A few lesser known tricks

Some experienced players may already know these, but I will divulge them anyway. Not all of these are always practical or worth the time, but may prove useful in those unlikely situations.

1. Manual aim for targets in the water

Verunan Naval Units

The Verunan Man of War and the Harpoon Ship typically miss their mark vs Liches, Beasts and Mer. To compensate, you can manually aim at the area slightly behind the target. The shot will likely connect if the target is charging towards your ship or stationary.
Rinse and Repeat when necessary.





If the unit moves across the flanks, fire both behind and at the path of the target, though the aim and timing of your shots will have to be very precise in order to hit in this instance.

Bastions, Strongholds, and Floating towers are much better at hitting the water units by default, but may still benefit from the above method as well.

Now, this is by no means a way to soundly counter these units consistently, but something to consider before you let a few critters totally annihilate your entire fleet.

Monarchs

Lokken/Elsins first and second attack, as well as Sages first attack, benefit from the exact same method. This is very important to remember when a Verunan player attempts to protect their monarch by retreating into the water, as attacking Kirenna normally generally wont yield direct hits.



2. Manual Aim for the Mage Tower
This one is notorious for having really bad aim. It will consistently miss fast units, especially flying ones. Even an Automaton will be able to dodge bolts if a player knows how to move it correctly.

Shooting ground units: Aim at the ground ahead of your target, the faster the unit, the more you'll will need to lead.

Shooting Water Units: As before, aim slightly behind if target is stationary or approaching. If they are pulling away, aim ahead (see below)



Shooting Air Units: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ got nothing

3. Pre-Aiming Bastions/Strongholds: This one is really simple. Just aim the ground in the direction of where you think your enemies will attack from, therefore you aren't waiting for it to turn later in the middle of an important battle.

4. Bugging the watchtower/guard tower: Use a Roc, Ghostship or any other air unit to hover directly over the tower. Once in position, keep clicking left, right, left, right and so on in order to keep the flyer relatively stationary. They will be distracted by the unit but they will never fire at it, allowing other units to destroy the structure.



Ten seconds later...



If you want counter this as a defender, select the tower and simply hold shift while clicking on any enemy unit (except the hovering flyer of course).

Awesome thread, I will contribute with a few things:


1- On factories, always "sell" the current unit being built before changing  the unit you want to build
For example, if your temple is building a Fire Mage, and is say 70% complete, but now you really need some Blade Demons. If you simply cancel the fire mage (by right clicking on its picture), all the mana you had used on it up til that point will be simply lost, wasting a lot of mana (when doing things like this several times in one game).
The solution is to hold Ctrl and click on the Stop Hand with the factory selected. This will "sell" the current unit on the factory back into mana, so no mana is lost when you switch units on a factory.
You can Ctrl+Stop the factory and immedietely right click on the unit being built to cancel them, then left click on the units you want to build. You don't need to wait until the factory is done selling to select the new unit you want.
I use this a lot and make it an habit to always sell the current unit before changing to another. Even zombies sometimes...
Ctrl+F is a shortcut that selects all factories, you can use a combination of Ctrl+F followed by Ctrl+Stop to sell all units on all factories. This is incredibly helpful when you have something like a bastion, a stronghold, or even a gate that is under attack and you need repaired fixed. I use this very often when I need to build something quickly with several builders but am running out of mana


2- This one is more of a gimmick but sometimes useful. Want to make a bird keep flying on the same spot without clicking repeatedly? Click on the bird and tell it to move to the location you want, and then type "+facingqueue top" before the bird reaches its destination. If you do so, the bird will stop and keep hovering in place in that destination. Useful with dragons to make them hover above your acolytes or lihr priests etc. (not every flying unit can do this though, thirsha can't)
You can replace "top" with other directions like "bottom" "left" "right" etc, these commands when used on land units will just make them face the specified direction. doesn't work with buildings (sadly), but when used on flying units will cause this thing, any direction works but top is shorter to type


3- Tired of typing "+showranges" in the beggining of every \"****\" game? You can put any command on the Keys.TDF file, for example you can put the word "showranges" (without quotes) in the letter K and when you press K it will use the command showranges.
You can also put "facingqueue top" on a letter to make it easier to do the trick on #2. As you basically can tell the bird to move, then press the keyboard instead of typing out the command on chat (which can be slow)


Controversial tricks:


4- You can make any builder build anywhere on the map by stunning the builder before it reaches the building place. Example: tell your mage builder to build an watch tower on the other end of the map > use a grenadier 3rd attack to stunned the builder > once the builder is stunned, stop the grenadier (to prevent from stunning again) and watch as the builder builds a watch tower on the other end of the map. Works with healing, and also helping another builder build something (so you can stun several builders building the same thing)
Deosn't work on monarchs and flying units since these can't be stunned

1) Yeah I forgot to mention this one. Very useful indeed, so much mana can be wasted by cancelling.

