General Tips for Beginners

Here are some general things to remember as you start playing:

General Tips:

For Expedition and Command Medal Talents: It isn't always best to max out each step, but rather to go further along the path. This especially applies to the Expedition section, because you want to get to Lv. 5 Expedition Mastery as soon as possible. Unlocking that mastery will allow you to attack level 5 toys, which is a more efficient usage of your Stamina. If you spend all of your points filling in the earlier skills, you won't be able to reach Lv. 5 Expedition Mastery at the earliest possible level of Commander Level 40. The good news is that you can spend 500 gold to reset both your Command and Expedition allocations. The icon in the upper right corner of the Medal Talent screen allows you to completely reset and re-allocate your points.
Keep all of your queues running:
- always be building something
- always be researching something
- (generally) always be making troops - eventually the upkeep cost will become important
If you’re lucky enough to start playing on cheap build day (starting on Wednesday at midnight in Battlefield Time) you can build up your buildings for very cheap in terms of paint and plastic costs - nice bonus!
Keep working on your Special Operations (you get to it through your Chinook). Unlock new areas when they are available; and attack the yellow Depots that are available. Learn how to use your Stage Skills - which ones are valuable, which ones are not. Learn to select officers that give you the most useful Stage Skills.
Keep training troops. Level your troop camps up to the highest level your HQ will support, and train the highest level of troops you can for now.
VIP: VIP level is pretty important, and keeping it activated has large benefits. You can see your VIP status by clicking on the VIP tab in the upper left corner. It will be grey if it's not activated, or golden if it's activated. You gain additional abilities by having higher VIP levels and keeping it activated.
Something you'll want to start paying attention to soon is the Ace Commander Event. It's found under the Bonus tab along the upper-left side. Ace is a daily competition that happens across the Battlefield, and you can gain more free stuff by participating in the tasks it presents to you. The tasks coincide with the daily bonuses.

Building:

Many buildings (and research tasks) can be upgraded for free as you level up. Click around your Command Center checking buildings for free upgrades, and use them.
Keep upgrading your buildings. I feel that you should keep your buildings all at the highest level that your HQ level will allow, and leveling them up evenly. I level everything up to its max before leveling my HQ up. That way you get the most out of each building.
Focus on Hospitals, especially if you plan on fighting a lot - see the Battle section for more details.

Research:

What you focus on in Research somewhat depends on what you want to do:

If you plan on fighting a lot, you could work on Combat I and Defense I.
I feel that resources are the backbone of all of your efforts, so I like to focus on Resource I. You can improve your Resource Factory production rate, your Resource Point gathering rate, and the amount of resources protected by your Moneybox.
Development I increases your efficiency at attacking toys, and helps with Construction.
If you are interested in Joining a Corps, Core I might be important for you - the Sign of Unity skill helps your Corps have more players, and can be very valuable to a new Corps.

Battle:

You start out with protection from being attacked with a free 3 day aegis. It used to be the case that you could not be attacked until your HQ reached level 8, however that is no longer true.
As you start attacking and being attacked you will want to have the maximum number allowable Hospitals, and you will want them all to be the highest level possible. This is one of your top priorities in your buildings. Look for the locked hands icon above your building and click on it. This sends out a help request to your corps. To see them, click on the Corps screen and go to Corps Help. Be sure to help your fellow corps members accomplish their tasks too.
Check out the Battle Beginners Overview page for more information

Protecting Yourself:

For the time being, your Command Center should be protected by an Aegis, or bubble. When you start a new character you automatically get a 3-day Aegis for free. You'll see the bluish-green bubble around your truck when you're on the Battlefield screen. You can also see the state of your Aegis by looking at the shield icon in the upper left corner. It should have a time under it, and be pulsing. If your Aegis is up, you cannot be attacked by anyone. While you're low level, not many will want to attack you, however once you get to HQ level 8 all bets are off, especially on the weekends. You will want to keep an Aegis up 24x7 on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and you might want to keep it up every day, depending on how war-like or peaceful your field is. Some fields adapt a peacetime philosophy during the week, and have attacking only during the weekend. Other fields allow attacking all week long. If you're on one of these fields, you will need to find a way to get Aegis shields to support your needs.

The easiest (but not most cost-efficient!) way to get an Aegis is through the Item Store. Click on the Items icon in the bottom tray (it looks like a table), then click on Store along the top. Here you can buy just about everything.

At this point it's important to know that almost EVERYTHING AMS offers goes on sale at certain times. Sometimes it's a Battlefield Buff that lessens the cost of items for purchase. Sometimes it's a daily deal. Sometimes you can find items you need in packs at massive discounts. It's almost ALWAYS beneficial to wait for these deals. You can save tons of gold and money by only buying things when they go on sale. And remember - ALMOST EVERYTHING GOES ON SALE AT SOME POINT - you just have to be patient.

