Since the 5.14 update there is that one OP strategy that makes my guide outdated and actually almost useless. You can read all about it here 5.14 market-based strategy.
If markets will get nerfed in future updates I'll maybe resume writing. Until then I'll just keep the rest of my guide just as a memory of the good old times.
(Parsifal - 06.09.21)
Hey Warzoners,
I'm playing WZI since August 2020 and I want to share with you some of my thoughts on what the game has to offer. My goal is to make a complete guide on all the important aspects of the game and help beginners to complete levels faster.
Many players are way more advanced than I am. Many have different opinions on how to approach the levels and that's the beauty of WZI - it adjusts to your playing style! I'm merely sharing with you some of the experience with the game that I had.
Army Camps
Your number one priority at the beginning of each level!
If you are in doubt whether grabbing a territory with an army camp or conquer another to complete some big bonus, prioritize the army camp.
Same for upgrading: Army camps first, mines second. (Sure, there are also possible situations you'd invest your money in a different order, like digging for example, or if you are in dire need of some ore.... I'm generalizing here)
SuperCamp
Is an optional feature. Its cost: a one-time purchase for 9.99$ (real world money)
The SuperCamp gives you a really good start at the beginning of a map. Then it becomes almost useless for a while until the next upgrade.
Upgrades seem to be expensive because the upgrades come in bulk. Instead of improving a little every time, the camp jumps from giving a couple of hundred armies to a couple of thousands at once.
In bigger maps, this camp alone can have a worth of 4-5 normal camps.
Note the following:
- you can't upgrade it forever. It's limited in every map to a different level. In Europe Huge it is maxed at level 9.
- is not affected by neither the Supercharge Army Camp Power nor the Supercharge Army Camp Artifact.
- is automatically switched off during Battles and Challenges.
Here is how this camp works in comparison to the other normal camps:
Upgrading Gislic for 6.48B to get a boost of 810 armies/sec
Upgrading SuperCamp for 7.22B to get a boost of 4020 armies/sec
Hospitals
In my opinion they are underestimated by some players. They might not give a good reduction at the beginning, but it adds up. They will eventually save you a lot of armies. Of course the larger the map, the bigger the impact.
All the hospitals have an upgrade limit.
I wouldn’t upgrade the first 2-3 hospitals, because they hardly do much in the late stages of the game, but I do upgrade all the rest. Starting from the middle levels, I upgrade first hospitals, then army camps!
During the last stages of Europe Huge my hospitals were saving me a total worth of 1B armies per conquest. Most of the territories had between 2B and 2.3B armies. That's almost 50% saved from every territory!
If you like to see how many armies will your hospitals save, press on a grey unfogged territory - a territory you can see but not conquer - and check the information window below.
Mercenaries
You will be tempted to buy your mercenaries whenever you earn some money. DON’T! Especially not in larger maps! Invest your money in hospitals, army camps, artifacts and mines.
I recruit my mercenaries at the latest stage of the game, when the map is 85-90% finished, most of the territories are visible, the hospitals upgraded almost to the maxand the upgrades for the army camps begin to be too expensive.
There are of course exceptions:
For example, let's say I'm about to conquer a territory with a new army camp that is guarded by 600K armies, but I only have 480K. In such a case I might consider getting the missing 120K from mercenaries, because as I said earlier: army camps are your priority.
Remember one thing:
Maps have one hidden big stack at the end. In my case in Europe Huge it was a gigantic stack of 400B among normal stacks of 2-20B.
Saving your mercenaries up to this point will help you a lot dealing with such obstacle.
Arenas
I'm not a big fan of them. I'm not always in the mood of playing suddenly WZC in the middle of an idle map, but the main reason: arenas give bad rewards. I think it's like opening a Cache of Power.
Mines
Every mine is upgradable up to level 20. Don't even think of upgrading them all! It's a waste of money. You'll need a couple of upgrades for each resource, but by all means find your personal balance between investing in armies and upgrading mines.
