by blumpy on Sat Jan 23, 2010 9:28 pm
This guide is aimed toward anyone who uses spies. The first part will be dedicated towards builds, while the second part will be focused more on gameplay. Without further ado, here is my advanced guide to espionage.
Keep in mind, when I say "spy", I am referring to any kingdom which either has around 160k spy stats or a much bigger spy stat than any other stat.
Benefits of a spy build:
1. You can bypass most kingdoms which have extremely high attack and defense but no spy stats.
2. Rarely will people spy on you. This means that you know the people who are attacking you, and you can retaliate more easily.
3. Only one spy building means less options.
4. Spy builds are usually overpriced. This can net you some gold early on.
6. VICTIMS DO NOT SEE YOU
Disadvantages of a spy build:
1. No plunder bonus. That takes out one of the biggest uses of allies.
2. Gold comes much more slowly than attack builds. See above reason.
3. It's harder to pin players.
4. Spy builds are usually overpriced. As you may have noticed, this is also in the benefits. This can also be a drawback because you might not be volleyed later on when you need gold.
5. It is hard to get on the leaderboards.
6. Wandering villagers are FRICKIN ANNOYING
SPY FACTS
Before we start, let's take a look at our most important building: the guild.
Guild at level 1: costs 25k, 150 of each spy stat given to allies, provides 500 spies
Guild at level 2: 2.5 mil to upgrade, 900 of each spy stat given to allies, provides 1500 spies
Guild at level 3: 75 mil to upgrade, 5400 of each spy stat given to allies, provides 4500 spies
Guild at level 4: 900 mil to upgrade, 13,500 of each spy stat given to allies, provides 9000 spies
Here is a list of land costs: 5k, 30k, 75k, 150k, 300k, 750k, 1.5 mil, 2.5 mil, 3.5 mil, 5 mil, 10 mil, 20 mil, 60 mil, 100 mil, 200 mil, 300 mil, 600 mil, 900 mil, 1.2 bil, 1.5 bil, 1.8 bil, 2.1 bil, 3 bil
Banking is the act of buying allies or items so that when other people attack you, you will lose minimal gold. Banking in potions will give you a 75% return. To see more on ally banking, check out Cowlegend999's guide on pot consumption:
http://forum.kingdomsatwar.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19023
The "too weak" exploit:
If anyone has an attack building, they will remain "too weak" for other players to attack, as long as they have under 20% troops. This means you can keep questing/attacking too keep your troops under 20% so you are invulnerable. To use this exploit, in addition to your guilds, build one attack building and stay under 20% troops. Recently, the developers have added that if you have less than 20% spies, you are unable to be attacked if you have no troop buildings.
BUILDING YOUR KINGDOM
Here is the recommended build order:
1. Start off with a volley, preferably until you have 30 mil or so gold. From here, ask a friend to volley an ally from 1 mil gold to 30 mil, you keep. This ally will be the base of your plunder bonus, something I like to call a plunder-holder. This ally is essential because no one will buy it from you (and if they do, you make a profit), so you can constantly be dependent on this ally for plunder bonus. If you don't have max plunder bonus, make sure to volley this ally up until you are hitting max plunder bonus.
2. After building your 60 mil land, convert all of your forges to level 3 guilds whenever you have money to. Make sure to keep plunder bonus maxed. When you're done with this step, you should have 1 attack building of your choice (not forge. choose war cathedral or bestiary for their special benefits).
3. You have two ways of making money: maxing plunder bonus on OSFs (which should give you a LOT of money) or questing to use the "too weak" exploit while stealing from targets.
4A) If you do want to reset, continue buying lands and building guilds (only upgrade to lvl 3) until you have completed your lands. Then, reset. This is potentially the quickest way to LC if you have a personal OSF due to the high plunder bonus of guilds.
4B) If you don't want to LC and reset for bonuses, then after you buy the 900 mil land, upgrade all of your guilds to level 4. When you buy your 1.2 bil land and build a level 4 guild on it, consider changing your forge to a war aviary (if you crystal a lot) or a summoning circle (for a small boost to plunder). After that, continue to buy lands and build level 4 guilds until you're done.
If you chose option A, you'll reach (stats for 1 war cathedral/bestiary)/124,200/124,200 and then reset.
If you chose option B, you'll end up with stats similar to:
(stats for 1 war aviary/summoning circle)/310,500/310,500
From here, start developing whichever build you want.
COMMON BUILD OPTIONS FOR SPIES
Pure spy
Pure spies are advantageous because they can never be seriously damaged. They hold no allies, so they can't be stripped, and they bank their cash in pots, so no one can attack them.
