NOTE I am repeating myself here, this is because I just simply don't have time to reread, so just churn shit out and put it here, hope you'll enjoy the shit. END NOTE.
I've been playing Whiteout Survival (WoS) (and other RoK-like games: RoE, LoM) for about 1 year now, speding on avg 300 bucks/game.
RoK-games almost perfectly mimic the global reality and brutality of the world today. I have not found a more perfect replica.
So what is the game? Shallow answer: Scoreboard, Deep answer: Feelings.
How do you win? Money+skills or frens with fuck-you money+skills (scoreboard part) and you need high morale (feelings part).
Where do I get money? No skills or skills => irl, skills => game events.
Where do I get frens? Alliance systems. Players from same alliance usually become friends. Each alliance has ranks R1-R5 with R5 being leader and R4 his trusted players, everyone else is a solider and/or meatbag. Think countries IRL. R5s talk to each other. Usually they implement NAPX (Non-Agression-Pact Of Top X alliances) where X = 10 and then slowly reduce to X=5,3,1 and eventually 0 upon state/server death. This means within NAP10 nobody can attack each other and rule-breakers are removed from ALL NAP10 alliances with 3-strikes-youre-out system. Don't join anything below top 10, you will automatically become a meatbag and lose. This is how first ~30% of players get zeroed and/or continuously farmed for resources. Don't beg for R4, people hate fucking beggers, earn it. Alliances in top 10 will contain 99% the potential rich friends. Make those friendships, the richer the more rewards they will provide to everyone around them.
Where do I get skills? Friends with skills and repeated events. There are many events. Events give rewards, rewards are money. Events repeat themselves in cycles and some get unlocked based on state age. The main events in WoS are: Bear Trap (Bear), Crazy Joe (CJ), Foundry Battle (Foundry), Sunfire Castle Battle (SFC), Server versus Server (SvS). Then there are "special building" events: Facility Battle, Fortress Battle and Stornghold Battle (SH Battle). All events are cooperative nature. You cannot win solo in this game unless unlimited money. Defense is much more powerful than attack.
So what happens if I start the game? You get dropped into the state/server with furnace/castle/city level 1 (abbr. F1/C1). If you are unlucky in your timing, you will be dropped into an "old" state (old here being 5-7 days for baby state, because "open" period for join is 7 days), this means you are 5-7 days behind your teammates. Think of it like no-talent IRL, but with hard work you can go still go far. You will notice a few numbers: POWER, FURNACE LEVEL, TROOP COUNT. Besides furnace, you will have other buildings and a map of things around you (just like IRL, think of Furnace as your brain, and other buildings as your vital and vestegial organs). Three most important buildings will be: Furnace, Command Center (CC), Embassy, Infirmary, Research Center, Island, Arena and Infantry/Lancer/Marksman Camp, everything else is for meatbags. What does each do? Furnace: Unlocks upgrades of all other buildings, CC: Size of reinforcements (ie. how many troops can you hold from your buddies helping you defend and attack (ie. group attack and/or group defense, called rally and reinf respectfully)). Embassy: Unlocks upgrade of furnace, Research Center: For increasing all sorts of buffs on all sorts of buildings, heros, troops, etc. Focus on Growth branch and Battle branch. Economy branch is for bitches and meatbags. Island: For increasing buffs. Similar to research center but easier to complete because there is no "research tree". Arena: A building for a competiton with Heros for nice rewards based on rankings. Infirmary: Size of your army hospital, this is where you heal your troops, if you lost attack or defense. If your infirmary is too small, any excess troops will die and you will only be able to recover some at the Cemetary. Infantry/Lancer/Marksman Camp: There are 3 troop types (Infantry, Lancer, Marksman) and each troop type has levels/tiers 1-10 (abbr. T1 to T10). Infantry is the most important followed by Marksman followed by Lancer. They follow rock-paper-scissor system, Infantry beats Lancer, Lancer beats Marksman, Marksman beats Infantry. People usually just train Infantry and be done with it. Troop system is mostly only important in two numbers, TROOP COUNT and AVERAGE TROOP TIER. Your army can have multiple troop tiers, for example 50k T1 and 20k T4, a weighted average is computed and rounded to one decimal place, in this case T1.8. Opponent with larger TROOP COUNT and larger AVERAGE TROOP TIER is more likely to win. Why just more likely? Because HEROES and CHEIF, which are much more important. There are many heros, rarity=common,epic,mythic. All heros have 3 expedition skills and 3 development skills. All heros have 4 gear slots, helm, glove, boot, belt. Mythic heros have 5th gear slot which is specific to the hero. Helm and Glove upgrades increase Lethality Buff %. Boot and Belt upgrades increase Health Buff %. Only do Helm and Glove. Endgame, Boot and Belt. What is CHEIF? Basically your character. It too has gear and cheif gear is also very important, but less than hero gear. Cheif gear is unlocked on F23. T9 is unlocked on F26. T10 is unlocked on F30. After this Fire Crystal levels (FCs) begin. FCX furnace gives *ability to have* (by upgrading necessary buildings) FCX level troops. So FC1 are unlocked on FC1 furnace.
