Strategies and Tactics to Survive in Tribal Wars

Tribal Wars is a browser-based strategy game in which the player starts with one tiny village, grows it and their army, in order to take the villages from other players. It is a game that is full of strategy and requires the player to have a fair bit of free time and cunning to do well in. However, without the proper knowledge, you will not last long in the game that can often last for years. However, armed with the proper strategies, tactics, and a strong tribe at their back anyone can emerge from the game showered in victory and showered with glory.

I am going about this guide hoping you have at least the basic knowledge of the game. I am going to assume readers will know what troops are used for what and what all the buildings are for. If you are a complete and absolute beginner, this may not be for you. This guide is for slightly experienced players that are getting into the finer bits of the game.

Village Builds

There are a variety of village builds a player can do. Most of it depends on if the village is offensive or defensive, or just your play style.

The General Build:

Village Headquarters: 20
Barracks: 20
Stable: 10
Workshop: 3
Academy: 1
Smithy: 20
Rally Point: 1
Statue: 1
Market: 10
Timber Camp: 30
Clay Pit: 30
Iron Mine: 30
Farm: 30
Warehouse: 30
Hiding Place: 4
Wall: 20

This build leaves room for 21,331 troops and allows for both good offensive and defensive capabilities. The marketplace can be upgraded more if you do a lot of trading or use it for resource dodging attacks. The headquarters should never be upgraded past 20, regardless of what build. Your wall should always be maxed out regardless of the build. If you want to squeeze for more population room for soldier, you can not fully upgrade your warehouse or resource producers, if you'd like.

Also hiding place can be completely neglected, I just always upgrade it to 4 as it does not consume any population.

You should always build your workshop to level 3 regardless of if you are offensive of defensive. Offesive players can build it higher, but defensive players should leave it at 3. Cats after decent for defense, but should only be kept in small numbers. Defensive players primarily use them as fakes, though it does not work to fool anyone if they already know you are a defensive player.

Troop Builds

There are a variety of ways to build troops. However there is always a best and a worst.

Best Defensive Build

The best defensive build is an even split of Archers and Spears. Spears handle cavalry and archers kill everything else. If you are playing in a no-archer world, replace them with swords. They are inferior to archers, but when they are not in the game, they are the best option to kill axe nukes. You should also have a little bit of heavy cavalry built. They are decent enough defense, but they are more so for supporting your tribe mates as quick as you can, as they are the fastest movers.

My exact defensive build is 4,898 spears, 5,500 archers (or swords on no-archer worlds), 200 scouts, 1,600 heavy cavalry, and 25 catapults (for fakes).

Best Offensive Build

The best offensive build is primarily made out of axes and light cavalry. The general rule is to have a 3 to 1 ratio of axes to light cavalry.

The nuke that is quickest to build and kills the most troops is 7000 axes, 3000 light cavalry, and between 250 to 300 rams. This takes down the wall and wrecks havoc. A player can also throw in 10 or so catapults to destroy the rally point so that the defend cannot bring their troops back if they dodged.

If you want to sacrifice some axemen to build more catapults, then fine. Aim them at the enemy farm and severely limit their ability to built troops. There are a few decent nuke builds that call for 1000 catapults, which will decimate a level 30 farm to level 3, severely crippling the recipient.

If you want to be a real ball buster, build a full axe nuke. It takes way too much time to build, but for noobs that build full spears for defense, it will completely devastate them.

Tactics

Now that we have discussed builds, it is time to get into the nitty-gritty, the tactics in which all great players know and all striving to be great players should know.

Farming

This isn't so much a battle tactic, but it is something you should be doing whenever you are online. It is one of the many reasons Tribal Wars requires so much of a person's time. Find barbarian villages, send 100 or so spears or 10 to 20 light cavalry and take their resources. If you are just beginning in an area, it is best to take out other players before they get too strong. The less strong players by you, the better. From farming you will get all these nice bonus resources for troops and buildings.

Fake Attacks

Fake attacks are the bread and butter of every player. Each unit takes a certain amount of time to get somewhere. Scouts and cavalry are fast movers, catapults, rams and nobles are slow movers. If a player is online when this attack is launched, they can deduce what sort of attack a person is sending. Many tribes will ask their members to send fakes at certain players, with many incoming attacks, things get chaotic. Usually they will want you to send a ram or a catapult to mimic a big offensive attack.

Dodging

Say you find yourself under attack. They are sending one nuke, but no nobles at you. The best thing to do is dodge. Dodging is when you send all your troops out of a village about a minute before the attack hits, then cancel it after the attack to bring them home. If you are an offensive player, dodge, then use a back timing calculator to send an offensive attack back at them just after their troops arrive back home before they can dodge. To be honest, the best defense is a good backtime.

If they are not sending a noble at you, don't needlessly sacrifice your troops. If you have a decent sized market, create offers on it to then cancel them after their attack hits for a resource dodge. However, an easier way is to just put a bunch of troops in queue then cancel that after the attack.

Noble Train

In the beginnings of a world, you will not see many noble trains, however as time goes on they will used everywhere. A noble train is a series of attacks in quick succession that will win over a village. An example of a noble train is:

Nuke > Noble > Noble > Noble > Noble

Those are five different attacks, the first wave clears the village of troops and the other four lower the loyalty so you take over the village. Ideally, you want these attacks to be fractions of a second apart from each other.