Tips/Tricks

## Overview

1. These notes are random. Since some tips easily fall under different categories, they are placed here under a "most likely" category. Over time some of the tips may be moved elsewhere in this wiki. Please send corrections to CaptainStarbuck (State #268, MDM Alliance), here, in-game, by email, or wherever you can find me.

## Terminology

These are terms you'll see in-game:

* **"RES", "RESS", "RSS"** = resources
* **KE** = Kill Event
* **hive** = a group of cities that have teleported close to one another. Think "bee hive".
* **raid, collecting rent, getting dinner, having a friend for lunch** = attacking a city near a hive
* **exp** = experience rewarded to heroes
* **buff** = a bonus or improvement. City buffs can hide resources. Heros with higher skill levels add buffs to APCs and buildings where they are Stationed.
* **crater, zero** = Completely destroying a base - see detail below. Also, getting zeroed, getting cratered.
* **Going out "HAKA-style"** = A form of rage-quitting. When a player is going to quit and starts to randomly attack everyone on the map, ultimately committing suicide (by getting cratered) and going out in a blaze of glory.
* **dailies** = Daily activities - things you do every day.
* **FOF** / **FOFs** = Friends of Friends : When a team is allied with one of your allies, but you are not allied with them, they friends of friends.
* **FOAF** = Friend of a Friend.
* **SVS** = Stave Versus State event.
* **DD** = DoomsDay
* **CoZ** = Clash of Zones
* **TILE** = Occupy empty plots or Polluted Resource Stations (Farms, Forests, Minerals, Water & Oil)
* **NAP** = No Attack Policy. Usually used as NAP20 or NAP14, indicating Top20 or Top14 Alliances can NOT attack each other in orther to become stronger during the peace policy. However, non NAP alliances can be attacked and attack anyone.

## Communication

Players communicate using two in-game chat channels, State and Alliance. Tap the text at the bottom of the screen to get to chat.

Players speak many languages. In the Chat screen, tap text to get an option to Translate. Most languages will translate.

There may be an issue translating Cyrillic for Russian or Bulgarian, Greek, and other character sets. Tap on text, select Copy, and paste into Google Translate or another app. You can get the Google Translate app to automatically open an icon whenever you copy text, so you don't need to leave the game.

The game authors do not speak English as a primary language so there are many terms in the game which seem odd to native English speakers. This is probably also the case for translations to other languages.

The red envelope in the chat screen is for collecting some rewards. Another icon appears under that to tell you how many envelopes you have to open. Scroll up to find a message with an uncollected reward.

## APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers)

Build Barracks to get more troops into APCs. More troops = higher capacity for resources and money. To understand what the numbers mean, look at the troop capacity for a Barrack building, which might be 3500. Then remove the heroes from your APC. You should see that the APC holds the number of troops seen in the Barracks.

Hero level doesn't significantly affect APC capacity. Increase the first skill level for a military hero to increase capacity significantly.

Only the APC with the exclamation mark will return money from an attack/raid.

A third APC is available at level 13; a fourth APC is available at level 18.

## Damage and Repairs

It's not necessary to immediately heal wounded troops. Wounded troops don't consume food so you can save food by keeping some wounded there. But make sure all hospitals are upgraded to allow higher capacity! When hospitals are full any more wounded die.

The Clone building is really a Resurrection building - it brings back some dead troops from the prior week. Give resources to increase the number of troops returned. The maximum recovery seen so far is 42% on base 18. The Clone building cannot be upgrade.

When your city is attacked it will burn for 20 minutes and the flames will go out by themselves.

When using Rapid production for resources and the building burns, it must be Repaired. The fire does not go out by itself.

Durability is a measure of wear - it's a progressive breakdown of an asset as it gets used.

An APC has a durability of 100% . This is reduced by about 5 or 10% with each usage. So in a day you might be able to make a maximum of 10-20 trips for resources, attacks, zombie killing, etc. APCs recover durability (they are automatically repaired) when they are in the city. This process is slow but improves when researching specific technologies.

## City and Buildings

You cannot attack other cities while your city has a defensive shield.

Try to plan time to start building construction before you quit the game for the night or before you go to school or work. When you come back the buildings will be finished and you can start a new building cycle.

Buildings can only upgrade to the same level as the Base. So with a level 13 base all buildings are limited to level 13.

You must upgrade some buildings in order to upgrade others. For example, to upgrade the Base, the Ration Truck needs to be at the maximum level, and to upgrade a Bank you need a House at the same level or higher.

