Warbook Players

Some people may be looking for Warbook players to attack. Here are some you may want to attack to get some gold:

• jean marron
• mei chi
• Ridzy
• menalok
• Seamus Savage
• DeadStars
• Manginga
• WeeIAmAPRO
• Qeeves
• Redion
• Injuni
• nickyyyyyy
• bakla
• Ryncewind The Wizard
• Rochu
• Jigula
• defender of good
• Woopup
• AeRiis
• cesar202
• mongral23
• Perforary
• Torkmaizter
• CowieTheSuperMage
• Biglex
• YML
• Alliannae
• Brandon I
• Jelme
• petroushka
• Souljah5
• Alvin the Amazing
• Europhaestus
• Darklon
• Artemis United
• Meberl
• Seanalair
• Langerhands
• SIMON PARKER
• Sam Campbell
• Miss KittyKat
• Marius the Fish
• 10110101
• Aerlon
• cervantez
• OhhCandy
• suku
• Aquilf
• Zhu Ge Liang
• Salmonella typhimurium
• BigCoffers
• metakat
• perrigans
• Merlin for dummy
• Vegangenius
• OZGUR UGRAS
• grunka lunka

Do you keep losing the war in WarBook?

If you’re like me and have discovered WarBook on Facebook, then its probably too late for you to have a life anymore, to make things easier when attacking your neighbouring Kingdoms I’ve created a spreadsheet for calculating how many troops you might need to win each war.

Essentially, you enter the number of troops and their types and you are given basic calculations regarding the Attack and Defense score given the size and makeup of the two armies. I’ve also included some additional calculations where you can add in the data for the number of Training grounds you have against the number of the defenders Forts to make the calculation more accurate. You can also hazard a guess at their Heros defense level which modifies the scores based on the Hero’s experience.

I’ve tested this against my Kingdom, however, if you want to test this calculation (to ensure its accurate) please enter your army units into the sheet (Attack & Defence sections) along with your kingdom and hero information. If it matches your scores on the Army page, then its working correctly.

Please remember, there’s always a random element in the game so you may not always win with a higher score than your victim has. Download the file below by right clicking and choosing “Save Link As” (firefox) or “Save Target As” (IE).

Warbook Attack Calculations Office 97

Warbook Attack Calculations Office 2007

~source~

Have You Had Your Warbook Fix?

I finally realise that I have it me. So, here goes —

Hi, everyone. My name is Sasha. I’m an addict.

A Warbook addict, that is.

Anyone who’s in Facebook might have heard of this free gaming software called, Warbook. It’s where you can be a General, a Warmonger, a Mage, a Mogul or just like me, a Visionary. Gawd. And I’m not even a gamer, yet I’m now spatting the lingo as if I’m this hotshot Warbook guild master or something. Heh.

But make no mistake, I’m grossly addicted. I am! My daily routine now goes like this:

• boot up the lappytop
• open IE for primary email
• open several firefox browsers (I group my work you see, 1 browser with several tabs per ‘category’)
• check email
• check stats
• check comments
• check warbook and every hour after that

See what I mean? It’s funny how I often tease my brother and my cousin before whenever they talk about Ragnarok (another game) as if the stuff they say are real but here I am having daily conversations with my brother (who I persuaded to open a Warbook account) about defense scores, hourly income, land and just how many kingdoms were attacking us on that day.

Another thing that’s proof of my addiction, I actually have my own alliance and have joined The WarBook Alliance Leaders Communication Centre, which is an exclusive group set up for, er, just that. I actually got a kick out of that name. I reckon they’ll be abbreviating it soon — TWALCC. Heehee.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be playing this game if I’m not having fun. I’m actually challenged by it, plus the fact that it gives me more things in common with my brother.

I know a few people who are Warbook-ers. Particulary the ones who are my Facebook contacts. But, now I’m wondering if any more of you are on it, too. Have you had your Warbook fix today? Or perhaps we might interest you to join in the fun? Let me know! Oh yea, feel free to join my crew while you’re at it.

P.S.
Now, all I have to do is squeeze in all the blogging work I need to do in a day. LOL.

~source~

Warbook Review

Alright, I’ll admit it: I’m a Medieval fantasy nut. Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite movies. My first true love in gaming was Warlords II on Mac OS8. I only owned the castle Lego sets as a kid (take that space and pirate buffs!). And apps like Warbook intrigue on a different level than others.

With that, I set out to see what Warbook provided. I had mixed expectations: There are a lot of other simulated strategy games out there which are going to be hard to top for one, and it is an early entry into the Facebook app world for two.

Initially, I have to admit I was not impressed. The app’s weak points are within the explanation and original presentation of the game. Sure there is a help section, but the user interface was fairly confusing, and after the first few pages I visited, I didn’t know the most important thing: What exactly am I supposed to be doing? It was only after I spent several minutes messing around with the pages and reading through the FAQ did I get a drift of my goal within the game. It is unfortunate because I would bet the app loses several initial installs due to this.

Fortunately, that’s the only negative throughout. Once you get past that, it becomes truly engaging. There are different customizations of your “Hero”. I chose the Visionary, which is defense-orientated. The point is to conquer other kingdoms, which are other user’s accounts. This is achieved through upgrades to your army, buildings, and magical powers. There are lots of different tactics and customizations, and fantasy buffs wouldn’t have it any other way. We love getting from point A to point B a dozen different ways.

This app truly shines with its social architecture. For example, your kingdom gains gold best through daily income generation. If I’m interesting playing further, this forces me to check back again and again to upgrade my current kingdom and hero. Alliances can be made with friends, which I found to add another dynamic to the game, both in strategy and fun. Another example is the whole leader-board system: People who play these kinds of games love to be recognized for their time spent. Just look at World of Warcraft.

Overall, Warbook does a great job of making me come back for more. It’s solidly built, and surprisingly fun. You just need the dedication to learn how it works.

~source~

Browser Based: Planetarion, Hattrick, and Warbook

I went through a short phase in high school where I was obsessed with playing browser-bases strategy games. The most serious of my addiction was a game called Planetarion, a science-fiction strategy game where the player would start with his or her own planet, which was also part of a small galaxy that was filled with other players’ planets. Then, you would build your planet’s facilities and collect resources, all while exploring surrounding space, building orbital defenses, and customizing your own fleet of starships.

It was a very popular game among my friends and me. However, as the story of our lives in high school, the game soon went pay-to-play, leaving us stranded and frustrated. Who in their right mind would pay a monthly fee to play a browser-based game? Seriously. At least when you’re paying monthly for MMOs, you’re paying for pixels, models, and other visual things that seem tangible enough to spend money on.

Once Planetarion was shut down, however, we migrated to and from other browser games, some built around WW2 and others around fantasy. Sadly, we never really found anything quite as exciting as Planetarion.

About a year and a half after Planetarion went pay to play, I stumbled across Hattrick, an online football (soccer) management game that featured no visual gameplay. Instead, everything is factored during a match and then automatically written by the system to look like a press release. You create your team, name it, build your arena, hire a coaching staff, set player formations, trade players, manage your youth squad, and more. There is just a ton of features and options to this game, and, if that wasn’t enough, it does nothing but improve every year.

I’ve been playing Hattrick since 2002, and the team I have now is the team I had then. Hell, my star midfielder that was originally generated for my team back in 2002 is now my head coach! It is necessary to note, however, that Hattrick is unlike a majority of fantasy-based management games on the web because it doesn’t feature real-life players and statistics. All the players are generated by the system and given fictional names.

Since I’ve been playing Hattrick, the desire to really jump back into browser-based games has diminished. I just haven’t found one that I really like and that I won’t have to pay to play. I’m sure as hell not going back to Planetarion after all these years. It would feel so alien to me that I wouldn’t last more than a day before quitting. Check out the Planetarion Wiki!

However, since the creation and evolution of community-oriented websites like MySpace and Facebook, we’re seeing new kinds of browser-based games. One that I’m currently playing is a Facebook application called Warbook. Warbook is a very simple, and I stress the word simple, browser-based strategy game that involves three basic features: building, training armies, and casting spells.

When you first begin, you must name your hero, who can be upgraded as he levels up in the game, and then you must select what type of nation you’re going to have. The different types include General, which has equal attack/defense power; Visionary, which specializes in defense; Warmonger, which specializes in attack (they weren’t too subtle with this one); Mogul, which specializes in trade and has significant economic advantages; and Magician, which specializes in magic.

The resources in the game include gold, which you use to purchase buildings, explore new territory, and train troops; Acres, which you need to explore to build new buildings; and Mana, which you need for your hero to cast spells. You gain gold on an hourly basis and the amount you earn depends on simple mathematics involving the number of mines you have compared to how much your upkeep costs are.

There is a leader board that displays the top players in each category, but other than that, there isn’t really a definite goal or objective. Land is basically infinite because there is no defined space in which the players fight. This means that as long as you have enough gold, you can just keep exploring more and more land to your heart’s content. I told you it was simple.

