Castle Age Quick Guide

Castle Age Quick Guide by Lena Gkika

1) What to focus on:

When starting, focus on gaining a large army and developing a good income. This will give you the chance to buy good units/weapons/armor and eventually win more fights. At first buy what your money can get, but later (after income is more than at least 2 mils) try to buy in bulk, like in 5s or 10s cause it will cost you less. Later on, try to increase your att/def so you‘ll be able to withstand attacks. Don’t just focus on energy, but try to get to at least 90, because this is the max energy required for the quests so far.
Good choices for first buys are tree ents that are highly effective for their price and also have no upkeep that would limit your income when you most need it. Also try to exchange as many gifts with your army as possible, since they have very good stats and you don’t need to pay a dime.
When still on low income, try to put your money in the keep as often as possible to avoid getting robbed from opponents. After your income gets high, it gets more expensive to stash the money than actually keeping them in the open. However being a good money source can make you a target. So if your stats are good, let them in the open and use the attacks from others for free experience and money. If you are not very strong though, consider stashing, no matter how much the cost.

2) Battle types

You have two options: dueling and invading. Dueling uses your active general and one of the following items: shield, helm, armor, amulet, weapon, and spell. It is advised to select your strongest general in charge when logging off the game. Currently, that general is Vanquish, if we are talking about heroes you can hire from the Heroes page. Invading will use as many units as your army size, one item and one spell for each of them. For every 5 units, one extra general will join the battle, so the more army and units you have, the better. Hiring all generals possible is recommended if you can handle their upkeep.
The item that will be used during the attack depends on if you are the attacker or the attacked. When attacking, you will use your best weapons with higher attack value, while when defending you will use the item with max defense points. For now, best weapons & armor are the Commander Plates which you can buy from the Smith when you get the rank of High Commander. Earlier on or if you are not much into battling, you can go for Steel Plates and Battle Axes.

The way you battle is up to you. Duels offer better chances to those with small armies but high personal stats, while invasions favor those with large armies and good equipment. Invasions offer also the chance for better loot, because you can use the help feature to gain double the max money that can be won in duels.

Occasionally, you will fight someone to the death, getting a message that you killed them, or you may find out that someone killed you. Getting killed means that the person’s health dropped to 0. When that happens, the killed persons “Eliminated” count is increased by one, and they lose 1-3 experience points. They do not lose generals, land or anything else.
The weapon selection is done by checking only attack points when attacking and only defense points when defending. That means that for example if you attack and you have 100 army, 100 battle axes and 100 steel plates, then those battle axes will be used in battle, because their attack value is higher than the one of steel plates, although it seems that steel plates have better total points.

If you find someone you want to attack again because they gave good money, or because you want to take revenge from them then you can use the following link, replacing X with the Facebook ID number of your opponent

Game Profile:
http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/keep.php?user=X

3) How the outcome of a battle is calculated

According to developer Tass, up until August at least, when invading the total points are calculated as follows:

Total Points= (skill points)*army size + (total att/def of units and all items)

From this we learn that the bigger your army the better. Moreover, skill points apparently count a lot in the equation; therefore it is advised to invest on them to have a good chance at winning. This is why a smaller army can sometimes easily win a bigger one.
Since August, it has been implied that there have been changes so that now attack and defense count differently in the formula. Currently, attack skill counts more when you attack and defense skill more when you defend, although we have not sufficient data on the exact weights involved.

Level Brackets: you get to fight people from -5/+5 levels from your current level till about level 60, then it is -10/+10 from 60 till 80, and after that it is 80 to infinity.

4) Questing

There are different lands with quests available to all players. Each area is unlocked after finishing 4 out of 5 of the previous’ land quests. Each area so far –except demon’s realm, has special quests that give out 4 artifacts, and some special drops, like the Holy avenger, Lightening storm spell or amulet of Cefka. The artifacts are used as “keys” that grant you access to demon’s realm. Each quest has prerequisites shown right after the Quests name and quest must be repeated several times in order to be completed. In order to proceed with each quest, you have to select the General shown in the quest’s image, or else you will not gain influence over the territory. The most difficult quest so far is in the demon’s realm and requires 100 dragons, 100 phoenixes, 100 angels, 50 steel plates, 50 sacred amulets and 50 battle axes. More areas are expected to be added soon, but nothing released so far.

5) The help feature

Occasionally you will notice that during invasions people help you out. There are several types of help: cash x2 (win double money), exp x2 (win double exp), health loss x1/2 (lose half health), cash ½ loss (lose half money when defeated) etc. This is done randomly and you have no control over it. The help feature does not affect battle outcome. Winner is firstly calculated, and then the feature is applied.
The help feature is available to both you and your opponent during an invasion. Therefore, although you might seem to gain the 2x cash feature, if your opponent gets the cash ½ loss feature at same time, you will not get double money. In battle screen you can see who helped you, but not if someone did help or how they helped the opponent.

