Empire: Age of Knights is an excellent medieval empire-building game from Goodgame Studios. Step into the boots of a mighty knight and look over a sprawling castle, expand your city, fight orcs, trade with other kingdoms and explore the map to find secret treasures.
The game combines city building with tower defense elements. You will have to fend off incoming orcs, invade enemy camps to obtain loot and customize your city to protect it from sneaky orcs. Empire: Age of Knights is perfect for casual gamers and this guide will help them to conquer territories, defeat orc invaders and make your castle prosperous:
Complete Castle Quests
In Age of Knights, the first thing you should do is complete Castle Quests to gain bigger rewards such as XP (used to level up) and coins (used for everyday tasks, such as constructing and upgrading buildings and starting production in each building).
The game offers different types of quests to keep players busy and not bored. There are orc invasion quests, building and upgrade quests, loot quests and contract quests. Tap the book on the left side of the screen and then cycle through each quest category to complete them.
As you keep finishing quests, you will notice that you have amassed a lot of coins, items and resources used for expanding and protecting your castle.
Construct and Upgrade Resource Buildings
Buildings play a very important role in Age of Knights. They contribute resources that help in upgrading your keep and other buildings, recruiting troops, trading etc.
Each resource-generating building is somehow connected with the other. For example: To produce planks at the sawmill, you will need logs from the woodcutter building and to manufacture stone blocks, you will need boulders from the quarry. Make sure you construct each building mentioned in the quest book if you want your village to flourish.
Recruit Troops to Battle Against Orcs
Battles are a lot of fun as you will be invading orc territories from time to time to acquire loot. You will need an army to defeat orc camps.
In the beginning, you will gain access to common troops. Reach level 8 to unlock training grounds, where you can train and recruit “militia” – these are common foot soldiers but can be very effective in battle, especially when invading lower-level orc camps. They attack in large numbers so make sure you recruit as many troops as possible to max out the number of units you can deploy against the orcs.
The more the number of militia, the higher your combat power against the enemy. You will need resources such as bread and coins to recruit militia. To produce bread, construct two building – Farm and Bakery. Farm produces flour and flour is needed to make bread at the bakery.
As you progress and reach higher levels, you will be able to unlock better buildings to recruit advanced units such as barracks, which produces spearman.
Raid Orc Camps for Loot and Glory
Raiding orc camps is the best way to kill time in Empire: Age of Knights. On the bottom of the castle build screen, tap the orc icon to enter battle mode. Now tap tiny camps surrounding your castle to invade them.
On the “prepare attack” screen, you will see a list of loot and the chance (in percentage) of acquiring them from raiding that camp. The higher the camp level, the better the loot. Just tap on each loot item to know what it is and its uses. Tap the green button to prepare attack.
The “create march” screen shows the maximum number of troops you can deploy to attack a camp, the type of unit you currently own and a green power bar.
The orc icon in the middle of the bar shows the enemy’s combat power. To make sure you have more combat power than the orcs, the green bar must fill past the orc icon.
To increase your chances of winning against the orc, fill the bar completely. You can do this by maxing out the number of units by tapping on each unit’s portrait. You can also tap and hold each unit’s icon and moving the unit slider until the green combat bar fills up. Latter is a better choice if you want to conserve troops as they might be killed or injured during battle and you don’t want too many casualties.
As you progress, you will attack higher-level orc camps, so make sure you keep the above tips in mind when attacking one.
How to Unlock a New Hero
Heroes can be very effective in your battle against orcs. Each hero has a unique special ability that can help you raid and defeat orcs. Without a hero, it will be difficult for your army to destroy camps. In battle mode, tap the hero icon on the bottom of the screen and select one. Currently, there are four heroes: Gladius, Bonny, Khan and Loki.
To unlock a new hero in Empire: Age of Knights, you will need hero tokens. Here’s how you can get all four heroes:
You will have to uncover new areas in the battle screen. Tap the fog and then tap “show me” under “explore new lands”. To lift the fog, you must upgrade the watchtower to a new level.
To upgrade a watchtower, you will need a certain amount of elven wood and units, such as militia. It’s displayed on the upgrade screen. Obtain elven wood by raiding orc camps and defeating incoming orc attack through watchtowers. You can also get them from battle quests.
Once a watchtower is upgraded, you will lift a part of the fog, which will reveal new camps. Pay attention to those camps that have any one of the four hero icons above them. You will have to attack those camps to rescue heroes and collect tokens to unlock them.
Know a Hero’s Perk
Along with special ability, each hero also provides certain perks that will indirectly benefit battles:
Gladius: Boost in combat power if you select this hero.
Bonny: Bonus loot.
Khan: Decrease in marching time from your base to the orc camps. Can be useful when the orc camp is at a fair distance from your castle.
Loki: Increase in energy regeneration.
Make sure you upgrade your hero to improve his/her battle perks. You will need battle banners to level them up. You can acquire battle banners from defeated orcs. Raid orc camps or eliminate incoming orcs from the watchtower to get them.
There are lots of things to do in Empire: Age of Knights. These include decreasing production costs, selling resources for a profit etc. Check out these additional tips to improve and expand your castle:
– Build dwellings to increase worker count. You will need workers when you construct a new building or upgrade it. Each time you build a resource-generating structure or upgrade it, a certain number of workers are assigned to it. Always pay attention to the worker count on the top of the screen. You can also upgrade the keep to get extra workers.
– Improve worker happiness to decrease production costs. To do this, you will need to place decorations and upgrade them from time to time.
Keep an eye on worker happiness bar on the upper right side of the screen and make sure it isn’t in the negative if you want to decrease production costs.
Upgrade an existing decoration using coins and royal coupons to get more happiness. Obtain royal coupons from tournaments. You can also build new decorations when you reach a particular level. Check the decorations tab under the build menu to know more about them, their requirements and the happiness points you will receive when you place them.
Note: Upgrading the wall also gives happiness points and a lot of XP.
– Fulfill contracts in the market to get coins and XP. Tap the cart on the lower-left corner of the screen and then tap each contract. Make sure you have enough resources to sell if you want to fulfill each contract.