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PvP guide

Content

Introduction

This guide attempts to explain some basics of Pvp. This guide is not a Pvp encyclopedia with answers to every question. You will have to experiment yourself and find out some things on your own, or there would be no fun in it. This guide has been created because there simply wasn't a Pvp guide around, and Pvping is a very important part of the game. Another main reason is that there's too many bad Pvps on the Country Pvp page every age. Those Pvps ruin the attacker's army instead of the army of the defender. If this happens a couple of times in an age the new player might consider quitting the game, and that's the last thing the game needs. This guide attempts to decrease the amount of bad Pvps and hopefully convince some players Pvping can be fun and isn't all that hard.

Before beginning to read this make sure you know the basics of this game or you will get lost in this guide. There is a good TLK starters guide available here. You will also find other useful guides on TLK Help. For people who are a bit more familiar with Pvping, this guide contains some more advanced Pvp strategies or tips that might help you while Pvping. This guide is divided into four parts. The first part handles the basics about Pvping. The second part consists of various things you might consider while you are Pvping. The third part handles additional, more specialized techniques. The fourth part includes player input in the form of Pvp Builds and tips.

Before we get started we first need to debunk the myth that all Pvpers are selfish and don't help their country. Pvpers are good for holding 2ic of a main when the LD isn't around. Some Pvpers will refuse to join SFs, but most Pvpers will join capital kicks and will participate in main drops in order to help out their country. Some army builds and Pvpers don't want to rank up because they can do more damage in Pvping at lower ranks with the army they have. Or, if they join SFs and get injuries in the SFs, their army could be injured to the point of being unable to Pvp. Pvpers in a main make an enormous difference in deciding the winner of a main drop, and at times a healthy Pvper is worth a slightly more injured SF.

As a Pvper you have to strike a balance between the ways in which you help your country and help yourself. An exceptional Pvper can afford to miss SFs almost altogether, while someone who's still learning should be willing to help their country in other ways. As a rule of thumb, if you can't get 750+ Pvp points for every 100 SFs your countrymen do, you probably aren't doing well enough in Pvp to make up for being no help in other areas.(put this easier) Ultimately you have to determine where you draw the line in order to be the best overall help to your country, but should be willing to consider the input of members of your HC.

Basics

Let's begin with the Pvp basics.

Your Army

The first thing you have to do is form your army and decide if you want to pursue low-rank Pvp or high-rank Pvp. Generally you can distinguish the low-rank and high-rank Pvp armies by the rank at which they are fully built. The low-rank Pvp army will be fully formed around the Lieutenant rank, while a higher-rank Pvp army will be completed at Captain or Captain** rank and might only be very effective from General rank and up. Very high rank Pvp starts from baron rank you will need to join sf's in order to get this high fast enough with a Pvp army. Use the army size calculator to find out the ideal army size. You really want to take some extra units, since you will get some deaths while Pvping and you want to stay hard-capped all the way. When selecting your army, try to see what other people are doing. An overflow of low-rank Pvpers can be detrimental not only to your personal Pvp points, but the country as a whole if they aren't spaced out properly or using different armies. On the other hand, there's very little risk in taking a high-rank Pvp army in terms of usefulness, but in most cases it will be harder to get atop the rankings.

Also, notice that there are differences depending on if you are playing Europe TLK or Asia TLK. The units are different from version to version. Furthermore, units will occasionally receive changes to their stats to make them more or less effective, which can be tracked here.

Training with a Pvp army isn't easy and takes some time. If you want to speed it up you can join some SFs. In some cases joining SFs will make your Pvp hero weaker, since it will receive fewer XP points from SFs than from training or Pvp. Avoid SFs if you pursue low-rank Pvp, because you will rank too fast by joining them. When high-rank Pvping, joining SFs doesn't mean you can't Pvp properly anymore. Any decent army will have plenty of targets left. If you want your country to survive until age end, joining the SFs is necessary for this to happen. In all cases you have to decide when to make exceptions. If you normally join SFs you might want to stay out if: you aren't needed for a flawless SF, you risk injury in an non-integral SF and Pvp is near, or other similar cases. If you normally don't join SFs you might want to join if: your country is in danger of dying, the SF is undermanned and integral to the country's success, a member of the HC expressly asks you to and presents valid reasons, or other similar cases.

Hero Builds

Now that your army is formed it's time to get to perhaps the most important aspect of Pvping, Hero duels and your hero build. Your hero build and duels determine the outcome of a Pvp most of the time. Win your hero duels and you win the Pvp much more easily, with less injuries and less dead units. The following just addresses the basics of building your hero, there are as many different builds and methodologies as there are players. Take advice from this guide and experienced players and then experiment with your own hero build until you get it the way you like it.

