I suggest everyone does the tutorial. You get free resources from it and a better experience of the game. If you don't do the tutorial you may not understand several things that I'll be going over in the guide.

The most important thing you absolutely should do when adding buildings to your first village is manage the space available to maximize your resource gain.


1. Get the stone quarries and wood cutters maxed out. Try and fit as many as possible into the small area that you get for your first village.
2. Get food buildings built up until you know for a fact you can have a nice surplus of food at all times. Generally you should be making enough to feed all of your people (without research) on x2 consumption. Preferable x4 for that great popularity boost.
3. Get your hovels built surrounding the middle building as close together as you can possibly get. The closer they are the more space you have for other things.

This is my preferred start that has generally worked for myself and anyone else I got playing the game.

1. Get stone quarrying and forestry maxed out as fast as you can.
2. Get orchard management maxed out since you will be relying on apples for quite some time until you get higher level foods.
3. Get tools maxed out for those better building speeds as it gets pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bad as you level up.
4. Get more farming research done so you can get different types of food. Having more than one type of food being fully eaten gives you a bonus to popularity.
5. Research scouts. These are a good source of honor income for those who are lower level and a good amount of resources are acquired for your village.
6. Get arts to 3
7. Get theology to 1 (Just so you have a constant faith point income as you level. Faith will become essential at higher levels)
8. Get engineering done
9. Get mathematics to 2
10. Get merchant guilds researched (Once you reach that level)
11. Get weapon making researched as far as you need to to get bow and pike construction researched.
12. Get long bow and pike research as soon as you're able. These are the two main troops in the game.
13. Get banqueting researched and start producing as many types of honor goods as you can for that extra honor income.

Again this is darrik's preference not my own.

#1 priority - Arts. Whenever you can spend a point here, spend it. It increases your honor multiplier.

#2 priority - castellation up to 5. This will give you the other castle researches you need below. The other keep levels you can wait a bit to do.

#3 priority - Put ONE point in scouts. This will give you one and only one scout. You can pop a couple more in later. See #8

#4 priority - put two points into command, one point into conscription, and one point into long bow. This gives you the ability to make armed peasants and archers. Don't make armed peasants, but they are handy mid game for 'storing' villagers, so unlock them anyway.

#5 priority - construction. A fully built castle will take about 50 days to build with no research in construction. It'll take 30 days with construction maxed. Put 1 point here every subrank until you max it. I get more honor from defending attacks than I do against everything else - you want a fully castle as fast as possible. Keep putting 1 point into this until you MAX it.

#6 priority - fortification. You need stone walls immediately when starting out. After that, work on #7 priority, then come back to this. You preferably want to get to great towers as fast as possible, because honestly if you build anything else you'll have to knock those down when you get great towers and that just wastes time. Put 1 point here every subrank if possible.

#7 priority - 1 point into defense. This gets you guard houses, which lets you increase the number of troops in your castle. Your liege lord may be stationing troops in your village, but you can't do much with them if you can only put down 20 (the minimum) into your castle to help defend it.

#8 priority - Pop a point or two into scouts. As Lost mentioned, you can get a lot of honor for scouting resources. You don't need a ton of scouts at the start, however, because there are typically only a max of 2-3 resources stashes in your honor circle. Don't put up capacity or speed until you finished this priority list and gone on to the next stage. In World 4 where the rest of us are, most of the ranked players don't bother rushing to stashes. You will mostly be racing against the Premium feature of autoscouts. So scout speed (in order to discover resource stashes first) is typically not key early game. In a newer world where everyone wants that stash, it would be.

#9 priority - unlock the first four food types. Apples starts unlocked, and you unlock cheese for a quest, but you need to put two points into animal husbandry to unlock meat (pig breeding) and 2 points into plough to unlock bread (wheat). As mentioned before, you want as many food types as possible running to get as much popularity as you can.

#10 priority - wood/stone production. Put a point into one of these every subrank when you've done the above. Best way is probably to alternate, because you generally need equal amounts of each unless you are building one specific type of building that requires focusing one. You want these as high as you can get them, because they speed up village construction significantly as you get more resources.

#11 priority - Tools. This reduces your building costs. Put a point into it each rank when you've done the above (and when it's available).

#11 Engineering - this increases all of your capacity caps. Put points into it until you max it, not the individual 'stockpile capacity' or 'granery capacity.'

#12 Merchants - You want to unlock merchants and get them up to 5 each building. Selling resources is one of the primary ways to get gold. And you need gold. So you want merchants. Put one point into commerce once you have one point into merchants - it'll let you sell to other parishes inside your county, not just your own parish.

#13 priority - put enough points into weapon production to unlock bows. And build at least one fletcher. You'll need them, and you can expand later.

