Play Celtic Tribes Part Four

This is part of the in-depth VisiHow series of Complete Celtic Tribes Game Guides.

Pay Attention to What You Build.

Make sure to check out all 6 parts of this guide!

Expanding your village is not as simple as just taking the nearest free village. In fact, depending on your positioning and play style relative to nearby players, you may want to take a village farther away so you can farm more resources. This is the sort of thing that, when done properly, will give you a solid and long term position that can be easily defended, and will not cause you headaches as you expand.

This was listed earlier in the Celtic Tribes Game Guide in terms of what buildings are important and what buildings are not important, but it needs to be mentioned again so that everyone clearly understands what is most important, and why it is important (in case you decide to do your own thing - you want to make sure you'll be happy with your decisions as you grow).

"PRO TIP!" As you grow, there are certain options that will open up for your villages. In particular, you will be able to have one button access to all tavern missions, all bronze transports, and all recruitment of a single unit type. You need to have enough villages though - which starts around six or eight villages. Unlike other Xyrality games - for those of you familiar with it - you can't send silver with one click, so prepare for a lot of clicking...

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There are five essential buildings.

Just five, you say? Yes, just five. These five are the Farm, the Palisade, and the three Resource "Storage" Buildings (Wood Store, Clay Store, and Ore Store). I'll start from the most essential, and then go down the list so you can better understand why these buildings are so important.

Required to Grow

This is one of only two factors in the entire game that limits your growth of a village. If these storage facilities are not expanded to a level where they can hold enough resources, then you will not be able to grow your village. This means you can't build anything if you don't have enough resources, and not improving these buildings means you'll stop being able to grow. These are listed before farms, because these storage facilities, like farms, require no people, but if these are not built to a high enough level, eventually you can't increase your farm size. That makes these the single most important building type in the entire game. Without them, you can't progress.

"PRO TIP!" If you are in a top alliance and have a friend feeding you resources, you can improve your Resource Storage to max level in a very short time, and then quickly develop other buildings and defensive troops, or gather silver for a fast expansion.

No Villagers, No Village

The second most important building type in the game, because without villagers, you won't be able to train troops, improve most building types, train Druids, or progress in the game. As mentioned above, these are only slightly less important than your Resource Storage.

Defensive Force Multiplier

Some would argue that this building, the Palisade, is not essential. I disagree. Without it your army will be easily defeated, resulting in the capture of your village. I use the Palisade as my 'measuring stick' for all villages. Every ten points I grow my village equals one point that I grow my Palisade (so, for example, you can expect that my 250 point village will have at least a level 25 Palisade). I say at least, because some players are more defensive, and will want to train up their Palisade earlier or to a higher level.

"PRO TIP!" Did you know that at the lower levels, you can get a greater benefit per point of resources invested in improving your Palisade than you will from training more troops? This is because the Palisade gives a more or less linear bonus, and the low levels cost so little in resources, a one point gain in Palisade improves ALL existing or future troop defenses, which means at lower levels you could train one defensive troop, or one level of Palisade - with the Palisade having a greater net improvement to your defenses (basically .25 troop defense per level of increase - which is not exact, but close enough for this discussion).

For Example - it will cost 1,226 Wood, 1,056 Clay, and 672 Ore to improve the Palisade from Level 17 to Level 18. If you averaged out these resources, you would not train more than 20 Archers with this amount. With a level 17 Palisade they would give you a combined total defense of about 680 points each (around 13,500 total). On the other hand, you should have about 1,000 Archers for defense at this point. A level 18 Palisade will increase their combined defense by almost 50 points, meaning you would gain 50,000 combined defensive points from improving your Palisade to level 18. This is why the Palisade is so important.

A Guide For Each Style of Playing

Don't start off the wrong way, and don't waste the free potions you receive when you do start!" Basically, when you first start playing the Celtic Tribes Game, you need to determine what sort of player you are going to be. There are two types. A money player, and a free player. A free player will have need of things like the Training Area, which speeds up troop recruiting, but a money player can just speed build troops - meaning they do not need to worry about the tavern when they first start playing (or ever if they are independently wealthy). This makes a big difference as to how you start building.

