How to Play on an American Time Schedule

Alright, if you're here it's because you understand the Beginner's Guide and are now looking for strategies on how to deal with the time difference because you're a warm blooded, bona fide American. You drink beer, shoot guns, and eat hamburgers and chicken wings at least every other day. Probably. Well friend, look no farther because I've got a formula for beating the time schedule difference that can be a pain to deal with.

First things first. Don't play a long game when you absolutely can't be up the next day. If you're playing a game to win it (which should be the case about 25% of the time) then you need to be able to access your phone at any given moment.

Second, use the times you're awake and they're asleep to your advantage.

Let's start by talking about map strategies because this is where a majority of your issues will be solved. If you're on the East Coast, games will start at about 8pm at night and the rest time will be from 11am - 7pm (these time explanations are also vaguely gone over in the Beginner's Guide). You can use this to your advantage mainly when you are first starting a game to get a decent jump on resources. If you wait until 11am to start a game, you'll have all afternoon to take over the surrounding small towns and get 8hrs of extra resources. Generally, food and troops is more important than currency at the start so focus on those. Assuming you get 5 castles/towns, that 8,000 food (4 towns) and 130 troops (1 castle) over 7hrs is an extra 56,000 food and 1,040 troops. Once the game starts, you can worry about regaining your currency. Keep in mind it's also better to take over towns using the absolute bare minimum number of troops your team needs to win. So instead of a unit taking a full 400 troops each, just opt for maybe 100 per general. This cuts your food consumption down by 75% so you won't be burning through it quickly. This should give you a strong head start when beginning games.

Additionally you use this same tactic during games that you've started and have managed to go on into your day off. If you've started a game and the game reaches rest time, you know your opponents are going to drop their guard. This is when I burn a ton of Harvests for extra food. All you have to do is wait until you're sure your opponent is asleep (say 2 or 3 hours into the rest period) and then punch a hole into their front line. The backline where all their resources are will almost ALWAYS have nothing guarding them. 200-300 troops at best is VERY easy for 2 or 3 generals with 50 troops each to run through. Multiple times I have taken the afternoon to just run through an opponents backline and nearly every time, that opponent immediately surrenders upon logging back in. You've stolen their resources, have positioned your troops right at their gates, and have taken out any extra troops they've gained during their time away. It's a complete and utter victory.

Next, worrying about Chests, the Shop, Stratagems, and Merit Chests. All of this here equates to the time that you don't seriously plan to be playing to win. Winning a game and taking down opponents awards you with chests that you'll need to wait to open. They all take 24hrs but if you discard another chest, whichever chest is first in your lineup will take 2 hours less to open. What you should be doing is on the days you play seriously, you accumulate 2 or 3 chests to open over the next few days. Otherwise, you play only enough to get your merit chests and log into increase stratagems and run through the shop. Stratagems are EXTREMELY important for any player when facing off against a stronger opponent and I always keep the following on hand when I play to win.

- 60 Coin Boosts

- 60 Harvests

- 40 Impressments

- 100 Forced Marches

- X Fast Constructions (I generally don't use these very often so I don't find them very necessary)

- 30 Fortifications

- X Joint Defense (I've never used it and don't know how)

The hardest of these to get back is your Impressments. NEVER waste impressments. Only use them if the opponent your fighting has an absolutely overwhelming advantage over you. Having 40,000 troops to throw at them while they only have 10,000 at best will inevitably end with you winning. Any damage dealt to them is a victory in that case because you'll simply wear them down to the point that they can't fight anymore. I've also noticed a grand majority of players either don't use their stratagems frequently or burn through them without waiting to refill them. This gives you an enormous edge during games as you can really just abuse the amount of extra resources you have.

And that's really all there is to it. It's not incredibly difficult but time management as well as making sure you've got all the resources you need will win you the game nearly every time. Happy Fubuing!