Tips to play 3kingdom on friendster

I'm writing (and updating) this tips as the game progressed.
Looked like the 3kingdom game @ friendster has some 'easy-but convenience to use' tips to enhance your strategy. Enjoy and please inform me should you had other tips to share...


For fast growth you need to balance the production of Gold and resources (Food, Lumber, Iron and Stone).
General tips would be to always have minimum of 300 allocable peasants (green, don't leave it on red) by building or upgrading cottages. The more the better since you'll got extra gold and a lot of people to recruit as your army.
Then as this free or idle peasants is enough you can build or upgrade your resources (not vise versa, ie : do not build resources while you do not have enough idle peasants, you would be short on workers !).
Having the habit of keeping quite reasonable number of allocable peasants would be beneficial when you need to increase your army size quickly.

Then when you would like to take a nap (what ? 6 hrs ? 10 hrs ?) or away from your game, always think ahead.
Best policy is to keep everybody working and running while you are away.


Tips on :
1. Setting Tax Rate. This is quite unclear early on but I think I got the optimum strategy already.
Here is the simple guide : Set your tax @ 50%. That will maximize your hourly gold production throughput !
You might wonder how I got this tips so easily saying... but read on cause I got a good mathematical explanation for this advice.
And here is the explanation : Your gold production throughput would be affected by tax and population.
I would focus not on the current population but your maximum population.
Current population is the one that fluctuated (approximately) every 5 minutes. They would increase (or decrease) within your (allowable) maximum population.
Maximum population itself would be affected by the Capacity (ie the number of cottages and their level of upgrade) and the Tax Rate set up !

Here is the simple mathematics equation to work with :
GpT = Gold Production Throughput (gold/hour)
C = Capacity (number of people)
MP = Maximum Population = C x (1-T)
T = Tax Rate (%)

GpT = MP x T
        = C x (1-T) x T
        = -CT^2 + CT
Maximixing GpT for T you got : GpT max for T = -C/-2C = 1/2 or 50% !!
So if you want to maximizing your Gold Production Throughput, you will have to set your tax rate @ 50%.
Prove :
Case 1:  Capacity of 10.000 people, with tax rate at 30% then Max Pop = 7.000, Gold Production Throughput = 7.000 x 30% = 2.100 gold/hour.
Case 2:  Capacity of 10.000 people, with tax rate at 50% then Max Pop = 5.000, Gold Production Throughput = 5.000 x 50% = 2.500 gold/hour.
Case 3:  Capacity of 10.000 people, with tax rate at 70% then Max Pop = 3.000, Gold Production Throughput = 3.000 x 70% = 2.100 gold/hour.

See what I mean ? :).

And don't forget to always add (or preferably) upgraded your cottage as frequent as time allowed to maximize your C and MP :D.


2. Fast Resource Production. This is how to speed up your Resource Production (Food, Wood, Stone and Iron).
* Build enough Farm, Sawmill, Quarry and Iron Mine. Then upgrade them according to your needs. It is wise to overlook the future need. means it would be better if you concentrate your spending on resource production in the early stage then you will have a steady output for you growth requirements.
I would suggest the number of Farm : Saw Mill : Quarry : Iron Mine as 4:3:3:2 for more or less almost the same level.
As you focus on growth you should focus on Saw Mill then Quarry and Iron Mine.
As your production rate reaching about 10k each you should be able to focus on building army and going to war, hence your focus on production building should be changed to : Farm, Saw Mill, Iron Mine and Quarry.

* Complete your growth Quests, each quest will give you certain amount of either gold, resources, influence point or even population to speed up your city building. Don't forget to get the reward okay ?! :D.

* Build College and do research at the earliest possible while watching your resource level.

Your resources would be essential for you city, BUT do not over use them for the army, wall, heroes etc.

Instead, you should focus first on the lumbering and mining then hammering and cultivation for the early stages.

This would boost up your resource production rate (additional 10% for each level).

Off course you need to maximize your population by building and upgrading cottages to earn as much gold as you can.

As soon as you can recruit army, try to conquer lake, swamp or pasture for food production boost up.
Lake is the best, for example level 9 Lake could boost up food production by 32%, level 9 Swamp by 21% and level 9 Pasture by 11%. Uplands are for Iron boost and Barrens are for Stone.
And do not forget to upgrade your government, the higher the government level the more wilderness you can control. For Example : level 6 government can control maximum of 6 wilderness of any kind.