#14 priority - Command - try to keep this ahead of your own army. If you have a liege lord sending you troops, you don't need to have it match your guard houses in your castle, but it would be the ideal level to shoot for. If you can station 60 troops in your castle, try to have enough command that you can have 60+ troops. Because if your liege lord needs to attack someone, you may suddenly find yourself out of vassal troops. You can tell your LL to send you some bows if you don't actually have that many archers at the time.

#15 priority - Diplomacy. This nets you honor for incoming attacks WITHOUT HAVING TO FIGHT THEM. I delayed researching it, and I regretted it. Max diplomacy stops an average of 50% of your incoming attacks from AI. Put a point into it whenever possible when you get down to here.

There are five different types of food: Bread, meat, apples, cheese, veggies.

Bread: Makes the most food per building but the buildings are much larger.
Meat: Makes an average amount of resources per building and the buildings are much smaller.
Apples, Cheese, veggies: All make around the same amount of food and are medium in size.

As I mentioned before you gain a popularity boost depending on how many types of food in your village that are fully eaten.

When I first started I didn't have a good design for my castle. Like an idiot I used a lot of wood walls mixed with stone walls. What many newer players don't realize is this: Infantry troops can not damage stone towers. Unfortunately they can damage stone walls so with my design the more great towers you have in your village the better off you are. Unfortunately with my design the costs for damages are quite high so you'll have to be careful about that.

My design:

Used in this:
-Great Towers
-Large towers
-Barracks
-Stone walls
-Ballista
-Moats

Darrik's design:

Used in this:
-Guard houses
-Ballista
-Stone walls
-Oil pots
-Smelters
-Turrets

My design relies heavily on stone Great towers to survive the enemy attacks while Darrik's design relies heavily on moats and pitch. In both our designs you see how we usually replace stone walls with moats right? This is because catapults are unable to attack moats which makes them very valuable during larger attacks. If you're going to use moats instead of stone walls make sure you have extra gold on hand to replace them. It costs 10k gold to get the maximum amount of moats in your castles so always have some extra for repairs.

Until you are a much higher rank army design doesn't really matter all that much. Ill go over the benefits of the different kind of troops before I teach you anything else.

-Pikes: Lots of health and armor. When defending they don't move to engage the enemy. Instead they stay where you place them and defend that spot until they die.
-Swords: Less health and armor compared to pikes. Much better attack power. They cut through stone walls like a hot knife through butter compared to pikes. Horrible for defense so don't do that. **I still prefer pikes for attacking. Will go into that later**
-Archers: Obvious troops are obvious. Good for attack or defense. On offence they need to have some sort of melee infantry troop in front of them to meatshield while they do their work. On defense do not put them on the ground or on walls. They are very squishy against melee troops and the towers provide extra cover against other archers.
-Catapults: Even more obvious. Once upgraded a good number of them can bring down towers and walls pretty quickly.

Once you have all four troop types research and maxed out (Yes you need to max them out) the general army I use for escorting attacking captains consists of this.

-225 archers
-225 swordsmen
-45 catapults
-As many captains as you feel are needed with the 5 remaining spots

One thing to note about armies is you wont ever be able to station 500 troops in your village if you want any kind of merchants/scouts/monks. The way I station an army that size is in my vassal villages. You can station up to 500 troops there that DO NOT count towards your total troop count in the village your vassal is attached to. You can also attack from your vassal's villages with the troops you have stationed there.

To better explain the vassal army system Ill give a hypothetical example:

My 06 village is connected to darrik's 01 village. I can make a total of 300 troops in my 06 village before it fills up the capacity. I send 100 archers to darrik's first village and that count towards the 500 max I can station there. I now have 100 more capacity in my 06 village in which to make more troops to send to more vassals. Whatever you have stationed in your vassal's village does not count towards your total.

When stationing troops in your vassal village you have to be sending the troops from the village your vassal is connected to. (You see that by the green line on the map once you click on the vassal village) I'll go into more detail about the vassal system next.

One small bonus is that any troops you have stationed in your village that you received from your liege lord you can put them on your walls and towers to defend your keep which frees up more space for your own merchants/scouts/monks and personal troops.

I've already gone into detail about the vassal armies so I'll talk about the rest of the vassal system next.

When you first start the main thing you want is to get a liege lord. Depending on the level of your liege lord and your own current level you get a certain amount of honor per day. For example, I am a prince while David, who is a duke, gets around 8k honor a day from me being his liege lord. Darrik, who is a viscount, gets 16k honor a day from me because I am his liege lord.

When you first start out the amount of honor you get per day is extremely low. As you level up the honor amount you get goes up. Unfortunately there is a certain point in the honor grind where the closer you get to your liege lord's level the less honor you get. David, who is one honor rank behind me, only gets 8k while darrik, who is four ranks behind me, gets 16k.

