Kingdom of Camelot: Battle for the North Beginner Guide

I. Introduction
II. Figuring Out Your Strategy and Style
III. City Structure
IV. Resources
V. Population Management
VI. Knights
VII. Wall Might and Troop Might
VIII. Pict Camps, Second City Crests, and Round Towers
IX. Gems

I. INTRODUCTION

This is a beginner's guide for those just starting out in Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North and it will be assumed that all players are under the new player's seven day protection period. During this period players need to maximize their learning experience as well as resource production and troops being built. There is a large chance that if you are a new player there will be players more experienced than you so you will need to have a basic strategy in place to survive, which is where our guide brings us next.
II. Your Strategy

Yes, you should have a basic strategy and style of play you are going to do soon after you start playing. Do not panic though, there is a small list of choices you can make.

If you are a pure beginner you should do a few things immediately

Join an Alliance
Follow the Quests
Build Your Economy First
Always keep something building!


i. Joining an Alliance

Joining an alliance should be considered a necessity for new players. Being part of an alliance offers you several things to help you get going. An alliance can give you resources if you run out, advice from more experienced members, as well as protection and support if you get attacked after your protection period ends. Some alliances have might requirements and others have none. Most if not all alliances have rules and guidelines for their members that should be followed unless you do not care about being expelled from the alliance.

ii Following the Quests

Following the quests is the best way for you to get started. They will help you get your city structure going as well as resource production. There is incentive for doing the quests since they often reward you with resources upon completing them.

iii. Focus On Your Resource Production First

Resources production is one of the most important concepts in Kingdoms of Camelot Battle for the North. With out resources your troop production and building comes to a halt. That is why early on in the game it is imperative to build up your production to a high level. Before you leave protection your Castle will be level 4. This means you will have 22 available spots to assign towards production. Typically it is best to have even amounts of all the fields so production is somewhat even. However, once you start training troops your food production will slow down. Troops eat food. So I have found the combination of 7 farms, 5 mines, 5 quarries, 5 sawmills has worked very well. Especially if you are player with only 1 city. Getting these resource fields to the highest level possible before your protection is over is strongly recommended. If you have the time to dedicate to the game they should all be level 6 if not level 7 by the end of your player protection.



iv. Always keep something building

Keep something in your building queue at all times. Save your longer production times for when you know you will be offline for a couple hours at a time or if you are going to bed. There are only 24 hours in a day to build and maximizing the amount of that time used will help your kingdom grow larger than players not optimizing their timing on long constructions.



The play styles are as follows:

Aggressive
Quasi Aggressive
Passive
Turtle and Hide

Obviously each of these have its advantages and disadvantages. Depending on your knowledge of the game, the amount of time you have to dedicate to the game, and your personality in general. Obviously your peace loving folks will go for either the Passive or Turtle and Hide strategies. Also so should any real first timers if they want to survive for more than a week (once their protection is over).

Aggressive

The aggressive strategy is for more advanced players. Typically they are the heads of alliances and players trying to get out of protection as early as possible to make it to the battlefields quickly. If they are focusing on an extremely aggressive strategy they will not even join an alliance, as to limit the number of players they can not hit. No one is usually off limits and if they believe they can beat you, they will attack just for the sake of it, even if only minimal resources are available. Pursuing this strategy as a beginner does not typically work out well to your advantage. But don't let that stop you if you think you can compete with the big guns right away.

Quasi Aggressive

Being confident but not over confident can be a good thing. This is how most players choose to play the game. Staying away from hitting alliances in the top 20-30s members and praying on those alliance ranked below that level. This play style allows you to still farm smaller players for resources allowing you to learn at a quicker pace. At the same time you are not fighting the bottom of the barrel of Knights in Kingdom of Camelot. You can work and learn some of the battle mechanics while still adding a nice boost to your resource production. You are not quite the leader of the hunters but you are certainly not the hunted.

Passive

Passive is how most players start out early on in their Kingdom of Camelot Battle for the North careers. They join an alliance request help when they need it and farm players that are inactive and unaligned. Not a bad choice for many smaller players since it is hard to make many enemies that way and also allows you to go unnoticed while you build and learn. If you do hit a player in an alliance it is usually a 1 member alliance or an alliance ranked outside the top 100. This being said, you are also the type of player that never allows his/her resources to go above their storehouse and shrinking powder levels so they will never be a target. They also typically keep their troops hidden so they don't risk losing anything they have spent time building.

Turtle and Hide

Turtle and Hide takes passivity above and beyond. People that turtle and hide never like to fight and normally try to join peace loving alliances with a long list of friends and minimum if any enemies. They never allow their resources to go over their storehouse levels and never even try to farm other players from alliances for more, in fear of their being some type of retaliation against them. Typically smaller roles members but just as helpful. They are normally generous with the resources they have as they do not want to become targets and can help the more aggressive players in an alliance keep building. If they get attacked they do not typically try to do anything about it since they know the attacker is not getting anything out of it at all except the little gold they have around.

III. City Structure

Trying to figure out how to set up your city can be one of the more difficult tasks in Kingdom of Camelot: Battle for the North. Where do you start? Where should you be by the end of the protection period? What levels should everything be? These are all questions new players have asked alliance mates and read the forums to see. The true answer relies on your style of play. If your an aggressive player constantly using your resources for troops you are not going to waste time building a storehouse while they could be leveling up their barracks to higher levels. Meanwhile a more passive player will focus more so on their warehouse level and embassy level.