3. Building Army, protection and preparation for war !
* Build College and do research at the earliest possible while watching your resource level.
I would focus on pikemen and archers as the prove to be reliable on the early stages.
Pikemen would drain your wood resource drastically but they are reliable and fast to train.
Archer would require 2 population per archer and long training period but they will reduce casualties at war thus saving a lot time to train and reduce resource need.

* Build Barrack on the 3rd or 4th day of your immunity period (7 days). This should give you enough time to prepare your army and defences. By this time, if you had maximized your population, resources etc you would be building all the army and war related progress in no time.

* Choosing Heroes, I would literally sums up the 3 main (and upgradeable) heroes character which is Politics, Bravery and Intelligence. If it falls above 150 (now it sounds like an IQ test isn't it ?) then you have a raw talent there. Recruit him immediately ! (In this case you need to always prepare at least 1 empty space at the hero lounge or you would be forced to lay out one of your hero).
I would prefer a level 1 (thus cheap) hero worth 1000 gold with 150 total character point and point him as a castellan to boost up his level in no time.
You could switch other hero as castellan and it took only 1 day to boost him up 3 level to level 4.
In two days he would have became level 7 ready to war...

Effective Barrack level :
I found out that the most effective troopers are :
* Archer for long range and reducing casualties. But takes 2 population and slower recruitment rate (approx half of pikemen recruitment rate).
* Pikemen for speed and fast recruitment. Seemingly really realible against low level army. But because of their speed at war they would take the most casualties. Seemingly really realible against low level army.
Takes a lot of wood to recruit !
* Swordsman for high hit points and guarding point. But takes longer time to recruit compared to pikemen.
* Cuirassiers (I have not yet own this type of soldier but I guess this one is reliable for battle against huge amount of troopers).

So considering the above condition I would suggest you to have 2 barrack at level 8 to recruit Cuirassiers and Ballistae. Then 2 barrack at level 4 to recruit archers. Then 2 barrack at level 2 to recruit Pikemen, scout, etc.
So total of 6 barracks should be enough to support your medium level war (not attacking city walls which require Battering rams or Trebuchets).

To avoid being scouted you need to keep a lot of scout in your city. Only scout will attack scout.
Keep like 2.000 scout to avoid being scout, but you could always get scouted if your enemy bring more scout and defeated yours.




4. War against Bandit and Yellow Turban Forces at 3kingdom Friendster.

I would rely much on archers because you can kill your enemy without loosing any of your army.
And I always command my army on war to maximize the result. Looks like all game are like that, you need to lead the war yourself to have a flawless win.

That's how you do not need to keep recruiting army. Keep producing archers and you would win higher level wilderness with ease. To defend your archer, choose the swordsmen they are quite tough. Against level 7-8 wilderness I would suggest 1.000 archers and 500 swordsmen or pikemen. You would almost achieve victory without casualties. Against level 9-10, I would suggest 1.500 archers and 1.000 swordsmen and pikemen, but there will be casualties. In order to avoid casualties, try rise archer to 2.500.

Off course always try to avoid (scout before attacking) carteran, YT archers and alike then high speed troopers such as YT Captain and mounted bandit. They could move very fast and kill some of your swordsmen / archers.

If you loose a war, you'll loose influence, something that you really want to avoid during your effort toward 1st rank player. So in order to avoid loosing wars, you will need to scout then (if necessary) simulate the battle (using sim.battle at rally spot). Here are some information you might want to know when analysing scout report:


Army type comparison :

Rookies alike : (armed with trident)
Rogue moving at 210 per turn,
Yellow Turban Soldier moving at 220 per turn,

Pikemen alike : (armed with spear/javelin), moving at 360 per turn.
Bandit, moving at 310 per turn,
Yellow Turban Veteran 320 per turn

Swordsmen alike : (armed with swords), moving at 330 per turn.
Brigand, moving at 280 per turn

Yellow Turban Elite, moving at

Archers alike : (armed with bow), moving at 300 per turn.

Cateran, moving at 275 per turn.