Note, at the end of the mine list you will find two very handy buttons:
One with all your unclaimed powers, the second with all your undug artifacts
Ores/Alloys/Items/Markets/Smelters/Crafters
I made a separate guide on the market. Follow the link: WZI Economics
Tech Tree
Unlocking all the available techs in a level will award you an achievement. In my personal opinion, it is to be avoided. You don't need a complete tech tree to finish a level, and trying to unlock every tech is tedious and time consuming.
Even in Europe Huge I gave up on the last army camp upgrade and was more eager to sell my 3 Dysprosiums than to wait two more days for the remaining 2 needed for the tech.
At some point, let's say your 9th ascension, you may do one run through all the levels with the goal of getting this useless achievement.
Here is the fully mapped Tech Tree. I'm not listing the ingredients needed, because they differ from map to map.
Note, that by unlocking Statistics level 4 with your AP you are getting a fully revealed Tech Tree on all maps!
The most important techs are:
- Drafting - you should get it asap!
- Sell price of ores, alloys and items - it will boost your money income at the end stages of a map when you are selling stuff.
- Cache Size increase +50% - a must on later levels!
- Maxing out all the Mercenary and Hospital techs if possible
The rest is somewhat of a secondary importance
Powers
There are couple of ways getting powers
- opening a surprise chest once a day
- spinning the wheel of fortune by winning WZC games (once in 18 hours)
- finding Powers on maps
- purchasing them for coins
- winning different competitive events like raffles, clan wars, special tournaments etc.
Note, each map has a limited number of Powers. After you harvested all the Powers twice, the maps will become Power-less. Forever!
From that point, you'll see Powers only by opening chests and spinning wheels.
Don't be demoralized. Powers are there to help you dealing with maps on early stages. Later you'll have your Advancements on your side. So don't be afraid to use them.
You can gather up to 5 Powers from each type. While playing a map it is possible to have even more of them. All the excess Powers will vanish after you finish the level, so again - don't be afraid to use them!
There are 9 types of Power. I'll list them from best to worst:
- Multilevel - best thing ever! Save it for the last three levels only (Triskelion, United States and Europe Huge). I don't have to explain the benefit of playing 4-5 weeks on two levels simultaneously and getting an amount of AP that you'd normally get in 9 weeks.
- Fog Buster - yes, this one! On big maps of course. It reveals 150 territories at once. If you know where all the army camps and the recipes are, or how many big stacks and mercenary camps await you, you will develop the correct strategy and finish the level 30% quicker.
- Inspire Mercenaries - save this Power until the very end of the map!! After you’ve picked ALL of the mercenary camps use it on the most expensive one (or the one that gives you the biggest army stack. You'll have to do your calculations). There is nothing more bitter in life than inspire a camp with 60B armies for 100W each, only to discover a hidden camp with 120B armies for 124W each!
- Time Warp – use it in middle and late stages of the map. Its effect grows depending on the level of your mines and army camps.
- Free Cache* - not as good as Time Wrap but can still give a good small boost. If you have cache-boosting artifacts equip them, they affect this Power.
- Supercharge Mine – can help a little if you are in need of a specific resource but don’t have the money to upgrade the mine that’s producing them. 10 minutes of 20x boost on a mine can generate some resources for a needed tech upgrade.
- Supercharge Army Camp* - it sounds better than it is. This Power is probably more useful at early stages of the map when it can actually make some difference. The downside of this Power is its low effect. Imagine you have 15 camps producing 500K Armies/sec, every second, every minute, every hour, for 3-4 weeks... what would change if one of them will produce 20x more for 5 "whole" minutes? Nothing. Note, Supercharge Army Camp doesn't work on the Super Camp!
- Market Raid - the idea of getting rare items or alloys for free is great. But Markets are scarce and they only rarely sell things you want. At the late stages of the map you don't really need Aluminum or Barbed Wire...
- Skip Level - there are 32 maps in WZI. DON'T SKIP LEVELS! It's really fun to skip all the way to Europe Huge. But first of all, how long would it take finishing an expert level without any advancement upgrades? Probably forever. In the meantime, you could play through the easier maps, get some AP faster and take on the later maps with more efficiency. Secondly, you probably want to ascend at some point. For that you'll need to finish all the levels once. So Skip Level only gives you an impression of a fast progress. In reality, it may slow you down. Is it useless? Probably. Think twice before you attempt finishing Africa as your third level!