There is one other important consideration. Are you a farmer who will send out wagons to gather resources, or are you someone who will sit and slowly build their village? A person who gathers resources by farming can have 4 or 5 villages when they come out of protection, but a person who does not farm will only have one village. This obviously makes a huge difference in your growth potential.

"PRO TIP!" Play smart, and you can use your protection time like a Pro Player by maximizing your free starter potions to get the most growth potential from your village.

In terms of resource farming or not, and paying for magic potions or not... If you do not pay for magic potions, then you will need to start building your Training Area (your Training Area should be built at the same rate as your Palisade). If, however, you do pay for magic potions, then you do not need to worry about this, as you can simply speed build troops and use the resources for something else.

If you do not plan to do any resource farming, then you will want to build your resource production areas (Woodcutter's Lodge, Clay Pit, and Ore Mine), as you will have no resources without these. You will want to balance the amount of resources you build against the amount of storage you have available. If you plan to engage in resource farming, then you do not need to build any resource areas, as you will gain resources by farming free villages for them. You will need to have carts to do this, which will be obtained by upgrading the Marketplace and then building them (do note that after a certain number of villages, it becomes impractical to only farm resources - as you will quite literally spend your entire day farming for resources).

In my case, I built my marketplace to level 4, and then I built some carts and some slingers (the most basic troops) to begin resource farming. Every time more resources came in, I built more carts and slingers until I had about 30 of each. Once I had that, I started to build my resource storage up in level. Since I buy "some" magic potions, I did not invest in the Training area or Palisade at this stage, because I can speed build them later.

If you were a free player, you would simply modify my strategy by building your Palisade and Training area as you grew, but keep with the initial strategy of building your marketplace, wagons, and resource storage for resource farming.

This is for those of you who have the finances to purchase large quantities of potions, and turn them to your advantage in playing. Technically the game offers a limited play advantage to those who purchase magic potions, but if you play your cards right, you can turn this to a huge advantage. How huge of an advantage, you ask? Read the Pro Tip to see. For now, read on about how magic potions can make your life so much easier.

Basically, everything you do can be done in half the time with magic potions. The way it works is simple - you click the option to speed up something, and a message window pops up asking if you want to spend however many magic potions it takes to speed up the time of that task by 50%. Take it a step farther, and everything you do except for Artifact and Tavern Missions can be done instantly. In this case you would just click to speed build a second time, get a pop up window, and then the build is instantly completed. This means that if you had the resources, you could just speed build your Palisade to level 15 on the last day of your new player protection (for example).

So, each time you speed up something, it takes an amount of magic potions dependent on the size of the task you are working on. For this reason, speed building troops is "ALWAYS" a bad idea. Think of it like this - speed build 250 troops once for the 50% time reduction, and you have just duplicated the effect of a maximum level Training Area. Speed build 1,000 troops once, and you have just spent 1,000 magic potions - which is more or less enough to speed build the entire Training Area - but instead of getting a permanent 50% time reduction for training, you just got 1,000 troops from it. If you look at it another way, having a Training Area of zero size means that one use of magic potions will speed up your troop training by 50% (one potion per troop). If you had a max Training Area, you would already receive a 50% speed reduction thanks to your Training Area bonus, so using one potion per troop would only give you a net 25% reduction in training time (again, just simply not worth it).

There is another use of magic potions as well - one which I use (especially on newly captured or low level villages). It is really quite simple. Again, it is not something you want to use with troops, but it works exceptionally well with buildings. As mentioned previously, all building construction is limited to two buildings at once. With magic potions, you can expand this list as far as you want. Each expansion will cost you one click of speed building (so a level one building might cost you one, or perhaps three potions to add, temporarily expanding your build list to three buildings in construction). This is particularly powerful, because when you leave for work in the morning, or go to sleep at night, you simply add buildings with just one click. It is great if you use it on all of your low level buildings (up to about 8 magic potions per click or so), and it is a low cost way to quickly get a low level building up to speed. Now for that Pro Tip you were waiting for...

"PRO TIP!" If you've been keeping pace with this guide, and reading it in order (you have, haven't you?), then you already know about the Tavern Missions. You know that you can get about 850 to 1,000 silver per day from Tavern Missions. The trick is - add in magic potions, and you can cut your Tavern Mission times in half. That means you can earn from 2,000 silver per day if you are casual about it, to 3,000 silver per day if you really pay attention to the clock. In game terms that means you could take over huge numbers of villages (and now you know how those players at the very, very top of the charts got there). Our secret ;) - now give me the shoes or I yell...

