Facebook Samurai Dynasty Starting Guide

Facebook Samurai Dynasty Starting Guide by Matsudara

Choosing Your Path

When it comes to playing Samurai Dynasty you have an immediate choice that will effect the rest of your gaming experience. Like all time-based, resource-based games like Samurai Dynasty (further referred to as “SD”), the main choices are always whether to have an affinity for something, be it attack or defense, etc.

This decision doesn’t necessarily cause immediate changes in your game, but will eventually come to call at higher levels when resource development or attacking becomes a continual effort.

Your Name

A lot of questions have already been posed in Chat about trying to change your name. In your inventory, under the “Chest” tab is a chest that will have an item within it that will allow you to change your name.

Warning!

You can only change your name once (for free) so unless you plan on obtaining more gold in order to change your name twice, make sure you choose wisely. Your name was what distinguished you from any other Samurai. Honor it and bring glory to your dynasty. Also, make sure to keep it friendly, as no profanity is allowed.

Building Up, Upgrading and Demolishing
(A more detailed listing of what each structure does coming soon)

When it comes to your first few days (while still under protection, not being able to be attacked), developing your resources and honing your defenses is a wise priority. Make sure to upgrade your resource buildings (Sawmills, Farms, etc) as quickly as time will allow. In order to maintain these resources, make sure your also building and upgrading houses and storehouses.

Edit: While I haven’t looked at it personally, someone has suggested that only having three farms and upgrading them may be worthwhile. This is possible, but if your upkeep (the resources required to keep your population, including army, fed) is higher than your production (which gives you a negative production ratio), you will not have the resources necessary to train more troops or build your essential structures.

After your resources become steady, your main focus will be to develop and create the armies by which you will conquest as well as create defense structures and the other structures that are necessary for your dynasty’s longevity. Forges, stables and academies are necessary to train certain units as well as increase resource production. Pay attention to the requirements in the Dojo. For example, you can’t train Spearmen until you are Level 7, have a Level 4 Dojo, a Level 2 Forge and train Level 1 Karate.

Other structures, like the Daimyo’s Hall and Sumo Ring aren’t -essential- but do provide important things that may help you and your city.

Demolishing buildings may not be essential, but if your space becomes limited and you have some structure that is expendable, demolishing or salvaging can be used. Use Salvage as often as possible due to the fact that it will give you extra resources from demolishing the building.

Always pay attention to the fine lines of the structure information screen, including what it awards you at its current level as well as what upgrading will bring to the table. Remember: Upgrading is always a good thing, but if you run yourself too thin you will not be able to maintain your dynasty for long.

Samurai, Ashigaru, Conscripts and Defenses

After your initial “New Player” tag wears off and you’re viable to be attacked, you must understand that conquering players will eventually come after you. In order to stop their take over, you will be required to amass an army and set up your walls and defense systems in order to prevent your defeat.

One important thing you need to remember is that when leveling up, achieving higher ranks in your dojo and training more experienced fighters, your need to have researched the key components becomes necessary. As mentioned above, certain units need certain research done in order to train them in the first place. Make sure that you have the research done (or, wisely: all research done). Keep yourself constantly reseraching, training and building and you will have a successful city.

When it comes to your army, a variety is always helpful. After all, any army from any period in history was never made up solely of one type of unit. Infantry, cavalry and other units have always been essential for being a dominant force. It is possible to take on 10,000 Kensai Samurai with nothing but Peasant Conscripts. However, you would probably need a significant amount of conscripts to go about doing this task.

Make sure you always have some sort of standing army. It is literally essential to the game that you have some kind of protection force at all times, especially wen your immunity runs out. Upgrading your walls and getting larger numbers of wall archers, traps and defense structures make it harder and harder for an enemy to ransack your city. When you are beginning your own conquests, having large armies with each of your generals will be essential to achieving victory. Once allied, you will also be expected to send reserve armies to station in your ally’s city.

A key thing to remember about all strategy based games is moderation, control and balance. If you’re overly zealous and stretch your armies too thin, they will easily be defeated and you will be left vulnerable. If you balance your attacking armies with your defensive units, and maintain control over your army, you will live up to the titles of Daimyo and Shogun.

The Small Things, Houses and Taxes

Not everyone is a statistical genius, constantly aware of everything around them. Being able to run a city, even in a game world, can be a daunting challenge to anyone. That is why there are important things that you need to be aware of that don’t come from anything else but experience.

One thing that is important to remember is that your houses create the population by which you can train attacking units and by which you upgrade your resource generators. When you upgrade your farms and quarries, a certain amount of the population is used and becomes the workers in that field. This is easier to see by the box between the Resources and your Army/Troop boxes. Your total population and your idle population are key things to always keep track of. When you need more people to work the fields, you will need to make sure you have an idle population that can. When you create bowmen or mounted ashigaru, you need to also make sure that your idle population is large enough (as well as your resource pool; see above) to support the training process.

Houses are necessary to have, due to the fact that they create that population base. Maintaining your houses, as well as upgrading them as often and as constantly as possible, will ensure you the population necessary to do what you need to do. Make sure that you have all your essential structures, and if necessary fill out the rest of your free spaces with houses in order to create, and constantly have, a high population by which to tax and use.

Upgrading all of your buildings all of the time isn’t always the right thing. Sometimes waiting until you need the structure can be good, but have some foresight and plan out when you need to upgrade your other structures like the Forge and Workshop. If you’re getting ready to get on past level three or four walls, and train higher level units, you will need to have these structures upgraded. However, if you’re still working on getting an army base to work with, or you’re more concerned with making sure your resources are being produced more efficiently, you can wait to upgrade these other structures. Discretion at this point is up to you and your personal preference.

Taxes are, along with the Sumo Ring structure, generate your silver for research and building upgrades. Having a high tax rate may not be the best thing due to the fact that your population will not be happy. If it is essential that you gain as much silver as possible in a day, raise it accordingly. If you have an abundance of silver and you can give your people a tax break, decrease it accordingly. But remember, as a tax-payer yourself (if you’re old enough), you hate it when your taxes get raised just like your city’s people would. Don’t be an overbearing daimyo that requires everyone submit 95% of their income to the city.

As stated above, but reiterated here, always pay attention to the fine lines and the small text everywhere. When you mouse over things, especially your resource tab box, you can find important information that you don’t have to go digging for. Your castle also has a lot of key information, and when upgrading buildings you can see what a new level will give you as well as what the current level produces.

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