Of course, Warbook’s simplicity, added to its implementation via Facebook, makes it surprisingly fun. Your Facebook friends, once signed up, are displayed within your Warbook application, allowing you to see their stats and information. If Warbook was a stand-alone online game like Planetarion, its simplicity would be its downfall. However, because it is built into Facebook, it is able to thrive.

~source~

“It’s D-Day - Warbook!”

Greetings From Sir Archibald Barricade, The Warmonger!

I bumped into warbook like a week ago. Make it two weeks then. I got addicted to it. It reminds me of the old time playing Utopia. Basically they’re both quite similar where it’s quite a simple game, your character runs a kingdom that accumulates gold each hour based on the amount of land it has. You can attack other player kingdoms or join an alliance of kingdoms. You gain experience points for every successful attack or defence or spell cast. There are various character classes with different strengths. In short, like playing warcraft in 1-D. Only text!

I don’t have tips to offer because I’m quite new to this game. What I know is, be rich and spend wisely. Don’t build twin towers or send some monkeys to space. It’s simple, to be rich, build more mines. That’s it!

I basically have a few blogger friends playing this game. I tell you it’s fun. I’ve been inviting everyone to play but no response eh .. Maybe they don’t find it appealing. Whatever!

The motive is like I said just now, to be rich and to have lotsa land. It’s either you buy land or you attack and conquer some land. Suit yourself. If you got lotsa money, just buy la. I wished I could!

Everytime you attack, you will gain up some experience and with that your level also build up. They will give you some points for attacking. The highest that I’ve seen in all network is level 51 and the mightiest in my network is, Sir Bernard Chan. You see, that’s why he’s not updating his blog. He’s preoccupied with his marvellous kingdom. I want some of that!

Do not be blinded by the stats. I’m poor because I’ve just upgraded my army and why Ms. Fong is the richest is because she didn’t even bother to sign in to her warbook account!

For those who I’ve invited but haven’t sign up for this game, please do so because with every invitation sent and every account open, I will be having extra cash to build my kingdom. I’m being honest.

~source~

Warbook: Chronicling My Rise to Power

I’ve had a Facebook account for some time now and it’s been pretty good to me so far. I love dicking around with the apps in Facebook, and yeah, my account is kinda cluttered right now due to the 100+ apps I installed on it. I’ve actually been meaning to get rid of an app or two, but I’m having too much fun poking Sasha (I swear, it’s not as dirty as it sounds), defenestrating Steel via Superpoke, drawing penises on Baddie’s profile, and buying beer for everyone. Okay, the beer is virtual, and free, but it’s the thought that counts, right? No? K.

But I digress.

You see, I’ve noticed that some of my friends, namely Adam, Mike, Fritz, Lauren, Pau, Steel, Helga and Bim, have taken a keen interest in this Facebook app called Warbook.

It’s this game where you build yourself a kingdom, hoard gold and land, build an army, and when your army becomes strong enough, you attack other kingdoms and pillage their land and rape their women. But of course, you have to protect your land and defend your women from retaliatory rape.

Of course I find this talk of war and murder and pillaging and rape boring. Okay, not the rape part but let’s not go there. You see, I am a cultured man and I take no interest in destroying the lives of millions of (virtual) subjects for the sake of war glory. What a barbaric. So I refused to partake in this “Warbook” thingamajig, thinking that I’m better off Superpoking all my female friends on Facebook (again, let’s not think dirty, people. Please).

The Beginning

Since my friends do nothing but talk about Warbook strategies all day, I’d get lost in a conversation when they start talking about armies and soldiers and pikemen and berserkers and manna and wizards and moguls and all that. I mean, they could insert a discussion about imaginary pink unicorns while they’re at it and I wouldn’t understand the difference. For all I care, they might as well be having a talk about Mesopotamian history and culture and how it relates to the rise of Adolph Hitler and Chuck Norris. And buttsecks.

So I finally decided to check Warbook out. And since I’m at it, I decided to take things further: I will totally rule Warbook and pwn everyone’s asses.

Choosing Your Hero Type

This is very important. The Hero Type determines what sort of strategy you will come up with and how you will react to different situations. Choose your hero type very carefully.

Here are the different Hero Types (definitions taken from the Warbook Manual):

• Visionary - The visionary is the ultimate defensive hero, able to withstand devastating assaults from the opposition.
• General - The general is a balanced militaristic hero who can either attack or defend with competence.
• Warmonger - The warmonger is a purely offensive hero whose units pack a serious punch when attacking.
• Mogul - The mogul is all about trade and income. Although the mogul’s military might seem weaker, one cannot underestimate the power of money.
• Magician - The magician is a powerful magical hero, who prefers using magic over using brute force.

Since I want to rule Warbook quickly with an iron fist, I choose the Hero type best suited to my goals. I want to pillage lands and rape my enemies’ women as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and I choose to become a Warmonger.

Because I am ruthless and merciless like that.

The Nom de Guerre

The Nom de Guerre, or “name of war”, is also quite important. It is imperative that you choose a pseudonym that strikes fear into the hearts of your enemies. Think about it: if you get attacked by somebody named “Pink Fluffy Bunnies the Googly-Eyed” it’s not really gonna give us much of a shock-and-awe effect, right? Now you see the importance of a really scary name. I was actually thinking of going for a name like “Ade the Noisy”, but then it doesn’t tell much of my ruthlessness to your enemies. It only tells them that they don’t want to sit beside me in a theater.

So I’ve checked my friends names in Warbook, and they have some really awesomific names:

• Gorr the Destroyer (Jayvee)
• the inquisition here we gow (JM)
• Diegong Twalya (Mikey)
• Helga The Weber (Helga)
• pink5 (Riz)
• Marko Severo (Marco, the Site Guy)
• Richard Masterson (Rico)
• Corinthian (Fritz)
• Lolcelot (Steel)
• Colin Pantsworthy (Pau)
• Dragonfang (Bim)
• Laurian (Lauren)
• Mordo the Fat (Adam Mordo)

Okay, I’ll let you pick up your face from the floor because I know that list totally rocked your face off as it did mine.

So after much pondering, I decided to go with the handle I have always used since 2002: DarkSpear. Yeah, it conjures up dark and mystical images of unbeatable flesh-eating undead armies and magical weapons. Imagine: a Warmonger named DarkSpear. Are you shaking in your chair now?

I talk to Lauren about my name choice, expecting her to shake with fear at my name. Instead I got this:

ME: I’ve chosen a handle.
Lauren: Tell me all about it!
ME: It’s… drumroll please… DarkSpear.
Lauren: um.
ME: Well…?
Lauren: um.
ME: You’re not wetting your pants in fear?
Lauren: Um. No.
ME: Do you not feel an urge to retreat just at the very mention of my name?
Lauren: Let me think. No.
ME: Crap, DarkSpear conjures up images of fear in my head!
Lauren: Actually–
ME: What?
Lauren: “DarkSpear” conjures up images of black men with ginormous penises.
ME: Um.
Lauren: But thinking about it… yeah, that’s pretty scary too.
ME: See? I win! I win!
Lauren: No.

Something tells me I should’ve used “Biggus Dickus” instead.

Create Your Kingdom

Now that I’ve got a kickass hero type and a kickass but slightly gay-ish war name, it’s time to create my kingdom. Warbook provides newbies with a two-hour protection from any attack (it’s magical, don’t ask) so that you can build up your kingdom withot any interference from those pesky raiders. Also, it’ll give you time to build your harem. Because harems are important like that.

First, you need to amass lots of land and gold. and that’s quite easy. Just explore, explore, explore, and you have lots of land to do your bidding. Now build mines on that land, you get gold. The more gold you get, the more you can afford exploring for more land. Also, if you have enough gold, it’s time to build your army.

Building Your Army

There are different types of units that you can use for your Warbook-conquering army. These units are: Soldiers, Knights, Pikemen, and the Elites. In battle, the Knights and the Elites can do the most damage to the enemy, but their defensive skills suck. That’s what the Pikemen are for. They offer the best defense, but their fighting skills are made of suck.

How you build your army is totally up to you. I, for one, prefer to stock up on my Elite force (the Warmonger Elites are called Berserkers). However, they can get really expensive. The damned divas.

Now if I could only find a way to infect my soldiers with syphilis. Now that would really pwn my enemies’ asses.

I know that wasn’t not really the best metaphor to use. Go away.

WAR!!11

Your two hours of peace are up. You’ve spent the last two hours obtaining gold, recruiting and training your army. You are ready. Time to attack.

I would advise against attacking blindly anybody who looks like a good target. That’s what the Spy spell is for (yes, we can do magic. It’s all virtual, ya knoes!). We can actually know the size of our enemy’s army and how much gold that opposing kingdom has. It will tell us if we can pwn the opposing army or not. Also, knowing how much gold there is for the taking will tell us if the kingdom is worth the effort.

Join alliances! I know, Warbook domination can only be done by one person, but the combined strength of these like-minded people will make your enemies shake in fear. Imagine us Warmongers banding together. Plus add a few Wizards, and a Mogul to give us money when the supplies run low. We’re unstoppable. Rape will be inevitable.

