From first city to regional campaign

Your first five minutes

Sign in with Google, choose The Crown Marches, and enter the shared realm. A new ruler claims an available starting city in a starter region. That city becomes the main city: the default rally point for certain returned troops, recovered losses, and rewards that need a stable destination.

The opening goal is not to attack every nearby marker. First identify the main city, its current troop count, the rate at which it produces gold and troops, and the neutral cities within practical marching distance.

Understand your Main City

The Main City is the stable center of a kingdom, not a disposable tutorial marker. Check its city level, stored troops, hourly production, wall condition, and nearby routes. Some returned troops and rewards use it as a safe destination when their original source is no longer owned, so keep it identifiable and reasonably defended.

Capture your first city

Choose a nearby neutral holding with a practical march time. Inspect it, scout if the defense is uncertain, and send enough troops to break the wall and defeat the soldiers behind it while keeping a reserve at home. A capture expands production and territory, but it also creates another border to watch; open the report after arrival before repeating the attack.

Build production deliberately

Regular cities produce gold and troops in real time. Higher city levels create more victory points, which increase production and make the city more valuable. Upgrading costs gold, so each upgrade is a choice between stronger future income and keeping resources available for immediate actions.

Each city produces 10.3 troops per victory point per hour before bonuses. Gold uses its separate city-production curve. Royal Granaries and Tax Stewardship improve those base rates, while Stronghold, Citadel, and timed-item percentages are shown separately so the Economy and city detail panels explain exactly where each total comes from.

Victory points measure city value and drive base troop production; they do not directly strengthen one attacking soldier, and passive gold does not use VP. Open the interactive Battle and Economy Guide to compare city levels, production, walls, skills, and battle thresholds.

The first active-map pickup appears after two minutes. Each successful collection starts a two-minute wait for the next pickup, which appears toward the center of the current map and rotates between thirty minutes of stored gold production, thirty minutes of stored troop production, and one Crown. The daily limits are 30 Gold, 30 troop and 20 Crown pickups, 80 total; exhausted types are skipped. Crowns unlock permanent cosmetics in Shop → Skins, equipped in Profile → Skins. When hunting is available, they also buy one daily stamina refill: the price is based on missing stamina at 30 Crowns per 100 points, rounded up to whole Crowns. Refilling from 70 to 100 costs 9 Crowns. Availability resets at 00:00 UTC. Daily login rewards use the current UTC calendar month; missing a day pauses progress, up to two earned rewards can wait, and unclaimed rewards expire at the next month rollover.

Use Daily Login and Daily Quests

Open Daily Rewards to see the current Daily Login track, then choose the Quests tab to see three Daily Missions. Login progress follows the UTC calendar month; missing a day pauses progress, up to two earned rewards can wait, and unclaimed rewards expire at month rollover. Only the currently available reward card can be claimed.

Daily Quests reset at 00:00 UTC and are scaled from a server snapshot of the kingdom’s current production, cities, troops, and available activities, so their targets and rewards do not move during the day. Progress comes from validated gameplay. Claim each completed reward manually, or use the one daily reroll to replace an unfinished mission and discard its progress.

Troops remain in the city that produced them until they march. That means a productive city can become a useful defensive reserve, but only if its troops are not repeatedly drained. Gold is held at the kingdom level and can be used across the realm.

Useful habits

• Upgrade safer interior cities when the border is unstable.
• Keep enough troops in exposed cities to discourage easy captures.
• Use the owned-city list to compare levels, troops, and regions instead of searching every map manually.
• Review production after gaining or losing cities because kingdom totals can change immediately.

Read the regional map

Crownlands spans 20 connected regions. Edge connections move the view between neighboring regions, and armies follow valid routes across those connections. Cities, camps, Strongholds, and the Crown Citadel appear as interactive markers over the map.

Select an owned city to review its troops, level, production, and available actions. Select a neutral or rival city to see scouting, attack, and information options. The home indicator recenters the view when the main city is outside the current screen.