A player can use City Buffs to make it look like they have more troops. See the buffs on the Base building.

Increase the level of your Headquarters building to increase the number of players that you can call to a rally. At level 4, you can have up to two more players. At level 8, you can have up to three more players. At level 12 and up to 25, you can have up to four more players, but only the building power increases after that level.

The Embassy level isn't important until upgrading the Base to level 16, then it is required for the Embassy to be at level 15.

VIP buildings are only available to level 20+ bases.

Some buildings are only available with an in-game purchase. But this is not a pay-to-win game, and dedicated players can quickly build a good base without paying anything. Purchases can enhance the experience, but they are not required.

## Money

Upgrade the Commercial Hub to sell more resources to earn more money. It is recommended to sell Water for money instead of other resources because Water is only used for Ration Truck.

Station a hero in the Commercial Hub. They get exp and level up by themselves. A higher level hero can be upgraded with skills to receive benefits whenever a helicopter arrives.

Tell the helicopter to take off when you're done trading. The sooner it leaves, the sooner it comes back. Each time the helicopter returns there are bonus items that come because of the hero. And each time there is a chance to trade you can earn more money by selling excess resources.

## Other Resources

For both money and other resources, you have two inventories.

* Your "live" inventory is stored in your buildings - the bank holds money, farms hold food, etc. Additional live inventory is available in storage buildings. Resources earned beyond the limits of this live inventory are wasted - you simply can't carry them. Upgrade buildings to carry more stock.
* You also have packages which are received as rewards. You may only have hundreds of thousands of items in live inventory, but you can have millions of items in packages and the count is not limited to buildings.

To see all of your stock, tap a resource icon at the top of the app. You can view stock by tapping the Go To button. When you click on the Use button, you move stock from packages to live, where you can then use the resource for building and other purposes.

You can only remove packages to the limit of your live storage - so if you have oil wells and oil storage, with 1 million unit limit, then you cannot withdraw 2 million units from packages.

The Ration Truck (Cafeteria) must have food and water to support high base population levels. When you add food and water, it supports your population for a period of time. The higher the population, the more people eat, and more resources are required to last for a period of time. High population levels are required to build certain structures, but once those structures are built a high population is no longer required. Population level also affects the efficiency of banks. Besides building structures and bank efficiency, population has no other impact.

You may not have enough resources to completely fill the Ration Truck or the Power Plants. You may need to add just enough resources for a few hours, and then come back every few hours when you have more resources to keep it all working.

Water is only used in the Ration Truck and when some buildings are burning. Sell excess water at the helicopter in the Commercial Hub to earn money.

Power Plants do not always need to be re-filled with oil. They consume Oil to produce Electricity. If there is enough electricity to power the city the power plants do not need to continue generating more power. Even if electricity is decreasing, the city is fine, as long as there is still some electricity to consume.

Generate additional power with the Wind Turbine. This does not require resources - it's free energy.

Add Bank buildings whenever possible and get them to the maximum level. Money can be difficult to get from other sources.

It's tempting to send troops out to farm (gather resources) overnight or when you are off-line for long periods of time. This is a good and necessary part of the game. However, on the other side of this, your city is undefended when your troops are all out gathering.

When gathering (farming), consider using all vehicles in each of the three slots. They have a higher Load value than troops so they can carry more. This means you can leave a truck gathering for much longer (like overnight) and they’ll bring back much more when done.

The vehicle "trick" works for money too. Attack a city with normal troops to reduce the defenses, then follow with the class APC that can get money and have that using all vehicles.

## Heroes

Take the opportunity to recruit heroes every day. When you get a duplicate hero, it is converted into a Hero Medal (HM). You can exchange Hero Medals (plus money) for Wisdom Medals (WM). You use WM to increase hero skills and to open new skills.

The number of HM that can be exchanged each day is limited by the level of the Military Academy building. Upgrade that building, and get WM whenever you can, not just when you need them. Consider : If you want to raise the skill of a hero, it might cost 40 WM. You can get 10 WM for 1 blue HM. So you need to exchange 4 HM. If your maximum exchange count is 3 per day, you will need to wait an entire day to get the extra WM to raise the skill level. This problem is eliminated if you exchange for WM frequently and you can exchange a higher number of HM each day.

Military heroes get experience from any attack with an APC - this includes cities or zombies. To level-up a hero it’s helpful to just put them in an APC and send them off for “training missions”, attacking increasingly tougher targets as their level increases.

