A new day, a new battlefield. Monsters and titans roam the world unchecked, reveling in the destruction they leave in their wake. Untold riches lie, waiting for an iron hand to reach out and seize them. Organized tribes and coalitions of humans, orcs, and elves stand bravely against the wild unknown, but in their hearts, they all nurture a desire to serve a great hero who will unify them and bring order to this chaotic land. Will you answer their pleas and lead them to greatness? Or will you be another kingdom’s stepping stone, a mere footnote in their history?
War and Order is a mobile empire-building game in the same vein as Evony: The King’s Return. In War and Order, you are but one of many fledgling monarchs trying to stake their claim on the land. You’ll need both a strong sword arm and a silver tongue to succeed here, for it’s not just beasts and monsters that challenge your rule, but also other players. Stand together with your allies or force everything to bend the knee – it’s your call. Those looking to join this battlefield can get War and Order on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.
Players of other empire-type games such as Evony: The King’s Return or Vikings: War of Clans will be very familiar with the systems of War and Order, and if you’ve played one of those, there’s not much more I can teach you. If, however, this is your first foray into the world of mobile empire builders, I bid you welcome!
In this War and Order beginner’s guide, we’ll be covering:
Before we begin, we should first talk about your peace shield.
The peace shield is a powerful three-day barrier created and given to all new players upon first logging onto War and Order. This shield is automatically applied to your city, and while it’s up, other players cannot scout or attack your city. Because let’s face it – you’re still just a guppy in a pond full of sharks. And while games like War and Order have their own player-made rules (based on server), it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
Your shield protects you, but it also restricts you. What the shield does is:
Fortunately, three days are more than enough to get the basics down pat and for you to find stronger friends. Note that the shield isn’t just limited to newbies – you can get more shields by buying them with both real money and in-game currency.
Now that you (hopefully) understand how important your shield is, let’s get down to brass tacks!
While you can get by just cruising through the tutorial quests, these don’t touch upon the finer points of city building. There are a ton of buildings in War and Order, and knowing exactly what each of them does for you is important as it helps you budget resources and make key upgrades. Let’s go over each of them in detail.
Quick Tips:
The Castle
The castle is your seat of power, but aside from that, it doesn’t functionally do anything important.
It is, however, tied to your major progression as your castle’s level dictates the upgrade levels of all your other buildings. The castle also provides passive bonuses to gathering speed and determines how many of a type of building you can have.
New players pay attention: castle upgrades are very important but consume a lot of time.In games like this, it’s not unusual to see an upgrade time of weeks or even months on the player’s castle. Thus, it’s always a good idea to set aside some (or all, if you want) of your speed-ups exclusively to accelerate castle upgrade progress.
The castle can also give you a quick overview of your empire. To do this, tap the castle then select Castle Info. This will bring up a screen that shows you how many resources you have as well as their hourly income (or losses), your total power and how much each aspect of your kingdom contributes to this strength score, your total number of units as well as how many marching armies and golems you have, and how many of each unit you have.
The Depot
The depot is where all your peons deposit resources. Food, wood, stone, iron – all of it goes here.
There is no cap on resources, meaning you don’t have to worry about hitting the maximum of a resource. There is, however, a limit to how many resources your depot can keep safe. The higher your depot’s level, the more “safe” resources you have – these resources can never be lost when you’re raided, so they’re a safety net to ensure you can get back on your feet. Depot upgrades can generally take a backseat especially if you’re in allied territory, though it’s always prudent to keep an eye on your resources and ensure they don’t spill over the safe limit.
The College
The college is your research hub in War and Order.
At your college, you can research a ton of new technologies that will help you in various aspects of governance. Want more guys? Got it. Stronger walls? We have that too. Better farms? Yup. As a new player, keep in mind that your college should always be researching something. Early techs may be done in minutes, but just wait – that timer is going to run into days sooner rather than later. Note that you cannot research technology while the college is being upgraded and vice versa.
Apart from researching technologies, the college passively increases building speed and unit training speed.
Barracks
Barracks are where you train (and probably house) your warriors.
The most important thing about the barracks is that they’re where your units come from. Ensure that your barracks are always busy training new guys – even if you don’t plan to get into fights with your neighbors, there are monsters to kill and resources to harvest on the world map. The higher a barracks’ level, the stronger the units it can train. Note that you cannot train units while upgrading a barracks and vice-versa.
You can have multiple barracks training units simultaneously; the higher your castle’s level, the more barracks you can build.
Drill Grounds
Having a big army is nice and all, but without the help of the drill grounds, you’ll be hard-pressed to mobilize your troops.
The barracks will teach your guys how to fight, but the drill grounds will teach them to operate as a unit. The higher the level of your drill grounds, the greater the maximum size of armies you can deploy.
