Rise of Kingdoms is a real-time strategy and "city builder" fusion that follows in the general traditions of Warcraft / Age of Empires and Civilization. It has an almost exclusive focus on multiplayer, however, specifically guild-vs-guild competitive play. You'll be dropped onto a world map that likely was generated within the last two days, and from there are on your own to find an "Alliance" and help them try to dominate the map (or at least their own little slice of it).
This game isn't a great choice for people who don't want to socialize or coordinate with other players. Success is heavily weighted to getting in and staying in one of the stronger alliances on your server, which will involve keeping up with and participating in team goals and probably doing at least a little text chatting here and there. Unlike some other similar games, like Lords Mobile or that Pokémon knockoff one, you can't just join a low-effort alliance and coast for its automatic benefits and hide off in a corner somewhere... I mean, you can, but you'll eventually be bullied and victimized by the other bigger groups taking the game more seriously and your growth rate toward your GPT goals will be paltry compared to what you could be doing.
That said, even the biggest baddest alliances tend to be friendly and helpful enough to get by (bringing a lot of engaged newbies along is always part of their process in the early days of each server, which is where you'll start). And you don't have to spend money to get in or stay in. In your first few days, just playing a lot and growing smart and fast will likely get you recruited as the power alliances need a lot of bodies like that to expand.
GPT GOAL STRUCTURE
There are three big ones that pay big money - City Hall level, unlocking troop tiers (T2 to T5), and your overall power level.
Let's take on the one that probably has the eye-popping numbers first - troop tier level, specifically offers of around $1500 to $2000 USD to unlock T5. First of all, put T5 out of your head in 30 days, or even 60 days. Even with the best possible luck and the best possible start with a really strong alliance that dominates the server, this isn't happening in under a year of regular play without spending huge money. People have repeatedly mathed this out and the absolute bare minimum spend to get T5 in 30 days, with like 100% best possible circumstances and gameplay on your part, is about $5000 to $7000 USD. More realistically it will be $10,000 to $15,000, since things won't go totally perfect. The cost to simply buy a T5 troop as soon as you start, regardless of other circumstances, has been put at about $30,000 USD. So that $1,700 to $2,000 or whatever back is really no consolation. Grinding it out with little to no spend generally takes well over a year, from what people report on forums.
However, T4 troops in 25 to 30 days (a goal that pays around $100 USD) are very possible if you get in and stick with a good alliance. 2 million power is the same; 1 million is readily doable. As is getting to City Hall 20. So this guide will focus on those specifically.
STARTING OUT - BEST TIME AND CHARACTER CHOICES
There isn't a specific day of the week to start, but try to pick a period where you'll have a few days to devote at least two or three hours per day to the game of semi-active play (some of it can be multi-tasked, but you'll have to pay active attention to a bunch of stuff).
Unlike some other games of this sort, you can't choose your own server when you start. Instead, you're automatically dropped into the newest one available (and won't be able to change for quite some time in-game).
This is a good thing for both general gameplay and GPT goal purposes, however. A fresh server means one-time initial events that provide a lot of bonus items to speed up your progress. In fact, people try to game this out to maximize this as much as possible - getting into a server that is no more than a few hours old (since you can wind up in one that is up to 48 hours old). How do you do that? Make a "burner" account on another device and get dropped in to see where the current server is at. There are forum posts and guides all over the place that detail what to look for, but personally I just YOLO'd it and wound up in a server that was about 12 hours old, which worked out fine. For GPT purposes I don't think it will make THAT much of a difference that you need to go that far.
With the game installed and running, your first choice is civilization. China is the correct answer. Not only for a 5% building speed boost, but Sun Tzu as a powerful starting character who will help carry you until you get better ones. Within a few game days you'll get an item that lets you change civilizations (but keep Sun Tzu), and in fact we may do this toward the end (to Korea for its research boost) if we hit City Hall 21 and are running short of getting our T4 troop.
FIRST FEW DAYS OF ELBOW GREASE
I mentioned earlier that you should start when you know you can commit some time to the game for at least the first three or four days. Here's why: identifying and getting recruited by one of the strongest alliances that is developing in the new server.
