Resources, Levels, and Buildings

## Cities

**Useful Tool: City Upgrade Cost Calculator**

Cities are the centerpiece of Million Lords. We use troops to attack or defend cities, gold to upgrade cities, and then our cities help us gain more gold and troops. Aside from the few scattered Temples in Gold and higher, all combat takes place on cities.

* Cities can be upgraded with gold, with the price increasing exponentially as the level increases. Leveling up a city will improve its gold production, troop production, and its wall strength.
* Walls are the primary defense of cities. They are also a primary source of experience - if you attack and successfully capture a city, you will gain experience equal to the wall's defensive strength.
* A city's gold and troop production are always equal to each other, and this value is the amount that the city will contribute to your Kingdom Power. So a level 50 city produces 4,140 troops and gold per hour, and increases your KP by 4,140 as well.
* Extending from this, Kingdom Power represents your total troop or gold production per hour, before increases from gear, skills, or events are added.

**Defensive Bonuses**

* Cities also have a defense value, represented as a percentage.
* This stat provides a bonus multiplier to any troops you have defending a city, similar to the Guardian stat you may gain from gear or skill points.
* For example, a level 75 city provides a 225% defense bonus. This means that 10 million troops on that city would actually fight with the power of 32.5 million.
* Due to the combination of these bonus troops and the city's walls, when fighting players of similar strength levels you will typically have an advantage as the defender. They may have 100 striker, you have 100 guardian, you have the same number of troops, but you will actually be much stronger due to the walls and defense multiplier.

**Tall or Wide?**

* Beginning in Bronze, many new players will see empires that span entire islands or more. But as you move on to silver, gold, and above, you will find that it is not so easy to control giant areas of land. You will want to put more consideration into your strategy, thinking about your city levels and their positions on the map.
* The most obvious point to consider is that the more cities you have, the harder it will be for you to defend. You will need to manage your troops carefully, and maybe utilize speed bonuses from gear or skill points in Rusher, in order to cover a vast empire. The further a city is from your main city, the more risk and challenge it will pose to you.
* However, there is a significant advantage to controlling a large number of cities, and playing "wide", so to speak. This is due to the mechanics of city levels. As you level a city, the gold cost of the upgrades will increase exponentially. This means that the higher the city level, the less KP you will gain per gold spent on an upgrade.

As an example, let's say you have about 400k gold to spend. You could either level up a single city to level 50, or you could level up 10 cities to level 37.

* 1 city at level 50 will have a production value of 4,140 troops/gold per hour.
* 10 cities at level 37 will have a production value of 1,000 troops/gold per hour each, giving you a total of 10,000 production.

However, the level 50 city will have 530,000 defense from its walls, while the level 37s will only have about 50,000. This means that the main reason to focus your resources on a single city, or a smaller number of cities, is to improve your ability to defend. Not necessarily to improve the resources it generates.

**Overall, the balance between tall and wide will be determined by an individual player's skill and stats.** It would be ideal to have as many cities as possible, leveled up equally so that you are getting the greatest possible value from your gold. But that value is lost if your cities are constantly being taken. It is still usually recommended to level your cities as equally as possible, but you will need to determine your own personal balance based on the number of cities you can comfortably defend.