That’s not all the drill grounds can do. At higher levels, the drill grounds let you retrain old, lower-tier units into more relevant higher-tier ones. This means that you have more leeway when training low-tier troops as they’ll never truly be obsolete!
The War Hall
The war hall determines your capacity to marshal combined armies into a rally.
Rallies are when friends and alliances combine marching armies into a formidable, unified force. This building is generally lower on the upgrade priorities list unless you have an alliance, and even then, it’s only important for whoever is designated commander. Still, it’s nice if you can have a few levels in your war hall for impromptu raids.
The Embassy
The embassy, as you may have inferred from the title, is where you hold peaceful talks with your friends and allies. More importantly, your embassy’s level affects how much aid you can both give and receive.
The higher your embassy’s level, the more aid you can offer to alliance members when they request assistance on a project. This also affects you, as your embassy’s level determines the maximum size (and thus strength) of reinforcement armies.
The Blacksmith
The blacksmith is where you go to make stuff.
As you fight monsters and complete quests, you’ll eventually earn materials of various rarities. At the blacksmith, you can combine these materials to make equipment for yourself. Your lord’s equipment isn’t just hollow bling; it raises certain stats of your armies and city, so getting good equipment should be on your to-do list. As a new player, you’ll be fine with the random junk you find…for now.
The Hospital
Not all who fall in battle are dead, and that’s what your hospital is for.
When you suffer losses in battle, a portion of those units will be wounded instead of killed. Wounded units need time to recover before they can rejoin your armies, and they’ll seek treatment at your hospital. The higher your hospital’s level, the more wounded it can convert back into usable units at once.
Upgrading the hospital also improves its sanctuary, which allows you to buy back dead units.
Castle Walls
Your castle’s walls are one of your main deterrents against attackers.
Upgrading your castle’s walls not only increases its health (making it harder for attackers to get through) but also allows you to train and house defense golems, which serve as additional troops when defending.
The Watchtower
Knowledge is power, and by upgrading your watchtower, you’ll have more intel at your disposal.
The higher the watchtower’s level, the more information it reveals when you are both scouting and being scouted. While the first few levels only give you general information, like the name of the player whose armies are approaching your lands, later levels can give a lot of strategic data, such as the equipment and tech levels of hostile armies, where exactly they are heading, what their army’s composition is, the health of a city’s walls, and so on.
What Should I Prioritize?
Good question! Since you can upgrade everything, there’s a temptation to just go willy-nilly and randomly dole out upgrades. However, there’s a better way to go about this. I would suggest prioritizing the following, in this order:
Since I’ve already mentioned the college, you should also prioritize getting the Legion I technology under the Military branch as this will allow you to deploy a second army on the world map.
It’s easy to upgrade your buildings. With a simple tap and some patience, you suddenly have a brand-new building. But earning the stuff is harder – your soldiers need to be fed, your buildings need material, and yes, even time is a resource. In this section, we’ll be discussing the many resources in War and Order and how to both get and maximize them.
Quick Tips:
Resources, Generators, and You
There are four major resources in War and Order:
While managing these four resources may sound daunting, generating these resources is simple: all one has to do is build the appropriate structure outside their castle walls.
You will, however, need to budget the land. Apart from the four primary resources, lots outside your castle walls can also be used to build auxiliary structures like training grounds (which reduce training time for units) and medic tents (which house wounded soldiers). While there are limits to the number of each structure you can build on the lots, you’ll still run out of space quickly!
When you place a new resource generator, don’t forget to use your free upgrades on it. By default, players can freely speed up any timer that’s at six minutes or less, so pay attention to the gem cost and see if it’s free.
Resource Nodes
Free resources are nice, but your generators are limited by time and upgrades. Fortunately, there’s a way to proactively gather resources. This is done by sending armies to resource nodes on the world map. By gathering food, wood, stone, and iron from the outside world, you can vastly boost your own stocks without touching your generator production. Unfortunately, other players will likely be doing the same!
To do this, go to the world map, then tap the node you want to go to. Make sure the node is unowned or you might run into trouble with the alliance it belongs to – to check that, tap on the node then select Check.
Once you’ve selected a node, all you need to do is tap Gather and dispatch an army. The bigger the army and the higher the tier of the troops inside it, the more they’ll be able to gather (you did upgrade your drill grounds, right?), and the more effective these trips will be.
Do note that you can always manually withdraw from a node by tapping it again and selecting Withdraw. This is good if you see a bigger, stronger army that wants to use that node or if you need more guys back at your capital.
Monsters
It’s not just resource nodes you should look out for on the world map as the monsters themselves are loaded with goodies and a smart ruler will actively seek them out and defeat them for lavish rewards.