It Shouldn't Be Confusing, But It Is...

Really, this should be easy, but maps in all Xyrality games are just messed up. In simple terms, the distance you can go east or west on your map will take twice the time when going north or south. This is particularly important if you send out resource farming teams. On an iPad, to travel one entire screen north or south on the map with a Slinger takes approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes. Alternatively you can travel three full screens to the east or west with a Slinger, and also take approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes. In simple terms, that means you can send out your farm teams east and west to greater effect than you can send them north and south.

Additionally, when looking at the map (visually) and then switching to the overview map (the big map, which you get by clicking the top right hand button when on the map screen), you will note that everything has shifted just a wee bit from what it looks like on the visual map. I don't do databases (or maps!), so if there is a logical reason for this I would love to know what it is. I just chalk it up to the computer graphics guys also not knowing about maps.

When you are on the large overview map, you will also notice the hexagonal rings marking off every 10 fields. This is the maximum distance you can travel from your village. In game terms, that distance is fixed at 296 fields (the maximum size for any village). If you wish to have other villages, or to travel greater distances, then you will need to build additional villages farther away so you can move greater distances.

"PRO TIP!" For the hard core Resource Farmer... if you navigate to the big overview map, and center the map on your village, you will see distances marked out in sets of ten (this indicates how many fields away something is). When I am serious about farming, I take my first village (center point), and I then establish a new village at 9 hours away (for a horse drawn cart this is about 45 fields away). Then, I laboriously map out each distance to four hours away from my new village (click each free village at the four hour distance, and highlight it until you have a ring). Then you can quickly farm all free villages in your area for each village you have positioned like this (I have never done more than seven villages worth, because that takes an hour or two depending on what else you are doing). It returns huge amounts of resources, and allows you to quickly grow your villages. The key is being far enough away from aggressive players so that you can get a few clusters going and defend yourself.

Because it was asked (and it is a good question, thanks Mich!) here is some information on the basic function of supporting and taking care of your other villages (your own, and those people who are lucky enough to have your support, you sugar daddy you!).

Basically, any time you click a village on the map that is controlled by a player, you have six options available to you:

"Copy Village's Link": This lets you copy the link of another village, and then you can paste that link into a message, or into a text editor on your phone or device. It is helpful when you want to keep track of a location, or you just want to tell your friends that you plan to take over a village, so they do not also get the same idea and take the village from you right after you conquer it (this happens all the time if people are not careful).

"Highlight Village": This is another good way to keep track of a village. It just changes the color of the village name on your map, so that it is easier for you to find later. The highlight color stays there until you remove it (click the village again, and the 'Highlight Village' option will have a check box next to it - just click to remove the highlight.

"Support": This lets you send support units. Make sure you only send defense units, unless it is the most critical emergency, because you will lose a lot of attack units. Also, my personal note, if the person you are sending defense to has a low level Palisade, your troops will suffer heavy losses. In this case, I do not recommend sending support, as it is a waste of resources, and players with low level Palisades are targeted often and with large attack forces. You can only recall your support troops once they have arrived. To do this, just click the village, and recall troops, or click the home village for those troops, and click each set of units to recall them.

"Send Resources": This just sends resources. Make sure you know how much resource space the other player has so you are not wasting your own resources. If you are sending the resources to your own village, you will see the amount of current resources and storage the village you are sending them to has, which makes it easy to know how much to send. Once you send resources you can not recall them or stop the transport, so make sure you don't send to the wrong player!

"Attack": This is the button you press when you want to attack another player. It is covered in Section Five of the guide. Note that once an attack is sent, the only way to stop it is to send a faster unit to 'Support' the village you are attacking, which will cause your troops to turn around and go home.

"Send Spy": This sends a Celtic Ninja to the other village. Useful - especially when taking free villages, as you can sometimes get lucky and find one that has one or more highly developed buildings. A nice present :)

"PRO TIP!" When you send support to any friendly village during war, once the support has arrived, no one knows who sent it except you and the friendly village - but if an enemy player captures the friendly village before your support arrives, then your enemy will know you sent support. In this case, you should immediately recall the support home so you are not protecting an enemy position, and also be prepared for them to possibly counter attack you, assuming your defense is away and can not protect your own village!

