GUIDE: HOW TO PLAY

Guide: How to play

The following guide is an example of what you can do and what you should focus on in certain stages of the game. It is a good starting point for new players who are still learning the game.

This guide assumes that you know the interface and where to find key functionality, as it would be too much to explain it as part of this guide. You can read about all functionality and interfaces on the other pages of the Wiki. The other wiki pages are sometimes also linked in the guide to allow you to quickly switch to the relevant information.

Disclaimer: Following this guide does not guarantee you a victory and not all steps in the guide might make sense in all situations. Please apply rational thinking yourself to determine which steps to follow in your current situation of the game. There might also be more successful ways to play that you will be able to discover for yourself.

Game start (day 1)

Follow the steps below at the beginning of the game.

Start doing Adviser tasks

• If you are just starting out in Call of War you will have personal Adviser tasks. You can access the Adviser in the corner of the game screen.
• Finishing Adviser tasks helps you to learn more about different aspects of the game and rewards you with extra resources.

Research new units

• In order to produce new units you have to research them first.
• Infantry, Armored Cars, Light Tanks, Interceptors and Artillery are good early-game unit choices.
• In case you get attacked, researching Anti Tank and Anti Air can also be viable.
• If you are an island nation or have a lot of coastal provinces, you can also research ships like Destroyers and Cruisers.
• Check the different research and production costs of the units you are researching. Depending on the unit type, units usually require higher amounts of one or two resources and smaller amounts of other resources, so it makes sense to diversify your troops in a way that you are not reliant on the same resources only. Try to spread your resource requirements over all resources.
• Check the damage statistics of the units available to you, to determine which units they are strong against. While countries start out with several unarmored units and some light armored units, this mix can change over the course of the game. It makes sense to prepare against other kinds of targets as well.

Construct buildings for unit production in your urban provinces

• The buildings required for producing units can only be constructed in provinces with urban terrain.
• Depending on which units you research, construct the corresponding production buildings to produce those units. Barracks produce Infantry type units, Tank Plants produce vehicles, and so on. You can check the unit details (info button) to see the production requirements for a unit.
• Construct only 1 or 2 production buildings per category to save resources. For example, you could build 2 Barracks, 2 Tank Plants and 1 Ordnance Foundry at the beginning of the game.
• It is sufficient to only build the first level on the first days of a game round.

Produce units in your production buildings

• Produce the units that you have researched in the production buildings that you just constructed.
• Use the province list to quickly start constructing units (or buildings) in multiple provinces simultaneously.

Contact other players and find allies

• It can be difficult to win by yourself when worrying about your neighbours attacking you. You can contact them in the Messages & Trades tab in the diplomacy list to make a beneficial arrangement with them.
• You can also trade resources with other players via the Messages & Trades tab in the diplomacy menu.
• You can change your diplomatic relations with your new allies to Right of Way or Shared Map in the diplomacy list. You can also consider creating and joining a coalition with them to make your partnership official. This unlocks a coalition chat in which all members can coordinate more effectively.
• Be cautious about who you ally yourself with and don’t let your whole territory unguarded. Not every player is as trustworthy as they might seem.
• Don’t ally with everyone around you to keep options for expanding your nation.

Scout out hostile neighbors and potential targets with your troops

• You are only seeing enemy advances inside your country and inside the vision range of your troops, while troops in the fog of war remain hidden and need to be uncovered.
• Place single troops at your borders to catch enemy advances early.
• Use your Interceptor to patrol along your border to spot troop positions of your neighbors.

Select your first target and rally your troops at the border

• The safest way to expand early is to attack a small AI nation (played by the computer). Check the map or the diplomacy list to see which smaller nations are bordering you.
• Combine your troops into 1 to 3 groups to prepare an effective attack.
• It is a good idea to keep a few units in reserve in case another nation attacks you from a different direction.