What heros do win battles? Depends on enemy heros. General rules of thumb: In solo attacks and defense: Use your best heros (most upgraded heros, skill-wise and gear-wise, preferably Mythic for that 5th gear slot). In group attacks (rallies) and defends (reinfs) it gets much more complicated. One, if you are a whale (someone who spent a lot of money ingame (10k-1M usd), ignore everything I say and treat everything as solo attack/defense). Two, if you are a rally leader or reinf leader (first person in CC) use your best heros. Rally leaders should be whales, because they have the biggest CC and can accommodate most troops (usually 1M-2M depending on buffs and research). Three, if you are rally participant, use Jessie-Sergey/Flint-Bahtiti in this order. Four, if you are reinf participant, use Patrick/Walis-Sergey/Flint-Bahtiti in this order. If more than 4 people have Jessie in attack or more than 4 people have Patrick in defense, the remaining Jessies and Patricks's skills will not stack. So each group (attack or defense) needs 4 people with these configurations, while everyone else should put their best heros inside. These are rules of thumb that apply to heros from GEN1 to GEN5. GEN5 to GEN8 these rules don't apply anymore, instead what matters is the heros of the enemy and if you can find the right combination of your heros to counter their heros. Heros have type, there are 3 types (Expedition, Gather, Heal), they work in a rock-paper-scissor type way. If you need speedy attack or speedy defense, use Gina/Walis or both. Heros also are important in Arena where there are 5 hero slots, for defense you will want Patrick, for attack you will want your best. Hero gear is extremely important for Arena, the more heros with it, the higher the ARENA POWER.
How to win solo battles? Always scout. If you can't scout because of anti-scout, attack with small force (proportional to enemy power). If it gets annihilated, do not attack further, you will not win because the enemy has reinforcements. If you don't get annihilated, you will get a report in which you will see their army size, then you can decide if you want to attack with full force. If wish to see if anyone is inside without scouting, then start a rally which will expose who is inside, but not what is inside. Defense is favoured over attack, attacker is much more likely to lose troops. If you are being attacked by a much larger force and you have no reinf, you have 4 options: One: bubble up (use shield), Two: Take Hit (and risk overflowing your infirmary, this depends on how much stronger the enemy is, if its a dolpin, you should take hit, if its a whale, you should shield), Three: Use Advanced Teleportation to jump around enemy, this will recall all your armies and enemy will be hitting air. But enemy can also launch prediction attacks attacking empty tiles anticipating your teleportation, be careful. Four: Use Random Teleport and call it a day. Five: Move troops outside your city, occupy random land and take economic hit. If you wish to kill someone quickly, do it with defense. Ask friends to speedup reinf to your furnace fill you up extremely fast before enemy troops arrive and make them lose a shittonne of soliders and uninstall the game, this is mostly only possible with whales and maybe some dolphins. If you wish to kill someone quickly with attack, then use speedups and be very close and make sure they are not reinforced. Note that as you move your troops outside your furnace, you are vulnerable. Also note that if you unshield because you want to make an attack (bubbles cannot make attacks unless they unbubble), you will be vulnerable for 30min, meaning you won't be able to reshield in this period. If your barricade, troop count and resource level all go to 0, you are considered zero. You died. You can continue but its like restarting a game. Of course, if you are a whale its not a big problem. Money wins.