Go back and read the menu sections in Part One if you are having trouble locating your other villages.

Farm Town Tactics (Let The Rabbits Wear Glasses!

I actually hate Farm Town. This is likely because I come from a real farm, so why I would want to practice pulling weeds again on the computer I haven't a clue. Keeping that in mind, I also hate resource farming in the Celtic Tribes Game, so I only do it at the very beginning of my game time. The way you do it is very simple.

As soon as you start your first village, build your Marketplace to level 4. This allows you to build more horse carts than the two you initially start out with. You have 8 slingers that should always be running a tavern mission, and 8 more that can work on horse carts, so get moving to give them some carts - until you have carts they are just oxygen thieves! Don't forget to read up on the map section of the Celtic Tribes Game Guide for valuable advice on which map directions are the best to send farm teams in!

"PRO TIP!" Resources are reset every eight hours. This means you can send out farming teams three times per day, as long as you time the farthest out team at four hours away from the starting point. Then when all of your farming teams have returned home, you can start again. This is a 'little' complicated.

(bear with me so you can see that my math is sound)

To build your Marketplace to level 4 and start sending out carts will cost you exactly 434 Wood, 316 Clay, and 95 Ore, and take about three hours. The maximum resource storage you will need is 246 (wood) 185 (clay) 57 (ore). That means you will need a level 3 Wood Store (305 capacity), and a level 2 Clay Store (218 capacity). Ore Store is fine at level 1 (150 capacity).

To get your stores to this level will cost you exactly 27 (wood) 37 (clay) 11 (ore).

The last thing to consider is that you are going to want two extra slingers to go out with your Horse Carts while the rest of them (16) work on Tavern missions for Wood and Clay. Two slingers will cost you an extra 24 (wood) 42 (clay) 34 (ore). It will take 25 minutes to build these - so you will lose three Tavern missions of Clay (-45).

Now you send out two slingers with two Horse Carts (one slinger and one cart), and you attack a free base (it does not matter if you do it in the day or night). You put the other 8 slingers to work on Tavern missions for Wood, and then Clay when your other two Slingers are built (so you have two teams of 8 each on Tavern missions, and two teams of 1 each on Resource Farming).

This is where we calculate our resources.

First - our incoming resources (not counting our Horse Carts, because we do not know how much that will be): 425 Wood 125 (starting) + 270 (tavern) + 30 (3 hours production) 380 Clay 125 (starting) + 225 (tavern) + 30 (3 hours production) 155 Ore 125 (starting) + 30 (3 hours production)

Then we calculate our resource expenses.

(to see how much we are short of what is needed)

-487 Wood -26 (2x slinger) -27 (Wood/Clay Store) -434 (Marketplace Level 4) -395 Clay -42 (2x slinger) -37 (Wood/Clay Store) -316 (Marketplace Level 4) -140 Ore -34 (2x slinger) -11 (Wood/Clay Store) -95 (Marketplace Level 4)

That leaves us needing...

62 Wood (this is equal to 40 minutes of Tavern Missions) 15 Clay (this is equal to 10 minutes of Tavern Missions) 00 Ore (we still have 15 ore left over)

Now - consider that we have two carts out Resource Farming, and it is almost certain that we will get the necessary resources to start our first farming mission, build some more slingers, and even get a few carts going. All told, it took us three hours to get started.

If you follow this method, by the end of your first day you will have at least ten carts (more if you are diligent), and be bringing in resources constantly (for which you will need to keep upgrading your resources storage).

This is the method I used, and it works great. Any 'excess' resources you have are never wasted, because you can instantly trade them in at the Chief House for more silver.

Farm Town On Steroids

One of the first comments I received was from someone who suggested that you send out one Lancer and two Horse Carts when farming, because they are faster and can carry more. I think that this is true - but based on how close I am to the center of the map, I never get full carts - so this is likely a tactic that will work better for those of you in less densely populated areas, where you can really get out there and collect some good resources. (As I write this, my son is listening to, "The farmer had a dog and Bingo was his name, Oh B-I-N-G-O, Bingo was his name, Oh!"). Two cart farming with Bingo bringing up the rear guard.