Attack your first target

• Cross the border with your rallied troops and conquer all provinces of the target nation. Head for the urban provinces first to cut off possibilities of reinforcement.
• Try to move your troops in a way that they won’t allow your enemies to flank or evade them.
• Remember that conquered provinces may trigger an uprising at the next daychange due to their low morale, which only improves slowly over time. You can either ignore that threat and re-conquer them at a later point in time, or you can leave some troops in the conquered provinces to prevent uprisings. Boosting the province morale with propaganda campaigns is also a quick way to deal with this. You can also build Propaganda Offices in conquered territory to increase the morale improvement rate.

Prepare your defense

• It is always wise to set up your defenses in your border provinces, where you anticipate a possible attack.
• Try to spot possible choke points that you can fortify more easily than a wide front.
• Place some defensive units (e.g. Infantry, Armored Cars) in the province center of your border provinces (don’t place them outside the province center at the border)
• Construct defensive buildings like Fortifications and Bunkers in your border provinces to protect your defensive troops even more. Only troops located in the province center will be protected by these buildings.

Improve your economy

• Construct Industry and Local Industry buildings in your core provinces to increase their resource production rate. This will pay off in the later stages of the game.
• Focus on constructing them in provinces where you produce the resources that you need the most. For example, if you want to produce a lot of Infantry, construct Industry in provinces that produce food.
• If you lack manpower, construct Recruiting Stations instead of Industry.
• Use the province list to quickly start constructing buildings (or units) in multiple provinces simultaneously.

Spend your remaining resources

• You may still have some resources left that you can spend. Consider starting more unit productions, or constructing more Industry in your resource provinces, or researching more units.
• If you have more leftovers of a particular resource, or if you are lacking a particular resource, trade this resource on the stock market, until your resource levels are even again. This also helps with spending the rest of your resources. Your allies might also be interested in trading resources, so why don’t you ask them in the diplomacy menu?

Grant small AI nations Right of Way or Shared Map

• In the diplomacy menu, consider changing your relation with smaller AI nations (computer players) to the diplomatic setting of Right of Way or Shared Map. AI nations are marked accordingly in the diplomacy list.
• This will improve your standing with AI nations and may lead to those AI nations returning the favor after several days. At that point you can travel through their territory without attacking them, which can be handy to stage surprise attacks on your enemies.
• You can also consider giving Right of Way to bigger AI nations, but keep in mind that other players can still join into these countries and use this relation against you. You should check the list regularly if a big AI nation turned into a human player.

Use the Wiki, FAQ forum and help chat

• If you feel overwhelmed or don’t know what to do, keep reading the Wiki to get an overview of the game. Also check out the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for answers on common questions.
• The Questions and Answers forums also provides helpful tips from veteran players. You can even create new threads in there to ask questions to the community. This is most effective when asking about a more complicated topic.
• The fastest way of getting help is by typing your question in the help chat channel in the game. This is most effective when asking about simpler topics.
• If you encounter any bugs or technical problems, use the bug report form in the game options instead, to get help from our support team.

Early game & (day 1-7)

Follow the steps below in the first phase of the game (usually the first 7 days).

Research higher unit levels

• Decide which units you want to improve. Focus on those which complement your strategy the best, since you won’t have resources to research them all.

Complete all Adviser tasks

• If you are just starting out in Call of War you still might have open Adviser tasks, which you can access in the top right corner in the game.
• Finish all open Adviser tasks to learn more about different aspects of the game and to collect the resource rewards.

Research new advanced units

• Research new unit types which complement your strategy even better. Good examples are Motorized Infantry, Medium Tanks, Tactical Bombers or Rocket Artillery.
• In case you have to rely on sea dominance you might also want to research Battleships or Aircraft Carriers.
• It makes sense to research a healthy mix of different units which counter different armor classes and which require different resources to produce.

Upgrade your unit production buildings

• When you research higher unit levels or new advanced units, their production time will become longer. You can counteract this by leveling up the production buildings of these units, which decreases the production time of units.
• The production time of units can not fall below a minimum production time, so it makes sense to only upgrade your buildings as much as you currently need it.
• Look up the current production times and minimum production times of units in the unit details (info button) to determine the feasibility of upgrading your production buildings right now.

