Hi guys, going to continue writing new player guides since the others I've done have been well received. Today I want to talk about Research!

Before we start I want to clarify something very important about the Strategy map that will shape our priorities on the research tree:

Once you unify all of China you can no longer get attacked. This means that for the most part any kind of defensive perks, including troops, or skills specific to sieges aren't worth it long term.

Worth noting as well that only your territory that border unclaimed domains/outposts/etc can be attacked. On top of that, non-domain spots (forts/ports/etc) have static troop levels, regardless of your own levels.

It's actually can be super annoying to try and take back forts and ports so it can be better to have your domains attacked so you can take them back quickly vs other people who haven't invested in defense either. You can also get lots of rations and silver this way if you make sure to destroy the stockpiles and treasuries before you win, and a bit of jade.

Also, before spending silver for research your priority should be upgrading all your domains to at least 5/6/5/6/5/1. Again upgrading the Vault is useless, and you only want to upgrade the keep so you can keep upgrading the income buildings. I don't know if it's been mentioned anywhere yet so just want to say you don't lose your building levels when you lose a city either. When you recapture it, they'll be where they were so don't fret about "wasting" resources to upgrades. It's always going to pay off long term to upgrade your income generation.

On to the research:

Battle

So not surprisingly you're going to want all the skills in the main tree of Battle, there are some that aren't important but they're prereqs for ones that are. Outside of that we have:

• The Art of War, do not get this, it;s a waste.

• Early Training is also not very useful unless it gets you to recruiting level 7 commanders in combination with your VIP level which also boosts starting level. This is nice because they actually come with level 7 gear, removing the need for you to level up the level 1 gear and buy/craft the level 7 gear. The same thing goes for level 14 though that requires VIP level 7.

• Chain of Command is kind of a weird one, I didn't like it at first because it seemed to lead to commanders buffing when they could have attacked or healed instead but I think you may need to max it out for your mages to use their AoE abilities when autoing (not 100% sure on that)

Govern

This one has a bit of a mix, let's look at the main tree, along the top you want to go as far as getting Vitalize 2, this is pretty mandatory as getting extra energy on your commanders is a huge benefit, especially as they use more every 10 levels (45 per battle when maxed out, so even with 30 you can't even do 3 battles in a row). All the skills past Vitalize 2 aren't worth getting though, your keep won't matter later on.

Along the bottom of the main tree, you want to go as far as Silk Road, better items in the peddler will mean less of a bottleneck waiting for material to enhance your commanders' gear. Again, don't get the Keep skill that follows. Outside of that we have:

• Hasten Combat: This is a must for autoquesting dailies, they'll take forever otherwise.

• Enhance Defense: You guessed it, a waste, don't bother.

• Enhanced Formations: This is end game annihilation stuff, don't bother until you have maxed out your current formations level you're using, which isn't a very high priority early on anyway.

Organize

Basically everything here is a waste, if you're really find losing and having to take back cities annoying then unlock yellow turban spearmen and warriors (not soldiers) and level them up a bit.

You may be thinking, stmack what am I gonna do with all these rations then? The answer is, autoquesting military drills and dailies til you level up all your guys. But if you're running out of energy on everyone you want to level and still are maxed out on rations then do Devotion. It actually helps a ton with getting Archives (and other materials) that you need to craft permits, which you're going to need a lot of when promoting your guys past 80. It's one of the biggest bottlenecks late game as you need 42 permits for each commander, and each permit costs 20 archives to craft!

Plus, rations won't be an issue for long, once you get your guys leveled up and start trying to autoquest with level 80 commanders you burn through your rations very quickly. Leads to doing lots of Practice battles and Annihilation since they don't cost rations.

Alright guys, hopefully this was helpful, if you have any questions or feedback I'd love to hear it!