"PRO TIP!" You only need one Slinger and one Cart to attack a Free Village and take resources "or" capture a Free Village if sending silver and a Druid. This can be done in the day or in the night, because Free Villages have no defense, but it is best done just when it turns dark. This is so you have time to get defenses in place on your new village while keeping the 100% night time defense bonus.

I Prefer Diamonds and Gold

These are two items you will need as you play the game. To get these items you need to trade resources. Again, they are "essential" to progressing in the Celtic Tribes Game, and while there is synergy between the two, each has different uses.

Bronze

This is the most simple and easy to get. This is the currency spies trade in. It is obtained in the market place by trading carts of resources. Each level of your Market that is updated will increase the amount of bronze you receive for each resource traded. Judging from the image, it is was also used as a cymbal in the last Korn concert (courtesy of Zildjian cymbals 380 BC).

If you want to spy on another village, you send a spy with any amount of bronze, up to the maximum amount you have. If the spy you sent was paid more bronze than the spy of the village you are spying on, then you will succeed, get a spy report, and no one in the other village will know you were there. However, if the other village has more bronze than you sent, your spy will be captured and they will get a report that you spied on them. If you want to see what this looks like, message a player and ask them if you can send a failed spy (just send 1 bronze), or have someone send a spy to you with 1 bronze - this way you know what it looks like.

It is of note that all spy reports are of the same quality, so a report that cost 1 bronze is just as accurate as one that might have cost 10,000 bronze. It is up to you to decide how much bronze you need to get your spy reports. Additionally, bronze is tied to the village you trade for it in, and it can not be moved to other villages. If you lose a village, you also lose all of the bronze stored in that village. Bronze is kept in your Chief House, so building a bigger Chief House will allow you to store more Bronze.

Silver

Silver is needed to capture other villages. It costs significantly more to trade for than bronze does (more than ten times the amount of resources are needed for one silver), and there are fixed amounts required when capturing other villages. At this time there is no known limit to the amount of silver you can store, and silver storage, unlike bronze, is not restricted by any building type. Also unlike bronze, it is actually worth something.

Silver, unlike Bronze, is not tied to any village, so silver can be used from any village you have, no matter where you traded it in. Like Bronze it can not be moved, but unlike Bronze, as long as you have one village left you will not lose your silver. Silver can not be moved in carts, and is simply sent automatically when you conquer another village by sending a druid along with your troops (please see the appropriate section for details on the attack process).

I have not yet tested to see what happens when a player with, for example, 10,000 silver loses their base and is sent back to a small base that can only store 1,000 silver, so I do not know if they lose the silver, or if they just have 'extra' for a while (update - there is no silver storage, so you can have huge amounts even with just one village - so far I have had close to a million silver at one point)

Likewise, I have not confirmed that a player who has silver, but is reset, actually loses that silver. I believe anyone who is reset will lose their silver, but this hasn't been confirmed by me yet. If you know different, please post a note so I can update the guide! Thanks :) (update from Vika - if you are reset, you do not lose your silver - Thanks Vika!) :)

"PRO TIP!" Any time you are attacking Free Villages to expand your villages, send a spy in advance. Some Free Villages have very high levels of important buildings (I have seen Level 9 Chief House, Level 7 Magic Runes, Level 20 Resource Production, and other high level buildings). It saves you time, work, and resources, so it is very much worth the extra time you'll spend scouting.

Don't Sell Yourself Short

Alliances in the Celtic Tribes Game can make or break you, but if you do not join an alliance, you will be attacked by a larger player, and you will lose your villages. This is absolutely not an 'if' - it is a 'when'. The problem is that if you choose a tiny alliance, you will still be targeted by larger players unless you are very selective, build defensively, and maintain close clusters. Even then top players or alliances will eventually target you.

"PRO TIP!" When you click on a player, three things come up at the top of the page - their village name, their player name, and last their alliance name. Clicking on the village name takes you to the village, clicking on the player name takes you to a list of all villages they have, and clicking on the alliance name takes you to their alliance page. For a useful tip, when you are on the player page or the alliance page, click the player name or the alliance name on the new page, and it will take you to the large map view with all of the related villages highlighted. This is especially useful when planning to join an alliance, as you can see where their power is concentrated. It also helps when attacking...