The first thing to take into consideration is to get 1 duelist hero with duelist skill. It isn't necessary to get this as a first skill and certainly not while highrank Pvp'ing. A common mistake is to just boost it as high as you can to get max duels on your duelist to protect your not duelist heroes. This isn't too smart either since in all main vs main battles and possible capkickers etc. your hero will also duel. A too high duelist skill will let you duel against the top-ranker heroes who should be way stronger then your heroes and in the end you end up with your heroes injured in battle. I recommend to not boost your hero duelist skill above 28 before count. Try to work in factors of 4 as well so use 20 or 24 or 28 p.e . At general rank try to be around 24.

Another key skill of your Pvp heroes is leadership (less the case when running Peasant/Tribal armies) as we can find in the armory: "A hero with leadership organises your army, making it look bigger than it is when determining which side goes first in a melee fight. In these rounds, the damage is spread equally on the bigger side, causing less kills in melee rounds." This is why all heroes, or at least your support heroes, lvl 11 and up should carry a banner. A decent amount of leadership 25-30 points till count rank on each hero should give you the first hit advantage normally.

Another very important heroskill is the merchant skill because money is probably the thing that you will lack during your Pvp sessions. Make sure to get this skill as the first skill on your support heroes (not your duelist hero). Personally I take merchant skill on all heroes (so duelist as well) it will cause his real duel skills to be a bit lower but get you more money in return.
The thing your duelist hero will need the most is melee defence skill and the melee attack skill, boost it as high you can and you will win more duels. Also one or more levels of HP on your support/duelist hero helps a lot.

Like I said this were just some important points about hero builds for Pvp. Everyone builds them as they want, some Pvp'ers even use healing skill. The trainer skill can be very helpful in case you are planning to reach Marquess or Count or you don't have all that many units. In that case you can use a bit of trainer skill to push them over the promo-edge in order to stay 100% hardcapped. Although most part of the Pvp'ers out there will just pay the most attention to the skills mentioned above.

Another aspect of heroes is the hero equipment.
The first question is whether it's best to mount or unmount your heroes. This choosing depends the most on what kind of army you are using. Generally you can say that infantry based Pvp army needs unmounted heroes. Cavalry and artillery based armies can have a mounted one because your main purpose is to take down the enemy army in the artillery and cavalry round. (the 2 first rounds of the battle) Three extra mounted 'units' will make the damage in the first rounds bigger and help you out.

There are a lot of different opnions about the mounting of heroes but the most heard reply to this question will be to mount your heroes.

As for hero equipment. Your duelist will need a decent weapon, possibly a banner, fill the rest with the max amount of armor you can get. Keep in mind that once your heroes advance in levels it might be interesting to equip it with 2 different types of weapons. In this case you will have to give up some armor though.

Your support heroes basically need armor since they won't be needing a strong weapon. They both need a banner on them for sure!

Perhaps one last tip about equipment: make sure if you mount your heroes you don't give them weapons they can't use on the horse. Even experienced players forget this sometimes which ends up in losing duels.

Unit Classes: Strengths & Weaknesses

Now, most of the questions and mistakes in Pvp'ing are made by hitting the wrong targets. I'm not going to give a list of armies that can defeat other armies, since unit stats change and it simply would be too much work and nearly impossible since you'll have to take terrain and heroes as well into consideration (see further). But generally there are some 'rules' in what sort of army can defeat another. Every army has his strength but also his weaknesses. There is no such thing as the best Pvp army! A Pvp'er is classified as a good Pvp'er when exploiting the weaknesses of other armies aka hitting the right targets.

As you might have already found out from FAQs, battles in TLK works in 3 distinct phases of artillery, cavalry and melee. Pvp armies work on the premise of stacking all the offensive power onto a single phase of attack. Hence they can overpower enemy armies either by hitting them before they have the chance of returning the attack, which is the case for both artillery and cavalry Pvp armies. Alternatively, they just defend themselves using either their total health or specialized immunity as a shield which is the case of peasants/tribals or pikes/lancers.

