The Epic Beginner’s Guide to Kingdom Maker
“Adventure awaits” when you play Kingdom Maker, a base-building strategy game developed by Scopely. The game consists of plenty of elements such as family creation, kingdom building, as well as strategic military battles. In this guide, we’ll help you learn these elements so that you can get started in conquering realms and expand your very own kingdom.
The Noble Family
The bread and butter of your kingdom is the noble family. They are the most powerful people in your kingdom and they are responsible for driving the main story and leading the kingdom’s soldiers into battle.
Character Creation
The noble family initially consists of one male character and one female character, representing the king and queen respectively. You can select which one of these would serve as the main protagonist of the story. Regardless of whoever you pick, the game allows you to change the physical appearance of the characters.
Kingdom Maker’s character creator allows you to change many physical features of your character including but not limited to: facial shape, body type, eye type, hairstyle, and much more. After creating your characters, you can then give them their respective names and also provide the noble family’s name (which can be changed anytime).
Character Customization
Each noble is defined by distinct abilities and traits which are determined at birth. Upgrading these gives passive boosts to the entire kingdom (i.e., bonus defense against all enemy types).
Additionally, any noble can be assigned as a military commander and their military abilities can be upgraded through training. Training gives nobles talents which give passive buffs to the kingdom’s army. Nobles can also be leveled up to increase the maximum capacity of their army. The higher the level of the noble, the more soldiers and officers they can take with them into battle, which in turn increases the chance of victory.
Procreation
The noble family carries royal blood so it’s important that they procreate. The king and queen that you created can romantically interact with one another, eventually resulting in their creating a baby.
It would take time for the baby to grow into an adult but once they do, you can choose one of three specializations:
- Captain – focuses on leading armies in open-field combat
- Merchant – focuses on trading and leveraging trade opportunities for the economy of the kingdom
- Explorer – focuses on scavenging dungeons and other areas to gather valuable loot
Afterwards, the child will be given their own abilities and traits whose qualities will be determined by the qualities of their parents.
Making Your Kingdom
The kingdom is the home that houses the noble family, the loyal soldiers, and the peasant population. It consists of the Keep as well as three types of infrastructure.
The Keep is the castle of your kingdom where the noble family resides. The Keep consists of multiple rooms such as the throne room, chapel, and bed chambers where noble family members can be seen roaming around. There are also special rooms such as the armory and library which give small passive boosts to the kingdom when noble family members are dragged and dropped inside them. Protect the Keep at all times to prevent the fall of the kingdom. Soldiers can be assigned to garrison the Keep to protect it from invading kingdoms.
Your kingdom’s infrastructure is categorized into civic, production, and defense. All infrastructure can be upgraded to increase its maximum capacity and/or production output.
- Civic Buildings – are the main infrastructure of your kingdom and the place where soldiers of various types are recruited and trained (i.e., housing, barracks, academy).
- Production Buildings – produce economic resources for the kingdom such as stone, lumber, and food which are required to build more infrastructure or train more soldiers (i.e., field plot, farm, sawmill, stonemason)
- Defense Buildings – fortifies the kingdom and protects it from being easily invaded by outside threats (i.e., platforms, watchtower)
All infrastructure can be easily relocated and rotated to make the kingdom look prettier. Interestingly, the game automatically generates roads that connect buildings to one another regardless of where you place them. Know more about kingdom building in this guide.
Conquering the Land
Military conquest is important in expanding your kingdom’s power and influence. The world map is filled with hostile orc camps and even hostile kingdoms waiting to be conquered.
Civic buildings are responsible for training the kingdom’s soldiers. Four types of soldiers can be trained: melee troops, ranged troops, mounted troops, and siege troops. Training soldiers can take time especially when there are plenty of them but this can be hastened by upgrading civic facilities and doing military research in the academy.
After training soldiers, they can then be assigned under the command of a noble. The maximum number of troops that can be assigned depends on the noble’s level. Additionally, highly-skilled military officers called Champions can be assigned as sub-commanders for carrying more troops and providing passive boosts.
The world map is filled with enemy camps of various levels. The higher the level of the camp, the better loot you get after conquering it. Select any camp and press “Attack” to allow your soldiers to begin marching to that camp. Note that the marching time to go to the camp and to go back to the kingdom depends on the distance of the enemy camp.
Battles are done automatically but you can manually instruct your soldiers to advance, halt, or surrender. Additionally, you can also call in reinforcements in cases of emergency. You can track how your army is doing by observing the battle progress bar. If the bar gradually becomes greener, it means that your army is winning. Know more about army building and battling enemies in this guide.
