In my fellowship UNGO under Phoenix'* leadership we are about to start our first adventure into NRP. To be precise: the campaign "Rings of Power: Kingdom of Men" (I will call it KoM from here on).
*visit Phoenix' YouTube channel and subscribe/watch our season start streams on Aug 4th
Most of us never played NRP. Some of us may not even particularly like the concept of NRP for various reasons. However, we aim to enter this adventure with an open mind and fresh spirit, excited for the unknown, yet eager to get as much information as possible before the season starts. We don't want to fall into potential traps that might be waiting for us.
To gather the information we needed I conferred with two friends who both have played the season before:
- Neal13 (aka DaRealDealNeal) from TIME is a very seasoned player with great knowledge of commander builds and strategy; he played the campaign when it was first released in 2022.
- T, a former UNGO member, who is also a very seasoned player and exceptionally good at season starts; he played the campaign just recently with another team.
I bothered both with a lot of questions and hereby want to thank them for their patience and for sharing what they remember and have recollected from their own experiences with this particular campaign.
The other main sources are in game explanations and patch notes shared by the developers via the official discord.
Larger Map
The map in KoM is significantly bigger than in any of the previous campaigns that had been published. This allows for more space to farm or for more people to play - whichever way it turns out to happen.
You start with the option in game to choose the region you spawn in. Usually you would be joining with your fellowship or warband and your leadership will have determined which greater region you will aim for as a team.
Within these greater regions you are more or less free to choose your regions where you want to spawn. Some regions (controlled by the keeps as you know it) will be unavailable to spawn into and others are free choice.
In our team we aimed to distribute the players roughly evenly in order to avoid early game issues with too many people sitting on top of each other and no one finding enough tiles to farm. How this is organized by your team may be slightly different. However, the most important part is to spawn in the correct region because if you are in a region that counts towards another capital, you will not be able to join your fellowship/warband.
The game only allows to recruit players who either sit in the greater region where your leader is located, or in a region that was already occupied by your team. As you know it might take a while until some of the keeps can be claimed.
Thus: make sure you follow the announcements of your team's leadership in order to not be left out in the cold.
2. First Day of Grind
After spawn you start your grind as usual. The major difference that you will find is that you start with both Men and Evil Men troops. For the early game chapter progress you only have to pick one of them in order to unlock the next buildings.
Once you reach MH 4 or 5 (we were not sure about that) you can start building the embassies for the races you want to hire (e.g. for dwarfes, elves, or also any of the evil alignment’s troops). With the embassy built you can start building camps outside your base. The camps can be upgraded like the quarter/troop buildings inside your base.
If a camp gets deleted by you or destroyed by an enemy, you can simply rebuild it for relatively cheap resources. It will retain the level you had before = you do not have to start over from fresh. However, if you had queues active for hiring in them, you might only get part of the hired troops (usually for neutrals you get those commands that had been finished). What I personally do is I start shorter queues while I know I am actively playing and just start a new queue every hour or two.
Side note: This is also something I advise for neutral camps in general if you need troops in your base quicker. Hire one type of troops in a number that takes maybe an hour, then instantly "recall" them as soon as they are marching to your base and fill the queue again. Then you don't have to wait 8 hours for a full queue to finish and can use these troops already. The speed recalls should be plenty if you do your swipes of mobs frequently.
3. Do you have to build all troop buildings?
Easy answer: No.
You pick and choose the troop buildings according to what you need for your own commander line-up. If you have only dwarven commanders and don't use elves on them, no point in building the elven troop buildings. You can save those resources for other buildings and grow faster or you use them for your queues to fill and get your barracks filled.
My advice: Try to make a plan on which troops you will need with your commanders throughout the season. Consider which ones you will need first - likely the focus during very early season will be on PvE. Make a plan on where to spend your resources in order to be able to manage them well. If you make that plan before your season starts, you wont have to figure it out during the grind.
The troops in your base are trained via the conscription queues, while troops in the camps outside your base have to be hired. However, only neutral troops cost gold, the regular troops (good or evil) do not require gold.
4. T4 Troops
In KoM you have the possibility to get additional t4 troops from the mobs around you. This works with a mechanic called "Conversion", a ring ability. Converting the troops means you convince the mobs near your base to join you as soldiers.
The ability is in the left upper corner of your ring tree. To activate it you need 1 ring point.