Conclusion

So now I’m ready to rule Warbook with an iron fist and nobody can stop me. And I now launch my first foray into war:

Um.

I think my world domination plans need a little more work.

And so, Ade “DarkSpear” Magnaye, Level 10 Warmonger of Codex Zabulon has spoken. Hear his words!

~source~

Warbook Strategy Guide

DISCLAIMER: I am not that great at Warbook. I played “properly” for about three weeks, and although I still play, I no longer devote anything approaching the time I used to. In fact, I was asked once by an Ally why my kingdom was doing so poorly compared to theirs. I explained to them that I much more enjoyed writing strategy guides than actually playing Warbook. I have played a Magician to level 11 and a Visionary to level 8; I am the leader of a tiny Alliance of friends – hopefully this will give you some idea of my experience. This guide is a collection my observations, experiences, guesses about how Warbook works, and information given to me by my wonderful friends.

DISCLAIMATIVE DISCLAIMER: The following guide is considered ADVICE ONLY. I accept no responsibility for you relying - or not relying - on the advice contained herein. In fact, I don’t know if “disclaimative” is even a word: I accept no responsibility for it not being one.

VERSION 2: This is the first complete revision of this guide. I’d been toying with the idea of overhauling the guide and giving it a really good tidy up, but I couldn’t find the motivation. Recently, a friend of mine pointed out that there were no numbers in my guide (that’s because I don’t like them, so there), and proceeded to provide me a large proportion of the numbers I was missing. Additionally, a number of things have changed or been added since the original version. So, tl; dr: Here’s the latest version of my Warbook guide.

THANKS TO: I would like to that the people who contributed to this strategy guide; however, in the interests of protecting their Warbook Hero identities, I will not refer to them by name. First of all, thank you to Lev, who not only went to all the trouble of recording various numbers involved in playing the game, but also very generously shared them with me. He also shared with me some of his own tips for success at Warbook, and encouraged me to write Version 2 (although he didn’t necessarily know that I was intending to almost completely re-write the whole thing). I also want to thank Jeej, whom I learnt many things from. It was Jeej’s enthusiasm for the game that kept me playing even after the initial novelty wore off. Jeej also gave me lots of pointers in the form of sharing observations just to be conversational. Thanks also to Lance Manthrob, who provided me with endless amusement over his name; but who also, as the newest member of my little Alliance, asked me plenty of questions that gave me ideas for things to put in this guide. Finally, thanks to Dark for some last minute research notes that rounded out this guide.

COMMENTS? SUBMISSIONS? If you have anything that you think should be in this guide, please make use of the comments box below to contact me.

What is Warbook?

In one very long hyphenated word? Warbook is a text-based-massively-multiplayer-online-real-time-strategy-facebook-application game (or TB-MMO-RTS-FA game for short perhaps?). It is almost entirely text based - your lands, possessions, and armies are represented by numbers and icons. It is not an RPG, but it can certainly act as a platform for role-playing if you enjoy that, and know people who do as well. I don’t recommend that you try RP’ing with strangers – you’ll look like a loon and people will be more likely to do the opposite of what you’re saying, just to be pricks.

1. HEROES

Your first step is picking a hero. This will be your representation in the Warbook universe and will dictate how successful certain strategies will be, so choose carefully.

1.1 Generals: The most balanced class in Warbook. Generals lose less elites when fighting; however, it is more expensive for them to both explore and build. At a guess, this would slow down the expansion of your kingdom, encouraging you to build large armies in comparison to the amount of land you have. The lowered elite casualties, and the fact that a General’s Elites have better stats, means that these kingdoms tend to be elite-heavy, with few or no pikemen or knights. If you’re playing a General, you should probably beware of recruiting too many soldiers too quickly, or you will not earn any income. It should also be noted that Generals have a low starting mana, and cannot cast alchemy.

Starting Stats: 3 Atk | 3 Def | 0 SP (spell power) | 10 Mana
Effects: -50% Elite casualties | +10% building and exploration costs
Elite Choice: Elite | 5 Atk | 5 Def | 1000gp each

1.2 Mogul: The main ability of the Mogul is that to make money. They are allowed to have more trade agreements than any other hero type, they earn more from their trade agreements, and it costs them less money to build their kingdom. The major advantage is that you can expand your kingdom and build your army faster than anyone else in the game; however, you will likely find yourself easy pickings to higher-level heroes unless you also know how to level quickly. My recommendation is that the Mogul is a good choice for experienced Warbook’ers who want to level quickly; or as support characters for Alliances.

Starting Stats: 1 Atk | 2 Def | 1 SP | 20 Mana
Effects: -10% building costs | 5 trade agreements | double bonus from trade agreements
Elite Choice: Legionnaire |3 Atk | 5 Def | 700gp each

1.3 Magicians: The spell casters of the Warbook world. They only truly come into their own at high levels, when they begin to be able to cast a large number of mana-intensive spells. Land grab and earthquake are devastating spells and make excellent retaliations. However, until such time as you can build up a good mana pool, you need to be a skilled strategist to build your kingdom, reinforce your army, and level your hero. They are a demanding hero to play, but (hopefully) the rewards are well worth it. Get into a good Alliance early on, and you’re laughing.

Starting stats: 1 Atk | 0 Def | 4 SP | 40 Mana
Effects: Double mana regeneration | +25% spell resist
Elite Choice: Wizard | 5 Atk | 3 Def | 700gp

1.4 Visionary: As the name does not suggest, Visionaries are the defensive masters of Warbook. They lose fewer troops when defending, and it costs them less money to explore free land. This means that they can make large kingdoms quickly, and their armies will bounce back easily from attack. Visionaries with a large defensive stat make excellent choices for slow players, or people who do not play very often.

Starting Stats: 0 Atk | 5 Def | 1 SP | 20 Mana
Effects: -25% casualties when defending | -25% exploration costs
Elite Choice: Defenders | 2 Atk | 8 Def | 700gp each

1.5 Warmonger: The Warmongers are truly built for war. They pay a meagre 50% to recruit troops and their elites have the highest attack stat of any troop type in the game. Their drawback is that there is a greater “random element” in their battles – this exhibits itself as “divine intervention” in battles; see 4.1 How Combat is Resolved for more information. Warmongers can quickly build massive armies for their kingdom size, even larger than generals. They are aimed at following a very aggressive strategy, and are well suited to confident players who know how and want to expand quickly. Build a lot of mines and forts right from the word go, and your kingdom will be nigh on unstoppable.

Starting Stats: 5 Atk | 0 Def | 1 SP | 20 Mana
Effects: -50% recruitment costs | “Divine Intervention”
Elite Choice: Berserkers | 8 Atk | 2 Def | 800gp each

1.6 Statistics: Each hero has four statistics that influence the game.

Attack: A hero’s atk stat increases the force with which their troops can assault another kingdom.
Defense: A hero’s def stat increases your army’s ability to repel invaders.
Spell Power: Increases the effectiveness of your spells and increases the chance that you will overcome spell resistance.
Mana: Used to cast spells.

2. YOUR KINGDOM

Your kingdom consists of acreage on which you can build enhancements to support your kingdom. At the top of every screen, look for the small castle icon: this is the number of acres you currently own.
2.1 Building: While unimproved land will earn you a small amount of income every hour, the value in land is in what you can build on it.

Mines: The main source of income for kingdoms. Each mine you build will increase your kingdom’s hourly earnings.
Forts: Defensive emplacments to increase your army’s Defense stat. This bonus to your defense maxes out when 30% of your kingdom is forts. For this reason, it is only worthwhile to build approximately one-third of your kingdom as forts - that way you get the maximum benefit of your forts and still maintain your bonus if you fall under attack and lose a percentage of those forts.
Training Grounds: Increase your army’s Attack stat. Presumably, this works similarly to forts, with the same maximum.
Barracks: Reduces the recruitment cost of all troops. Barracks are essential to Warmongers, who can buy their troops for dirt-cheap already. If you choose to buy your Soldiers from a Warmonger Soldier Farm, you can spend minimal amounts on Barracks.
Amplifiers: Increase the effect of spells in the same manner as Spell Power.
Barriers: Increase your spell resistance, making it harder to cast spells against your kingdom.

2.2 Expanding Your Kingdom: Of the ways to expand your kingdom, the most common is to take it by force from another hero. Unless your opponent has nothing for you to steal, every time you attack/invade you will steal some of their land.

The second most common way is by exploring. Exploring costs money, and it is worked out at a percentage of your current kingdom size. This means that the larger your kingdom gets, the more expensive it is to continue exploring. This makes exploring fairly prohibitive at high levels.

The final way to obtain land is through spells. There are two spells: boundary shift and land grab. See 6. MAGIC for more on these spells.

