GENERAL QUESTIONS

Where do I start?
Follow the Tutorial and Use the Quests. They will lead you through many of the important aspects of the game, and reward you as you go. If you want to skip something proposed (like building a watch tower when you still have three days of protection left), you can always do quests from the list out of order.

How do I complete my next quest?
Read over the quest carefully. The objective is what you need. The description gives hints on how to meet the objective. The See also “Building My City” below.

How do I get more Merlin’s Tokens?
You can get more Merlin’s Tokens by purchasing them with gems. You also gain them occasionally when helping your friends to build or research things (being rewarded at most one per day).

How do I get more Gems?
The gems you start with and/or gain in your initial quests are your only freebies. To get more, you need to either purchase them with money, or complete the Internet offers. There are no other ways.

How do I find players who want to be my Facebook Friend?
Join the “Round Table" group and share your desire for friends in their discussion group: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/topic.php?uid=194995608222&topic=10190 Assuming you want to let somebody who you’ve never met, be your Facebook friend.

Isn’t this game a lot like Evony/Travian/Tribal Wars?
Yes.

What are your coordinates?
Considering that you can’t give me anything unless I’m in your alliance… Why would you possibly want to know that?

Who is in Charge?
Lady Anna and Lady Poserpine are the Game Masters. There are also some programmers that lurk around, but they don’t talk much above a whisper.

THE CHAT ROOM

What’s up with people shortening my name?
When Chat gets busy, you can reduce confusion by including at least part of someone’s name in the reply.

How do I ignore somebody who is being annoying???
If somebody is being offensive you can click on their name and select “ignore” to not see anything else that they type. There is not currently a way to remove someone from your ignore list (as of 11/22/09) so you might not want to ignore TOO quickly.

How do I avoid being annoying?
1) Don’t be rude or offensive with your posts. 2) Don’t yell (all caps). 3) Please read this FAQ and try out the tutorial before asking a question in Chat (Newbies are welcome; it’s just hard to always be answering the exact same questions). 4) Keep in mind that minors could also be on the chat.

How do I whisper?
If you want to chat to a single person, use @name text or /name to whisper. /a text talks to just your alliance. From the alliance tab, /g speaks globally

THE FORUMS

How do I find the forums?
There is a link in the Chat area.

What can I find there?
You can share your thoughts and give feedback on the game. “Beta-Bug Reports” is a place to report bugs, and get updates on what is coming (The GMs will be keeping us informed there). “Arthur” has information about the current game including a recruitment folder (as of 11/09). Alliance members get a folder of their own. PLUS, the latest version of this FAQ is in the Player’s Guide folder!

BUILDING YOUR CITY

How do I train troops/research technology/build buildings?
At any one time, you can be building something, researching something (once you have an Alchemy Lab), and training a troop (once you have a barracks). Click on an empty plot in the City or Field (see tabs at top) to select what you want to build. Click on your Alchemy Lab to research. Click on your barracks to train troops. You can queue up as many troops as your number of barracks.

How do I destroy a building?
Currently you can only do it with a Dragon Stomp item. Dragon Stomp can only be gotten with Gems or through Merlin’s Game. Lady Anna has said that eventually there will be a slower way that will not require the item.

How do I speed up build & research times?
Everything in Kingdoms of Camelot takes time. Eventually, things will take many hours to complete. You can shave off up to 10 minutes if you are willing to pester your friends (select “Upgrade With Help” when building). Knights can help when assigned to appropriate roles (see “How do I use Knights?”). Also, you can research Giant’s Strength to speed up construction of buildings in the city and fields.

Why won’t it let me construct X?
Many items have prerequisites. If you aren’t allowed to build/research/train something listed, click on the item anyways. Then, look for the place that lists requirements for the item: those listed in red are ones you don’t currently have. It could be that you need to build something, research something, or build up a resource.

What are Resources?
They include food, wood, stone, and coal (gold is not counted as a “resource”). All four are produced in your fields. You can find your current totals listed near the top of your screen. Holding your mouse over one, shows you more information about it. When the capacity limit is reached, your fields don’t produce any more. The hourly production is the amount you produce per hour. With food, the troops upkeep shows how much food your troops are eating each hour. You can see hourly production more easily on the Supply tab at the bottom right corner of your screen.