That being said a good set of all around goals to have before you leave the protection period for any new player should be:

Barracks : 13-14
Cottages: whatever is left
Round Tower: lower level or none if you have a second city

This may all seem like a tall order to a new player and impossible. However it is more than possible if you are part of an active alliance in which everyone helps speed up the building process for everyone else. This is commonly why being part of an active alliance is such an important factor in your initial success of the game.

IV. Resource Management

Managing your resources is very important early on in the game. Ideally you want equal resources of every type. This is not really an option early on since many of the buildings you will need to build and technologies early on require more food and gold. In order to make the most of your resource production have two cities is preferred. However not everyone will purchase Gems to buy a second city and collecting crests through hitting Pict cities can take FOREVER. This section will be made for players with only 1 city.

Early on you are going need to keep a fairly balanced amount of all resource production. Farms are the quickest to build of the four types and you will need more food as you keep training troops. What most players do not realize is Kabam does not penalize you by making your troops "run away" if you run out of food. So you can reinforce an alliance members city with excess troops if it is their second city and they are not concerned about food production in that city. If you do not have an alliance member with that type of city or any with a second city then you will have to keep your food production going higher than the troop's diet in order to keep building, researching, and training. That being said.... early on keeping the production of stone, iron, and lumber somewhat even for building, training, and research production is key. If you run low on resources try to ask your alliance for some, or offer to trade some with other members. Usually someone has excess of something and is willing to trade.

Normally a ratio once your Castle is level 4 is:
7 Farms
5 Mines
5 Sawmills
5 Quarries

This will give you a fairly even output of production if you can manage to keep us with the levels of each structure. Your Farms will level more quickly than the others and it is a good idea to keep them roughly a level or two higher than the rest since you will need the extra food production to offset what your troops eat. PLEASE KEEP in mind this is for someone with only 1 city and no one to reinforce..... any other player can keep standard amounts of troops in and reinforce excess to their other city or an alliance member.


V. Population Management
There are three things to know about population:

Population Limit
Idle Population
Population

Population limit is the largest total population your city can have in terms the amount of cottages you have and their levels. A city with a population limit of 10,000 will not always have a population of 10,000 and will certainly never have 10,000 idle population, if you ever train troops or have any resource production.

Idle Population is the amount of idle citizens your city has that are not working or being converted into soldiers. This number should fluctuate often if you are upgrading your resource fields and training troops. It is determined by the amount of your population that is not working.

Population itself, is the total population you have available in your city, for working the fields, training troops, and being taxed. The higher your tax rate the lower you population will be.

VI. Knights

Knights in Kingdom of Camelot: Battle for the North are one the most overlooked aspect by early players. Yes a higher level knight cost more gold per hour to keep at a position. However when that knight is assigned to that position you can see a major boost in, resource production, troop training time, research time, and construction time.

A knight can hold the following positions in your city:

Steward - 1% increase in resource production per level.
Marshall - .5% reduction in recruitment times and .5% increase in attack and life of defending troops in city.
Alchemist - .5% reduction in research times.
Foreman - .5% reduction in construction times for buildings and wall defenses.

These bonuses may not seem to be much, however they can make all the difference in the world at higher levels. A 20% increase in resource production is a lot if your resource production is 100k per hour. That boosts it to 120k per hour. A player can level their knight by attacking wilds, Pict Cities, and other players.

VII. Wall Might and Troop Might

The argument of troop might vs wall might has existed since the games creation. Which is better? Is wall might fake? Why do alliances not want wall might? The list of these questions and arguments continues to go on. That being said, there are many more backers that troop might is the only might that matters, especially early on. Most alliance recruiting players will request to scout a player before hand so they do not take someone with wall might. For the time being Troop Might reigns as king in what is the better might. Walls will provide a player with a lot more might than troops will but are much less useful and are fairly easily killed.

That being said, later in the game once your Troop Might is at an acceptable level having wall might is useful. It is harder for an incoming army to fight its way through both Troops and Wall Defenses. This has become acceptable as long as you have the troop might to back up the wall might and you have selected troop hiding to be off. If troop hiding is on, having any type of wall might is useless since it will only be wiped out by even tier 1 troops when attacked.

VIII. Pict Camps, Second City Crests, and Round Tower

Since an update by Kabam in May of 2012 Pict Camps give far less resources than they once did. Now the levels of resources received are more even with troop loss. Does this mean that hitting "Pict Camps" as they are known in the game is useless. NO. There are two benefits of hitting the Pict's, the lesser of the two being experience for your hero. The more valuable of the two is a chance to win a second city crest. With 100 second city crests you can create a second city. A second city is something that is extremely important to your game-play if you want to rise to the top. With out one you will be relying on your alliance mates to have one and reinforcing their second city.

Most players will tell you that getting a second city this way is extremely time consuming, tedious, and will require a lot troops. They are 100% CORRECT. You must hit level 6-10 Pict Camps in order to have a chance of receiving a crest. You must also have a Round Tower present in your city to receive the crest. Many players have stayed away from hitting level 8-10 Pict Camps for crest since they are more costly on your troops. Level 6 and level 7 Pict Camps are easily to attack and can be done with much lower troop losses. The higher level the Pict Camp is the larger the "drop rate" of a Second City Crest is. This rate also increases with each level upgrade of your Round Tower. A good starting point to where you will start seeing an increase in crests from hitting Pict Camps is when your Round Tower is level 7. They do drop prior to having a level 7 Round Tower, but this is a good bang for you buck level.

How many times will I have to hit Pict Camps in order to finally reach 100 Second City Crests? The best answer is in the thousands. It is very time consuming and if you are of the impatient type, buying gems to get a second city deed is probably your best option. If you are the type of player who refuses to spend any money on a "FREE" game, then as of right now this is your best option.