How to keep a massive army and not be called a cheater

So many people are cheering on the forums about how it’s now impossible it have a massive army in your cities, and all those “cheaters” are going to have their troops starve. This is not true! With a little bit of work, you can still have 500k in each city.

THE STEPS:

1. Spam Farms Or Sawmills.

Pick one and go with it. You will want at lest 25. Do note that many people will be BUYING food to support their armies, so selling the wood for food will start to give diminishing returns. Personally, I’m going for farms.

2. Max the research.

Whatever resource you go for, wood or food, you will want to max the research for that resource. You will also want max Horseback Ridding and Logistics, but I’ll cover that later.

3. Space Out Your Villages.

You don’t want to have all your villages clustered together; as then, you will be competing for resources with yourself. Space them out and destroy one of your barracks and replace it with a max level relief station. That way, you can shift your troops around very quickly even though they aren’t close together. One barracks is a small price to pay to keep your troops alive.

4. Optimize Your Valleys.

Take over only high level valleys that correspond with your chosen resource. Since your cities are spaced out, this will be much easier. Remember, valleys can change their level during the server maintenance. Just wait before taking them over, and they’ll become higher.

5. Make A Super Politics Hero In Each City.

Spam attack high level NPCs with your politics hero in order to boost his/her level. This, obviously, works best on Lv. 10’s. Just be sure to send more ballista then usual to compensate for the hero’s lower attack score. Once he/she is at an uber level, make them the mayor again. You might want a backup politics hero to use as a temporary mayor until this step is done.

6. Setup NPC Farming Trains.

This part uses an over looked fact. NPC farming wasn’t nerfed, it was tweeked. If you have several high level NPCs in your area, then make one massive NPC farming force. If you have several smaller ones, then make two or even three smaller ones. Do this in every city, and start farming NPCs on a rotating basis, i.e. attack the closest, then the next closest, and then the next….Having Horseback Ridding and Logistics at max level will speed this process up. Simply make a list of what cities you have attacked today, and ignore them untill they recharge. If you want to mass your army in just one city, then just transfer the farmed resources to your HQ. Taking over high level flats, and turning them into NPCs will help this.\*
NPCs now regen the following per hour...\*\*

Level 1: 4.1k
Level 2: 8.2k
Level 3: 37.5k
Level 4: 67k
Level 5: 125k
Level 6: 167k
Level 7: 187.5k
Level 8: 334k
Level 9: 584k
Level 10: 792k

That’s it. Depending on what you build, and how good you get at this, you should be able to get around 500k in each city. Sure, this takes some effort, but at least no one can complain that you’re getting something for nothing now.

* Please not that I have not listed turning the smaller players into NPCs for farming as a part of this as I personally don’t support this. It is, however, what many players will do to make this even more effective.

* + Thanks to Zamte for the exact NPC recharge rates.