You will be judged by them almost entirely on your "power" level. This is a combination of all your metrics of growth in the game - how many characters you have and what level they are, troops and their tier, and your city and economic development primarily. At 100k in the first server week or so, you start to look valuable to the strong alliances. 200k+ within a few days, which is easy to do by day 2/3 with regular and smart F2P play, and you're virtually a shoe-in for one or another of the top dogs.
You can find the strongest alliances once some of the map is unfogged, look for the ones that are cutting long usually vertical paths of territory for themselves and expanding by multiple squares daily. People will also likely be bitching about how they have so much power already in the chat. And they will usually be "regulars" who continually play cycles of the game (more on that later), often organized well before moving into each server and will have multiple teams that have numerical extensions after the same name in different parts of the map.
One other odd thing that can help you get into a good alliance as a new player: still being BELOW City Hall 7. At that level, you still have the Beginners Teleport items that let you go just anywhere you please on the map. As of City 8 you trade them in for Targeted Teleports that require the teleport destination to be under the control of your present alliance. This can be valuable to alliances trying to move out of the way of a stronger alliance early, as their 8-and-aboves have trouble teleporting out; they need 7-and-belows to jump into the territory they're targeting and contribute to building their new Central Fort, which allows them to claim the territory so the 8-and-aboves can jump into it. Just an oddity to keep an eye out for.
SHOULD YOU BUY STUFF?
As long as you trust your GPT provider to track and pay you, there are definitely a couple small things to buy right away.
The "Path of Vengeance" side game will open up sometime in the first day. Get to level 10 of it ASAP. There's a scripted event there where Minamoto comes in and auto-wins the battle for you. He can then be purchased, along with some other goodies, for 99 cents. This probably won't count toward a GPT goal other than aggregate spend for the whole period (there's usually like a "spend $100 total get $20 or $30 back" type of goal), but it's well worth the paltry price to have him ASAP. He's not only a good commander for cleaning up NPC mobs early, he has a built-in building speed boost (and I'm not sure he can be unlocked any other way).
The other thing to get, that probably requires you to buy within 2 or 3 days, is the 30 day gem supply. HOWEVER, don't buy this as soon as you start. Play for a bit, around late day 1 the game should generate a 50% off coupon offer for you on this (possibly at City Hall level 7?). So it'll cost like $4.50 instead of $9. On my GPT offer this paired with a $1.94 back for any purchase of $4.99 or more and an $8.92 reimbursement for the pack, so it actually turned about a $7 profit!
Save any other spending until much later. The only other compensated offer I saw was a break-even on the "growth fund" that gives you hoards of gems as you hit certain City Hall levels. Basically it costs $15 and you get $14.92 back, so it's almost free. Word around is they never ever generate coupons for this one or discount it in any way, so you can just buy it whenever, but there's no harm waiting to see how far in the game you go first as you retroactively get any older gems from prior level goals. Also if you're on Android maybe you'll get a surprise Google Play coupon or at least a reward points boost offer or something.
BUILDING SMART FROM THE START
Building commanders is all about specializing them for certain tasks they already have natural inclinations for.
When a commander hits three gold stars, they can pair with another commander so you get "two for the price of one" in one unit. So generally you want two specialists in each of these categories, but for the first couple days you only need to worry about building just one, get them to 3 stars so they can carry someone else with them:
* Barbarian cleaner: Commanders with the "Peacekeeping" ability. Minamoto and Boudin are a powerful and early accessible combo. Boudin is good because she gives anyone she's with an EXP boost when beating barbarians. You get Markswoman tossed to you early and she suffices in this role, but don't waste resources taking her beyond lv 10 as someone better will be along before long. Only level her more if you really get stuck for a second one of these somehow. Build out their Peacekeeping branch first to get the bonus resource chests and EXP each time you kill a barbarian and the reduction in AP for attacking them.
* Gatherers: You'll actually want at least 2 sets of these eventually, so 4 total (and 3 sets by the late stages when you're around City Hall 20), but until you get into a strong alliance you can focus just on one pair. Joan of Arc is the best that tends to come early, if you have her focus resources on her as she can also step into assorted combat roles as a tank and buffer. The others kinda depend on what you happen to get. Constance, Sarka, Gaius Marius, Centurion all work out just fine. The lower-rarity ones actually kinda work out better, at least for the 2 support roles, as you can more cheaply and easily raise their star level (which you want to get their gathering bonus skills available). Obviously build their Gathering branch out, aim for the "More The Better" perk at the back while getting the food and stone upgrades along the way.