*Supercharge Army Camp + Free Cache combo - the Free Cache is affected by your army production. Using it in combination with the Supercharge Army Camp will boost greatly the amount of armies you get from the cache!
Try to accumulate 5 of each of them and then use them all at once starting from the mid-late stages of the level (never do it at the beginning!)
First supercharge five different army camps simultaneously - then immediately use the Free Cache Powers.
Supercharge Mine + Market Raid combo - I've never tried it myself, but there are indications that it is possible to get more of the needed alloys, if the respective mines are supercharged.
Superpower
A new feature that came with the 5.14 update.
By completing the Hardened Ursa-Luna you can now consume 5 Powers of the same kind to activate them at a x10 rate.
This is a powerful move and should be saved for the hard levels only!
-Superpower Inspire Mercenaries - the most OP feature of the game! Inspires one camp 10 times. It's should be used on the biggest camp. This alone can finish a level within seconds if played correctly.
- Superpower Fog Buster - reveals 1500 territories. Use it only in levels that have more than that!
- Superpower Market Raid and Free Cache - gives you 10x of each. Very powerful in combination wirg the combos.
DON'T use the superpower on army camps and mines!! - it will only prolong the duration of the supercharge, not the production quantity!
Mortars
A new useless feature.
Mortars are bad! They cost a lot of money to be activated. They take 1 hour to load. They can only hit targets within 5 territories (until the mortar is ready, you have probably already cleared the whole area next to them). They do really bad damage (20% of a stack). And if that wasn't enough, there is a good probability they'll simply miss the target.
Also, I'd avoid investing in their Advancement upgrades.
Maybe if future updates Mortars will get some kind of a boost... until then simply avoid!
Artifacts
I made a separate guide on the artifacts. Follow the link: Artifacts Guide
There is also a detailed database for all the artifacts and their statistics -------> Artifacts Database
Advancements
I made a separate guide on the advancements. Follow the link: Advancements Guide
There is also a database for all the Advancements. It shows the effects and costs for every possible upgrade.
-------> Advancements Database
Replaying Levels and Ascending
You can replay any level unlimited times. However, with every repeated win you will get 30% less AP! Replaying maps makes little sense. Before I knew about Ascension, I was trying to calculate which replayed level would give me the best amount of AP to time spent ratio. But now I understand this was the wrong approach.
What you want is Ascension. It is activated by finishing Europe Huge and costs 100 AP to activate. You start basically all over again from the first map. It restores the full amount of AP you get for finishing the level. BUT, you keep your AP progress, your unused powers and your artifacts, which means replaying levels should get faster and easier.
Note, you can now skip as many levels as you want and even only play Europe Huge, however, I still think you should play most of the levels in their order. Going too soon for a bigger map means you'll struggle more and waste time.
To help you visualize the difference of playing a level for the first time and replaying it after you have ascended here is a comparison of the statistics for the level Old Town:
The difference is of 5 days!
Between the two playthroughs I was digging and upgrading artifacts (including the Supercharge Army Camp) and investing my Advancement Points.
(That was all before the 5.14 update. Now levels take just a couple of hours to finish)
Gameplay - Conquering territories
If you unlocked Auto-Conquer (Advancements Phase 2) and activated it, the AI will conquer the territories for you. If that's you play style, make sure to upgrade camps and mines to help you AI. Make sure to invest AP in your Auto-upgrades and increase your idle time!
If you like to play actively, you have to do the following:
- make sure Auto-Conquer is deactivated!
- Joint Strike (Advancements Phase 1) is upgraded to the max.
- Try to unlock Drafting on you tech tree as soon as possible and don't forget to collect your drafts!
- Enter the game at least every 4 hours to watch the ad and activate the 20% boost to all your army camps.
Joint Strike
Try to always conquer a new territory that borders at least two of your own territories. The Joint Strike will save you 25% percent of your army, which is sometimes equal to the amount of the armies your camps will produce during the entire level!
If you have an option of conquering multiple territories using Joint Strike, start with the bigger stack. Why?
Let's say you have 450K armies and two territories to conquer. One is guarded by 400K, the other by 100K.