Upgrade your units on the battlefield

• After researching higher unit levels for existing units, you can upgrade them to the higher level directly on the map. This provides you with a stronger army without needing to build new troops.
• Upgrading units costs some time and resources, so if you have resource constraints, upgrading may not always be the best course of action. Sometimes producing new troops and keeping existing troops on a lower level may be worthwhile, whereas in other situations it is better to quickly improve your units on the map. You can even use upgrading at a later point to skip levels in between to save resources.

Upgrade your economic buildings

• Upgrade your Industry, Local Industry and Recruiting Stations buildings to higher levels in order to reap the long-term benefits.
• Build Industries and Local Industries in your core resource provinces where you did not build them previously. Even if don’t need the resources at the moment, you could need them in the future. Selling them for profit on the stock market is also an option.
• Only do this when you are not currently in a situation where you need all available resources for war, since upgrading takes a few days to pay off.

Optimize your army stack

• The combat system works in a way that only the 10 strongest units per damage category deal damage to an enemy. Try to keep your unit count in an army close to 10 to not lose damage efficiency.
• In certain situations it makes sense to exceed the limit of 10, to increase the army’s chance of survival. In that case you should still diversify your army as much as possible, as it will make the loss of efficiency less severe.
• If a unit in your army is heavily damaged, consider splitting it off from the rest of the army to send it back to your territory to heal up. Units do this automatically on daychange for a fraction of their lost hitpoints. You can also spend gold to improve their condition faster. Otherwise, damaged units will slow down your army, as they receive a speed penalty when having less than 50% of their hitpoints remaining.

Build Infrastructure on select supply routes

• In order to quickly send your troops to the frontlines, build Infrastructure on key routes from your core territory to your front lines.
• You won’t have enough resources to upgrade all provinces, so locate the best routes which cover the longest distances with the lowest number of provinces.

Gather advanced information about other countries

• Keep scouting the surrounding area for suspicious troop movements.
• With airplanes you can patrol deep into other nations, which creates espionage reports on stationed armies, that last until the next daychange.
• Deploy Intelligence and Military Sabotage spies to enemy provinces via the espionage menu. They will reveal armies and provide other useful country information every daychange, lasting until the next daychange.
• Check the ingame newspaper on a daily basis and filter for enemies or nations nearby. Check the progress of their wars as well as their losses to spot windows of opportunity for your own attacks.
• Talk to other nations via the diplomacy menu to exchange information.

Avoid high unit losses

• Only start fights that leave you with enough remaining units afterwards. Otherwise you might be unprepared for an enemy that tries to conquer your defenseless nation.
• When you need to clear out enemy fortresses or big armies, try to use ranged weapons to do so with fewer losses.
• Always bring the right counter unit to a fight. Look up enemy army compositions to determine which troops your own units are most effective against.

Attack the biggest threat

• Often it’s better to take out the bigger threats around your before your troops take damage in attacks on smaller nations. This goes contrary to the point made above about avoiding unit losses, but attacking the biggest threat first might be necessary sometimes. It may hurt you in the short-term, but taking out your competition right away will pay off in the long run, especially if your enemy is in a position to outgrow you quicker than you can outgrow them.
• Study the map and the diplomacy list to determine which nations in your vicinity are the biggest threats, and prepare your attack against them, potentially with the help of your allies.
• A real active opponent will be tougher to beat than a small AI, do not be afraid to take some losses but try to keep them as low as possible.
• Try to make use of surprise attacks and use the information that you gathered beforehand via scouting and spying.
• If your information reveals that you currently have no chance in beating your biggest threat, postpone your attack and wait for an opportunity. Your enemy may get caught up in other battles, that reduce their strength, and you may be able to increase your strength by conquering smaller nations first. You could even consider allying yourself with your enemy.