* Main fighter / defender: The guys you send into battles against other players and rely on for base defense. Sun Tzu is your initial, build him out with his natural Infantry skill, and back him up with a character with strong AoE attacks. You can just leave it to them for a long time as you won't be doing PVP until you get into a strong alliance and it's probably been at least a week or two of gameplay. When it's time, the best choices that usually pop up are Cao Cao, Scipio Africanus, Bjorn and Hector. If no one else pops up Lancelot can be leveled as a super budget choice in a pinch because at least you'll get a TON of skill points on him naturally as you play, probably enough to max his skills out quick, and he's the fastest marcher in the game so you can always keep him as a niche unit for racing to tag runes, build flags and do assorted little tasks like that later. For rarer guys look for Charles Martel, Alexander Nevsky, Emperor Qin, and Æthelflæd.
* Archers: A lower priority consideration, but one or two can help in the back rows of Path of Vengeance in the early going. They can also eventually be added to your castle defense once you level the Wall high enough, as a unit that just sits there permanently. Your best budget choices early are Markswoman, Tomoe Gozen and Hermann. Any of the Legendaries you might draw (El Cid, the squat Japanese guy whose name escapes me right now, etc) in this category will also suffice, as you don't have to raise them much so their star cost won't be a factor.
As far as upgrading skills: for gatherers, just upgrade freely as they need their tier 2 and 3 abilities that provide gathering boosts. For combat-focused units, however, you want to pump the initial skill as fast as possible because it's always more valuable than the later ones in fights. If the tier 2 skill is open, as soon as it gets to level 2 you can "lock" it so that all future upgrades go to the initial skill - do that ASAP.
"ACTION POINT" USE
Like many other games, there's a "limited energy" scheme in the form of Action Points that recharge slowly over time. You also get items here and there that restore them.
Unlike many other games, most of the stuff you can do doesn't require them. In fact, they're pretty much used just for attacking stuff, whether that be barbarians or other players. So in the early going, they're not overly useful.
By all means kill some barbarians if your AP is full and time regens are going to waste. They only give minor EXP (very slow grinding for anyone over level 10) and small rewards, but you do get Gold Keys for each new level you kill for the first time, and somewhat larger rewards for the sub-quest that has you reach lifetime kill thresholds like 50, 100, 200 etc. There is also often some special event or another going on that gives some kind of extra goodies for killing a bunch of them.
The one place to farm barbarians aggressively, including using AP potions, is during the Lohar event. This runs for five days every month and you'll see it at least once during a GPT run, if not twice. Each barbarian unit killed gives decent extra items during this, including the item needed to upgrade your Watchtower. They also sometimes drop an item that summons Lohar for a rally battle. This offers bigger rewards, including Lohar statues, get 10 and you add him to your team. He's an elite barbarian hunter unit but no great shakes otherwise, but you get some more Power for adding him. The Lohar summons can be saved until after the event, they never expire, and in fact that's the smartest way to use them BUT even in experienced and strong alliances people will be summoning his ass all the time in the middle of the event anyway. It can be worth joining in as you get some huge resource rewards, but the tradeoff is it costs 150 AP per rally rather than the usual 40 for hunting regular barbarians.
Don't blow out ALL your AP potions on Lohar though. The speedups and resources you get really add up and are worth grinding, but there are other events and alliance activities where it helps to have some on hand. I would say maybe use 70-80% of what you have max on the Lohar event.
BARBARIAN TRICKS
While we're on the subject of barbarians, let's quickly cover two tricks used to stretch AP out while farming them.
When you attack one coming out of your city, select the "hold position after battle" box. After the fight, your unit will stay out on the map. Now, if they attack another barbarian unit, it will cost 2 AP less (down to 30). This also works if you search for new ones to generate them. It resets when you send the unit back to the city.
There is also a trick called "barbarian chaining" you can look up. The gist of it is, find a large group of them standing near each other, start a fight with one, get their health into the yellow, then start marching toward the next one. You let your area of effect skills kill them as you go. I couldn't get this to work well or consistently, I think one key thing the internet advice fails to tell you is that this doesn't really work until you get around 10 days into the server, when there's an event that makes the barbarians start going aggro and initiating fights with you if they take splash damage from another nearby fight you're in. You can look up more details on it on Youtube and such but I didn't find it necessary to meet all the goals comfortably.