Your villages have two factors that determine how much honor you get from that village: Popularity, and the popularity-honor multiplier (I'll shorten it to multiplier).

Popularity is that big number at the top of the right sidebar. If you click on it, you see everything that is affecting it.

The first is taxes. I typically keep my taxes at a level that brings more in than the parish tithe is costing me. When you start out the parish tithe is minimal, it grows as your village grows however, but so does your tax income, so typically the setting you start with should be fine. Most of my villages are at the first level of income, which has a 0 popularity modifier. One of my villages has the second level, which gives a -10 pop. At the top level, I'm basically even between tax income and tithe.

The second is food. As lost said, the more food types you are fully have feeding your villages, the more popularity you get. You can increase your food rate, from x1 to x4. You get 6 popularity for x1 and one food type. You get 70 popularity for x4 and 5 types. Your first village is primarily an honor/faith village, so you should be shooting for 4x food with as many types as you can build.

The third is beer. There are no types, so it's between 6 and 24. I buy it for most of my villages, because it helps offset the negatives in the 'other' category I'll talk about below. I'm researching production multipliers now so I can make enough to supply at least two of my villages with their own beer. But it's not a priority for early game - build enough so you can get x1 if you want, and then buy more as you research mid-game (after your third village at least). As you research its production, you can increase until you get to x4.

The fourth is bed space. The more open beds you have, the more pop you get for it. It's handy early game, but DON'T BUILD HOVELS FOR THE SAKE OF IT. The more villagers you have, the more food you have. Build hovels at a rate that gives you extra for the buildings you need to man, don't keep building hovels until you have 40 extra villagers, because they just eat your food.

The fifth is buildings. But literature research gives you the ability to make buildings that boost your popularity 6 max each. This is KEY after the very early levels. So research literature and build those buildings as soon as you can. You can't max it, because it's level based, so pop a point in whenever you can and build that building.

The sixth is other. Everything else affects it. If there are enemy AI in the parish, you get negative popularity. AI castles, wolf caves, and bandits all negatively affect your popularity. Player controlled driven blessings also show up here. The big suck is weather, and it's totally random. Sometimes you can get +18 from sunshine, and sometimes you can get -12 from rain. And you can't do anything about it. The popularity buildings and beer help offset the 'other' category, which is almost always negative in any built up parish.

As you upgrade theology you get a certain amount of faith points per day. As you upgrade it you get access to more and more types of faith buildings. Around my third village I was attempted to produce every single faith building I can maxing out on the cathedrals.

There are five different types of faith buildings.

-Small shrines: These buildings are extremely tiny, only taking up one square, but only produce 1 faith. They are really good for filling up small unused spaces so I usually only start building them once I have built everything else I want in a village
-Large shrines: These buildings are pretty damn small compared to other buildings. They are a bit bigger than small shrines. 4 small shrines can fit in the same amount of space as one large shrine. Each large shrine produces 4 faith.
-Chapels: About four large shrines can fit in the space of one chapel. Each chapel produces 8 faith and has a honor bonus of 3.
-Churches: About one and a half chapels can fit inside a church so it's a much bigger building compared to most other buildings in the game. Produces 15 faith a day with an honor bonus of 8.
-Cathedrals: By far the largest building in the game with only the bakeries even coming close. Produces 100 faith points a day with a honor bonus of 26.

I recommend that as soon as you can start producing all of these buildings in each of your villages.

There are a few really great uses for faith points.

-Interdiction: More commonly known as simply "ID" this skill allows you to essentially put your villages in beginners protection for as long as the ID lasts. AIs and players are completely unable to attack you. The first level of ID lets you ID yourself but no one else. Each increase in level of ID lets you ID higher and higher ranked players.
-Baptism: Allows you to remove disease from the parish. Disease reduces your popularity depending on how much disease is in the parish. Once your parish reaches level 30 disease it sends out a "Plague rat" that infects the parishes around it.
-Marriage: Allows you to "bless" a parish which gives a bonus to popularity ti all the villages in the parish.
-Confirmation: Allows you to do inquisition to a parish which gives a negative bonus to popularity to all the villages in the parish.
-Extreme union: More commonly referred to as Excommunication or just excom. This allows you to remove church powers on a player for a certain amount of time until the excom runs out. Very good for fights with other players as it stops them from being able to ID their villages.
-Confession: Reduces the time your village is excom'd.

You may not realize it but depending on how leveled up your parish is you may be getting a huge bonus for certain resources. When you control a parish you are able to place down certain guilds, that when upgraded, provide a resource bonus for whatever guild it is you are upgrading. When upgraded you are able to delete the guilds and retain the bonuses (Wont be able to in age II).

