Templar Knights – Honor, Loyalty, Integrity

Last Updated: Sunday, September 30, 2012

I’ve seen some posts in chat that the Knights’ Hall isn’t worth much unless you want more knights. This is absolutely wrong (although I hope our enemies keep thinking this…). Proper management of knights and Knights’ Hall positions is a great way to increase your city’s capabilities.

Managing Knights’ Hall

Every city should already have a Knights’ Hall (KH). It starts with two knights. One or two knights are added with each level. At a minimum, consider matching the number of knights to the number of armies you can send from your Rally Point (RP). Every time you attack, a knight is necessary to lead your army. Knights are not necessary for other trips leaving the RP.

Managing Knights

Knights do more than lead armies; they also increase production, decrease build time, and perform other important functions. The value of a knight is based on its experience level. Experience is gained in two ways: leading attacks and training. Each time a knight leads an attack, it receives points toward the next experience level. A high experience level (EL) increases the probability of victory for any army it leads. It also increases the value it adds when you assign a position (see below). Increasing EL with attacks is a slow process, but there is a faster path.

See Figure A. You can purchase the Train with… combat items, or you receive them as Merlin and chest gifts. Applying these to a knight can quickly increase its EL. See Figure B.

Figure A

Figure B shows the knights list in my KH. The red arrow points at the button to tap when adding experience to Sir Balin with combat items. When I clicked on the +EXP button, I bought a Train with Kay item. This added 260 experience points, taking Balin from EL-18 to EL-20. The yellow slider next to each knight shows how many experience points he or she needs to reach the next EL. It you don’t want to purchase gems, and Merlin is stingy with his gifts, each attack adds about 20 EPs. As you can see, it can take awhile to advance to high experience levels using attacks… unless of course you’re Eddie the Farmer. Go get ‘em, Eddie!

Figure B

Managing Positions

The KH includes knight positions. Each position, as shown in Figure C, provides a benefit to your city commensurate with the EP of the assigned knight. For example, Sir Owain fills the steward position below. This causes a sash to appear on his icon in the knights list in Figure B. Since he is at EP 101, and he adds 1% production improvement for my city for each EL, he increases resource production by 50.5%. Not too bad, but there is a cost. First, he can’t lead an attack when in this position. So I temporarily Unassign him (see button under red arrow) for attacks. This is important because he is the highest-level knight I have, which makes him the most powerful when leading an army.

Figure C

The second cost is in gold, as shown in the circled area in Figure C. As the EP level of the knight assigned to the position increases, so does the salary cost. Compare the costs of Omar and Kenneth to Owain’s. When you assign knights to positions, be sure your gold production is high enough to maintain payroll. If gold drops to zero, the knights automatically begin unassignment. This is one reason taking gold during farming enemies is a good thing.

Finally, moving knights between positions is an important consideration. For example, if you are about to start a higher-level research build, you want your highest EP knight in the Alchemist position. In my case, I would temporarily move Owain to Alchemist. After starting the research, I would move him back to Steward. The knight doesn’t have to stay in the position during research or builds: only for the start.

Got additional recommendations about knights? Send them to me at ozfury@adventuresinsecurity.com

GOOD HUNTING!!