WHAT TROOPS TO UPGRADE
We're shooting for the T4 payout, the largest one (short of T5), which just requires unlocking one troop. However, the build tree will force you to unlock all the T3s first along the way. For T2s you can just unlock the Infantry and Archer initially to move on from them, but you will eventually have to double back and get the Cav and Ballista as well because of the T3 bottleneck.
Infantry is the quickest to get to at T3 but is regarded as the second-best unit to upgrade. Cavalry is generally regarded as best. When you get to barbarian fort rallies you'll see some people asking that you only send your cavalry units. Not that it matters much, but when you get advice about the game most of it isn't tailored to GPT needs.
PATTERNS FOR UPGRADING THE CITY
When you start the game you're given four "builder contracts" that get you the second building slot free for two days each. Go ahead and start using these immediately.
The basic pattern after you reach a new city hall level: one build slot goes to the Academy, since you'll need that for the T4 troops goal. The other goes to the first item in the current chain for upgrading the Wall. The Wall always needs upgraded right before the City Hall but the path there can be a little different with each new level. Start that path with the other build slot, which will stay devoted to it.
In the original build slot, when the Academy is done, there's always some rando second element other than the Wall chain that has to come before City Hall as well. So start on that. If this slot gets bottlenecked at some point, use it to upgrade other stuff, pretty much everything in town has to be upgraded to some double-digit level at some point as part of these chains, some go much farther than others. But the ones that will end up having to go to 19 to get City Hall 20, aside from the Wall, are the Alliance Center, Tavern, and Quarry, so they're always safe and efficient upgrades along with the Academy. The Infantry and Cavalry buildings will have to go fairly high in the end, like 16 or so, but the Archers and Ballista can stay at around 12 for some reason. Lumber Mill and Farm will also have to go fairly high but not the Gold Mine at all. Castle and Watchtower are also not part of the equation beyond I think the Watchtower having to go to 7 or 8 for one earlier level, but they do help for starting rallies and city defense, respectively.
SPENDING GEMS
Push all your gems into getting to VIP 6 as fast as possible. That gives you the permanent 2nd builder slot for free as well as a big permanent boost to your building speed. Both extremely important for quick development.
There's some debate about continuing to push gems to VIP after level 6. The stock advice is to push it to 12 or 14, but that's through the lens of people playing long-term. For GPT players leaving after 30 days max, the gem requirements from 7 on start getting so high I felt it was better to save them for speed-ups and upgrade items you need in a pinch. You'll get bonus VIP points from quest rewards and daily login and such as you go, maybe top it off when those bring you close to get that 10% build speed boost, but otherwise I wouldn't push it hard. One helpful thing that gets unlocked at VIP 7 is the ability to buy discounted 8-hour speedups in the weekly discount shop, but that can wait until week 2 or so.
WHAT CAN I EXPECT FROM AN ACTIVE AND POWERFUL ALLIANCE?
Active high-level alliances do expect some of your time in return for giving you a berth, but I didn't find it to really be an imposition unless it's poorly managed and the leadership is jerks.
They won't be barking orders unless they're psychos (or little kids), and in this early phase of the game they won't demand people be on a schedule or be on at certain times. But, if you happen to be online at certain times when they're doing certain things, they do expect you to participate. Primarily, in the very early game where we'll be, this means:
> Contributing a commander and some troops when they're building forts and flags (to speed up construction, you just send someone with at least a few thousand troops to go sit there for a while)
> Occasionally join a big group attacking an enemy fort or particular player's castle who done really goofed up (you'll be part of a big mob so little individual risk to your troops)
> Harvesting material, especially wood, within alliance territory (when available). You keep all the proceeds of your harvesting, but if its within your borders the Alliance gets 1% of it as a bonus for the stores used to build flags, forts and other alliance buildings.
SHOULD YOU CREATE FARM ACCOUNTS?
RoK is kind of unique in that it not only openly permits farming, it actually lets you have a secondary farm account right on your main account. And you're allowed to register new accounts to do further farming.
