Welcome to the Valor Universe!
So you have joined a world, completed the tutorial, validated your email address (whatever that means), and have managed to not die or abandon your world...yet; you are now at the threshold of your new kingdom. It is now time to develop it, defend it, and expand it to its full potential.
This exciting yet daunting journey begins at the City Hall, where you can construct the buildings that will comprise first city.
What to Build First
Whether your play style is to casually develop, amass points, or conquer the world, your building strategy will determine your chances of survival in Valor. It is crucial, especially at early points of the game, to use your resources effectively toward the right buildings.
As a general rule of thumb, manage your construction order according to the time you have available to play the game. If you are going to check Valor a few times within the next few hours, place buildings in the construction queue that will complete during those few hours. If you are about to go to bed, that’s when you want to queue your big 8-16 hour constructions.
Core Resource Buildings: here’s a list of important buildings to upgrade early on:
Lumbermill: essential for building. Try to level up to max asap.
Quarry: like lumbermill, essential for building. Try to level up to max asap.
Ironmine: essential for most troops. Not as essential to upgrade during early game, but definitely put in a few levels.
Warehouse: as resource production goes up via levelling lumbermill, quarry, and ironmine; you will need to upgrade the warehouse to increase your storage capacity of these rapidly increasing resources.
Farm: similar to warehouse, the more you develop, the more food capacity is required to accommodate it.
Without any of the above buildings at a sufficient level, your city is basically a sitting duck. Once you have quite a few levels in each of these 5 buildings, you will have some flexibility in how you develop your city further.
The following lists will help give you a direction for your development (particular for those of you starting on your first city), but are not necessarily applicable to every city in every situation.
Aim for an Academy! Though you may be enticed to start building up your military or upgrade your research, the pinnacle of your building efforts should be to obtain an academy, as this building provides your city the capability of creating scholars, which are your only means of conquering other cities and expanding your empire. It takes days, even weeks, to build up to your first academy, so always keep the following buildings in mind when aiming for this goal:
City Hall: this structure needs to be level 25 before you can access your academy. It is also an essential building for unlocking many other buildings such as barracks, forge, and market. This is one of few buildings, other than the core resource buildings, that should also be upgraded extensively from the very start of the game.
Barracks: this needs to be level 15 before you can access your academy. This building is typically fairly cheap and quick to upgrade to the required level, so do not worry too much about getting to this level, unless you want an increased production rate of your basic troops.
Forge: this needs to be maxed out at level 20 to before you can access your academy and typically takes the longest to upgrade. Bear in mind, this building is often overlooked, as it has very little function outside.
Once these 3 buildings get to the levels required to reach an academy, there isn’t too much benefit to upgrading them further during the early/mid-game.
Defenses at the Ready! Early game should be primarily focused on resource and city development, but there may be instances in the game where you require defense early on. Sometimes you may go weeks into the game without getting attacked by a single player, while other times, your next-door neighbor might be the most aggressive pillager on the block. Aside from having defensive troops stationed in your city, your wall will greatly enhance your city’s defenses and is worth have a few levels put into it early on. It is also a relatively cheap construction compared to most of the other core buildings and can be placed in the queue to fill in spaces between lengthier constructions.
Join a Guild
Networking is key to advancing in Valor, and having a strong guild to support you will ensure your city’s protection, especially during the early development stages of your city.
A guild not only provides physical support via troops and resources, it also provides a source of in-game knowledge sharing, as well as a strong presence that will ward the predators off. There’s safety in numbers, and in Valor it is often your only means of safety.
The best method to searching for guilds is to find one in your area using the map. Private message guild leaders that appear to have space in their guilds. Let them know you are an active player and have a city/cities near their main guild cluster. Often times, you may receive guild invitations from local guilds without any prior contact or context. Feel free to carefully decide which guild is best for you, but be sure to join one quickly, so that your city is not lost while you are in limbo.
If you are ambitious enough to start your own guild or happen to be one of the lead officers of one, quickly find out who your neighboring guilds are and possibly attempt to form alliances or non-aggression pacts with them. Make sure your guild is an active one. Each player in your guild should display a steady growth rate (i.e. more cities and higher city point values) and a fair amount of activity within your guild (i.e. post in guild forums, send support to allied cities, help plan/participate in attacks, etc.).
Farming Resources
One major supplement to your resource income can come from what is popularly known as “farming”. You can “farm” resources by sending troops to attack other cities. Whenever your troops successfully attack a city, they bring back resources from that city. The more troops you have hauling back resources, the larger resource capacity you have available to haul.
Who do I farm? Farming is primarily an efficiency-based tactic, so ideal farming targets include cities that are
- Near your city
- Weaker than your city military-wise
Typically, players will target barbarian cities, as they are
- Abundant in number and resources
- Generally lower in military power than player cities
- Will not retaliate
Sometimes players will farm other players to keep surrounding opposition down. This tactic does run the risk of retaliation, as well as the possibility of greater loss of troops due to higher defenses of player cities.
Which units do I send? Going along with the idea that farming is efficiency-based, you will want to send units best suited to bring back the most resources in the least amount of time. Some viable candidates for early-game farming include the following:
Lancers: lancers are only considered a viable option, because they are so inexpensive to create, so losses due to city defenses will not cost you very much.
Berserkers: high in attack points, berserkers are ideal units for farming in the early game, as all farming is technically attacking.
Knights: being the only attacking unit type boasting both the fastest speed and the greatest haul capacity, the knight is primed for farming, but may take some time to develop.
I was so confused b4 reading this