Artillery

Artillery armies deliver their killing blow in the very first round of battle in any Pvp. They always have the first mover's advantage so to speak. Their targets are decided by how much artillery attack the artillery Pvper army can deliver and how much Cavalry or melee attacks, if present, they have to back up their main arty damage compared to the HP of the target. The advantage of striking first is balanced by the low HP and Strength of most artillery armies. They have to win in the first or second melee rounds as they lack the staying power for more.
So its usually the high wage units which are the most common targets of artillery armies. These high wage units can be either high wage high HP ranker armies or high wage Cavalry armies.
The total HP of such armies are usually low, that's why arty armies find them particularly edible. Any other army whether due to injuries or deads that has a low total HP, is a good target for arty armies too. Their achilles heel are the high total HP armies which can basically withstand the artillery barrage using their numbers and cumulative health. Once the artillery attack gets too much spread on target army to injure much units, the artillery armies are practically defenseless in the following melee rounds.

Cavalry

Cavalry armies only strike in the second round of battle, the cavalry charge, and the subsequent melee rounds. Though they lack initiative against other artillery armies, they have the advantage of usually having pretty decent melee stats. This means they can hold their own in melee rounds too, or at least better then artillery armies. Their targets are mostly infantry armies of all hue and type except pikes for obvious reasons. They are distinct from artillery armies, due to their decent melee and HP stats. Cavalry armies can hit even high total HP infantry armies like peasants and come out with either a decent loss or a costly win. Their nemeses are the artillery armies which can hit and injure most of the cavalry in the artillery phase itself before they get to cavalry charge phase. The anti-cavalry specialized armies like pikes and lancers which have immunity to cavalry charge can beat them pretty easily.

Besides the full cavalry type there is a type of mixed artillery/cavalry armies called 'Ranged cavalry'. These try to combine the advantages of both artillery and cavalry. Their attacks are being spread into 2 rounds and are difficult to counter. Pikes can't avoid the artillery damage of a Ranged cavalry and peasants find a Ranged cavalry with charge bonus a much tougher opponent than arty armies, though they can still beat them... which brings us to the disadvantages. Ranged cavalry units make a compromise: their attack is spread into different rounds and therefore they fail to kill any enemy units when attacking injured armies as the Pvp is won before you can deliver your full attack.

Infantry

Now onto the infantry Pvp armies, which can be divided into 2 types. The ones who rely on their high melee per wage (Heavy attack infantry), and the ones who rely on the high HP per wage (Horde type infantry).

The high melee infantry is a specialized one and has a limited attack spectrum. It can easily beat pike armies as those are usually low melee infantry. Other than that they have to depend on terrain to attack normal ranking infantry to be able to do more than 1 Pvp. On neutral terrain, these high melee armies get more than half of their army injured even when winning. The main advantage of these armies is that they come out as one of the most lethal killers of Tlk, getting hit by them twice in one day is enough to make most targets want to hide in the capital for at least a day. Being infantry, they do suffer the same disadvantages as other infantry against cavalry and artillery Pvpers.

The 'Horde type infantry' depend on their total HP and numbers to ride out all enemy attacks. Hence they have no particular strength in any rounds and they have no weaknesses either. Theoretically you can beat any enemy army with them. Both artillery and cavalry armies find these armies as having too much total HP for them to do substantial damage in either artillery or cavalry rounds. Subsequently a peasant/tribal Pvper can hit artillery or cavalry or even fellow infantry armies. The low HP of their units means they might get a dead unit or 2 (or more, if you have bad luck/terrain) against artillery or cavalry armies and lots of injuries against decent melee armies. The same low HP makes them very vulnerable to getting injuries or deaths in Sf's and main drops. More then 20 units in the reanimation yard is not abnormal using peasants/tribal armies. Be prepared for this.

There are some specialized armies too. For example there are Anti Cavalry units, also known as pikes and lancers. These are good against the units they are specialized against: Cavalry. They do pretty badly against almost all other armies. They do have cavalry charge immunity, so they can almost flawless against most cavalry armies. Their high wage and low melee or HP mean they are sitting targets against most artillery and some infantry armies, though. Keep in mind that while using lancers your commander gets injured pretty easily too. (Buying a duke would prevent most of these 'random' injuries.)

This probably looks very complicated if you are a starting Pvp'er. A handy tool that can help you determine the outcome of a Pvp is the battle simulator. It takes a while to fill everything in and when you need to Pvp fast it's not recommended to use this, but it can give you an idea of the outcome. Keep in mind that it only is a simulator and not the real game were random factors and heroes also play their role.

First Steps

Hurray, we can finally begin Pvp'ing now! Or not? The first days of an age you won't see much Pvp at all, since your country requires an HQ before being able to go to war. Normally this shouldn't be all too boring since you will be busy training your army up and filling your merchant stock with money you will need later on. Use this time well is all I can say.