You'll see many of the advanced players in the game operating farms. However, there are some serious restrictions for the new player only playing for 30 days.
First, you can only pass wood, stone, food and gold via farm accounts. No gems or other cool item goodies.
Second, both accounts have to have the Trading Post in their city. That's not until City Hall level 12. On your main account, that will probably be day 6 or 7. Grinding up ANOTHER account that far is a SERIOUS time investment, you'll probably have your hands full just with your main. Running a couple farm accounts could turn this into literally a full time job.
Finally, all these farms have to be in the same alliance to pass stuff between each other. Alliances have finite space for members and their OGs probably won't let new players take up space doing this. If they're a REALLY big group they may have secondary alliances just for people's farms, though.
So, all in all, I didn't feel this was worth pursuing just for GPT goals. But there's the info if you want to look into it.
FINAL TIPS
> To review the GPT goals, easily done in 25 days = T3 troops, 1 million through 2 million power, City Hall 20. Tougher and tighter but still quite doable = T4 troops (requires City Hall 21 first but you can stop building there). You can potentially do all this in around 14 days (even T4, I got it in 15) with a good alliance, actively maxing out events and a little good luck. Forget about T5 there is no way the math works out in 30 days. If you can somehow find an offer that gives you 90 days or more for a $1700+ reward ... maaaaybe but it would still be very tough.
> Be sure to turn on "auto explore" each day at your Scout building, and just leave it on. At the start you'll get an hour of this per day, just go ahead and use it right away. That'll increase a little as you level up the building. It saves a lot of annoying time and trouble manually dispatching them.
> Focus on military research upgrades at first, driving straight for troop tier unlocks. The tribes you find around will give you a lot of the lower-rung economic tech for free in the first few days. The economic ones to divert your attention to are the ones that open up new mining abilities: first stone, then gold. Gems seemed like a good idea initially, but in practice it turns out opportunities to mine them are few and slim in the window we'll be playing in, that's more for the later stages of the game way beyond when we're checking out, so you can essentially ignore the Economic upgrades after you get gold mining.
> Regular and steady gathering is very important. Aim to have at least one unit, ideally Joan of Arc at 3 stars with a secondary gatherer with bonuses, doing it regularly with your ballistas and old T1 cavalry. When you join an alliance, prioritize mining in your controlled territory as it gives the alliance the equivalent of 1% of what you gather and makes the leaders happy.
> Go ahead and build troops constantly. Even T1s if that's all you have. They come in handy for gathering if nothing else, they aren't expensive, and there's no maintenance cost to hold them like there is in Lords Mobile and some other games.
> Don't waste gems on any gold keys ever. That's how they try to get you with the gatcha. Gold keys are more important if you're sticking around for the long game, as you need to draw certain rare pulls (Charles Martel being the primary) for the metagame later, but in the window we're playing in this does not matter at all.
> Unlike some other games that have promo codes, RoK does not put a daily limit on how many you can use. Search up all the working ones through Google, AI, Reddit, social media etc. and go ahead and use them all ASAP. You can just enter them one after the other, all at once. A good guild will also usually have someone putting them in the group chat as they appear too.
> After you've upgraded your City Hall some, the Mysterious Merchant will start randomly appearing with her goods that "fell off the back of a wagon." She can appear up to several times a day, for 2 hours per visit, and will appear more often if you're spending AP mashing barbarians (and also seemingly completing building upgrades). Whenever she appears, clear her out of whatever speedups for buildings, general and research she has (without using gems to refresh). This is the cheapest way in the game to exchange your gems for speedups, at discounts randomly ranging from 10% to 80%, and it's also the only way to trade easily obtained wood and food for speedups. Also don't overlook the speedups in the weekly discount store, once you build a Shop in your kingdom.
> If you need a power boost to get to 2 million late in the offer, a couple of things to try: first even out your overall amount of troops, like equal amounts of the four types. For whatever reason that seems to boost power more. Also, level up your neglected commanders. This can provide 10s of ks of power each, as much as 50k-100k each if you've got the tomes and stars on hand. Also look for any quick building upgrades, like your secondary mines and such that you haven't been leveling. But if you get to City Hall 21 you should just get 2 million power naturally as a result of your development, the only stumbling block I could see is if someone really wipes out your troops at the wrong time.