How do I get more Resources?
Resources replenish based on their hourly production (minus troop upkeep for food). You can increase your long term production of resources by developing (and/or upgrading) your fields, conquering appropriate wilderness spots (they DO stack), assigning a knight to be your steward (after building a Knight’s Hall) and completing appropriate research (after building an Alchemy Lab). In the short term, you can increase production using items from you’re My Items tab (gained by completing quests or spending gems). To reduce demand for food, you will need to get rid of troops (putting them in the wilds no longer works).

How Do I Trade Resources?
The Market is supposed to start working next week (11/26/09). You CAN send resources to alliance members (see Alliances).

How fast will my gold replenish?
Look in the supply tab (bottom right) at gold. The left number is your current gold. The right one is how much gold you get each hour (“Net Income”). Net Income is determined by subtracting your Knight’s Salary from your Tax Revenue. Tax revenue is a straight percent of your current population equal to your tax rate.

How do I get more gold?
You can increase your tax rate (in your castle) and/or build cottages (in your city) to increase your tax revenue and gain gold over time. You can swap gold for happiness (or happiness for gold) in your Castle. You can fire some knights (see “How do I use Knights” below). You can go to war and steal it (probably not when you are first starting out).

How does population work?
Hold your mouse over the people on the bottom right of your screen (when on the supply tab). Your population limit is determined by your cottage capacity. Your current population is a percent of the limit equal to your happiness. Your labor force is the number of your population that you are currently employing in your buildings and fields. Your idle population is the number of population available to work in buildings or be trained as soldiers; it has no negative impact on you. Idle population trained as soldiers will replenish over time (depending on your happiness level). If you want more population you need to build cottages or lower taxes.

What should my tax rate be?
People use a lot of strategies with tax rates and they all seem to work fine. Some tax really high and buy happiness in their castle. Most tax between 15-20%. I like the “Levy Economy” approach (thanks to Zammutz).

What is a “Levy Economy”?
In a Levy Economy you raise the money you need on demand instead of building it up slowly with taxes (see above for a detailed explanation of how taxes, happiness and population work). To convert over, you should build cottages to increase your population while lowering taxes slowly until you are just barely breaking even. When you need money, go to your castle and select “Increase Gold.” Each “levy” drops your happiness by 20, but it bounces back quickly with low taxes.

How do I use Knights?
Knights are used to speed up construction times, increase resource production, and lead your troops into battle. You need to build a Knights Hall to hire Knights. Knights cost 1,000 gold to hire and have an ongoing gold cost based on their level. Click on your Knights Hall and select a friend to hire from the Appoint Knights tab. Then go to the My Knights tab and click Assign Role to put the knight to work. Then click Assign Skill to boost the attributes appropriate to their role. When you want to wage war, you will need to either temporarily Un-Assign one of your knights (probably your Marshal since she also needs Combat skill), or have an extra Knight who remains unassigned to lead armies. Eventually, you might want additional knights to lead additional armies.

What’s up with Knight Loyalty?
According to an administrator, it is an unimplemented feature, but eventually a Knight’s loyalty will go down if they aren’t paid. If low enough they will abandon you.

DEFENDING YOUR CITY

Do I need to worry about being attacked?
You may not attack or be attacked by other players for the first four days of game play unless your castle reaches lvl 5.

Lady Z attacked me 5 times today! Isn’t that unfair?
No. Did you miss that war is a part of this game? If you don’t want to be attacked, make it either painful or pointless to attack you (see the next two questions).

How can I best prepare for attacks from other players?
First realize that attacks will not destroy buildings or capture your city. There are two approaches to dealing with attacks from others:
1) Defensive - most players won’t keep attacking if they can’t get anything: Level up your storehouse to protect all your resources from attack. This mostly works but does not protect your gold. To avoid losing your troops, tell them to hide in the sanctuary (do so in your castle).
2) Offensive – Build up your might and your army (see CONQUERING WILDERNESS below) so people won’t be willing to attack your city. Set the troops to defend (in your castle). Find a tough alliance (see ALLIANCES below) who will stand by you if you are attacked. The risk is that somebody bigger who doesn’t mind the losses could come along and wipe your army out while you’re away….