3. YOUR ARMY

Remember that when you are “purchasing” Knight/Pikemen/elites that you are only upgrading existing soldiers; your army will not grow in size. This means that there is a hidden cost to purchasing these types because you will likely need or want to replace the rank and file troops that have now moved onto bigger and better things.
3.1 Basic Troops: Soldiers, Knights, and Pikemen are available to all Hero types. Their stats (attack, defense, recruitment cost, and upkeep) are listed below.

Soldier: 1 Atk | 1 Def | 100gp | 1gph (gold per hour)
Knight: 3 Atk | 1 Def | 300gp | 2gph
Pikeman: 1 Atk | 3 Def | 300gp | 2gph

3.2 Elite Troops: Elite troops are Hero-specific. Their stats are listed below.

Elite: 5 Atk | 5 Def | 1000gp | 3gph
Legionnaire: 3 Atk | 5 Def | 700gp | 3gph
Wizard: 5 Atk | 3 Def | 700gp | 3gph
Defenders: 2 Atk | 8 Def | 700gp | 3gph
Berserkers: 8 Atk | 2 Def | 800gp | 3gph

3.3 Value for Money: When purchasing troops, consider what you want them to do and how much it is going to cost your kingdom. For the most part, elite troops will fill the role of either Knights or Pikemen far more effectively at minimal additional cost in terms of recruiting and upkeep. Do not fall into the trap, however, of purchasing Wizards in place of Pikemen or Legionnaires instead of Knights. Despite the fact that they have the same def/atk stat as these lesser troops, the increased recruitment and upkeep is certainly not worth it. In the case of Defenders and Berserkers, save money wherever you can; do not purchase Pikemen (Visionaries) or Knights (Warmongers), but instead ensure that you have plenty of Soldiers as ablative armor instead. Finally, as a General, each Elite has the stats of a Knight and a Pikeman put together for less upkeep and the benefit of halved casualties. However, each of these Elites will cost more than that Knight and Pikeman put together. Aim to have an army strong on Soldiers and Elites, but be prepared to start with less troop choices.

4. ATTACKING and DEFENDING

The name of the game is Warbook, sooner or later you are going to find yourself in combat, be it on the giving or the receiving end.

4.1 How Combat is Resolved: Not having done much research into this, I can only give you a rough idea of the process of combat resolution. Combat is a function of the attackers attack stat versus the defenders defense stat.

Sum of atk of all attackers troops
+ Hero’s atk bonus
+ Training Ground bonus

- vs -

Sum of def of defenders army
+ Hero’s def bonus
+ Fort bonus

While normal combat may be as simple as the spoils goes to whoever of the two gets the highest number after these have been added up, Warmongers have an added random element in all battles. This means that instead of the normal results for a battle, you will instead see a message saying that due to Divine Intervention, against all odds, you have the won the battle.

4.2 Picking a Target: Unless you’re a Visionary with more forts than you can poke a stick at and enough pikemen to repopulate earth after the apocalypse, you are going to be doing a certain amount of attacking. At the start of your Warbook day, you should bolster your army and rebuild your lands after the night’s attacks. Unless you’re a Magician with a large amount of mana, don’t go overboard, you’ll need to save some money for later.

When looking for kingdoms to fight, use the search function to find kingdoms that are slightly larger than one third* your size. The search system will find the 15 kingdoms closest to your search parameters, starting with the lower number you entered. There is a bug in the system that if you search for a number ending in zero, the majority of the kingdoms in your search results will have considerably less acres than it says in the results list. Always search for numbers ending in 1-9.

*When attacking/spying on other kingdoms, a kingdom that is too large or too small will generate an error saying you can’t attack a kingdom either more then three times your size, or less than a third. However, at lower levels I have noticed that the error is twice/half instead. Considering reports on the forums of very high levels attacking people a mere quarter of their own acreage, it seems likely that the “range” of kingdoms that you can target increases with your level.

Try to avoid, if you can, attacking members of an alliance. They are easy to spot, the abbreviated name of the alliance appears in white nest to the hero’s name. It is possible to cough up that million gold you need to form the alliance on your own, but do you really want to take the risk that the person you just attacked is going to sic the rest of their alliance on you not just now, but for the next three weeks?

Consider your opponent’s level. A level 1 Warmonger might be easy to beat when you’re level 10, but you won’t get any experience. On the other hand, beating a level 10 when you’re level 1 is worth a lot more experience than Heroes your own level, the chances of you actually succeeding are remote.

Additionally, the Hero type you are facing is an important consideration. Visionaries start with a higher def stat than other Heroes, combined with the massive def on their elites it is generally safe to assume that they will have a higher defense than other Hero types. I’ve heard Warmongers complain that they are frequently the target of attacks, which surprises me. Between Divine Intervention and the sheer force with which they can retaliate (cheap troops + high atk stat on their Hero), to me, makes them less-than-ideal targets of aggression.

Despite the threat of magical retaliation, I find Magicians are the easiest targets. They have the second-lowest defense of the Hero types, and at lower-levels do not have the mana for spell-intensive responses. Beware, however, the Magicians with very high atk ratings who come round and pound you the old fashioned way instead. Generals and Moguls have moderate def ratings on thier elite troops, and are suitable choices if they do not have a high def stat and/or lots of forts.

4.3 Sending in the Troops: Pick fights that you can win without committing too many resources. Visionaries will cost you a lot of troops to overpower their elites and the hero’s defensive bonus. This is where Magicians really come into their own, with their mana pool they can afford to spy repeatedly on opponents. This is invaluable when deciding who to fight and how many troops to send in.

There’s no point in trying to face someone with 12,000 elites if you only have 5,000. And sending 10,000 Knights into battle against someone who actually only had a combined 5,000 troops is a complete waste. Remember that your casualties are based on a percentage of troops your send to the front - don’t send more than you need.

You should also take your opponents level into account. You get more experience for attacking someone who is a higher level than you, however they have the potential to be much harder to beat as they can have far better defense bonus. Remember that a higher level Visionary will have more defense than you have wenches in your kingdom, best to look for another target.

For people who don’t want to think about it too long: Roughly, you can send in Soldiers for Soldiers, Knights for Knights and Pikemen, and elites for elites, rounding up to the nearest five hundred or nearest thousand. For example, a kingdom with 1300 Soldiers, 2400 Knights, 2600 Pikemen, and 5300 elites can theoretically be overcome using 2000 Soldiers, 3-4000 Knights, and 5500 elites. It’s not a perfect system, but it makes for fast attacking.

A much better system for people who like to do the math: Using the values supplied in 3. YOUR ARMY, convert your opponent’s troops into a defense value, and deploy your troops to exceed that number. For example, 1300 Soldiers equals 1300 def, plus 2400 Knights equals 2400 def, 2600 Pikemen equals 7800 def, and the elites could be worth anywhere from 10600 to 42400 def.

4.3 On the Defensive: Assuming that you have the maximum 30% Forts, then the greatest variable in how well your kingdom can defend itself is in your defense ratio. To calculate your ratio, check your kingdom’s Defense score the Army page and divide that number by the number of acres in your kingdom. Depending on your preferred approach, defense ratios can range anywhere from 10:1 up to 50:1.

4.3 Sacking and Reduced Gains: After you attack a kingdom, you are returned to the “diplomacy” screen, allowing you to act again against that Hero. I previously advised against sacking kingdoms, however I’ve recently found out that you do now receive experience for each attack, so I’ve had to have a re-think on this strategy. Simply put, you can choose between reduced gains coupled with reduced losses, or taking the time to pick fresh targets to gain larger rewards at higher risk.

5. COMMUNICATION

The available communication between Warbook players is very limited. Through the “diplomacy” screen, you can send a message to another player, however messages will be truncated if there are too many characters. Additionally, you cannot use most forms of punctuation in the text boxes. All messages and notifications appear in the green information box at the top of the home screen. They all include a blue link to the player that sent or triggered them.

5.1 Searching: The Warbook interface does not include wildcard searches, so be sure that you have copied down important names exactly.

6. MAGIC

Magic is an essential part of Warbook even for non-Magicians.

6.1 Self-Spells: Of all the spells available to Heroes, two are cast on the Hero himself: alchemy and boundary shift. Alchemy produces gold in proportion to your kingdom’s income. Spell power increases the affect of alchemy by increasing the amount of money you will magic into existence. The base mana cost of alchemy is 20 mana, meaning that most kingdoms can cast it once one at a full mana pool. However, the cost to cast alchemy increases with the amount of mana you have.

. Mana pool | Cost to cast
30 | 20
80 | 24
100 | 30 .
110 | 33 .

Boundary shift is cast on your own kingdom and magically adds acres to your kingdom. Each cast of 60 mana increases the size of your kingdom by approximately 0.1-0.2%. This is one of the cheapest ways of acquiring land at high levels if you have the mana.

6.2 Scouting Spells: There are two spells used for scouting out other Heroes: spy and survey. Both cost a mere 2 mana each. Spying allows you to see how many of each troop choice a Hero has, and how much gold there is in their treasury. Survey lists the number of each type of improvement a Hero has built on their land.