Picking fights with monsters not only gets you resource packs that you can use at your discretion but also the materials you need for crafting ruler equipment. You also get a nice first-time bonus each time you kill a monster of a new level. Do note that monsters must be challenged in ascending order; you can’t challenge level 3 monsters off the bat – you’ll first need to kill a level 1 then a level 2 monster before you earn the right to fight level 3 ones.
You can look for monsters on the world map on your own, but it’s far easier to use the locator to help you search. To do this, tap on the magnifying glass in the lower right, select “monster”, then adjust the level range.
Beating up monsters is rewarding, but you can’t do it all the time. Each battle with a monster consumes stamina, which is the icon directly to the left of your ruler portrait on the topmost bar.
Quests, Missions, Accomplishments, and Free Stuff
Apart from these methods, there are other ways of getting free stuff.
First off, check your inbox once you can – it’s the letter at the bottom of the screen. You can get a bunch of free resources due to being a new player, and yes, this is where you get your free name change.
The growth map is a series of one-time achievements that give you prizes for reaching certain levels of city development. You can open it by tapping the bubble on top of your castle. If it vanishes, you can tap your castle and then select Growth Map.
Since we’re already talking about beginner rewards, the King’s Road series of quests will not only help you establish a solid foundation for your kingdom but also reward you for completing quests. You’ll also get a special prize, usually in the form of speed-ups, after finishing each series of missions.
There’s also a battle pass; as with every other game, there’s a free and paid variant of the pass. While the free version won’t get you anything outstanding, it will score you some free resources.
Chronicles of War represent server-wide achievements. There are two rewards and two tasks in each chronicle: a server one and an individual one. You can redeem prizes from the server rewards even if you didn’t chip in, but you’ll need to complete the individual task for an extra prize. Refer to the image above to access the Chronicle of War.
You can access the quest tab by tapping the book icon on the lower panel – it’s the leftmost icon, the book. Quests are composed of both one-time growth quests as well as daily quests. Note that daily quests take the form of an activity bar – you need to do the activities listed on the tab, and completing each of these fills the bar on top of the screen a little bit. Make sure to claim your prizes by tapping on the unlocked chests on the bar. Aim to complete this every day as the final chest contains 2000 lord exp!
Participating in events is a great way to amass a lot of resources quickly. You can check the current events by tapping the icon on the left side of the screen or by tapping the gift box icon on the structure to the lower left of your castle.
Look out for resource bubbles from wandering soldiers and the wagon in your city. The wagon in the upper right refreshes every few hours, while the random bubble (like the one below) appears – you guessed it – randomly.
Budgeting Your Free Resources
As a new lord in War and Order, you’ll be bombarded with free resources – sometimes they add directly to your stockpile, other times they’re given as an item that you can pop for a quick infusion of resources. Moderation is key here as once your shield is down, your hard-earned resources can vanish if you fail to defend your city!
I’ve found that in games like War and Order, it’s always a better idea to only use resource packs when you need them – i.e. if you’re immediately going to spend them. That way, you ensure that no one takes them away from you and you can reap all the benefits of said resource pack. There’s no penalty for keeping your resources squarely on the maintenance line, so be wise and think twice before opening or claiming resource packs.
Shields and Where to Get Them
Finally, because they’re so important, let’s talk about where to get more peace shields.
The obvious answer to that is “buy them from the store”. However, those are expensive: 2400 gems for a 3-day shield and 450 for 8 hours. However, there’s a better and cheaper way to get them, and that’s by buying them from an alliance shop. Naturally, this means you’ll have to join an alliance, which, as I mentioned earlier, is an absolute necessity in games like this. Peace shields aren’t the only benefit to joining an alliance, and we’ll discuss them in more detail later – although I hope just the lure of a shield will be enough to motivate you!
Now that we’ve gone over both building your city and securing your resources, it’s time to get to the meat of the game. A strong army serves as both a mighty sword and a powerful shield, and you’re kidding yourself if you say you won’t need to fight. There are, however, a lot of ways to make your army stronger – better units, for sure, but there’s also technology, equipment, passive buffs, and your mythical beast to consider.
Quick Tips:
Unit Types
There are four unit types in War and Order, each with its strengths and weaknesses. The four types are:
As a general rule, try to focus on one melee unit class (infantry or cavalry) and one ranged class (archers or mages).
Stats and Combat
Each unit also has stats that can be found in the upper right of its training screen.
These stats are:
If you were hoping for a grand battle where you’d get to see these stats at work, you’re not getting one. Combat in War and Order, as with most other empire builders, is usually resolved without any input from players. It does, however, run through calculations: both armies are placed on a battlefield and all units are given an attack-move order towards each other. This simulation also respects common sense; infantry and cavalry will be closer to the frontlines than archers and mages.