When you finally get a LD and HC's or if another country attacks you, your first precious Pvp will be there soon enough. What to do now? Normally with a good Hc the times when Pvp will be available will be announced in hc messages so try to be online at those times to Pvp. Since this is a strategy game, plans are most likely to change depending on enemy moves so Pvp times can change. When an enemy main finally borders your main you can start your Pvp'ing.

You can't Pvp commanders who are injured. You can't Pvp people who have been Pvp'ed in the last six ticks. At least, after 1 Pvp people will get 6 ticks of Pvp protection so their army can heal up, after these 6 ticks wear off, or if they participate in another battle as the aggressor, the protection will wear off. This includes main vs. main battles, which means that the easiest PvP targets can be found right after their main attacked something (whether they won or lost).
The first thing you should check is the terrain that your enemy is on. Like mentioned before, on good terrain you will win and flawless much more enemy armies. On bad terrain you will get much more injuries and might even lose your Pvp's or even worse get deaths in your army.
When you checked terrain it's time to check your hospital page. Make sure that your army is fully healed before Pvp'ing. Lots of players forget to heal before they Pvp which sometimes even leads to death of their commander. Once you made sure your army is fine you can begin to spy officers that are Pvp'able. Spy officers of your own rank first! After you looked what kind of army the player has and you know/think you can take them, hit them and await the result. You can choose to force heal after or, if you didn't get many injuries, continue spying and hitting.
When you are out of targets you might be tempted to hit armies of officers ranked above you, generally this is a bad idea. Other Pvp'ers of your nation might be able to do way more damage to the other player. There are some cases where Pvp'ing uprank isn't all bad or even can be considered good. A count with a Pvp army can probably better against a ranking marquess then a ranking marquess vs another ranking marquess. It also can happen there is no other Pvp'er around your rank online so you might wanna Pvp 1 or 2 ranks up. Be careful though: the difference between blue and green, green and red is big so keep that in mind!
Another thing you will spot on the border are mixed armies, with two different soldier classes. For example a cavalry army with some pike units mixed in to prevent lancer armies attacking the cavalry. Even worse are the so-called rainbow armies with all kinds of soldiertypes it's very hard to forsee the outcome of those Pvp's. On the bright side: rainbow armies are generally not as strong as armies with one, two or maybe three different units. It's better to him them than an army that has an advantage over you!

After your Pvp session, make sure to not go offline with an injured army because this will ruin your army for sure. It's always best to keep some spare money or healing turn (duke/knight accounts only) to force heal in case you do a very bad Pvp or you suddenly need to go.

Hopefully this guide helped out a bit on your first Pvp steps. If you have more questions about Pvp, feel free to ask me or other even more experienced Pvp'ers or direct them to your LD and HC. Normally they should help you. On your way to become a real pro-Pvper you will learn to know your army better. If (or rather, when) you lose a Pvp: don't worry, that happens to even the most experienced Pvp'ers. Don't panic if you get dead units. It happens. See you at the border!

Advanced Tactics

Welcome! If you start reading this you should know the Pvp basics. I'm gonna list some things that might help you during your Pvp sessions.

Target List

Not really that hard a suggestion. When you win your Pvp's very easily, just remember the name of the player whom you defeated or put it in a text file. When you see them at the border a next time, you don't have to spy anymore and just hit. You will notice that the good targets will disappear very fast, so for good Pvp'ing speed is required as well as a good army. Some people just spy all targets listed in one country first, keep that list and next time they border they really start Pvp'ing at very fast rate. Some people do have the annoying tendency to rebuild after they got hit bad in some Pvp's so still beware with using this. Re-spying sometimes might be a good plan, if you have time.

Attack Order

Another technique used by top-Pvp'ers is at the end of their Pvp session and there won't be Pvp in quite a while they hit bad targets. Even if they lose and get injuries they still attack. Every injury/kill you inflict in Pvp'ing gets you points and eliminates some more enemies of your country. Try to avoid armies that inflict deaths on your army though, you don't want to be out for 24 hours. Also keep in mind that other people at your rank might have armies that are capable of taking out the other armies and do way more damage to your enemies.

Utilize Terrain

This requires more skill. Not all Pvp'ers stay in main. Some leave the main in order to border an enemy main without MP so they can easily Pvp them without being concerned and getting kicked. This requires you to forsee the enemy main movement and this isn't that easy to do. On the other hand, you might catch them on good terrain for you and you get the chance to Pvp without any other Pvp'ers near. The risk of getting disconnected from your own main and getting kicked eventually is quite big, so that won't be a help for an empty reanimation yard.