Increase your relative power

• If you cannot take the step above and would rather avoid attacking your biggest threat for now, try increasing your strength instead. This can be done in different ways.
• Spend more resources on your economy, to have more resources for your military in the long run.
• Conquer weaker nations that provide you with resources to build a stronger army, but avoid losing units while doing so.
• Engage in diplomacy with other players and try to collaborate with the enemies of your enemy.
• If you are in a dire situation, spending some gold on resources or speed-ups could help you to catch up.

Prevent uprisings

• Whenever you conquer new provinces, their province morale is reduced to 25%.
• With such a low morale, the province is at risk of revolting at the next daychange, which can result in damage to your troops or buildings or an ownership change to another nation.
• To avoid uprisings (revolts) in your provinces, place a small amount of troops in provinces that have a morale below 31%. Your troops will suppress the uprising.
• The morale of a province will improve over time with each daychange. This allows you to move your garrison troops away as soon as the province morale is above 31%.
• To speed up the morale increase of a province you can build Propaganda Offices in them.
• You can increase the morale of the province immediately with a propaganda campaign as well (costs gold).
• Conquering a capital at the right time will also immediately increase the morale of your provinces.

Time the conquering of capitals

• Capturing a capital city will decrease the morale of all provinces of the nation it belonged to, while increasing the morale of all provinces of the conqueror.
• The moment when you take the enemy capital can be quite important: Secure it early in your conquest against a strong enemy to deal a heavy blow to their remaining provinces; conquer it last against a weak enemy to improve the morale of all your newly conquered provinces before the daychange - this way you can prevent uprisings from occurring.

Don’t forget about stealth and scouting

• Some units have the stealth feature, making them hidden on certain terrain. You can check the stealth capabilities of units in the unit details (info button).
• Some units have the scout feature, making them able to reveal hidden units. You can check the scout capabilities of units in the unit details (info button).
• When using stealth units, beware of enemy scouts that can reveal them.
• Scout units need to be at least on the same level as the stealth unit to uncover it.
• Always include a scout unit in your armies so you don’t run into hidden ambushes.

Make use of your Doctrine

• Your nation belongs to 1 of 4 Doctrines, which have different strengths and weaknesses. Study the Doctrines page to get an overview of your Doctrine.
• Consider using primarily the units which are favoured by your Doctrine, but do not neglect the other units too much.

Mid game & (day 8-21)

Follow the steps below in the mid game phase. There is no clear indication of this, but usually it lasts from around day 8 to 21.

Keep researching, producing and upgrading your units

• You need the strongest and most versatile army to have the best chances of winning, so improve its power by researching unit levels, by upgrading existing units and by producing new ones
• Always check on what your enemies bring to the battlefields and try to counter it.

Keep conquering and eliminating threats

• You can only win by collecting enough victory points. Luckily conquering provinces also grants you more resources and additional production possibilities.
• Always keep analyzing the map and diplomacy situation around you and try to eliminate threats before they become too big of a risk.
• Time when you conquer the capital city of a nation to make the most use of the morale effect.

Keep optimizing your army

• Always consider the size efficiency limit of 10 units per army.
• Keep analysing the army compositions of your enemies and mix units together which counter those compositions.

Upgrade your core provinces to the maximum

• Upgrade your unit production buildings in your core provinces to the maximum level, to keep your production times as low as possible.
• Upgrade Industry, Local Industry and Recruiting Stations buildings in your core provinces to the maximum level to keep your economy competitive.
• Upgrade Propaganda Offices in order to keep your province’s morale at maximum level, to not receive any production time penalties.
• Upgrade Infrastructure to reduce the travel time towards your frontlines.
• Consider building more than 1 or 2 unit production buildings in the same urban province, to quickly shift production focus to different units. Do this only if you have enough resources to support this.

Consider special purpose units

• For some purposes researching and producing specialized units may be the best option.
• If you want to bomb down the infrastructure, economy and unit production facilities of an enemy to end a stalemate, use Strategic Bombers or Rockets against the enemy core provinces.
• If you want to disrupt enemy supply lines or even use enemy buildings against your enemy, consider dropping Paratroopers behind enemy lines.
• If you want to surprise your enemy and ambush their troops or provinces, consider using stealth units like Commandos.