2-3) Honestly had no idea about this. Interesting

4) I can see why players may be very alarmed by this if they don't know about this glitch. I'd be really confused if stronghold just warped into my base lol.

One other thing I neglected to mention in my first post was how to make a unit block an enemy factory. Patrolling a unit on defensive at it's "entrance" so to speak will make cause it attack automatically attack the unit being built. As long as there isn't any other enemies close by it should work.

This might be for melee units only, but I'm not entirely sure.

Yeah its very useful to blockade a factory with a unit and if the enemy doesnt have another source of unit or other troops it's gg for that factory. Another few things:

Thirsha can insta-shoot any of her attacks, mostly useful would be her wave:
1- Set thirsha on passive (optional, but helpful to not distract her)
2- Select wave and attack the ground BUT stop thirsha (press S) or move her before the wave actually comes out
3- It's very easy to know the timing because the wave sound will come out, so what you basically do is stop thirsha immediately when you her the wave sound
4- Attack somewhere, the wave will come out instantly (it's important that the place you attack is within thirsha's range, i.e, she doesn't need to move further to attack)
If there's an enemy within thirsha's range, then set from passive to aggressive this will make thirsha's wave come out immedietely into that enemy no matter the direction (can wave a Roc that is below thirsha, other flying units that are below thirsha) super useful.
Works with any of her atttacks, if skilled enough, you can insta-charge the 2nd attack, then attack something, switch to aggresive quickly, to deal a double attack.

Thirsha can attack things in any direction, needs to be on defensive/aggressive, then tell her to attack the ground, but move her right before the attack comes out (you know because she shakes her staff a little). This is extremely useful when attacking other air units (such as an enemy thirsha) as it allows thirsha to fire in any direction, even units glued to her.
Video demo of all the above: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2r7C8NneXo

Forgot something useful that is very common:
Telling a builder (usually monarch) to build something that it is already building (the hammer cursor) will make the builder attack and build at the same time (only works on defensive and aggressive)

1- Gryphon: if you keep clicking like a moron on the target they won't miss the shot.

Technically not a "trick" since these are very explicitly intended by the game developers but:
- certain units emit an "aura" around them, the most common type is healing aura (emitted by acos, priest of lihr, sacred fire) but other types exist such as:
- Armor Aura: shaman (x1.2 armor) and titan (x1.4 armor) are the only units that do this. Letting a few titans on standby near a gate or any other unit can greatly boost the defense of that unit/building
- Attack Aura: shaman (x1.2 attack) is the only unit. Doesn't make much of a difference alone but if you have several shaman glued as close as possible to a treb, it can make the treb hit like a truck

Note1: the same unit can't emit aura to an unit of the same type. An aco can't heal another aco, a titan can't boost the defense of another titan, etc
Note2: but the above doesn't prevent an aco from affecting a sacred fire, so if you put an aco close to a sacred fire, they will both heal each other (imagine the combination of aco+sacredfire+titan behind a gate...)
Note3: being as close as possible is important, a shaman that is 10pixels distant from a treb will affect it only a little, a shaman that is 1 pixel distant will affect much more. Using a roc (to drop the shaman) can make it easier to place the shaman as close as possible to what you want
Note4: only healing aura consumes mana (and consumes a lot...)

I made some interesting posts/videos about TA:K on the facebook page, if you guys wanna take a look just check it out:
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms/photos/
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms/videos/

DeeKay wrote:

I made some interesting posts/videos about TA:K on the facebook page, if you guys wanna take a look just check it out:
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms/photos/
https://www.facebook.com/TAKingdoms/videos/

Amazing, I assume you're running this page? Well done.

Apparently this game has a much bigger following than I thought. Makes me wonder why this game has been so dead on GR in the last few months.

$_Spagg wrote:

shaman (x1.2 armor) and titan (x1.4 armor)

I always suspected the defensive aura might be different for each unit, but until now I never knew for sure.

Nice tricks, didn't know about the attack auras!

Not really a trick, just a little reminder about how far the build range is when you place a sea fort.




As you can see there's plenty of space to work with, even if you're on a north facing coastal cliff.