Repeat Attacking

This one is really funny. Whenever Pvp protection wears off after 6 ticks you can hit the same target again. In case you inflicted kills on that person the first time your next Pvp will even be better. In case they use high HP units or you injured their hero in the previous Pvp they might be not healed yet after 6 ticks. If they didn't show online to heal up his units the next Pvp will be very good for you.

Heal Turn Prevention

These will only annoy the rankers but won't get you much gain. When you Pvp an offline ranker and inflict injuries to him he will loose his HT that is building and he has to wait 12 ticks again before a new one. This can be very painful for your army to Pvp an uprank army. It is generally only worth your time/money/injuries if your target is very important for the enemy, such as their main holder or leader (often the same person).

Trailing Main

You just stay 1 mp behind your own main when it's getting chased by an enemy and Pvp away. Notice again the risk of getting kicked although less risk since you won't be much behind your own main.

Capital Farming

In case you get left behind or your own main borders an enemy cap. It might be interesting to stick around the capital for a bit. You might be able to do some nice repetitive Pvp'ing against some (mostly) inactive commanders.

Country Selection

After your country is defeated (that can happen as well) you can do a lot of things to get more/better Pvp. Mostly it's the best to pick a country with similar country bonuses as your previous one(s), keeping your army more or less the same. On the other hand you could also pick a country to even out your bonuses and get them all as close to 0. In that case you won't have any real bad terrain left to Pvp on. In case you see a country on the verge of death. You might consider joining it to get some Pvp from main borderings. Countries that are gangbanged will have plenty of Pvp targets as well. Last thing I'm going to tell about country picking is to not pick a country at all! Some Pvp'ers decide to wait 24h before joining a new country in order to get their deaths restored without having to worry about new deaths in Pvp, maindrops or Sf's.

Other Tactics

Rebuilding

Mainly we can determine 2 types of rebuilding.

  1. The rebuilds at general
  2. Rebuilding at Marquess

The first type of rebuilding is that at general rank. You start out with a normal ranking army but you will invest way more in trainer skill on your heroes than usually. Also make sure to give duelist skills on your first hero. When reaching general rank you start to blend in the units you want to rebuild to dismissing your ranking units and buying the new Pvp units in their place and use your trainer points to get your army running again.
Reasons for rebuilding at general can be various. Ranking faster at first you can get an advantage rankwise to your Pvp competitors which will cause you to have less competition. Although most people do this in order to gain a benefit for their country, since generals are needed if you want a HC.
Generally seen this is not the best method to form your army since rebuilding isn't that easy and will require you to be active during the rebuild phase were your army is very vulnerable for Pvp. Keep in mind that rebuilding to arty isn't smart at all. Artillery units will need Ranged Accuracy in order to do damage. Only ways to gain Ranged accuracy is by training or joining Sf's. Better to train artillery armies instead of fast-ranking to general and then rebuild.

Rebuilding at Marquess is only going to happen when the age is long enough so you get enough targets and trainer xp or if you are a very active ranker. You will need tons of trainer xp to do a full rebuild at Marquess. Amount of trainer xp needed varies from 3M till 8M depending on what army you want to change into. Even better is to get enough trainer to re-rebuild to a ranking army in case you get bored with Pvp or get too much deaths on your army so you can save up again for another full rebuild. A key aspect of Marquess Pvp are the heroes. Make sure that you have 1 maxed out hero if you really want to do damage as a Marquess Pvp'er. Best is to have lots of melee attack and defense on your 3 heroes, although it isn't really necessary. Again, keep in mind that when you rebuild to artillery your Racc will get you into trouble. Take into consideration some extra training time to boost Ranged accuracy high enough.

Mixed armies

Building mixed armies can have it advantages. These armies are mostly build to cover up some army's weakness and therefore should be less Pvp'ed when offline. A typical example are the lancer/cavalry armies or infantry/pike armies. They will be less vulnerable against their usual enemies, but won't do that good in Pvp either. Depending on what combination you make you will get different results. It's best to experiment with army mixes if you have some experience building Pvp armies other possible combinations are made with the Pvp infantry types or even some combinations with pezzie armies. However making a bad mix can result in bad Pvp's and that's the last thing you want. If you are not sure if a combination would work ask around a bit.

Credits

Wonderbra
CG_Lucifer
Deepsu
Muffin

People that helped in some kind of way :)
Damanta
Santa
Threesteps
Raziel
Unknownsoldier
Jan
Mav(grammar NAZI!!) No actual jews were harmed while correcting this guide.