Buffing Your Army
As there’s little you can do to help your army thrive in combat, you’ll have to settle with upgrading them as much as you can so that the numbers favor you over your opponent. Luckily, there are multiple ways of doing this:
Beasts
If you were wondering about the lack of heroes in War and Order, here you go. Every ruler has access to a mystical beast, a literal force of nature that can be deployed alongside your armies.
Your beast is a one-creature army, with combat prowess equivalent to entire platoons of troops. However, it’s not trained the same way as other units. While it’s relatively easy to strengthen your regular units, your beast is a different (literal) monster altogether.
Instead of upgrades, your beast needs levels to become stronger and to do that, you’ll need to feed it exp pills. These can sometimes be found in the many resource packs you get – do quests and beat up monsters and hopefully, you’ll find some. Or you could just buy them en masse.
For all the trouble that beasts take, they are massive game-changers in battle. Their stats dwarf anything that normal armies can bring to bear, and they have powerful skills – though they’ll still be used in auto combat. Skills can be upgraded to push their numbers even higher, and you can even equip additional skills if you’re lucky enough to find them.
Finally, you can also evolve your beasts to improve their already fantastic stats.
Your Ruler
Your royal self does no fighting, but rest assured that they are vital to the success of your army.
Rulers are notable for two things: their equipment and their skills. Each ruler has slots for six pieces of equipment, and each of these pieces of equipment confers sweeping bonuses to your army.
Your ruler also has access to two skill trees – one for military and one for economic development. Each level gives your ruler three skill points that you can use in either tree. I suggest going for the military tree as you’ll rarely be starved for resources as a new player.
Alliances, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, are a necessity in games like War and Order. A lone ruler is both no threat and easy prey; a coalition of leaders, on the other hand, can give your foes pause. It’s not just military might that allies can contribute to one another – alliances are relevant in almost all game modes and if you’re not part of one, you’re majorly missing out!
Alliance Help
While the name may vary from game to game, one of the most important perks of joining an alliance is being able to give and receive help on most timed projects.
When a player in an alliance starts any timed project – upgrading a building, training troops, researching technology – they’ll also gain the ability to request help from their other alliance members. Choosing to help someone this way costs you nothing, but the person who received your help will get a minor time reduction for that project. It may not be much, but every bit helps.
To improve the assistance you give, upgrade your embassy level.
Alliance Technology
Every alliance benefits from a special technology tree that only affects its members.
Unlike regular research, you can’t just fire and forget. The alliance leader or an officer must first set what project to research – in games I’ve played, it was usually held by a vote in alliance chat. After that, every member can contribute resources toward that project’s completion. Make no mistake – we’re talking a lot of resources and a lot of time, so help out whenever you can!
Territory and Elite Mines
Gathering from resource nodes is great, but they’re finite and dangerous. Alliances provide a way to subvert both of those limitations via elite mines.
Elite mines are rare phenomena that appear on the overworld. These mines both have an innate gathering speed bonus and steadily regenerate resources over time rather than vanishing. The catch here is that to control an elite mine, it needs to be within your alliance territory. This is where buildings like alliance flags come into play. If you’re not the leader of an alliance, there’s not much you can do about this.
While within an alliance’s territory, members can freely gather from the mine. In addition to this, other players from outside that alliance will need to pay a set tax if they gather from that mine. Don’t take that as an invitation to mine from other alliances though!
Rallies
Your alliance may need military help from time to time, and that’s where rallies come in.
Rallies are where you combine your armed forces into a single unit that can be commanded by the alliance leader or a high-ranking officer (usually the commander). These rallies are often necessary to take down key targets, such as dangerous players during PVP or tough monsters in PVE. If a rally has started, contribute what you can – your alliance will thank you for it.
Alliance Shop
Your service to your alliance won’t go unrewarded. By helping members with projects, contributing to research, participating in rallies, and generally just being helpful, you can earn alliance honor and alliance points that you can spend in the alliance shop!
This shop is very important for every player as it gives rulers easy access to some very nice things, such as VIP Points, teleporters, army buffs, peace shields, and more!
Practical Advice
One of the best things about being in an alliance is being able to talk to veteran players, especially if you join one of the bigger alliances in your server. Games like War and Order may have an open-world system, but skirmishes are (almost never, I hope) personal and you can find friends and mentors both in allies and rivals. Don’t be afraid to speak up in your alliance chat for advice and assistance!
Final victory isn’t something you can just achieve in War and Order. It can take months or even years to become the dominant alliance or player on your server. But remember – take one foot in front of the other, and before you know it, you’re at your destination.
That concludes my beginner’s guide to War and Order, and I hope I was able to give you some idea on where to go and what to do before your shield runs out and you have to replace it. Games like this can get very complex, so don’t be afraid to look for more in-depth guides and seek assistance from veteran players. If, however, you have anything to add – suggestions, tips, or tricks of your own – make yourself heard in the comments below!