Most non-military heros only get experience when they are Stationed in buildings. But some heroes do not get experience even when stationed.

You can use skill packages to train heroes.

Hero experience and level is not the same as Skill Level. Each hero has different Skills. Each skill becomes available over time, and you can Unlock a skill when the hero has reached the required level. You will see that a skill can be opened when the lock icon on it changes to an open lock. Click Unlock to see the resources required to unlock the skill. Once opened, the skill level can be increased using Courage Medals. Some skill levels are valuable and others are not - evaluate them yourself and decide if spending the medals is worth the benefits to you.

## Items and the Store

Donate resources to your Alliance Technology to get "Alliance Contribution" points (skull with wings medal). Go to the menu > Alliance icon > Technology.

Use these points to exchange for bonuses in the Alliance Store. Go to the store from the menu > Alliance icon > Store.

Advanced Teleport and Peace Shields are important items. Alliance commanders (R5+R4) restock the Alliance Store with items.

## Troops

When you upgrade Fighter Camp, Shooting Range, and Vehicle Factory, you can produce higher level troops and vehicles. Research the technology to promote lower level troops to higher levels, then promote them in the Command Center.

When you upgrade the camps and get higher level troops (like level 4 to 5) you will probably have tens of thousands of lower-level troops that you will want to promote to a higher level. The Command Center only processes a limited number of troops, about 600, and it may take about 20 minutes per group of promotions. During this phase, come into the game frequently and promote as many troops as possible.

You cannot promote troops that are in APCs. The troops must be removed from the APCs so that they can get their promotion in the Command Center.

Consider this strategy for troop production : Start training low-level troops in a camp. That will take less time and fewer resources than higher-level troops. When those are done, promote them in the Command Center and start training new troops in the camp. The benefit is that you have two buildings producing troops at the same time. Weigh all factors including time, resources, and your ability to promote troops to the desired level.

All vehicles, including helicopter scouts, travel Very slowly over dirt. Avoid putting your city in dirt, sending a gathering party to a resource in dirt, or even flying over dirt to scout a target.

## Research

Research constantly. You will always need higher level technology to get more benefits in the game.

Some technology cannot be researched until the Institute building is upgraded.

## Challenges

There are two kinds of "Daily" challenges:

* There are Quests which have Daily Tasks. These challenges do go for 24 hours before a reset.
* There are also Events, where the Daily Challenge is an Arms Race which changes every hour.

In each challenge/event you can get points for training, upgrading buildings, attacking zombies or cities, gathering, researching technology, speeding up processes, and other activities. You can earn a lot of rewards by trying to complete all of these challenges. As levels increase it is much more difficult to get higher rewards (like getting 3 million points for increasing building power). Just do the best you can and collect all rewards as you go to avoid losing them when the event changes.

The **CoZ** event allows States to compete in many categories. Activity by players is calculated into totals for the State (not individual alliances within a state). The event lasts 7 days. In each day there is a new main challenge. In the first day, for example, the focus is on gathering, and rewards are offered for gathering large quantities of resources. Farmer-class players benefit the most from this first event. In the second day City Building is the focus. You can research tech to help with CoZ, but it’s expensive and takes time.

Around holidays there may be special challenges which reward activities over a period of hours or days. These events can be similar to CoZ. Huge bonuses can be obtained by completing a single activity (like building trucks or defeating zombies) where there are rewards from multiple challenges like dailies, CoZ, and a special event.

## Military Strategy

Before attacking a city, use a Scout. The scout is a helicopter that moves very fast compared to troops. It will tell you what is in the city. It costs a few hundred food items to use. A city that has few resources isn’t worth your effort. When you upgrade the Radar building the scout will see more, like the number of troops defending the city.

It’s not good to zero a city unless the player really deserves it. Their resources are lost, they are relocated, and the player might be too upset to continue playing. They might “rage quit” and never come back to the game. This is bad for everyone because it reduces the number of players, reduces the number of targets for resources, reduces revenue for the company that needs money to continue maintaining the game, etc. To keep it fun for everyone, try not to reduce a city to less than 10%. The city will be stuck there. The player will try to recover the loss. The city will heal back to 100%. You can farm it again later.

## Zombies

Within the city, zombies play a very small role in this survival game. There are no zombie hordes (yet) breaking down fences, no troops getting killed and/or eaten.

Tap the Stereo outside the city fence to draw zombies for shooters to kill. This returns small money packages from 500 to 75000.