Yellow Turban Archers, moving at 260 per turn.

Cavalries alike : (ride a horse), moving at 1250 per turn.
Mountain Bandit, moving at 1200 per turn,
Yellow Turban Captains, moving at


Amount of troops from scouting :
Few = 1 to 10 (my data : 2)
Several = 10 to 25 (my data : 12 to 20)
Pack = 25 to 50 (my data : 36 to 40)
Lots = 50 to 100 (my data : 57 to 78)
Horde = 100 to 250 (my data : 100 to 247)
Throng = 250 to 600 (my data : 291 to 450)
Swarm = 600 to1.000 (my data : 604 to 953)
Zounds = 1.000 to 2.500 (my data : 1.000 to 2.334)
Legion = 2.500 to 5.000 (my data : 2.667 to 4.800)
Bulk = 5.000 to ....  (my data : 5.334 to 6.667)
Giga =  10.000  to ....              (my data : 10.000 to 16.000)

But anyway, looked like if you upgrade reconnaissance (at College) to level 3 you will get exact number of enemy from your scout ! Nice thing... So I'll stop (because I could not) updating the data above.
reconnaissance is a nice thing to upgrade, btw, if you reach level 5 or 6 you could see almost everything you need to attack a wilderness even a city.
Note : with low level of reconnaissance you could not see enemy army in a city ! This is very dangerous if you want to attack a city such as a yellow turban one.



5. Upgrading your rank.
This is one of the primary purpose you played 3kingdom, to gain Nobility and Military Rank.
They always corresponds one another, and you will need to pay attention to these aspect :
* Level of Government and Wall.
* Jewellery. To upgrade to Livery you need 10 Pearls. Then Coral, Liuli, Agate and so on... so always gather the jewellery in the wilderness.
* Gold.
* Conquer wilderness and then a County when you want to upgrade from Major to Colonel.


6. Increasing Influence at 3kingdom Friendster.
This is one of the utmost goal of this game. Feels like you would like to win the emperor's heart by gaining political influence.
- Win Battles, especially with high level hero or huge army (high level wilderness).
- Join Arena and defeat the heroes at the arena's quest.
- Growth in population and all construction level in town.
- Conquer wilderness, growth in army number.
- Gaining influence from quest reward.
- Giving tribute to the emperor (epic quest) either resources, jewelry, troops, etc.
The most easiest thing to gain influence are giving tribute (if you had 3 - 4 cities then giving resource tribute shouldn't be a problem).
Then also killing enemy heroes and judges at arena should give a fast boost on your influence. For further detail see the 'war on arena and city' section.
The fastest but hardest way to earn influence is by defeating YT castle, County or defeating the top players hiehiehiehie....

To Own a County (or YT city). Its best to place your castle adjacent to them.
This is because you would need to defeat them 90 times to bring the Allegiance level to 0.
See if you can differentiate between a City and a County ;). The county is different in shape and colour compare to a city.


7. What to do if you are away ?
Well, a lot actually. Especially in the higher level and without diamonds and vouchers... meaning you do not want to speed up nor pay for those fancy facilities.

* Wilderness, you should gather on your wilderness. I would suggest you gather more on Lake and Swamp to get as much Pearls and Corals as possible to achieve Livery rank. This would enables you to go to arena and build more cities. Do not forget to gather the other jewelry type, and gain some quests reward.
From my experience, 2 hours gathering almost get you none of the jewellery, 6 hours or more had a good chance of getting jewellery. I usually put them on 8 - 10 hours before reap all gathering.
Small tips, to save time, put your big army in your city, go gather with heroes and cavalries. They moved very fast so you could save travel time. The big army in your city could defend your city should there are any attack, and could be sent directly for maraud or conquer.

* Construction, you could do the lower level, high speed construction and upgrade at your presence and higher level, long duration construction and upgrade while you are away. Government, Walls, Research usually took long time to finish.

* Army Recruitment, while you are playing, try to recruit in a small group such as 20 for archers, 50 for pikemen, 40 for swordsmen etc. While you are away, try to recruit in a larger group such as 100 for archers, 200 for pikemen and 150 for swordsmen.
Anyhow this game teaches us to schedule our life isn't ? hahahaha.... talking about online games....
But watch out your food production... this is could be crucial because if you do not keep a high food production number it could go red (minus) when you are away and those army finish their recruitment process.