At the very least, spy is an indispensable spell in that it allows you to choose your battles a little more carefully. While you can’t account for whatever stat bonuses they may have given their heroes, with the aid of spying you can be smart about how many soldiers you should send in to the fight. Knowing how many troops you face, you can tailor your attacking force to reduce costs, and send in the minimum number of troops you think you’ll need to break his defenses. Survey, while still useful, is not quite as essential to successful attacks.

6.3 Offensive Spells: There are three spells available to all Heroes for offensive casting: magic vortex, fireball, and earthquake. At 20 mana, magic vortex is possibly the most useless spell in Warbook. It drains half of a target Hero’s mana - a pointless exercise against the majority of non-Magicians, and Magicians regenerate their mana fast enough, and have a large enough mana pool that this spell isn’t very effective. Fireball (30 mana) destroys a percentage of a target hero’s troops, this seems to be approximately as effective as sending your own troops in, except that you suffer no casualties. However, you do not gain any land or gold either, only experience. Earthquake (40 mana) is basically the same as a fireball except that you destroy structures instead of troops. Again, you gain no land or gold, only experience, and you suffer no casualties.

6.4 Land Grab: This spell is only available to Magicians, and steals land out from other heroes. Land grab is an expensive spell at 100 mana, but in addition to proving a cheap way of increasing the size of your kingdom, it is an excellent retaliation spell. You steal from your opponent around 0.1-0.2% of their land, of which you add to your kingdom a random allotment of mines, forts, unimproved land, etc.

6.5 Mana: Each hour, a hero will regenerate 10% of their mana pool, with a minimum of 5. Magicians have double mana regeneration, regenerating 20% per hour with a minimum of 10. For most Heroes, 30 mana is ideal, this allows you to cast alchemy and up to five spies for each full recovery of your mana pool. Some players recommend increasing your mana pool to 80, at which point alchemy costs 24 mana to cast, but with a regeneration rate of eight points per hour you can cast alchemy every three hours (instead of four hours at a mana pool of 30).

7. ALLIES

The make allies screen in Warbook is designed to give you easy access to friends who play, and allow you to sign up to Alliances.

7.1 Alliances: Being part of an Alliance is always a good idea. It costs 1 million gold to form an Alliance, so you may want to pass the “hat” around your friends for contributions first, or charge a joining fee.

Leadership of an Alliance cannot be transferred, so if your leader leaves the Alliance, or destroys their kingdom to start again, the Alliance will vanish and you’ll have to poney up another million to reform. The Alliance leader is the only person who can see the member listing of an Alliance, so it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if there a people out there only finding out about new Alliance members because they see their own tag while hunting for kingdoms to invade.

The major benefit of Alliances is that it can help discourage people from attacking your kingdom - just the threat of potential allies waiting to rain havoc down upon their kingdom should they dare be so bold will help keep your attackers away (unless they’re part of an Alliance themselves, of course).

In theory, an Alliance offers you the benefit of strategic communication. However, the alliance interface does not really add much to the Warbook experience at the moment. There is a chat window at the bottom of the Alliance screen, allowing all Alliance members to send messages to all other members simultaneously, but to see any communication regarding the Alliance, you will have to go through several screens to reach the Alliance page.

Part of being in an Alliance is the Counter Policy. This is the dictate of the alliance leader regarding what constitutes an offence against your alliance, and what the expected response is to be. This can range anywhere from a single retaliation attack from a suitable Alliance member to the no aggro reset counter policy that was used by my own Alliance.

The no aggro reset counter policy was inspired by a line from the hilarious Onyxia does Wipe Club mp3 and flash animation (click here to see or download the animation).Basically, it assumes that when opponents attack allied kingdoms, they are generating aggro. If they don’t know how to manage their aggro, then there is no aggro reset (and the Alliance will perpetrate certain atrocities against them).

7.2 Aid: It is possible to send aid to other kingdoms in the form of Soldiers and gold. Every time you do so, you are taxed a minimum of 10%. No one know where this gold and Soldiers go, but beware that depending on the size difference between yourself and the receiving kingdom, you may end up losing 40% or more.

8. STRATEGIES

Below is a collection of observations I have made on how to build a solid kingdom.

8.1 The Early Levels: For your first few levels, try to split your money three ways over soldiers, forts, and mines. It is important in your first few levels to keep your kingdom as impenetrable as possible, while earning as much money as you can. It takes very little experience to level up the first few times, so let other people hand that experience to you by smashing themselves on your walls while you stay safe at home.

8.2 Know Your Strengths: And play to them. If you are a Visionary, this defense tactic will get you through most of the game, though not quickly. Visionaries should build armies heavy on Defenders with a full 30% complement of Forts and a few Barriers. Warmongers should build strong Soldier and Berserker armies; you should be able to rely on the strength of your troops and the ability to quickly and cheaply reinforce to retaliate against people who attack you. Generals should choose whether they want to play a defensive or offence game and follow either the Warmonger or Visionary strategy.

A Mogul’s elite troops are slightly biased towards defensive stats, so you would be best off with a Visionary-style strategy with these heroes, using your superior money-making skills to heavily reinforce your kingdom with forts and elites. A Magician’s elites are stronger attackers than they are defenders, however, at high levels your awesome magical abilities just might make you a lot of enemies, so building the basis of a strong defense now seems like a good idea.

8.3 At Higher Levels: Your strategy shouldn’t change much at higher levels - if what you’re doing is working for you there’s no need to change it. However, you will want to start building Barriers to defend you from high level Magicians.

The trouble with magic is that all of the forts and troops in the world won’t protect you when the fireballs come hailing down. Forts and pikemen are the key to covering your ass at low levels (when even Magicians have to level up the “dirty” way), and they are indispensable against invading forces. However, when the Magicians start getting to the point where they can cast multiple fireballs or earthquakes, then you start becoming vulnerable to magical attack. Barriers will help defend your kingdom from Magicians by blocking their attacks. From about level 6 or 7 upwards, make sure that you spend at least a little money on barriers so that by the time heavy magic attacks start coming around, you’re prepared.

8.4 Levelling Fast: I’m probably the last person you should ask for advice on how to level quickly in Warbook. However, I have read some bits and pieces researched by Dark.

The “More Money Than You Know What to do With” Fast Track Strategy: Log into your kingdom every few hours and cast alchemy every time is available. Keep doing this until your kingdom has 10 million + gold. Buy around 300000 Soldiers from your nearest Soldier Farm (and try not to look at how far in the negative your income has gone). Begin attacking with wild abandon until you have sent roughly half of those Soldiers to their deaths.

The “Impenetrable Fortress of Doooooom” Strategy: Admittedly, this isn’t a fast strategy, but it’s nice to know that I’m not the only person who thinks that 35% Forts, nothing but Defenders, and a “come and get me” attitude is one of the best ways to play a Visionary. It is possible to get your defense ratio up to around 50 : 1 using this tactic. Just don’t forget how long it will take you to level this way.

9. EARNING EXPERIENCE and LEVELLING UP

There are three ways to earn experience: conquering enemy lands, repelling invaders, and casting certain spells (fireball and earthquake if memory serves). Most of the time you will earn a single experience point; however successfully invading a kingdom larger than you, or repelling the attack of a kingdom larger than you is worth proportionately more xp.

When your hero levels up, you will get a message in your green communication box to let you know. You get 2 stat increases each level, click over to your hero’s page to spend them. How you spend these points will depend on what sort of strategy you are following.

For non-spell casters, choose whether you want to be aggressive or defensive. If you want to play aggressively, atk will be your primary stat and def will be your secondary stat; and vice-versa for defensive players. The guide below is flexible enough to cover almost all play-styles, while ensuring that none of your stats become too gimped. However, if you are a General, you will want to spend both stat points on mana to be able to cast alchemy at second level before trying the following outline.

2nd & 3rd Level » primary stat + mana
4th & 5th Level » primary stat + secondary stat

6th Level » primary stat + spell power

7th Level » 2 x primary stat
8th Level » primary stat + secondary stat
9th Level » primary stat + mana or spell power or secondary stat

then repeat 7-9

If you’re a Magician, or you simply want to follow a magic-heavy attack plan, then your focus will be a little different. Mana will be your primary stat, and your secondary stat will be shared between spell power and either atk or def (Magicians are skewed towards atk already, so choose if you want to pump that up or if you want to ramp up your defense instead).

10. EARNING MONEY

There are several ways to earn money in Warbook, some more successful than others. When you reach 10,000,000 gold pieces in your treasury, you will no longer be able to see the exact amount of gold you have. People spying on your kingdom, however, will still be able to see the exact amount.

10.1 Alchemy: The fastest way to make money is by casting alchemy. Alchemy is a good way of making fast money when you want to reinforce yourself quickly, or as a “bank” to draw on when you’re putting your kingdom to bed (see below) if you drained your kingdoms resources to ensure that you weren’t vulnerable to attack while busy invading other kingdoms.

10.2 Mines: This is the most basic form of earning your income. This is the only way to ensure that your kingdom is earning enough money every hour to pay for your troops.