What do I do if some BULLY keeps attacking me?
First, try talking to them in a reasonable way (via e-mail). Some will leave you alone if you object: they want easy resources but don’t want to be nasty about it. Few respond well to tirades or whininess.
Also, read the defensive section in the question above and work on setting up your city so the attacker doesn’t get anything. Whenever you see an attack coming (or are going to be away from the computer) make sure you aren’t leaving resources and gold around to be taken. Queue up troops to get your resources down below your stores. To reduce gold you could spend it on research or happiness or hire knights or lower taxes. If the attacks continue, you need to keep gold out of your treasury: Wait to collect your level up quest rewards until the last minute and consider switching to a levy economy (see the BUILDING YOUR CITY section).

How do I increase my Might?
Might is increased by upgrading buildings & fields, increasing your number of troops, and completing certain quests. Losing troops in combat will take their bonus out of your might total (you will never lose levels that you have gained). Lady Anna has said that eventually Might will also increase some with successful battles.

ALLIANCES

What are Alliances?
Alliances are groups of players who join together for a common purpose. The members do not have to be facebook friends. A list of the alliances (sorted by Might) is viewable by clicking on the Alliance button at the top of the screen.

What can Alliances do?
Alliance members can see details about their alliance (on the Alliance screen). They can send resources or troops to allied cities (go to the allied city on the map and click on the city). A city can host as many allied armies as the level of their embassy. They also have their own chat room to discuss alliance issues and plan their attacks. The Chancellor and Vice Chancellor of an alliance can designate other alliances as “friendly” or “hostile.” Officers can also send people invites to join another alliance.

How do I join/create an Alliance?
Once you have a lvl 1 Embassy, you can ask to join an alliance. You can also ask for interest in the chat area. Alliances are limited to 100 members and some require a minimum might, recommendation of another member, or frequent play. You need a lvl 2 embassy to start you own alliance.

Which Alliance is the “best” one?
Good question. The alliance list sorts them by Might. Some are more violent, others are more defensive. Some help out new players and others only want advanced players. Decide what you want and ask around? Also, check out the Arthur/Recruiting folder in the forums.

CONQUERING WILDERNESS:

How do I go to War?
Before doing any conquering you need to build a Barracks, a Knights Hall, and a Rally Point. You will also need a hundred or more combat troops (undamaged Level 1 Wildernesses will have 50 supply troops and 50 militia), and at least one knight (see “How Do I Build Knights?” above).

How Do I Train Troops?
Click on the Barracks and select the troops you want to train. Be aware that (coming 11/18/09) troops eat food no matter where you put them. So try not to build beyond your capacity. NEW FEATURE: You can dismiss troops in your barracks (coming 11/18/09).

How much does each troop type eat?
Troops require the following amount of food per hour each: Supply troops= 2, Militia = 3, Pike = 6, Swordsman = 7, Archers = 9, Cavalry = 18, Hvy Cav = 35, Ballista = 50, Catapults = 250. Please let me know if you determine what Battering Rams cost. Troops eat this food whether stationed in the wilds or in your city.

How do I speed up training times?
Everything in Kingdoms of Camelot takes time and better troops take longer. Assigning a Knight to be a Marshal makes training faster (see “How do I use Knights?”). Additional barracks speed up troop training (the number seems to be more important than their level of upgrade, but both make a difference). Upgrading your stables speeds up training of horsed troops. Also, you can research Geometry to speed up Siege Weapon training.

How do I conquer a Wilderness square?
First, make sure you have an UNASSIGNED knight in your Knight’s Hall (ideally one specialized in combat). Go to the map and hold your mouse over the wilderness areas to see their level and their resource boost. You can scroll the map by clicking and dragging. Choose a LEVEL ONE wilderness (no higher) and click on it. Do not attack a Barbarian Camp yet (they are 10x stronger). Choose attack and then assign your troops and a knight (you left one unassigned right?). Select “March” and wait for the troops to arrive.

How do I build a city in the plains?
You can’t yet (as of 11/22/09). Currently there is no reason to capture a plain. See the BUGS, GLITCHES, and MISSING FEATURES section below.

What if my Map just shows up Green?
Reports are that it may be a browser issue. You could try a different browser. Firefox works for me.

