(INTRO)
Here is my promised guide to xp play. Now to be fair, this is a casual guide to playing for xp since as a general rule I play xp relatively casually. The fact is, I've never won the xp ranking for any round, but I have fun and I think others can have fun and do decently as well if they follow this guide.

(XP BASICS)
The basic premise of xp play is pretty straight foward. You need to optimize the number of times you gain xp and you need to optimize the amount of xp you gain when you do. Before I go on to how to do those two things as well as how to pick a race to xp, let's get a few things straight. For starters, if you play for xp by default your econ is going to suck. Traditionally land players focus as much as they can on econ buildings, but you will be concentrating on xp buildings instead. Second, if you arn't willing to accept the fact that your kingdom is going to get hit and hit often or if you take every attack on your kingdom personally, don't play xp. The fact that your econ is going to suck combined with the emphisis that you need to put on attacking means that comparatively speaking, your defense is going to be horrible. Third, currently there isn't any feature in the game that allows later starters to try to catch up with people who have been playing the entire round. If you start late and you want to go for xp, don't be surpised if you don't rank very well, if at all. Just take your first round as a time of learning so that when you do your first full round you will do better and have more fun.

(PICKING A RACE)
When you deside that you are going to play for xp, picking which race you are going to play is pretty important. As a general rule, you will want to avoid races that have high non-gold cost associated with their troop cost. This allows you to run fewer resource buildings and more xp buildings. If the race has gold only troop cost then that's all the better. The troop cost arn't the only factor though. If the race you pick has certain properties that lend itself to xp play, they should be considered as well. These include buildingless improvements, autoretraining of lost troops, and cheaper than normal land rezoning. Sometimes bonuses like these can overcome the dissadvantages of having secondary resource cost on your troops.

(MAXIMIZING YOUR ATTACK WINDOWS)
Ideally, you should be attacking at least twice a day on average. It's important to note that even though many races have troops that have troops that return quicker, their heros don't. This means that often times you are going to have to wait for your heros to get back home before you can attack again. It also means that you are going to be averaging an attack every 12 hours or so (with the exception of Vampires who have to work around the day/night window). Many people can't log in every 12 hours for weeks at at time. That's perfectly understandable. I can't do that either. That is why you you use frost temples (and perhaps the slow spell). They allow you to have additional flexabilty for when you attack. If you do miss an attack window, just accept that it happened and just continue with the round.

(MAXIMIZING YOUR XP GAINS)
If you are a begining player, the first thing you need to do is learn how to calculate someone's defense so that you never bounce. There are online calulators that will help you do that, but I always use a hand calculator. First, open up the guide in another window/tab so that you can reference the military of the race you are thinking about hitting. Second get a farsight on the target and write down what troops they have for every troop type that has defense. Third, get a Spy on Military and see if any of those troop types are out. If not, then calculate what their raw defense is. If so, then you have to calculate each troop type that is out. Pick one of the troop types that have defence and that has been sent out. Take the number left at home shown on the spy on military and mulitply it by 1.18 and then write that number down. Then take the number of troops that the spy on military says they sent out, multiply that number by .85 and subtract that number from the total number of that particular troop that your farsight told you they had. Compare the two numbers and go with the smaller of the two. Repeat this with any troop that has defense and that has been sent out to calc their raw defense. At this point, get a spy on buildings and mulitply the % of taverns they have by .7, add 5 (for magic shield) to that, then get a spy on improvements and add both wall improvement to that number. You now take that number, divide it by 100, add 1 to it and then times that by their raw defense to find out how much total defense they have. If you calculate how much attack you have against that person before you attack then you should know if you can or not successfully. Now if this last paragraph has scared you, relax and use an online calculator instead or you could just realize that even though the process I use looks ugly once you get the hang of it, calcing an attack isn't that complicated if you just break it down into smaller steps.

The second thing to maximizing your xp gains is to maximize the number of academys that you have. 40% acads is minimum. In order to fit that many academys and what ever frost temples you want to have in order to allow you to attack twice a day and to minimize casualties, you are going to miminize or eliminate almost every other type of building. This means no homes to speak of, as few farms as possible (8-9.5%), as few sawmills as you can get away with (keep 20 of these at all times for most races and you will be fine), enough towers to cast your spells (5 to 6%ish), and the minimum number of secondary production buildings you need to train your troops (depends on race).

Another factor is landsize. You should be hitting as close to 100% your landsize as you are able to. Any varaiation on this will decrease your gains. There is also a landsize penalty that kicks in once your ruler hero gets to 800xp. It starts off small, but as your ruler xp grows the need to maintain a higher average landsize becomes more and more important and the harder it becomes to always hit at 100% your landsize. This means you DO need to think about your defense. If you have too little defense, then you aren't going to maintain the average landsize that you need and you become easier to overpop. What this normally does is force the average xp player to concentrate on training enough atk power so that they can always make attacks as close to 100% their landsize as possible and then training as much defense as they can after they do that.