10.3 Invading: Probably the second most common way to earn money is by pillaging your enemies coffers when you invade. Just as with land, you will gain a proportion of your opponents money every time you attack another kingdom.

10.4 Trade Agreements: Your Hero can manage trade agreements with up to three other Heroes simultaneously, unless you are a Mogul, in which case you can have 5. For every trade agreement in place, your kingdom will earn an extra 5% of their hourly income; again except for Moguls, who earn 10%. You should always have 3/5 trade agreements at all times, no one can argue with free money.

10.5 Soldier Whoring: This tactic works especially well for Warmongers as they can produce Soldiers very cheaply. It is possible to sell your kingdom’s Soldiers to other Heroes for up to 30 gold each.

10.6 Farm Accounts: The final way to make money is by having farm accounts. I’m not going to pass judgement on whether doing this is right or wrong, your morals - or lack thereof - aren’t my problem. By registering secondary email addresses on facebook, you can invite yourself to play Warbook and control multiple kingdoms at once. This way, you can send money from your farm accounts to your main account, making them more powerful than non-farming Heroes.

The biggest restriction on this is that you cannot send any aid to or from a kingdom that is smaller than 3000 acres, or has been in play for less than 2 hours. You also have to protect these kingdoms. Exploring up to 3000 acres and then funnelling 100% of your money into another kingdom is the fastest way to find yourself under repeated attack. It is vital that a farm account be fully self-sufficient before attempting to fund another account.

11. BEGINNING AGAIN

So, you’ve totally stuffed up your hero and want to try again? Fortunately, Warbook allows you to do exactly that. At the very bottom of the main page, click the Kingdom Options link and destroy your kingdom. However, before you do, find a friend you trust and ask for their help. Send your friend all of your gold and Soldiers and have them hold it for you while you destroy your kingdom and start again. Remember that you will lose 10-40% in “tax” each way, so make sure that the amount of gold you have is worthwhile transferring first.

However, as Jeej learnt the hard way, do not convert your excess gold to Soldiers. Try to keep the gold : Soldiers ratio as high as possible. Soldiers cost upkeep, and a 1,000 acre kingdom with 70,000 Soldiers* simply cannot afford to stay alive. Nothing bad will happen if you go into negative income, assuming that you don’t count having a negative income as a bad thing. However, it can be very hard to recover from losing income every hour.

*Not actual figures, but pretty damn close.

12. PUTTING YOUR KINGDOM TO BED

When you’re done for the “day” - i.e. before you log out of Warbook - you should put your kingdom to bed. The idea behind this is to leave your kingdom in a secure state

First of all, if you saved your mana for alchemy, you should cast that. Spend some money replenishing troops that have been lost from attacking. It’s nice to leave your troops on a round number - I did this just because I like round numbers - but Jeej pointed out to me that it is really obvious what has been happening to your kingdom while you where gone if the number had some nice fat zeroes at the end.

Expand your kingdom, and build on your unimproved land. Lev shared the following trick with me: Because it is near-impossible to search for an acreage ending in zero, try to ensure that your kingdom has a round number of acres at all times.

Spend your mana. Mana regenerates very quickly (especially if you you’re a Magician), and any time that your mana is full, you are essentially “losing” free mana. Using it whenever it is available means you will get the most value out of your mana.

I also like to drain my kingdom’s coffers each day. Lev doesn’t agree with me on this point, citing the fact that generally he doesn’t lose more than about an hour’s gold each day to attackers. However, this strategy works for me because: I can barely keep my kingdom in the black anyway. Between my general incompetence, and my favouritism of this strategy, I tend to run my kingdom on a very low income. I usually have as many troops as I can afford for what my kingdom earns.

At the very least, what I mean by this strategy (are you listening Lev?) is that whatever you do, don’t just leave large amounts of income lying about. At the height of my Alliance’s no aggro reset phase, we perpetrated what could only be described as a war crime against a player who attacked my kingdom three times over two days. Over the course of a week, we all took turns sacking the kingdom, sometimes up to six or eight times a day.

The player in question was not actually present for the majority of this, and their kingdom had built up a small repository of gold, only about 2-3 million at a time. However, by the time a kingdom reaches the point that it is no longer possible to capture resources you will still strip roughly 0.1% of their wealth every attack. This might not seem like much, but if you leave a couple of million lying around, remember that you are losing thousands of gold every time someone invades.

~source~

The Totally Useless Guide to Warbook

If you don’t know what WarBook is, you probably have a job that’s cooler than mine. WarBook is what the members of the desk-chained working class are busy with for the nine out of ten hours they spend at the office. It’s a text-based RPG application for Facebook where you build your own kingdom, train an army, and amass more land by attacking other kingdoms, burning their villages, pillaging their farms, and raping their wimmin on church altars.

Before WarBook came into my life, I was a naive college graduate whose “burgis twang” became an endless source of amusement to her coworkers. Genetics and real world conditions make me too nice to retaliate at those who choose to make me the butt of their jokes. If I were to be drafted into the army and placed smack dab in the middle of a battle, I’d be the fodder placed at the front of the line. If I were a civilian during times of war, I’d be the farm girl who dies in the burning barn because I fell asleep instead of watching out for enemy soldiers who want to get their gunpowder-covered hands inside my cornflower-blue dirndl. Thanks to WarBook, no longer will I be the helpless maiden with naught but a metal pail to defend herself with! No longer will I be the nearsighted new recruit whose shoulder will break at the rifle’s recoil! I am a lvl 11 Warlord of a kingdom seventeen thousand acres wide, patrolled and defended with an army 137k+ strong. AND I WILL PWN UR SOULZ.

I’m probably not the best person to blog about WarBook since I know next to nothing about strategy. Over coffee, Pete (who, in the world of WarBook, is Mordo the Fat, Diplomat for the Premiere Alliance and self-proclaimed patron of Codex Zabulon) enchanted me with stories of alliance warfare and tried, bless his soul, to educate me on the math governing the right number of soldiers, knights, pikemen, and elites to take to battle with me. The whole lecture, of course, flew way over my head the way any conversation that involves numbers does. Perhaps I should have taken down notes. I am currently having difficulty breaching the defenses of enemy kingdoms around my size, but every Warlord has their moments of defeat.

You might be wondering how an utter ditz everywhere like such as myself could have possibly amassed so much land and so many troops in the span of three weeks. Well, my faithful readers and loyal subjects, hang on to your mouses for I shall reveal to you my secrets to Warbook success.

The key to victory is friendship. You think I climbed all the way to the top through my own hard work and effort? Hell no! In the first place, wimmin only play games like RPGs to get guys to like them. It makes us look like we’re smart and into elves and other ghei shit guys wank off to at night when in truth, the only thing girls know about RPGs is that we want to marry Legolas someday. That being said, if you are a girl, becoming a Warbook success story such as myself is a piece of cake. It doesn’t matter if you choose to be a Wizard, General, Warlord, Visionary, or Mogul. As long as you have a vajayjay attached to your crotch, you’re a sure win!

The first thing you do upon adding the Warbook application to your already cluttered Facebook page is to invite your fellow Facebook friends to join the war. The invitation process requires serious thought, because you’ll want to invite the friends who spend 20 hours in front of the Internet each day. The type of friends who won’t be able to resist a juicy invitation to a simple text-based RPG on a social networking site. This alone will earn you 100,000 gold for every friend who accepts your invitation. See how easy you have it already?

In about a day, the friends you invited should be about ten levels higher than you. This will really come in handy when your fledgling kingdom gets attacked by players stronger than yourself - which will happen a lot while you’re still a n00b. Don’t be stupid and exact vengeance on these bastards yourself; you don’t want your troops to die needlessly! All you have to do is to give the names of your attackers to your stronger friends, and they’ll retaliate in your name.

At this point, one of your friends should already have the one million pieces of gold required to start an alliance. An alliance makes the whole telling-your-friends-about-your-attackers process easier and the retaliation process more convenient for them. Make sure that the friend who initiates the alliance christens your coalition with a sinister sounding name. A name that conjures up images of villages reduced to ashes, its former occupants impaled through their anuses by the gates of the once-majestic kingdom. A name that will strike fear in the hearts of men and make them lose control of their bladders. Let me show you an example. The “We Love Dinuguan Fan Club”, as suggested by Pau, is NOT an alliance you’d like to be part of. A name such as that brings to mind a group of potbellied, middle-aged fathers feasting on pig’s blood and Beer na Beer on rickety wooden benches at the sari-sari store in the kanto. Which is pretty much how the Man Blog editors spend their weekends, but we don’t want people in Warbook to know that, do we? Luckily, Fritz (Corinthian in the world of WarBook) came up with the million gold before Pau could, and our alliance was hereafter to dubbed Codex Zabulon.