What do I do after sending my troops to battle?
Once you have sent your troops, a countdown on the troop march will appear on your screen. When your Messages box starts flashing you can check the Battle Report (via Messages – View Reports) to see if you won. If you defeated the wilderness, your troops should be listed as encamped (unless you have already conquered the number permitted by your castle size). You do not need to leave them there any length of time: If you go to your Rally Point, click on Troop Movement, and “Recall” the troops, your will still control the wilderness. If you go to the wilderness directly and “Abandon” the province, you will not control it any more.

Why are my troops coming home without encamping in the wilderness?
Troops do not occupy barbarian camps and enemy cities (they just bring home resources). Sometimes armies retreat from a battle without losing all their troops (check the battle report). Finally, you can only occupy a number of other wildernesses equal to the level of your castle: once your cap has been reached you will need to either upgrade your castle or abandon a wilderness before capturing a new wilderness.

How do I scout areas I want to attack?
Don’t bother with the Scout function versus Wilderness squares. If you want to find out the number of troops defending, send a single troop with a knight to ATTACK the province: the troop will die but your knight will return unharmed. You can then check the battle report (via Messages – View Reports). Scouting IS useful against player cities.

How do I know how many troops to send?
See the “Scouting” section above to find out what you will be facing. Lord Dennisson has suggested the following formula for wildernesses with Hvy Cav or less: look at the largest number of enemy in a single troop type. Divide it by 10. Use this number and take that many units of the same types as the enemy, plus one more type. For instance if the enemy's strongest unit is the cavalry, go up to the heavy cavalry. Lord Xenom (me) hates casualties and tends to send more than Dennisson: If you come up with a better system, let us know.

How much loot can I expect to find in the Wilderness?
1,000 of the appropriate resource per level of a Wilderness Square. Barbarian camps have much more, an undisturbed level one camp has: Gold: 1k, Food: 100k, Wood: 10k, Stone 2k, Ore: 200. You only bring home as much of the loot as you have carry.


SECOND CITIES
This section is based off of information shared by the Game Masters.

When do I get to build a Second City?
The Second City option will be available either 11/23 or 11/24 PST. You will not be able to build more than two cities until an undetermined future update.

What is required for a Second City?
You must control a Plain square and have 250 Supply Troops encamped (reinforce) at that location. With the supply troops, you need 10k each of Gold, Food, Wood, Stone, and Ore at the location (reinforce). It is possible you may also need to have a certain amount of Might or be a certain Level.

How will second cities relate to my original city?
Each city’s resources and troops are separately tracked, but can be transferred between cities. Buildings, building prerequisites, and control of wilderness squares will be tracked separately. Research will be shared by all cities.

Can a Second City be conquered?
For the moment attacking a Second City will have the same limitations as attacking an original city. Eventually, when you have multiple cities all but one of them will be conquerable.


GLITCHES, BUGS, & MISSING FEATURES

What do I do if something isn’t working?
This is a Beta version and there are glitches in the game: Sometimes watch towers misreport. Sometimes troops take a long time to report or a long time to return home. Sometime your display on the game shows a previous point in time. Sometimes avatars change randomly. Sometimes battle reports are delayed or never arrive. Troop marches sometimes get stuck on waiting for report, reset, or take extended amounts of time.

Anyway to fix the Glitches in the meantime?
First, try refreshing your browser (admins have reported Facebook has a refresh bug that the KoC admins can’t fix). If a report, wilderness bonus, or building affect hasn’t shown up and refresh hasn’t worked, wait a while and see if it shows up later. If something isn’t displaying (like the wilderness map), try using Firefox as your browser; some say it works better.

What features are missing?
As of 11/22/09:
Markets can not be used to exchange resources between players (no reason to build a market yet).
Relief Stations do not yet work.
Additional Cities can not be built (no reason to attack plains yet).
Watch Towers do not detect more after Lvl 2.
Walls only help you build your castle (no defensive units yet).
Items that don’t work: The colored knights, Dove of Peace, and Sealed Orders.

When will X get fixed/added?
Check the Beta- Bug Reports folder for updates. Lady Anna has said it that New Cities, Markets, and Defensive units will be available by 11/26/09. More recently, the GMs are saying they should arrive 11/23 or 11/24

Where do I post bugs?
In the Beta- Bug Reports folder in the Forum.


Let me know if you have any suggestions!

Lord Xenom