Min/max strategy
The promotion ladder
Score several times the Alliance Duel points from the same soldiers, by promoting them up your training tents on Friday instead of just training.
Why it works
Two facts from the game’s own numbers.
- Training scores the same rate at every level. A Lv.1 soldier scores 20 points and a Lv.8 scores 90, but the higher level takes longer to train by exactly as much. Either way, a tent earns 30 points a minute.
- A promotion scores like training, in a fraction of the time. Promoting a soldier one level scores the same as training a soldier of the new level, but takes only 20 seconds. It costs the difference between the two levels, so you pay nothing extra overall.
Train one Lv.8 on Friday: 90 points
4,535 Grain and Timber, 180 seconds.
Promote a Lv.4 up 4 tents: 300 points
The same 4,535 Grain and Timber, and the same 180 seconds, counting the Lv.4 you trained earlier in the week.
Base points, before your Duel research bonus. The bonus multiplies both the same way.
Set up your tents as a ladder
Every training tent has its own max soldier level.
- Lv.4soldiers in
- Tent 1max Lv.5Lv.4 → 5+60
- Tent 2max Lv.6Lv.5 → 6+70
- Tent 3max Lv.7Lv.6 → 7+80
- Tent 4max Lv.8Lv.7 → 8+90
A tent can only promote soldiers up to its own max level, and you raise that by upgrading the tent. That’s what makes the ladder: with your tents at different levels, each one lifts soldiers one step and hands them on to the next.
The best setup is tents one level apart, like the picture. Each tent always promotes from one level below its max, because a bigger jump takes longer for the same points.
How to do it, step by step
-
Monday to Thursday
Stock up the bottom of the ladder
Train soldiers one level below your lowest tent’s max (Lv.4 in the picture). They score nothing yet, and that’s fine: they score at every step on Friday. Keep them cheap and keep the tents busy.
-
All week
Save your training speed-ups
They score 50 points a minute on Friday, on top of what the soldiers score.
-
Friday: War Preparation or Full Development I
Start a promotion in every tent at once
Each tent promotes soldiers from one level below its max. When a tent finishes, those soldiers are ready for the next tent up. Keep every tent busy all day.
-
Friday
Speed up the top tents first
A minute of speed-up on your Lv.8 tent is worth 270 points from the soldiers, against 180 on the Lv.5 tent.
-
Friday
Only train when there’s nothing to promote
Training still scores 30 a minute. It’s the fallback, not the plan.
The numbers
Every one-step promotion takes 20 seconds.
| Promote | Points | Points a minute | Grain each |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lv.1 → 2 | 30 | 90 | 48 |
| Lv.2 → 3 | 40 | 120 | 204 |
| Lv.3 → 4 | 50 | 150 | 554 |
| Lv.4 → 5 | 60 | 180 | 843 |
| Lv.5 → 6 | 70 | 210 | 718 |
| Lv.6 → 7 | 80 | 240 | 856 |
| Lv.7 → 8 | 90 | 270 | 1,215 |
| Lv.8 → 9 | 100 | 300 | 1,235 |
| Lv.9 → 10 | 110 | 330 | 1,257 |
Compare that with 30 points a minute for training. Grain is the extra cost of the promotion; Timber is the same.
If your tents aren’t one level apart
- Two tents at the same max both take the same step. Fine, but you need twice the soldiers ready for it.
- A gap between tents (say one at Lv.6 and the next at Lv.8) means a two-level jump: twice the time for the same points. Upgrade a tent to fill the gap when you can.
- Only one or two tents unlocked? It still works: promote one step in each, and keep training as the fallback.
Watch out for
- Only Friday scores soldiers. Promote on any other day and you get the soldiers, but no Duel points.
- A tent can’t train and promote at the same time.
- Promotions go in batches, up to 500 soldiers at a time.
- You can only promote soldiers you have, so the ladder is only as long as your stock at the bottom.
- In Raid weeks (War Preparation and Raid the Enemy), Saturday is a fight. Don’t leave yourself with an army stuck mid-promotion when the raid starts.
Back to the week’s plan: Alliance Duel.