NOTE : Feature is temporarily deactivated to speed up the battle list. Devs promised it will return improved

6) Army and adding more people

The most people you can take with you to a battle is 501. However, you can have more than 501 persons in your army, and this is advised, because you can win a lot of money through the “help” function of the game. You can invite up to 24 people a day through the army page, and 10 more by “training” them in the training grounds.(see below for Training ground). Training also gives you 1 favor point/24hours. You can add more people that play the game through the official “add me” threads by either manual adding them one by one, or using the mass e-mail lists. After that, you can either put those people in separate game lists and restrict their access to your profile, or delete them entirely.
If you find you have no more friends to invite to the game there are two options. Either add more people from the threads, or go to army page, and under “sent invites” tab, select “stop messenger” for some of your friends.
So far there is no valid direct invite link. Those that are posted around are not working, so don’t spam your friends by re-posting them.

How to add people from add me threads:
A) If you choose the manual adding, go to one of the threads, post your name in the last page, and start adding people as friends one-by-one, by stating “Castle Age” in the personal message of the invite.
B) If you choose the fast add e-mail option do the following:
– (Optional) Copy the last post of the e-mail list, paste it in your answer and add your own e-mail in the end of the list, separated by comma from the last one.
-Copy the e-mail list and then from Facebook menu select Friends-> Invite
-Paste the e-mail list in the “To” box
-Write “Castle Age” on the “message” box right below
-Click invite

After new friends accept friend invitation, you can go to Facebook menu, select Friends-> Recently added and see the names of the people that just joined you. Use the list to select the people to invite from army page, or train from the grounds.

You have 2 options concerning those new friends. Once they accept the game invite you can delete them from friends, and still keep them in your army, keeping your profile clean. You can also keep them as friends, but in separate lists with restricted access to your profile, so that they won’t access personal info, but they will be around if you need them for new games.

To add people in a list, do the following:

-Go to Facebook menu and select Friends
-From there select “Create new list” button. In the pop up window, select the friends you want to add to this list and then click “save”.
-To edit the privacy settings for these friends go to Facebook menu, select Settings->Privacy Settings->Profile.
-Go to the Basic Info and from the drop down list select Customize. To the bottom of the window that pops up, click on the “except these people” field, and select the name of the list you just created.
-Do the same for any of the other options given (like Photos, wall posts etc).

If you feel the News feeds get clogged from stranger’s news, you can use the list feature to see only news from people you like. For example, in the home page, go up and left, right below the button “News Feed”. Your lists should show up there. Select the one you want to see news from, like Family or Good Friends, and immediately the news are filtered to the ones from people you are interested about.

7) Training grounds

Feature officially removed – Devs are working on other ways to maintain balance, please stay tuned for updates

8) Favor points

They can be won through several ways: through demi-powers rewards, through free surveys, application additions or by buying them. How to use them is up to you, but it is highly advised to spend them either on generals or spells. Most of the units and weapons are not as powerful as the ones offered by the game, so they are not worth it.

9) Demi- Powers

There are 5 demi-gods, each of who can help you make your skill stats better. Every 24h (or 48 in case of stamina) you can pay tribute to one demi-god. They will give you 1 extra skill point for the skill of your choice (not a refill!) and 105 demi points (210 for Azeron).

The demi-points can be used to gain access to certain rewards each god offers if you follow him. The rewards vary from energy potions to spells and armor or new special quests. Favor points can be won as well. (In case of Azeron you get 210 points every 48h). Ten more demi points for each god can be won through the battle page, if you successfully attack 10 people of each alignment per 24h. Make sure you attack from battle page, and not through the links on a player’s game profile, or else your point will not count. You can switch to different gods each day without losing the points you won so far. If you have unlocked certain demi-quests, you can access them later either from the Quests page, under Demi Quests tab, or by accessing the Demi Gods tab, through the Oracle page. When there, choose “view rewards” and select the preferred quest. The quests that give out energy potions and energy bolt can be done many times and you can win many of said rewards. So far those have 10% drop though, so while the energy bolts are worth pursuing, the energy potions are not suitable for all. The potions restore 10% of your energy only (not full refill) to a maximum value of 10 points. Therefore if your max energy is low, it is not worth it. For ex. If the max energy is 30, the amount restored is only 3 energy points. It’s not worth the trouble.