If you start with the bigger one, Joint Strike will save you 100K.
450K-400K+100K= you are left with 150K and you can still conquer the second territory.
If you start with the small one, Joint Strike will save you 25K.
450K-100K+25K= you are left with 375K which is not enough for the bigger stack.
If you are not sure if the territory you are about to conquer is connected to one or more of you territories, use connection arrows from the window below.
Where to go
Your next goal is to decide where to go. For that revealing the fog is essential (or at least very very helpful!).
First objective for me would be to find my route to the hospitals and army camps.
Second objective Is to conquer recipes, mines, smelters, crafters and dig sites.
On the way prioritize to complete bonuses for boosting your money generation!
Getting mercenaries and markets is important but more for the later stages of the level.
Caches
There are 3 types of Caches you can find on territories:
- army
- money
- resources
All three give nice boosts, so grab them!
If multiple ways lead to your goal, try to choose the one with more caches on it.
If you have Caches Boosting Artifacts make sure to equip them before you conquer to maximize profit.
If conquering different caches is available, start with the Army Cache for the same reasons described with the Joint Strike strategy.
Unlocking the Increased Caches Size from the tech tree as soon as possible is important to maximize profit from the caches
Later stages
After you have conquered about 80%-85% of the level, you'll notice that your progress starts to "slow down".
The neutral stacks will get bigger, upgrading your Army Camps will become more and more expensive and less and less effective.
That's the time to start thinking about your mercenaries.
Don't forget to invest your AP in mercenary upgrades, because normally the amount of armies that awaits you in the mercenariy camps is bigger than what your army camps will produce during the entire level.
At this point your tech tree should be (almost) fully upgraded, which means you can start selling your items and alloys: buying mercenaries is going to be painfully expensive but essential for a fast win!
Challenges
As I described in the Advancements guide, you need to decide about you style of playing. In order to win challenges (starting from level 4-5) you need to invest in the different Auto-Upgrades.
If you want to be able to go more and more idle with WZI, do it.
Take into consideration that challenges only award you with 100 AP for a win and only once per level! Interestingly the harder levels give the same amount as the easier ones. Calculate if you are not spending more AP on upgrades than you will gain from winning a single challenge.
Finishing all the 31 challenges will give you a total of 3100 AP.
Battles
Allows you to fight other players on an idle map for miscellaneous rewards (most of them pretty minor).
The more battle points you accumulate the better the rewards
Since the boost on the active artifacts there are four situations you may encounter:
1. No one possesses the Supercharge Army Camp Artifact (SACA) - In this case make sure you haven't unlocked Auto-Upgrade Army Camps! Let the other fight for the first spots and get bombarded, while you stay at 5th or 6th position for a while. Upgrade your army camps gradually and carefully and when you are ready sell your resources, upgrade your army camps and purchase all your mercenaries. With luck you'll waltz yourself into the winning position.
2. One player possesses SACA (at least rare) - Almost nothing to do. You are probably fighting for 2nd place. Repeat the steps from the previous point.
3. You are the only one to possess SACA (at least on rare level). Congratulations, you have won. Upgrade Gislic, and only Gilslic and supercharge it whenever the artifact is ready. Purchase Mercenaries to help you win quicker.
4. More players have SACA. Repeat the steps from the previous point. The one with the most advanced artifact will probably win.
At the right side of the screen above the thumbnails of all the players, you will find four/five green buttons with letters.
With these 4(5) options you are guiding your AI how to target you opponents:
T - targeting the player with most territories
A - targeting the player with most armies income/sec
U - targeting the player with the fewest unconquered armies
R - targeting players randomly
C - targeting only players that are members in a clan
Please, whatever you choose, don't pick the Random option!
Your AI will blindly attack players including those who aren’t posing any threat to you, and miss the opportunity to attack players who are about to finish the battle first.
Apart of wasting your attacks on nothing your aren't gaining anything from that!
I'm constantly rewriting and revising the guide. It's worth checking it once in a while, as new sections might be added.
If you found a mistake, or you miss information about some aspects of the game, contact me!
GG
Parsifal (01.09.2021)