Scout before attacking

A scout is a small march that reveals a snapshot of a target after arrival. The report shows the holding owner's garrison separately from each clan member's stationed reinforcements, plus exact current wall integrity, wall power, garrison power, and relevant bonuses. Successful intelligence lasts for ten minutes from arrival, then its entry is removed from Reports. A newer successful scout replaces that target's report and restarts the timer; failed or blocked scouts do not refresh it. Attack and defense reports remain available for 24 hours after combat. Scout Nearby charges its displayed kingdom cost once and either launches every confirmed one-troop scout or launches none.

Use the combat forecast together with the latest report. It shows how much attack power the wall is expected to absorb and how much should reach the garrison. It separately labels a likely wall hold, garrison hold, capture, protected breach, or protected raid, and shows projected losses, the report age, estimated survivors, the minimum force needed to capture, and any shortfall. Advantage labels are intentionally conservative: overwhelming requires at least three times the live resolved defense.

Your army’s per-troop attack power is fixed when it launches. Defense stays live until arrival: troop production continues, reinforcements may arrive or leave, damaged walls may repair, objective bonuses can change, and ownership may change. The detailed battle report compares the launch forecast with the live arrival result so a changed outcome can be explained.

Move troops and protect holdings

Choose a source city, target, and troop amount to create a march. The server calculates and validates the authoritative route and arrival time together with ownership, available troops, protection rules, and other requirements before accepting the order. Regroup also runs as one server-validated batch: its displayed cost is charged only if every confirmed nearby transfer is created. When a march arrives, the server resolves the outcome and records a report.

Successful captures transfer the city and reduce its level by one, never below Level 1. Failed attacks can still award reduced experience. Newly acquired cities remain immediately attackable and award their normal battle and capture experience.

Defense happens in two layers

Attack power strikes the holding’s one physical wall first. If the wall absorbs all attack power, all defending soldiers and reinforcements survive unharmed. An exact breach with no attack power left also causes no defender casualties. If it is breached with power left over, only that remaining attack power fights the garrison; the city is captured only when that remaining power exceeds garrison defense. Each defender uses 1.30 base power, plus Shieldwall Discipline and additive personal or shared clan objective support. City level never increases soldier defense. Stoneworks alone strengthens the wall.

Each level’s full-breach repair window is 15 minutes plus 0.3 minutes per city level, rounded to the nearest minute with no cap. A hit that removes at least 5% of full wall power persists and adds its exact damage share of that window: a 20% hit adds 20% of the full-breach time. Wall integrity and defensive power then rise continuously while the repair timer counts down, reaching 100% at the deadline. Another meaningful hit applies to the wall’s recovered strength, keeps elapsed repair progress, and adds only its own damage time. Combat captures and every player or neutral handoff preserve the damaged integrity and running deadline, and a capture level drop does not recalculate it. Reinforcements help the garrison but do not add duplicate walls. Protected raids never persist wall damage. If an attack is already marching, decide whether to reinforce, counterattack while a wall is damaged, move vulnerable troops, or preserve resources elsewhere.

Contest camps, Strongholds, and the Citadel

Reward camps

Resource camps reward a ruler who defeats their defenders and holds the position for the required time. Every neutral camp starts with 20,000 troops. Neutral NPC troops have 1.00 defense each without bonuses. Player garrisons and reinforcements use 1.30 base defense plus their own Shieldwall, equipped soldier-defense gear and objective support, capped at +200% per army. Camps have no walls, so wall-strength bonuses do not apply. Gold and troop camps provide production-based rewards, while Deed and Relic camps use their own award rules. Camps are temporary objectives rather than ordinary permanent cities.

Strongholds and the Crown Citadel

Strongholds grant strategic benefits to their controller. Different Strongholds can improve gold, training, defending-soldier power, or movement. Defense Stronghold and Crown Citadel percentages apply only against each defending soldier’s 1.30 base; they never increase walls, Stoneworks, city level, or repair time. The Crown Citadel is the realm’s central prestige objective: its current controller receives the Citadel effect, and the Reign Ledger records cumulative control time.

Develop skills and use items with purpose

Hero levels award skill points. Skills are grouped by role: Attack contains Swordmastery, March Orders, and Field Medics; Defense contains Shieldwall Discipline and Stoneworks; Utility contains Tax Stewardship, Royal Granaries, and Guild Charters. Shieldwall Discipline adds 3% soldier defense per point up to 100%; Stoneworks remains separate and affects only walls. These groups organize the screen but do not limit how you combine skills.