How to win building battles? Go solo if you have NAP agreements, don't waste teleports, if not needed. Otherwise, always go group-wise unless intention is to provoke enemy into spending teleports. Build battles are: Facility: Gives buffs to alliance, facilities have levels 1-4, and types of buffs, level and buff cannot be duplicated (won't stack), all other combinations stack. First hit to facility is rewards. Time to hold to gain control: 30min. If nobody gets consequtive control of 30min in 2h, last one to hold takes. Fortress: Gives pop-buffs and speedups, first hit gets reward, then another reward for taking the Fortress (distributed by longest occupant). Time to control and 2h rule same as facility. Stronghold: Gives shards, first hit gets reward, then another reward for taking the Stronghold (shards). Time to control and 2h rule same as facility. Sunfire Castle: In SFC and SvS events, SC is for battle. It is surrounded by 4 turrets, each deals 2% of casualty per 5min (initial occupation 1min) of the troops currently residing in castle (insta death) if its not your alliance in the castle. If you are weaker than your opponent alliance, go for turrets, heal 1k by 1k with alliance help or bot farm healer alliance. Time your castle hit with turret fire. In SC, there are two types of buildings, Castle and Turrets. If you hold castle for 3h continously, you win and battle stops. If you hold castle for 3h inconsistently, you win by majority time, the battle will last 6 hours, you have occupied at least 3 hours. If you hold castle for anything less, you lose. There are 4 turrets, each kills 2% of troops in castle irreperably every minute and not for 5 minutes after capturing of a turret. There are three situations in castle battle. One: We are stronger than enemy. Two: Enemy and we are of equal power. Three: Enemy is stronger. In case of (3), forfeit castle and play on Turrets/Towers for points. In case of (1), capture the castle and at least 2 turrets to minimize casualties, which will be needed for the "afterparty" of svs (teleporting to enemy state). In case of (2), do a shadow rallying system, esentially it goes like this: One: You kick enemy out with alliance X. Two: You CAREFULLY pull out, swapping your troops with friendly alliance Y. Y must not lose! Three: You rally Y in castle. Four: Do step (2) but now Y pulls out and X fills. Five: When enemy stats march, X pulls out right before they arrive. Six: Since we started rally in (4), our troops are marching and will hit them right when the enemy arrives, giving them no occupation time. You must think this pretty slick huh? Well think again. This only works if servers agree to clean SvS, as opposed to dirty one. A dirty SvS is when servers don't make agreements. It implies city attacks are allowed in red zone, area around Castle and Turrets. If you get hit in red zone and lose, you will randomly port. If you get hit in gray zone (which is anywhere outside red zone), this will not happen. In a dirty SvS, fillers cannot be present in red zone, as shielding is not possible and they would all get zeroed. Red zone in this scenario is for whales. Whales should receive full and best reinf. There should be at least 15 main whales, so that each can be part of occupied castle reinf rally as to maximize hero count in rally. Say, 60k-ish per whale to fill 1M with 15 whales. Whales should be familiar with techniques of close combat. If a whale gets ported out due to loss in rally, whale must immediately port back in red zone. Because that whale must be reinfed fast, fillers should position themselves on the edges of red zone, in gray zone bordering on red zone, with best fillers 1 row BEHIND the border, as first row will be used for whales to park themselves before reinf. A even more ideal structure for filler positioning is something like a bear trap structure, leave a 4x4 square empty and put fillers around, then when whale gets tpd out, he ports into the 4x4 (space for 4 whales) and is mathematically fastest reinfed since the distance to many members is the same, preferably fillers should have speedups as well. Whales should use all buffs imaginable, except maybe army size buff, especially if they are on tower/castle RL duty.
How to win in events? Bear: If whale, start rally with best heros, if anything else, join rallies with Jessie, Jasser or Seoyoon as march captain, if you have none of these, other options are: Philly and Flint. Rally leaders use buff. Mia: Luck. Enigma: Luck. Crazy Joe: Buddy system, make sure everyone has at least 250k troops, go offline if you know you will be burned on rounds 7, 14 or 17, send to HQ if 10 or 20 and whale. Icefield: TP to level 3 zone and mine high level mines, before burst event recall troops, mine with 2 squads and kill midgets with 3 squads or 3-3 system if you have 6 squads available due to VIP. DO NOT LOSE HEROS. Heros will be timed out if you lose defense/attack in icefield but you need them for defense/attack. Icefield Endgame: In last minutes of icefiled, castle opens, if you are a whale take it and hold with best it and keep reinforcing it with troops.
TODO