* Research, build traps, archer towers etc at your wall during you are away. This would also save you time. Do the short duration research while you are playing and save the longer duration while you are away. that's always the general rule.




8. Choosing and Recruiting Hero(s).
As your city improve, you need more heroes for war (maraud, conquer) and building / researching / boosting production in the city.

Early in the game,
I always appoint a hero with high politics and intelligence to be a castellan. It would boost his experience as well. The high politics and intelligence speeds up building and research.

As your game advancing,
Point a hero with high politics and bravery to boost up your resources production as well as recruiting army.

For War,
Recruit heroes (I usually use 1 or max 2) heroes with high bravery and intelligence as those characteristic will boost your attack and defend as well.

Then choose some ordinary hero, preferably from a low level one (hence will not require high salary) to gather  your wilderness thus boost your resources production as well.


For a Castellan,
Choose a hero with high Politics as it boosted production and construction.
Preferably with high Bravery to speed up your troops recruitment.
If you have a high intelligent hero then you could speed up research at that city.
Placing a hero as a castellan would give him experience so do not forget to monitor your castellan and upgrade their level.



9. War at Arena and City at 3kingdom Friendster.
This is one fast way to gain influence, but you need to be very careful because the arena basically is consecutive wars each 5 to 8 minutes against various kinds of enemy type. You would have to kill minimum of  6 to 7 heroes before you could reach the 3 judges.
There is a time limit when the arena is open (3 hrs), and if you could not kill the 3 judges in the time span then you'll lose the arena battle.
But even though you are loosing the battle you'll still gain influence and experience for your hero(s) by defeating any enemy heroes and judges. This is the good thing about arena.

Here are some hints for you to prepare battle at PVE arena :
* The heroes at Level 4 arena are about as strong as Wilderness level 7 or 8. It gives you 1.6k influence per heroes defeated (arena quest). The heroes at Level 5 arena more or less equal to Wilderness level 9 or 10.
But the judges are the one you need to worry. They are about two times stronger than the heroes you found in the arena. Especially the Julu Judges (at the upper right most city).
Actually as you travel from bottom left to upper right, the heroes and enemy would become gradually more difficult to defeat. This also true if you go up to save the kings. But still the toughest ones are the 3 judges.

Here are some easy to calculate Archer match up :
Archer vs Archer : each round you can kill about 60% of you enemy (example : 50k archer would kill around 30k archer each round).
Archer vs YT Veteran : 26% per round (example : 50k archer would kill around 13k of pikemen each round).
Archer vs YT Elite : 7.2% per round (example : 50k archer would kill around 3,6k of swordmen each round).
Archer vs YT Soldiers : 120% per round (example : 50k archer would kill around 60k rookies each round).
The number of Swordsmen would be the one you should be worrying the most because they are the toughest one and often you will find a bulk number of swordsmen (elite YT) with only some archers or captain. Means you should be calculating your chances before engaging the war.
Be cautious that the number I wrote above is subject to many things, your research level, your hero bravery, and the distance between your archer and the enemy.
If you are 'out of range' then you could only kill half of the number displayed above.
So always remember to close in to kill maximum number of enemy and then fade out to parry their attack.

Easiest (but costly way) to scout your enemy at the arena is by using the Homing Pigeon, but you also could spy on them by defeating other non hero general at the same castle and then you can scout the hero freely.
Just click offence on them (if you are on the same castle) and their information would appear.


* To minimize casualties I always bring archers, a lot of them. about 6k for PVE arena lvl 4 and 8k for PVE arena lvl 5 and 11k for lvl 6 would be advisable. I also bring  at least 2k swordsmen to protect my archer, just in case. You will need to prepare about 200-300k of food to supply your troops during war.
For convenience and insurance, I recommend you to bring more archers than needed.
45k-50k archers for lvl 7 is advised, although I can also do it with 40k.
70k archers for lvl 8 is advised, although I can do it with 65k but I also lost 70k by surprise when 40k swordsmen at Julu the Heaven Judge.

So use homing pigeon or kill the other army leader (advisor, decorated general, rebel leader an so on, as long as its not the Hero) to scout. This way you can still avoid loosing troops.
Do this especially for the Judges.