The Skills screen opens on Current Build. Every skill uses the same compact minus, cost, and plus control: the center shows the next level’s one-point cost, plus spends it immediately, and minus freely refunds one point. You can keep adjusting while the realm syncs. Reset Skills is a free clear-all shortcut that refunds all spent points without changing gold or saved presets. Four private skill-preset tabs unlock at Hero Levels 25, 50, 75, and 100. Selecting an unlocked tab opens an isolated draft: empty presets begin at zero, saved presets reopen their exact eight-skill allocation, and draft changes do not affect the live build. Enter a custom name or keep the default, then choose Save Preset; Apply stays unavailable while changes are unsaved. Saving is free and does not change live skills, gold, or the active marker. Every confirmed Apply costs one hour of base gold production, including an active preset or an allocation that already matches, and it alone applies the stored build. Apply is disabled when you cannot afford it. Editing and saving the active preset shows that its changes still need to be applied. Stored legacy reset credits are no longer consumed. Points earned after saving remain unspent when an older preset is applied, while any Current Build adjustment or Reset Skills clears the active marker without changing saved presets.

Shop and reward items provide temporary protection, production, concealment, faster transfers, or army recall. Most items are bought with in-game gold and have daily limits. Read the description and duration before use; a timed effect is most valuable when it supports a planned sequence of actions.

Join a clan and coordinate

Clans provide a shared identity, membership roles, applications, allied map information, shared rewards, and coordinated attacks. Clan members cannot treat allied cities as ordinary enemy targets. Instead, they can send reinforcements to eligible allied holdings.

Reinforcement troops continue to belong to their sender. In city and objective sieges they join the garrison with their applicable troop-defense bonuses behind the holding’s one physical wall. They do not create extra wall layers or duplicate Stoneworks. At reward camps, reinforcements receive their own sender’s Shieldwall, equipped soldier-defense gear and objective bonuses, with the normal +200% cap per army. Camps have no wall layer. You may maintain up to two assignments with each clanmate, but each assignment must support a different holding. Ordinary cities reserve up to five reinforcement contributors as soon as their marches launch; allied Strongholds and reward camps do not use this city limit.

The sender may recall stationed troops, the holding owner may send them home, and battle losses are applied when the position is attacked. Troops return to the city or Stronghold they originally left while it remains owned by the sender. If that holding has been captured before the return begins or while the troops are marching, the server redirects survivors to the sender’s current Main City.

Coordinate rallies in the War Room

Open Clan → War Room to manage clan Rallies. Leaders and Officers can form them; all active members can join, inspect, or withdraw before launch. The creator or Clan Leader controls launch and cancellation while a Rally is forming.

Form and join rallies

Clan Leaders and Officers may form an ordinary Rally against a hostile Stronghold or the Crown Citadel. Reward Camps and ordinary cities are not Rally targets. Select the objective and choose Rally, then commit one army from an eligible owned holding. A Rally supports 2–20 unique clan members and has no launch timer. The creator or Clan Leader may launch or cancel it while it is forming; only the creator may recall the combined army after launch.

Rally details and the final objective stay private to current clan members while the force forms. Other rulers can still see allied contribution marches traveling to the creator’s assembly holding. Committing Rally troops does not remove an active Royal Peace Shield.

Open Clan → War Room or Kingdom Activity → Rallies to check participants, assembled and inbound troop totals, and arrival times. Members may withdraw before launch. Launch is blocked with an explanation unless at least two eligible participants are Ready (three for Tower targets), including the creator, the creator still owns the assembly holding, and the target remains eligible and hostile. Ready troops defend the assembly holding and can suffer casualties until launch. Any contributions still inbound turn back when the Ready force launches.

Once launched, the combined force appears as one incoming attack and travels at the slowest participant’s locked march speed. Each participant keeps that ruler’s own attack skills, Common Gear, bonuses, losses, and survivors. Only the creator may spend a Recall Horn to recall it; if the creator leaves, is removed from, or changes clans, the server safely recalls the whole Rally without consuming a Horn. Survivors return to an original city that is still owned, redirect to the Main City when the source is neutral or clan-owned, or attack the source when an enemy controls it.