Look around your base. You will occasionally see zombies that have come in through the fence. There is no hole in the fence, they are just there. Tap a zombie to kill it and return a small reward.

Zombies in the city do not kill troops or damage buildings. They are harmless. They just walk around until you kill them.

A "Rebel Base" is essentially just another zombie target with a name that means nothing in the context of this game. However, "killing" the base gives you small monetary rewards depending on the level.

Outside of the city, zombies are also non-destructive. Attack higher level zombies to get better rewards. Specific zombie types (Plague, Shuffling, Ancient and Mutated) return specific rewards (food, oil, lumber and iron, respectively). Higher level zombies naturally yield higher rewards, as well as exp points for each hero in the attacking APC, energy fragments (for use in the Material Plant at Base Level 16) and courage medals (used for certain research tech tasks). Be careful not to attack zombies or cities with levels too high for you. You will lose too many troops and the resources and exp will not be worth it.

A healthy city has a durability of 100%. You can see this in the World view when you tap on the city. When you attack a city, it’s durability is reduced by some amount like 13%. A city that is attacked many times will get reduced down to 0%. This is called “zeroing” the city. The city then teleports to a new random location. A burned out building (crater) is left where it was for a while, and then disappears.

## Alliances and being a team player

Join an alliance. Non-allied players get attacked a lot because they have no one to help defend them. (Safety in numbers.)

Click the Help button (handshake icon) as often as possible to ask people to help reduce your building time. Click the handshake icon on your Embassy as frequently as possible (all the time while you’re in game) to help your teammates to improve their cities.

Coordinate activity in Alliance chat. Don’t share alliance chat with the State where other players and their alliances can use information to harm your team. “Loose lips sinks ships.”

Learn from others in chat and try to help answer questions.

Alliances often come together in a Hive, which is a group of cities that have teleported close to one another. There are benefits to joining a hive - “safety in numbers”. But there are good reasons for not being in a hive too. Consider being close to your hive when it’s good for the alliance.

If your team has a strategy (overall goals) or tactics (coordinated activities), you can disagree with what they are doing, but try to participate rather than arguing all the time. This is a game of military strategy and there is a hierarchy of leadership (R1-R5). If you don’t like what your team is doing, voice your opinion, and if that doesn’t help, then leave - but don’t stay in an alliance and not follow the team plan. “Don’t be an ass.”

A team “Alliance” can form relationships with other alliances to cooperate. Some relationships are closer than others - some other teams can be “friends”, others “family”. Always protect family. Never attack allies. “Friendly fire is not.” Commanders should update the Alliance info with current allies so that everyone knows who is a friend … anyone not on the list can be considered a target.

Be careful about FOFs - the game has no way (yet) to identify these relationships. For example: You are in team 1, you have an alliance with team 2, and they have an alliance with team 3. Your alliance list doesn’t include team 3 so it looks like they can be targeted. But your allies wouldn’t like for you to be attacking their friends. If teams 2 and 3 have nearby cities, it’s likely that they are allies - even without confirmation, it’s usually good to avoid attacking a city from a third alliance that’s in the middle of a friendly hive. Players not in an alliance are all “fair game” and can be attacked.

Try participate in Daily Challenges and Events that require a group effort. Try to join a Rally (a gathering) to help other players to accomplish their objective. Call a Rally to attack a Wendell zombie or to defend against an incoming attack.

This game has some of the intrigue of the real world : A player can be a spy for another alliance. A player can betray their alliance and join another one. Players can leave an alliance and form their own new alliance - with peace or war with their “parent” alliance. If you feel that information in public is insecure, use messages with R4-R5 leadership.

An alliance can only have about 100 members. A larger alliance can have child/sibling alliances, essentially the same team split into multiple groups just because of the game limit. Each team requires its own R5 Commander, R4 leaders, etc. There is not yet a special game link between these alliances.

To see other people in your alliance, go to the menu > Alliance icon > and the Member tab at the top.

## Miscellaneous

There are two kinds of teleport :

* A Random teleport will move your city immediately to a random location in the same State as long as you don't have troops out. You can't use a random tp if you have troops out.
* An Advanced teleport costs more and allows you to decide exactly where your city will move. This is good for coordinated attacks, where you jump in, do major damage, then jump back to the hive. Also, an advanced tp will port your city even if you have troops out.

Get teleports from the Alliance Store.

Leaders must “stock” the store with teleports and other items. Pay for the items with points received from Alliance Contributions. In summary : Contribute to alliance technology to get points, then use those points to buy items from the alliance store.