To convert the mob you click on the mob, pick the option "Ring" and then choose "Conversion" to convert the mobs into your soldiers. This conversion costs 10 AP per activation.
5. Neutrals
There are different ways to obtain neutral troops
- You take a native camp
- Fellowship members obtain native camps and hire 1000 commands -> you can build a camp for yourself as well
- Fellowship leader unlocks the neutral units in the Employment Hall, which allows you to hire up to 60 command per day in total (across all three types) -- NEW MECHANIC
6. Hiring/Conscription Queues
Once you reached the required level you have
- up to 4 conscription queues and
- up to 4 hiring queues available
7. Keeps/Regional Control
To take control over a region your team/kingdom has to
- take over all scout towers/control points within the region
- take over the keep that controls the region
8. Building a Kingdom
Taking control over a capital/ring will allow your leader to create a kingdom. Your kingdom can then recruit ONE other team as partner within our kingdom. Alternatively you can join another team's kingdom if they invite you.
The Kingdom has the same functionalities as a fellowship. This includes helping others and the contribution by helping them.
By getting control over a capital, you automatically acquire the ring that belongs to it. These rings come with different buffs: active skills (launched by the king) and passive skills (constant buffs).
Active Skills:
- Powerful Treatment: choose an adjacent region of your kingdom to activate the buff. Members of the kingdom heal 50% of wounded soldiers after winning a battle in that region.
Resource Power: Members of the kingdom gain resources yield +50%.
Construction Support: Choose a region fully controlled by your kingdom to activate the buff. Members of the kingdom receive construction speed +50% while building forts in the region.
Powerful Repression: Choose a region fully controlled by your Kingdom to activate the buff. Members who are not part of your kingdom can't reinforce in this region.
Passive Skills:
- Kingdom Protection: Tacticians gain buffs including Relocation, Movement Speed +, Quick March, and Kingdom Protection in the regions that are fully controlled by the Kingdom.
Ring Empowerment: All members' personal Ability Point limit receives +1 for each Ring of Power controlled by the kingdom (maximum: +5). All members' personal Ability Point limit receives +5 when the kingdom controls Dol Guldur.
9. Losing the Capital
Losing your capital will cause the kingdom to get destroyed and you lose the buffs that came with the capital. Once you regain control over the capital or another capital, you can re-establish a new kingdom and start over.
10. Territory Protection
In KoM your territory within the main kingdom area has some protection mechanisms. These mechanisms apply to the capital and all regions that are linked to the capital regions. This means a region that does not border to the main area under your control will NOT have these protection mechanisms.
11. Tiles in Enemy Regions – NEW Mechanic since 7/26
If you have tiles in enemy regions, these will receive the status “blocked”. Blocked tiles will have the effect that no one can jump on them. You can move to your own tiles and use them to path further. However, fellowship/kingdom members will NOT be able to path from your blocked tiles.
As I said, this was implemented on 7/26, which means it is a very new feature and we have not played with it yet. I will test in game and update this article later when we found out the concrete mechanics.
What we do know at this point is that this will give some mild security if there are enemy tiles in regions controlled by you within your own kingdom. On the other hand it will make it harder for you to path through enemy lands as you have to first path to a fellowship member's tile and link your tiles with theirs by using the option "land order".
Kingdom Strategy
As last point I would like to suggest a way on how to approach the season from a leadership point of view. In my personal opinion it is advisable for the registered teams to coordinate their chosen spawn regions. While you can of course just go in with your team and yolo it, it seems to be a fairly good idea to share spawn locations and potentially pivot in case the region would be too crowded.
What would happen if two pairs of kingdom-partners decided to spawn in one region? If all four teams are full teams of 100 players, that is a lot of players and very likely not all will fit. This can result in the teams not getting everyone in. Now, since a fellowship/warband can only recruit members that are located in the same greater region or in a region under control of that team, this would result in members floating around without the option to join your team. It weakens you and your team. It also weakens all the other teams in that region because they would all face the same problem.
Therefore, I think it is the smarter play for all teams to collaborate for a start that is as smooth as possible for all teams. The ultimate goal should be a fun season and you won't have a fun season if you either lose terribly, or struggle getting your pals into your team or even if you steamroll a server. In the latter case you will just be afk most of the season, which is not why we all play the game.
Of course you have to go with your own strategy and maybe with a smaller server going in the YOLO way may be a viable option and still provide some fun. It definitely will also depend a bit on how well the registration got filled up.