The parish tax can be a killer for whenever you are first starting out. You may think "Why am I being taxed for money that isn't being used in my parish." The gold in a parish is used when construction more guilds or even building parish armies to defend/attack with. In war time you may see your parish tax jump up to x9...which is a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ money sink. The parish steward isn't doing this because hes a ♥♥♥♥. He's doing it because he needs the money to replace the parish army after it gets used for attacks.

Concerning parish votes. Unless asked to do not start voting yourself up. I know from experience that should you start voting yourself up, the steward will either be nice and just send you a message asking to you stop, or he will raze your village to the ground. Do not do this unless asked.

One of the most basic things you should know is: "What parish are you in." The most common response I've gotten is "What the ♥♥♥♥ is a parish." when talking to newer players. This picture will show you how to find out what parish you're in.


The black lines indicated by my awesomely drawn red arrow is the parish borders. If you're within/on those borders that is what parish you are in. The big bold black name is the name of the parish you belong to. Also indicated with my sexy red arrow. The even sexier red circle indicates the parish capital.

In each of your villages, you have a multiplier. This determines how much honor you are getting for your village in combination with your popularity.

You can see it by clicking on the gold crown on the side bar in your village. There are 6 categories.

Faith buildings, as Lost mentioned, also net you honor at the later levels. Chapels, churches, and cathedrals both bring in a certain amount of faith per day and add to your honor multiplier.

Decorative buildings are unlocked with decoration research in the education category. If you throw all of them down, you can net a total of 200 multiplier from them. Put these down whenever you don't have anything else to build (or not enough resources to build what you want to, because they are pretty cheap). There are only five levels, so similar to literature buildings, research it when it becomes available if you can.

Justice buildings are unlocked with the justice tree. They add multiplier, but also decrease your popularity. Don't build them until LATE game, if at all.

Arts research - this is why you put a point into Arts whenever it pops up.

Parish Bonus - your parish steward builds certain buildings that increase your honor multiplier.

Cards - there are cards you can play that will give you temporary increases in the multiplier.

All of these add up to a total multiplier. In that same screen, you can see that it multiplies that multiplier with your popularity to give you a certain honor income a day. My biggest village at one point had a multiplier of 241.50. With a popularity of 82, I was making 19,803 honor a day.

Farmer. This guy focuses on making food up the ying-yang. His villagers are very happy, and he can sell the extra for the good. He can also supply other village types (or his vassals) and donate to the parish to upgrade buildings. Food is good, as discussed in the popularity section. You put points into food production and ale. Everything is about making the stuff that makes your villagers extra happy and therefore maximizing your honor bonus.

Merchant. You sell ♥♥♥♥. You sell ♥♥♥♥ everywhere. There is a dedicated role for this, and apparently it involves buying low and selling high country wide. I think it's mainly a secondary role, but I suppose if you do it well enough, you can make enough money to buy anything you aren't making your own self. You would focus on merchants, commerce, and transportation for this role.

Scouter. This guy is the one who pisses off the newbies who are trying to get honor bonuses for discovering stashes. Anything he doesn't make, he gets from stashes. He'll send scouts to any stash in range and basically grab the whole thing in one go. He's got max scouts, max capacity, and max speed.

Monker. He's got monks. He can bless his parish (increasing the popularity), cure disease, curse his enemy parishes, ID (prevent all attacks) his villages and his friends, excommunicate, etc. He needs faith. Tons and tons and tons of faith. So he's focusing on theology and all the sub researches within. I don't know how they make money, so I would assume it's just the main focus and they do something else on the side.

AI attacker. He's got troops, and he sends them at every AI thingamibob in range. He gets his honor from successfully attacking the poor AI guys who just want to pillage your villages. He needs command, weapon production, and troop health. Troop speed is helpful, but not vital since your honor circle isn't all that big

Pillager - this guy is hated by everyone near him, because he's attacking PCs, not AI. Don't do it unless you're extremely confident of winning, because you'll screwed if you do it to someone who is stronger than you. But you basically focus on the same things as AI attacker, but you'll also put points into pillage to maximize your returns and forced march to give the poor bastards less warning. You can use the same skills as an attacker for your faction, too, in a war.


***LOST SIDE NOTE***
All of these rolls essentially merge into one when you reach late game. Once you get to prince and above you can pretty much do everything listed here.

This game is a bit of a grind early on when you're doing nothing but trying to survive among players who have the potential to crush you beneath their feet. Make friends with stronger players and make sure to get liege lords for every single one of your villages so you don't have to waste resources defending yourself. Once you get to max rank, try to get into a higher level faction in a decent house. My first house on house war was one of the best experiences I had while playing stronghold kingdoms.


Lets just say flag raiding with a friend during one of the house wars I participated in was extremely fun. You can see the long chain of attack icons on the map.

I'll leave you with this for when you need some music as you raid people: