GOW: Farming 101

A friend of mine recently asked for the breakdown on the benefits of a farm account.  Ever the obliging companion, here goes:

1.    Rally target/victim.  Other than shielding, rallies are the only way to protect your troops.  You can always join someone else's rally, but that will only protect troops. If you want to protect your hero, do the rally yourself. Set it at 8 hours, and at the end of that time, your troops start to March.  Ideally, you call off the rally and yay. 

2.  Thing is, most of us can’t always make it in 8 hrs. But if your rally target is far away, you can factor that march time into the picture so that you have more than 8 before casualties occur.
Also, an unstopped rally can cause drama if you're ignorant and the target isn't friendly.  Plus, you could lose valuable troops if the target is a turtle or trap account.
So you control the situation.  Make your own target and place it far away.  Make sure you can still march there, and joy.

Kingdom view: Wonder Woods Lavel 6 Monster3.  Place your farm account as far away from other alliances and hives as possible. 

4.  So you have a sitting duck. Now what?.  Make him work. Gather resources, earn in-game gold, etc.  Level him at your leisure, but keep him below sh15 for obvious reasons.  Okay, maybe not so obvious – Your hero can be killed at Stronghold level 15.  Below that, he/she’s just captured for a few days.  If your primary account has membership privileges, you set your farm to join your alliance long enough to send your primary account resources, and then unjoin asap.  Happy happy

5.  Gifting  Eventually, get gifting for your farm account.  Unless you’re extraordinarily lucky, this will probably cost real money.  This step isn’t necessary for a good farm account, but it certainly can help when your primary is running low.  Basically, Gifting is a feature that, once purchased, it enables you to use in-game gold to purchase items as gifts for other players.  Basically, you would use your farm account’s in-game gold to purchase <whatever> for your primary account. 

6.  Email addressing  Set up the other account with a different email and register it under devices on the + screen.

7. Retribution  If your farm account accidentally poaches, and gets in trouble-- no big. Your hero won't get killed, and there is no retribution because the farm account can't be traced to your primary

8. Oops!  If for some reason, your farm city is totally destroyed, it auto ports to a random location.  Again, no big: move it back (or not) and keep producing and gathering resources.

 Wonder temple: in the center of the woods

Know your Wonder.  Aka: A few notes on placement of your farm account: 

1.  Know where your local wonder is, and where you are relative to it. 
2.  GOW operates on a coordinate X-Y grid.  Unlike the one we had in Geometry class, this one’s a bit different. 
3.  First, notice that while the X-axis starts on the left, the Y axis starts at the top.

4.  The Wonder forest is around 200:500

Go to World View from within Kingdom View, then enter Kingdom

5. One way to quickly get to the wonder itself is to go into kingdom view, Press the World View button, and enter your own kingdom.  It will drop you at the wonder. 

6.  The highest level monsters hang out in and near the wonder forest. 

7.  The most-active alliances do, too. 

8.  To my knowledge, every tile in the kingdom has the ability to march to the Wonder.

9.  This is not to say that every tile in the kingdom can march anywhere in the kingdom. Several times, I’ve opened a treasure map only to find that it’s too far away to gather.  L

10.  I have encountered places that are too far away to march.  The game-makers do this intentionally.  Ideally, you should move your empire close(ish) to the target in order to reduce march time.  Nevermind the fact that depending upon the target’s watchtower, they can tell you’re coming and port outta there.  Solution:  use a teleport to save time and angst.  The problem:  teleports are commodities, and if you’re not careful, you end up paying real money for them.  These lightning raids are a favorite tactic for high-offense players and alliances. 

11.  Bottom line for farm accounts:  ensure that the wonder woods is between you and your farm account – but still within marching range.  This should increase your non-carnage rally time to a point where you can call it off.