Always move forward and kill the YT Captain (horsemen) first, then YT Archers, then YT Pikemen basically whoever move the fastest or could damage you from long range.
Why you need to go forward ? because seems like the range would determine the accuracy of your archers and therefore would kill more or less enemy.
As the enemy (they are always march towards you) get closer, stop or move back your archers and your other army. So close in then stay out, do not let your enemy touches your army especially your archers.
Always monitor the position (coordinate) of your army and enemy and make sure they did not touch your army on the next move.
This is how you could survive 10-11 consecutive war without loosing any troops.

* Always look for castle with heroes, and always aim for the heroes. Sometimes one castle contains 2 heroes. Kill them before you move to the other castle. Remember time is limited.
As for the reward, each level 5 heroes you kill would give you 2.5k influence (do not forget to take your reward at the arena quest). The Judges would give you some 3.5k influence or more (sorry, did not remember). But the price is good, for each arena lvl 5 you finished you could gain 30k to 40k influence if you are quick and strong enough.
Lvl 7 heroes give you 4.9k influence per hero and Judges give you 7.35k, 9.8k and 14k.
If you can beat higher level arena then the price is even better, but you will need to much more army. Be prepare.

The marching speed (between city) inside the arena is determine by the heroes ! The higher the hero level (Bravery I guess...) the quicker you move. You can also use horse or bulls to speed up even further.
Then off course the different speed of each troops would also contribute to your marching speed.
If you include ballista for example, then your speed would drop significantly and depends also to your tech.
So upgrade your Navigation for infantry such as archers and swordsmen, Equitation for troops and siege engines, etc.


* To my experience, the best route at PVE Arena would be :
Xiang Yang (Start) --> Fan Cheng (kill 1 hero) --> Deng Cheng (kill 1 hero) --> Nan Yang (kill 2 heroes !! another hero would appear after you kill the 1st one) --> Wan Cheng (kill 3 heroes !! heros appear after another) --> Xie Jing Shan (Kill 1 hero).
Then you have 2 options here, whether to go up north directly to the judges or swing first to Xing Ye (1 hero) then Ru Nan (2 heros !) then go north. Its all up to your war speed.
Then go to Wu Ping (1 hero) --> Cang Ting ( 1 hero) --> Dong Jun ( 1 hero) --> 3 judges GuangZong, Julu, XiaQu Yang ( total 3 heroes).
Then go back to Dong Jun, Chen Liu (1 hero) and then Chang She (1 hero) and go after the Bo Cai to Ying Cuan (1 hero), Yang Zhai (1 hero), then Peng Tuo (2 heroes including Bo Cai).
You need to move very fast here ! so about 20 heroes could be eliminated in a single arena battle trip if you are fast !!
if you did level 5 then total additional influence is 17 x 2.500 + 3 x 3.500 = 53.000 experience per arena !
Not Bad isn't ? for 3 hours playing...

note : red bolded cities have tough hero ! Pay special attention when defeat


Now for the city war,
The epic quest, counterinsurgency would need you to attack a YT city (to release YT captive).
Scout it first with level 5 or more reconnaissance and you could see all your enemy and remember that the difficult thing is not to defeat the YT armies but to avoid looses from city traps.

ps : tricky way to scout is to send one Cavalry, which move the fastest, to attack and you can see the enemy quantity. Send your real army on the second attack.

There are 40 rounds for battle and within that you will need to bring the 1000k hit points wall down to 0.
During those time, the city traps will eat your army little by little. So be quick.
I would suggest bring heavy artillery such as Ballistaes, Trebuchets or Battering Rams.
Oh ya, you need to shift your archer forwards so that the walls and enemy behind wall are within its attack range.

To reduce casualties, try this method :
1st attack : Sacrifice attack to scout, or use scout.
2nd attack : Maraud attack to eliminate troops without having to deal with the defensive wall (ie : traps, stone, logs, archer tower, etc).
3rd attack : Conquer attack, bring a lot of Siege engines to bring down the wall faster then use the rookies, swordsmen, cuirassairs, etc to sacrifice against defensive wall, so bring them forward, then use the heavy siege to attack from distance. Move your archers as well.


so far... that's what I could share to you...



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