something to take the place of a Villa, like the Hall of War, or my preference, remove a villa for another barracks and train more troops for 24 hours!
3.) Depending on your goals, you could choose to destroy your troops after each event. A large army will eat all your food in storage making food management a pain. If you intend to do these events for weeks or months, you could just keep the last X amount of troops, be it a few hundred thousand or several million for an end-game rally meat shield.
4.) Resource costs will be heavy if you want to win multiple events per day. Plan your farm accounts accordingly.