(A FEW RANDOM TIDBITS)
Being killed by overpopulation can be avoided by not overtraining workers and having a decent defense. I have seen xp players try to get by on land defense or simularly low defense get overpopped easily. The Hero's Sword is currently the only relic that really benifits the xp player. It is the equvilant of abit more than 7% extra acads and can be that extra nudge you might need in gaining more xp. That said, if you are active/good enough you can get by without it. This is especially true once you factor in the loss of attack power you will have from the heros you put into the quest party to hold it. A side note about attacking frequency. You might be tempted to try to maintain a 3 or 4 times a day attacking routine. I highly recomend against doing this for too long unless you are in a position where you can depend on your heros for most of your attack power. Your econ is going to suck and it just isn't going to be able to maintain that sort of attacking if you are using mostly military troops. Doing so will shoot your build to hell (since you are going to end up with so much barren land you can't build), it will decrease your xp gains (from having a smaller % of acads), and you might end up not being able to attack at all (larger landsize means stronger players combined with the fact that you havn't been able to replace your miliary loses means you don't have enough attack power anymore). Finally, the unique hero that the Death Faith has that boost xp gains is a good hero in the short term as long as you don't spend too much gold to get it. I have found that long term, you are better off spending that gold on more troops. Those troops will allow you to attack more and maintain a larger landsize. If you can get that hero for cheap get it though and don't hesitate to bid on it just to force another player to spend more to get it.

(CONVERTING)
Converting in an alternative to the basic strategy spelled out above, but it does have simularites. Converting revolves around not sending your hero out on attacks early round. Instead you rely on questing to level up until you get to about level 5. Durring this time you should have a traditional land economy that has emphisis on improvements. When you get to about level 5 and 1k acres, you then convert over to a traditional xp build and strategy as outlined above. At point you are playing catch up, but your improvements should give you a relatively better econ than your xp rivals and your military should be built up where you defense is better. These should allow you to maintain a higher average landsize so you won't be as strongly penalized by the land penalty and will gain more xp per hit than your smaller traditional xp rivals.

I hope this guide helped. If you have any questions or improvement ideas for this guide, feel free to post them in this thread.

'tis a nice guide. Sticky it to the Gametalk/questions?

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www.ceekayed.com

Do you think it would be better if I moved/sticked it there instead of here on the strategy board?

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http://www.imaginarydaughter.com = Funny weird webcomic that I recently found and that I think you should check out as well. Personally I can't wait to see where it goes next.

PS. Thanks to LUF for making me this imaginary daughter avatar.

great guide *four thumbs up*

Well, not really, no. But the Ace's OOP guide is located in gametalk so I thought it'd be just logical to have all the guides in the same board.

So, move this guide to gametalk or Ace's guide to here. Either way is fine. :)

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www.ceekayed.com

Could a subforum under strategy for guides be made? That seems like it would be best. Cause it really doesn't seem any good to be stacking up more and more stickied threads in the general discussion, where everyone is already trying to post the majority of the conversations about the game, and it would keep any future guides all collected in one easy to find place.

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To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
- -- Novalis

I agree with L-o-D.

I was thinking to play XP this round but with this starter guide I WILL PLAY!!

thank you very much

Tazar

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I will not apologise for my spelling. I reserve the right to spell appallingly at all times. I may apologies if it can not be understood and is commented on politely.

so be careful how you coment I have a fund ready for leagl action at any time

Ironically, it was being so affected by being hit that made me try XP, as an attempt to take hits against my kingdom less seriously. I'd say it worked, too, though I still dread getting smacked when i'm going for Land.

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"The GREEN button, Commander Boots! Press the GREEN button!"

Yesterday is dead,
Tomorrow's lurking in wait,
Today can only last so long.

Spam? Don't be silly.


'Bout time to update, methinks.

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WK and Ace and tuco for scorps.

Just updated it. If anybody sees where I need to update it some more or where I messed up... just let me know.

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http://www.imaginarydaughter.com = Funny weird webcomic that I recently found and that I think you should check out as well. Personally I can't wait to see where it goes next.

PS. Thanks to LUF for making me this imaginary daughter avatar.

Other than a few typos, it looks good to me.

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WK and Ace and tuco for scorps.

it's all very well but how do you get a kingdom to show up since I don't have any when trying to spy or attack

First off you are probably still in protection. If you are then you have to wait for now. Secondly, if you are out of protection then instead of using the Spy Operations or Attack! buttons click on the REALM then find a realm click your targets name then you can choose to spy or attack

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Mynn L says:
I LOVE YOU ADAM

Now since I havn't played xp for a while and xp just got an makeover, I'm thinking it might be time for one of the current xp players to take over this thread or to perhaps make a more updated guide?

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http://www.imaginarydaughter.com = Funny weird webcomic that I recently found and that I think you should check out as well. Personally I can't wait to see where it goes next.

PS. Thanks to LUF for making me this imaginary daughter avatar.

-_-' I made one at the begging of last round....

EDIT: I found it... I had someone read it and follow it

below...

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The Age of Despair :: Round 2 :: 1 El Norte
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 4 :: 1 SmoochyWoochyPoochy
The Age of Wisdom :: Round 6 :: 1 Goblin Rings
The Age of Achievements :: Round 1 :: 1 Hufflepuff's Cup