Their stats should be similar to: 0/0/324,000/324,000
Consider becoming an OSF or an Open Spy Farm (or Open Secret Farm, not sure). Definition: an OSF is a player who has no attack or defense and allows players to hit him/her five times a day for gold. If you are interested, contact Nocturnal.
Also new for pure spies, the NUF, or the Nightly Unlimited Farm, is a group of pure spies who lay out cash at certain periods of time and are farmed until they're out of money. See flavaflavv to join, although he may have recently closed it due to spy nerfs.
Defensive spies are spies who build towers to prevent attacks so they don't need to bank. They sacrifice guilds for defense.
Their stats should be similar to: 0 attack, [amount of towers] x 40,500 defense, 324,000 - (13,500 x [amount of towers]) spy attack and defense
The Emeth build was not actually created by Emeth, but the concept was derived from his strategy. It is more of a mixed build, but it is closely related to spies. Emeth was a player who bought a large amount of allies. His plunder bonus was off the charts and his ally bonuses were insane. His stats were 300/300/150/150. Hansel decided to carry on Emeth's legacy and built a kingdom with one forge (no subs at the time) and 23 level 3 guilds (no level 4 at the time). His stats were 7200/4800/124,200/124,200 and he bought enough allies to greatly boost his attack and defense until he could pin many leaderboard players.
Final stats vary as there are too many versions of this build. The build most aim for is (stats of 1 war aviary/summoning circle)/310,500/310,500
Plunder Bonus
I did not add this to information in the front because it technically has nothing to do with spies.
When you attack someone, you gain two types of money: plunder, and plunder bonus. Plunder is determined from your buildings, and plunder bonus is based on your plunder bonus cap from buildings as well as allies. Spies with one attack building rely purely on plunder bonus.
A forge (lvl 3) raises the plunder cap by approximately 144,000 profit
A tier 3 level 3 troop building raises plunder cap by approximately 324,000 profit
A level 3 guild raises plunder cap by approximately 216,000 profit
A level 4 guild raises plunder cap by approximately 432,000 profit
You can tell your plunder bonus is maxed out when the last three digits of your plunder bonus is 000 (unless you have an odd number of level 1 tier 3 buildings, in which case your max plunder will end in 500). For the 1 sub factory and 23 level 4 guilds build, plunder bonus is 23x432,000+324,000=10,260,000. This means that if you attack someone, you can potentially gain nearly 10 million gold in one hit!
SPIES IN BATTLE
Spies have two main functions during a war: to scout and to assist in pinning. Scouting is self explanatory; scout the opponent and give your allies the necessary information. To assist in pinning an attack build, simply assassinate the target while your allies bash. To pin another spy build, multiple spies are needed simply because you always lose more spies than the opponent. Simply scout or steal (the opponent's loss of spies versus your loss of spies is proportional, whether you scout or steal, but scout has a higher success rate) along with your allies until the target is "too weak", or out of spies. To keep him pinned, advertise in WC that your target is out of spies and is an easy farm. Note: you lose the same amount of spies whether you win or lose a spy battle. However, the opponent loses less spies when you lose a spy battle.
Before the nerf, spies were extremely useful in stripping or cleaning out an opponent. To do this, someone would buy the target's allies and steal from him until the target runs out of money. However, stripping is now not as easily performed because the percent loss from steals has been changed from 0.3% to 0.025% (according to tmh) and barely any gold is taken now. Furthermore, spy towers have been upgraded so that they give 20,250 spy defense (to allies) making strips even more difficult.
SPY LOSSES
The spies you lose is RELATIVE TO THE OPPONENT'S SPY DEFENSE. For example, if you spy on a person with 0 spy defense, you will lose 545 spies per level four guild. If the opponent has spy defense or items, you will lose more, maybe 600 spies per level four guild for example. Minimum loss of spies for a level four guild is 545. Also, the amount of spies you lose is relative to both your and your opponent's spy strength.
TIPS
+follow the 5 hit rule, not because you're honorable, but because it benefits you more. If you use up your troops on an enemy, not only does it heighten the chances of you being caught, but it also gives you less gold per steal.
+when pinning a pure spy, the opponent loss to your loss of spies is proportional, whether you steal or scout. Scouting has a higher success rate.
+if you are losing a lot, use spy items. Not only does it help your success rate, you lose less spies.
+stealing from stronger opponents nets you more gold. However, there is a limit to how much you can steal per guild.
SPY ITEMS
Most top players will have all 8 spy defense items. This adds up to a 25,340,000 spy defense bonus or 506,800 spy defense bonus to allies, higher than a full 0/0/324,000/324,000 spy. To test if they have spy defense items, buy all 8 spy attack items and spy on them. The screen will show how many spy defense items opponents use. From there, assess if you can spy your opponent without items. If not, move to another target to spy on.
CONCLUSION
This concludes my spy guide! Good luck on building your kingdom!