Demi quests can be done with any general and have no completion percentages. They can be done indefinitely. So far, only the 4 first demi quests of each demi-god have drops. The rest are only used as story fillers, so do them once and move on. Drops might change in the future, so stay tuned.

Each person is assigned to one alignment randomly. The alignment does not affect game play, and only way to find out what yours is, is to ask someone who attacked you. It is speculated that the appointment to each alignment is done in a way that each alignment holds about 20% of the player population.

10) Spying

There are no actual spies. You “spy” someone by checking their profile to see the types of weapons/land they have so you can decide if they are worth attacking. Your opponent is always notified of said spying, and might consider it act of war and attack back.

11) Changing Character

Feature unfortunately is unavailable at the moment. Only solution is to remove application, and wait for 1-2 months so that your data is removed from the game server. You can change name though, by using 10 favor points in the Oracle page

12) Defense strategy

Best defense strategy is to invest on equipping a big army, while also increasing your defense skill. However if you are new, have small army, or just don’t want the negative stats, you can logout under 10 health, and you will be untouchable until next time you login. This strategy is generally disapproved though

13) Damage done in battles

When battling, points are calculated for each player and the one who has more is the winner. After the winner has been found, the loser is assigned randomly a damage value X from 6-12, and the winner a random value from 1-6. If a person’s health drops to 0, then they are killed. However no actual generals/units or land are removed from the loser’s inventory

14) Magic

You can have one spell with you in duels and one for each unit in invasions. You can win magic by:
A) Buying from Oracle
B) Doing special quest in land of Mist to gain the Lightning Storm Spell (35% drop, can be used only once)
C) Doing the 1st demi quest of Ambrosia and Corvintheus for energy bolts (can be done many times)
D) Getting demi rewards from gathering demi points for the gods. Check the rewards of each god in the demi-power page http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/symbols.php
E) Unlocking Spells that can be bought in Town by achieving high battle ranks
F) Getting them as gifts from friends

15) Skill point allocation

You can allocate points according to your gaming style. Most common styles are:
(I’m sure you can come up with more)

A) Quester – allocates a lot to energy to do many quests and level up fast, without caring for battle stats. Usually weak in battle but richer than most and very high in levels.
B) Fighter – allocate more points to att/def and some on stamina to be able to win more battles. They focus on battle stats, and are usually left behind in quests
C) Balanced – allocate points to all skills almost equally. Weaker than all, cause they are not strong in battles, but also are left behind in leveling

Choosing your style is crucial to your evolution in the game. However the least useful skill in this game is health. Not worth investing in it (unless maybe following Aurora for her rewards)

16) Game Etiquette

There is no game etiquette around. You can attack someone as much as you want, and people will definitely attack you back, for many reasons, like improving stats, money, demi-points, battle ranks or even personal grudges. If you are the one being chained try talking nicely to attacker and maybe send a friend request. Will work most times. Whining on their walls or swearing will get you nowhere; most probably will earn you more attacks.
If you are the one chaining people, then if someone asks nicely, although you don’t have to, consider adding them to your army or just stop attacking. If they keep whining or start name calling then advise nicely to stop ip it. If they do, move on. If they don’t, feel free to keep chaining
*That is absolutely my personal opinion and my approach to people I face in the battle field. No one forces you to do it too, but it is generally considered acceptable behavior.

17) Battle Ranks

By fighting other people you get to win battle points. The higher the rank of your opponent, the more you can win from them. If you are defeated you may lose points too. By acquiring points and achieving ranks you can win skill points and unlock access to special units, items, spells. For more info check the battle ranks page at: http://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/battlerank.php

18) Gifting

You have the option to send and receive gifts from your friends. Sometimes, things go wrong. Follow the instructions below to make sure you get all your gifts:

When receiving army requests & gifts, do not go to FB notification page to accept them. Instead, go to army page, click on the first gift/request you see and follow these steps:
a) When clicking on a name in army page, you ll be taken to FB notification page. Accept ONE gift/request and wait till you are directed back to FB army page
b) Accept a new person and repeat step one till all gifts/requests are accepted.

If any request notifications still remains in army page but you can’t find them on FB notification page then do following:
a) For each notification left in the CA army page from a friend, follow below link, replacing X with the friend’s FB ID:
https://apps.facebook.com/castle_age/recruit.php?act=acpt&uid;=X

b) Once you are all done accepting, hit “accept all” to remove any past pending notifications

If you don’t hit accept all, those friends will not be able to send you new gifts till you do. It is a tiring process, but it has to be done, not only for CA but for most apps because of the new FB rules.

19) Leader boards & Hit lists

Unfortunately they are not available yet and not sure if they will ever be added.