The only kind of aid your friends and allies can give you is in monetary and soldier form. WarBook is constructed in such a way that you can’t leech off other people completely. Thus, the only way for your kingdom to grow in size is to attack other kingdoms yourself and take land from them by force. Here are a few helpful tips on how to launch a successful campaign:

Don’t bother attacking kingdoms who
- have been attacked heavily recently
- have been attacked moderately recently
- have not been attacked recently
- have been sacked once or twice lately
- have been stripped off most of their resources by invaders
- have not been sacked recently

Make sure you use the Spy function before launching an attack! This way, you’ll find out how many soldiers, knights, pikemen, and elites they have versus yours. If they have more troops than you, don’t even think about it.

I rarely ever use the Survey function, but it sort of helps seeing how many mines, forts, barracks, barriers, and amplifiers the target kingdom has. Unfortunately I don’t know what to do with this information so I just kind of ignore it and attack anyways.

Players with a bunch of unclickable letters attached to their names means that they’re part of an alliance. Don’t bother attacking them unless you want your kingdom to get ass-raped by their friends.

Players who aren’t part of an alliance probably have a shitload of forts and pikemen defending their land. Don’t bother attacking them.

Do you have a Warbook success story you’d like to share? Tips, tricks, and strategies? Tell me all about it! I’d love to hear from my fellow warmongers and decorated heroes.

~source~

Warbook

just started playing WarBook the other day. WarBook is a Facebook application in which you create a hero, select what type of hero it will be (character class), and build a kingdom and army to conquer other lands. You can set up trade agreements with other players, but your character class limits how many agreements you can have. You can also join an alliance/guild, which is composed of a number of different kingdoms/players.

As you can imagine, WarBook is rife with griefing. People who are more than twice your level will regularly bombard you with attacks because you’re an easy mark. Knowing this, I decided to make my Hero a Visionary, the defensive character class. The Visionary has a 25% reduction in casualties when attacked by an enemy kingdom, and it is 25% cheaper for the Visionary to acquire new lands when compared with the costs for other character classes. So, if I lose lands to an invading force, I can recover those lands a lot cheaper than other classes. Each class has an Elite warrior type, and the Visionary’s Elite has the highest defensive score compared to other classes’ Elites.

My kingdom has been attacked on a daily basis pretty much since Level 2. One particular Level 5 Magician has been pummeling me with multiple attacks per day since I hit Level 2, but I’ve been able to withstand the onslaught. However, since my attack score is weak, I haven’t been retaliating. I want to level up a bit more so I can be sure any attack on this fool will be painful.

If you’re on Facebook and would like some diversion during the day, check it out. If you’re one of my Facebook friends, please send me a message so I can send you a WarBook invitation, cos then my kingdom gets gold for inviting you. *grins*

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How to Play Warbook in Facebook

I've joined Facebook for awhile but never took it seriously until last week. It was impressive to see how that simple social networking site has evolved into a democratic application portal that in the end has given a lot of choice for its community members.

One of the application that I got to try is Warbook. I am not a gaming fanatic of sort but this one really got me hooked. As the game becomes more popular, new players may have a tough time scaling up. So here's a simple guide that I give to fellow new players:

Choose your hero and strengthen it

1. You need to decide whether you'll be a visionary (ultimate defense), general (balance defense/offense), warmonger (ultimate offense), mogul (trader), magician (prefers magic over brute force).
2. You can also invite 20 friends in your Facebook account everyday and earn 25,000 gold for each of them. If one eventually joins, through your invitation, you'll get 150,000 gold too.
3. As you level up, either through attacking or be attacked, you can decide to use the experience points to increase powers in attack, defense, spells, and mana. You can do this in Your Hero's page.

Expand your kingdom

1. Create Mines to increase your income. (priority)
   Note that your kingdom earns on an hourly basis that you can use to expand it further and build infrastructure. Make sure that your kingdom generates more income than its hourly upkeep or cost.
   
2. Build Forts and Training Grounds equally to protect your kingdom and strengthen your attack. (priority)
3. Build Barracks to reduce your army recruitment and upgrade cost.
4. Build Amplifiers and Barriers to strengthen and protect yourself from magical attacks.
5. Use your Mana to cast spells such as alchemy (create gold) and boundary shift (enlarge your kingdom). This gets partially replenished every hour so make sure to use it whenever possible.
6. Update (10/17/2007): I had to admit that as you level higher, improving your kingdom takes a setback as it can be frustrating whenever you get attacked after major work in this area. I ended up focusing more on my army build-up.
   

Build your army

• It is best to protect your kingdom by having at least 2 to 12 personnel per acre of land you have. (Thanks Toby for additional tip there!) Whether you are attacking or the one on the defensive, it is best to convert your soldiers to their strongest form as possible such as knights (offense), pikemen (defense), elites (strong on both offense and defense). Depending on your hero type, the elites are also referred to as defender, berserker, legionnaire, or wizard.
• Update (10/17/2007): As I leveled higher, I stopped upgrading my soldiers to elite. When computing amount paid to get an elite, it appears to be more cheaper and practical to invest instead on knights and pikemen.
  
  
• Whether you win or lose during attacks, spend your gold immediately to replenish your army. When your attackers can't extract any gold from you, it deters their motivation to attack.

Attack / conquer enemy lands or repel attackers
Upon sign-up in Warbook, you go through a 2-hour period of protection. Make sure to use this time to set-up your infrastructure and army utilizing your hourly kingdom's income.

You can level up by either attacking (offense) or be able to repel attacks (defense). Winning or losing can be influenced by:

1. The number of forts, training ground, amplifiers, barriers.
2. The strength of your army (number of personnel, attack or defense score per personnel, hero's attack or defense rating, % of training ground or defense ports)
   

When attacking or counter-attacking, note that:

• You can size up your enemy or target by casting a spell using your mana in their hero's page. This can be used to anonymously spy (show hero's gold and army resources) and/or survey (shows infrastructure of the kingdom) them.
  
  
• You can attack or counter-attack a hero as much as you can (and vice-versa). However, Warbook does not let a hero to be brought completely down and bar further attacks once it reaches the limit a hero's kingdom can take.
• Update (10/17/2007): Attacking a hero more than 2x may be considered a multi-attack, especially if they are part of an alliance.
• Update (10/17/2007): On the other hand, if you are being multi-attack, you can consider joining an alliance. If you have lots of friends in Warbook, forming an alliance can be a good option too.
• Update (10/17/2007): To survive and grow in Warbook, hit the smallest kingdom that you are allowed to attack but the strongest hero to increase chances of success and get high exp to level up.
  
  
• Another option in attacking is by casting spells such as magic vortex (drain half of opponent's mana), fireball (destroys opponent's army), and earthquake (destroys opponent's infrastructure). This is dependent on how much spell power and mana you have and which you can increase as you level-up in the hero's page. This is an option if you find that an opponent's barrier is not that strong during your survey.
• Note that magicians with higher rank can also land grab (get opponent's land and convert to own) using their mana.

Trade agreement, aid package, and alliances (subject to Warbook tax as applicable)

• Note that you can enter into a trade agreement with other heros. This is where you can trade gold in exchange for soldiers or vice versa. As a newbie, I find that sending a trade agreement proposal while being attacked is also like a white flag being waived.
  
• You can also send an aid package to another hero such as soldiers or gold that they can use to rebuild their kingdom.
• You can also join alliances to help out or be helped by fellow heroes. When you have enough gold, you can also start your own alliance.

I'm still a newbie in Warbook and hope to update this guide as I learn the game more. For now, my goal is to reach Level 50 in Warbook which is considered the maximum level that you can attain in the game. Don't forget to monitor and join the discussion to get a feel of the community too. Additional tips are more than welcome. Thanks!

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Facebook MMO ("Warbook")

I’d be surprised if no one else hasn’t mentioned this yet, but Facebook, the aftershock of MySpace, is supporting several games (e.g. Scrabulous, JedivsSith) all of which are there to improve the community and help retention. Usual stuff. Warbook is the first I’ve seen that tries for a sort of old-school email tactics like game that kind of acts like a very minimalist MMO.

It basically is a PvP version of Kingdom of Loathing (without the humour or stories or pictures), where players pick a class of Hero and each hour they improve in gold and can buy new land or soldiers to grow their kingdoms. They also can progress by attacking other players, which is really the whole point. It’s a straight out PvP game that so far does not seem very balanced. Players can increase in level, but AFAIK they can only do so by attacking others or successfully repelling attacks. There’s no honour in just being good at making gold. And while all you have to do to make gold is wait an hour and hope no one attacks in the meanwhile, you can make trading packs with other players as well send gold and troops friends. And they also allow to create alliances (think guilds) which is basically just a group in Facebook world.

Having been attacked by some people 10 or more levels higher than me, there’s not a lot of balance so far. Also, there is no game board. There’s only a search function whereby you have to find players in a range of level or land or gold that you want to target. You can employ spells to spy on them to learn their stats and present inventories before you attack. There’s not much of a profile otherwise, and really it’s a game that feels still in Beta. Certainly, its database is not robust, so be prepared to wait several seconds for any updates.

However, crap infrastructure aside, there seems to be a fair amount of attention and it’s worth noting as another webby game example. Certainly it’s a good example of what you can do to capture a lot of players quickly. Although, I’m only guessing there’s a few thousand just because of Facebook memberships and the poor availability. It’s very minimalist but also very mainstream.