Consider constructing new production buildings in conquered provinces

• To minimise travel time it may be worth constructing and upgrading new unit production buildings in the provinces that you conquered near your frontlines
• Don’t forget that your enemies can re-conquer these provinces, so choose the location carefully.

Check your front reports and notifications

• Front reports and notifications help you to keep track of what happened to your provinces and units while you were offline. Open them via the corresponging button.

Read the Call of War news

• Whenever there is an update to the game, the changes are communicated on the home screen of Call of War.
• Be up to date on changes that can potentially affect your game round.

Consider playing Call of War on multiple platforms

• Call of War can be played on multiple platforms, including mobile apps, desktop browser and Steam.
• You can log in to your game round on these platforms using your existing account, if you entered a username and a password in the account settings.
• Consider playing on desktop while being at home to increase the precision of army controls and the ease of use when browsing the menus.
• Consider playing on mobile while on the go, to always be able to react to new situations and to never let your troops or production facilities idle for too long.

Make use of Premium Account features

• By now you probably have got the hang of the game and know which features can work to your advantage. Consider purchasing Premium Account to gain even more possibilities to plan ahead and to control your troops with more precision:
• The build queue lets you plan production of units and buildings ahead of time. You can put them into a queue to make them start automatically when the province has an empty production or construction slot and when you have enough resources. You can also reorder items that you added to the build queue. This is very handy if you want production to not slow down while you are offline.
• Fire Control allows you to customize the prefered behaviour for units with ranged attacks. Order your artillery to automatically stop moving and start shooting whenever an enemy enters their range, and to resume moving when the enemy is destroyed. This is very handy if you want to keep your front moving while you are offline without having your ranged units run into enemy garrisons. You can even tell your submarines to only return fire when attacked, allowing them to pass through other ships undetected without starting fights.
• Rally Points let you gather newly produced troops at the location of your choosing immediately after they exit your factories.
• Share intelligence with allied players. Your allies automatically see all espionage reports and revealed armies of your enemies, while you can see their reports if they share intelligence with you as well.
• There are even more benefits, like being able to create your own private game round or the ability to upload pictures with your newspaper articles.

End game (day 22+)

Foll the steps below in the end phase of the game. This usually starts after day 21.

Manage province morale

• By this point in the game you have probably expanded quite a bit, receiving an expansion penalty modifier on your province’s morale.
• Counter this negative morale effect by constructing and leveling up Propaganda Offices in your provinces, which adds a positive morale modifier to the province.
• First focus on your core provinces, then prioritize provinces which are in danger of an uprising due to low morale.

Allocate missing victory points faster than your enemies

• Be on the lookout for opportunities to close out the game, by making plans how to quickly gain enough Victory Points to reach the victory threshold.
• Keep an eye on the ranking in the diplomacy list or in the newspaper to see which of your enemies is closest to victory. Prevent them from reaching it with force!

Consider nuclear weapons

• To clear out large concentrated forces quickly, Nuclear Bombers or Nuclear Rockets are a good choice.
• They are expensive to research and produce, but can be a game changer.
• Beware of the larger impact radius of these weapons, which can hurt more than just one army, including your own.

Keep an eye on the game end time

• Every game round has a maximum runtime. If no player wins earlier, the round will end and the player or coalition with the highest current placing wins. Keep that in mind when planning your moves late in the game.
• The runtime for smaller scenarios is usually 5 ingame weeks, for medium maps 7 ingame weeks and for big maps 10 ingame weeks.
• You can check the runtime of your current game round in the newspaper inside the game rules tab (only on desktop).
• 7 days prior to the game round ending a game end timer appears on the screen, notifying you about the imminent end in advance.

Join new game rounds

• No matter if you win or lose the game, you can always join the next exciting game round of Call of War.
• Play new scenario maps and try out playing as different nations with different Doctrines.
• Level up your profile statistics and gain new achievements.
• No playthrough will be the same!