If you joined the game, and do not want to play in an alliance, I can only say that I am sorry for you, and I hope you find a good alliance when you are reset and rebuild your villages, because it is not a matter of if you will be reset, but rather a matter of WHEN you will be reset - unless you are in an alliance. There are three main types of alliance:

Attack Alliance

This type of alliance exists to attack. They can be considered as carnivores in terms of what they eat. They are very active, and usually among the top alliances on a server. They are also extremely well fortified, and capable of launching mass attacks (meaning every member of a true attack alliance can attack you within the same hour - and if they are really good, within the same ten minute period). These are the least common type of alliance. MANY alliances will pretend to be Attack Alliances, but they are in fact Hybrid Alliances (and in some cases, Builder Alliances).

If you want to join an attack alliance, you should contact them directly, as any true attack alliance does not need to recruit - they consist of the best and most elite players, and usually have application forms to fill out. Generally speaking, if someone contacted you to join them, they aren't an attack alliance.

This type of alliance requires a very high level of activity (log in at least once daily, and be able to meet alliance attack schedules).

Builder Alliance

This type of alliance is often referred to as a 'Farm Town' alliance. They are viewed negatively by the elite players, and are considered the lowest alliance type. They can be considered as herbivores in terms of what they eat. This is the easiest type of alliance to join, as they often mass recruit, but provide very little actual training or mentoring to new players. The goal is generally to build as much in terms of villages and they can possibly build, getting to very large sizes - but generally being unable to make any attacks outside of taking free and inactive villages.</li> <li>If you would like to join a Builder Alliance, generally all you have to do is check your in game mailbox. You will most likely have numerous invitations from a great many of them. It should be noted, however, than any top alliance will not be a Builder Alliance. They will either be an Attack Alliance or a Hybrid Alliance. I have heard they also give out invitations at Justin Bieber concerts, but that could just be a rumor."If you join this type of alliance, you do not need to log in more than once every three days in most cases, and sometimes even less."

Hybrid Alliance

This is by far the most common type of alliance. It is a mix between the raw aggression and attack power of an Attack Alliance, and the strength of resources and building production that a Builder Alliance has. They can be considered as an Omnivore. Some members will naturally work as an attack unit, while others will work as builders, providing resources and defense to their attack groups in some cases. Others (and quite often in large numbers) will be inactive, or only log on weekly. The only real danger in joining such an alliance is that they are sometimes targeted by the Attack Alliances when they are perceived as too inactive, or the Attack Alliances just need something to eat.

More often than not this type of alliance will request that you log in daily, but as a general rule they are too large to effectively manage, and you can have log lapses of activity without being noticed. If you are occasionally active, and occasionally away, this is a good type of alliance for you, as it usually offers more protection than a Builder Alliance.

Once you have passed the initial scrutiny of logging on several times a week and growing a little, in most cases you rarely ever need to log in or perform any activities outside of responding to the occasional 'inactive' mass mail.

To find one of these alliances, the easiest way is to click the bottom right 'profile' icon on your main screen, click your position in the rankings, then click your information.

A note on mass mail - all larger alliances send a mass mail to members. Deleting the message takes you off the inactive list, and not deleting it means you are declared as an inactive. If you do not log in regularly, this can mean your village basically gets internally recycled - so it is a good idea to be aware of this and act accordingly.

For those who have asked, I am in an Attack alliance, and I do attack. In fact, my husband would tell you that I hoard silver and just attack five days a month - but then I would attack him and you for laughing!

"PRO TIP!" Don't wait for an Alliance to contact you. Most of the good ones won't (though a few might). Check out the top Alliances, and see which ones you like. Send them questions about the alliance, asking what concerns you may have. Do this early, and you stand to get in a good alliance and quite likely receive some aid to help you get off to a good start.

That is GREAT!

Really, if you made it this far, I'm truly flattered. It means you are taking the time to research your game (and see what is there), and it also means the time I took to write this has helped (which is pure awesome - like Unicorn Defenders!). If you have anything you want to say, just post it below, and I'll have a look. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the guide!

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