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Why Warbook is a Productive Game

If you’re a Facebook user, you’ve probably tried out Warbook. It’s a very productive game, because it doesn’t require constant supervision.

Here’s how it goes: you’re a ruler trying to make your kingdom the biggest and most powerful possible. You do this by recruiting troops, improving your domain’s infrastructure, develop your own abilities, and of course, attack other kingdoms.

So why is Warbook a productive game? Instead of typical games that require all of your attention for hours at a time, Warbook represents just a few minutes of management per hour. You can decide to attack an enemy, propose some trade agreements, build up your kingdom, or any combination of the three. After that you’ll have to wait for the next hour (your earn income on an hourly basis) before you can do anything.

Which means of course, you can get busy for most of the hour, then take a break whenever your Warbook kingdom earns money. It’s a perfect setup, one that lets you get things done while having some fun on the side.

Agree or disagree?

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Warbook Alliances

• Winning at war. The only way to win at war is to focus all your Alliance’s energy on a single target at a time. Choose the leader of the opposing Alliance, hit hard and hit relentlessly and then work down the list. If you are coordinated, the psychological impact on the upper ranks should be enough to have the war end quickly. You will need to have a squadron of highly defended mages and a good sword whenever the target comes out of alert (which will likely never happen). Also, to prevent retaliation attacks on your support kingdoms (banks and soldier factories), have them leave the Alliance temporarily so tags do not show. Keep your mages in Alert. Do not use all your mages at one time as they will be taken down very quickly. To defend yourself from mage attacks, you will need to have more mage units attacking each mage on the Enemies side that you can identify - again start at the strongest. At the end of the day, the side with the most mages will win. The only effective offensive spell is landgrab - fireballs are useless when the Alliance can just feed more soldiers in to that account. You will need various units of mages at different levels to keep the pressure on.
• Preparing for war. Level up your mages to the maximum possible level so they can cast many spells. Strata them into units at different land levels. Pump each mage full of pikemen for maximum defences. Make sure your banks are overflowing with cash and your soldier factories are full. Recruit more mages and do the same.
• Sharing information. Posting a list of targets, supporting kingdoms, soldier factories can be useful especially if you have rostered people to periodically cast spy on those targets.
• Gathering intelligence. Think about getting a member of your Alliance to leave and join the other Alliance. Do this before war is declared as most of the time, Alliances will stop allowing new members in to prevent exactly this. The spy’s job is pretty simple, get a list of all targets especially active members and leaders and keep the main Alliance updated as to what is happening. To maintain security and cover, the spy should only be conversing with one contact back into their original Alliance. Make sure you have more than one spy and that they do not know each other so you can validate any information you receive. You could also consider planting double Agents to sow mis-information but they are easily found out if the Alliance has more than one spy in your Alliance.

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Warbook Alliances

• Have a clear objective. What is the purpose of your Alliance? Is it to grow? Is your Alliance aggressive or is it mainly for self-protection? Or is it primarily for socialising?
• Have clearly articulated policies that meet your objective. This includes retaliation policies and Non-Aggression Pacts. Make sure members and non-members know of them. It’s best to be consistent.
• Clearly communicate internally. You’ll need a private forum, a chat room, email lists etc and the means to administer them. Facebook fortunately has a fair amount of that already but not quite enough.
• Clearly communicate externally. Have nominated contact members especially for complaints and for diplomacy with other Alliances.
• Do not grow too quickly. New members need to be inducted and can change the objectives of your Alliance.
• Form small units. Small units of members who play at the same time work more effectively together.
• Have clearly defined roles within units. Soldier factories (warmongers), banks (moguls), swords (again warmongers but could be anyone), spell support (mages) for when kingdoms go in alert. A possible tactic is to have all members supply money to a single specialised attacker (aka sword), have the sword grow, transfer soldiers and cash out to the bank, and then have other members of the unit attack the sword siphoning land until the sword is in full alert. Transfer soldiers back and have the sword grow again. This way, only the sword is exposed to retaliation, all other members remain unknown and safe. Also members level up when they siphon land off the sword keeping the unit roughly within the same level range.
• Form specialised units for between unit cooperation. A cadre of mages can be extremely effective when warring with locked down kingdoms - make sure they have very high defences however. A unit of soldier factories working around the clock is essential. A unit of swords designed to take heat is also good. Consider only using swords for retaliation and attacks. This protects all other members from retaliation.
• Share resources. Think about having a mobile army of soldiers that can transferred from one sword to another or from one unit to another. Have duty mages for spells.
• Manage retaliation lists (aka kill-lists) carefully. It’s quite easy for members to go overboard and retaliate above what your Alliance policy states is acceptable. Having separate kill-lists is essential. Ensure that members update the kill-list with information on retaliation. Moderate.
• Maintain discipline. Moderators and administrators of the Alliance have the responsibility of maintaining discipline. Have a clear policy for expulsion and implement it.

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Warbook Strategy

There are also some legitimate techniques that I’ve seen work which I’ll list below.

• Dont be a dickhead. Only attack once, do not abuse your enemies, keep a list of the people you’ve attacked, be polite on the forums. This is probably the most important rule to keep your kingdom strong especially at the lower levels.
• Be a soldier seller (1). If you’re a warmonger, you can make soldiers for as little as 25% of the usual cost. Through the forums, you can sell soldiers for say 35% of the usual cost and skim 10% profit for your own uses either through buying land or more soldiers for yourself. It is competitive however and the prices have dropped. Also, most Alliances have such soldier factories without the markup.
• Be a soldier seller (2). As with above, but you can use other people’s soldiers / gold for your own campaigns before you give it back to them. Why would you do this? To prevent yourself from going into negative gold and to expand beyond your means. This is not a problem if your customers are in no hurry. Also, be careful not to extend yourself.
• Be a soldier buyer. This is pretty much the only way to keep on top of the arms race. Find a good supplier and buy soldiers (or join an Alliance). I use this myself.
• Be a bottom feeder. Search only for kingdoms that are nearly at the limit at which you can attack. Select the weakest and gain land from them. Seeing as you’ve gained land and they’ve lost, they will not be able to retaliate until they come within range. If you do this continously, you should be able to streak past the majority of those you’ve attacked.
• Farm weaker players. Keep a list of easy targets and hit them regularly - especially if they are not in an Alliance. This a variant of the bottom-feeder strategy but much more annoying.
• Dont worry about defence (1). This works especially well if you’re a magician. At the end of an attack run, your kingdom should be significantly bigger but you’ll also be vulnerable to others. Dont worry about being attacked in turn because if you have enough mana you can cast Alchemy and get the gold for your new kingdom size. Buy soldiers from a soldier factory - get your soldier factory to delay delivery. After the retals have finished, you’ll be smaller but have a lot more soldiers than anyone your size - plus you havent lost any of your soldiers from retaliation. You could even store some of your soldiers in a friendly kingdom.
• Dont worry about defence (2). If you chain attack weaker kingdoms and Alliances, you’ll be guaranteed an unending series of attacks. This is not a bad thing if you can grow quicker than you’re being taken down for especially if your kingdom will get put into alert for most of the time. To conserve your troops before you’re in alert, you could either transfer to a friendly kingdom or you can put your gold in a soldier factory for when you need it. Once you’re in alert, attack mercilessly and grow as quickly as you can. When finished your attack round, put your soldiers and money in a friendly account or a bank. Be careful though as you’re still vulnerable to spells. However, you can take assurance that mages dont work well together.
• Be a bank. Offer to store money and/or soldiers for other kingdoms while charging a small fee. Or you can offer interest rates.
• Build a strong defence and dont leave your flank exposed. Any chance you get, buy pikemen. They have the lowest maintenance cost per defence point. Dont attack with your pikemen, only with your soldiers. This means you always have a fallback defence.
• Join an Alliance. Alliances protect you. Pick an alliance that matches you and follow the Alliance rules. Contribute as much as you can. Offer assistance.
• Attack Alliances strategically. If you’re a solo player and dont care about your reputation, it’s quite possible to attack lots of the weaker members of an alliance consecutively while swearing vengence. When they start attacking you in turn, ask for a ceasefire immediately and start talks with the Leader. Also start other talks with other Alliance members. Lie about who attacked you, stall, break ceasefire and attack randomly, stall, start talks again, lie some more. The amount of noise you’ve introduced into the Alliance should give you enough time to grow very quickly.
• Attack others while being protected by your Alliance. If you’re an Alliance member and dont care about your reputation, it’s quite possible to attack other Alliances or other players while under protection of your own. At this time, Alliances cannot cast you out. Choose an Alliance with a nasty reputation for retaliation and then chain attack everyone outside of it for as long as you can. Where possible, lie to your Alliance about who has attacked you and after they’ve been softened up, go in for the kill. Always maintain your innocence. Be as helpful within your Alliance as possible and try to be as much liked as you can. People will more likely believe you.

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