Getting back to Aegis - you can buy them in the Item Store under the Buff tab. The base prices are:

8-Hour Aegis: 500 gold
24-Hour Aegis: 1,000 gold
3-Day Aegis: 2,500 gold
7- Day Aegis: 4,500 gold

As you can see, they are more cost efficient as you increase in duration. You might think that you want to buy a long one, however you should realize a limitation Aegis have: if you want to attack another player, you have to break your Aegis, and it goes away. To protect yourself after attacking you need to buy and use another Aegis. In this way, you go through many more bubbles than you might think, especially if you attack a lot.

For the time being (the first few days) you don't need to worry about this too much. You should start with a 3-Day Aegis automatically up. However: BE PREPARED for when that bubble drops. When it does you will likely be attacked, especially if your HQ is level 8 or higher, and ESPECIALLY during Deep weekends (which are every other weekend). Many players set alarms for themselves to remind them when their bubble is going to drop. Get in the habit of doing this if you want to protect your troops and resources.

Resources:

Get your rss (resource) plots up and running, and upgrade them whenever the next step is free.
Gathering: If you are not actively playing you should be gathering. Find a Resource Tile on the Battlefield, and send a gather march there.
When you're done playing for the day, set out a gathering march or two (as many as you can send out). Be sure to take into account the aggressiveness of your field and use a Resource Point Aegis to protect your gathering if hitting them is acceptable.
At HQ Level 9 you can start gathering at your Corps Supply Depot. There are many benefits to gathering at the Corps Supply Depot:
- It has a large number of resources
- Your troops cannot be attacked when you are gathering at the Corps Supply Depot (they can be attacked when gathering on a field gather point, aka "tile").
Collect the resources that are created by your Resource Factories. You should have a good handful of plastic and paint factories, and they are constantly producing. Collect what they produce!

Officers:

Level up your officers when you can. As you progress through the Counterstrike stations, you will gain training dummies - use them! Higher level officers do more damage to toys.
Sunday is the day that you get a buff for the full day on using Training Dummies and Promotion Materials. At the first few days you can safely train up your officers when you have enough dummies, but eventually you will want to start saving them for Officer Day. Field buffs may not start right away on new fields.

Free Stuff:

Check your daily events and bonuses - there is free stuff there
Claim your Online Rewards when you see the treasure chest bouncing - more free stuff there.
Keep claiming free rewards. There are tons of them out there. Look for the red dots - they bring your attention to things that need to be done and rewards that need to be collected.

Attacking Toys:

While you are waiting for research or building tasks to finish, go out and attack toys. In the beginning it’s almost impossible to run out of stamina, because you get a full stamina reset at every Commander Level you gain, and you gain a lot of them.
There is a lot to be gained by attacking Evil Toys, and you should use up your Stamina as often as possible. You gain Player Experience for each hit you make (you don't have to kill it), which helps you increase your Player Level. You gain Resources, Training Dummies, and Speedups each time you attack.
Attack the highest level toy you can. You gain more experience points per stamina spent when you do.
Keep attacking toys. Attack the highest level toy you can, and focus on the type of toy that gives you the resources and speedups you need to accomplish what you’re working on. You should attack toys until you are out of stamina.
Once you achieve Lv. 2 Expedition Mastery, you can start attacking level 2 toys, which moves you past tan army toys and on to the higher level toys, which are more lucrative in their rewards.
The type of toy you attack matters:
- Attacking Dolls (aliens at level 2) gives you electricity packs. You don’t really need these at early levels. They do, however, give you Research speedups, and these are very valuable later on.
- Attacking plants gives you healing speedups and paint. The paint is useful, but if you have selected Lossless Expeditions in your Medal Talent you won’t need the healing speed ups.
- Attacking animals (Boxing Ducks at level 2) gives you building speedups and plastic - both of these are valuable at early levels.
- Attacking machines gives you metal and training speed ups - you don’t really need either of these early on.
I go with animals until you get much higher level and start needing metal.

Game Time and Day of the Week:

Game Time: Since this game is managed by a Chinese company, activities in the game align with Coordinated Universal Time. Each day resets at midnight Coordinated Universal Time, which is likely not the same time as your midnight. For example, for those in the Eastern time zone of the United States, reset happens at 8pm EST. Figure out when reset is for your time zone and pay attention to it. See Battlefield Time for more information.
Pay attention to what day it is, and perform tasks accordingly. On Thursday game time it’s Research day. Research is cheap and you can do a ton of it for not much resources. I have noticed that this doesn't start on new fields until a couple of weeks after the field is created.
Here are the featured activities broken down by day of the week:
- Monday: Toy Day - Attack and kill as many toys as you can
- Tuesday: Gather Day - Gather as many resources on the Battlefield as you can
- Wednesday: Construction Day - Starting a construction task costs very little resources. In addition, use of Building or Research Speedups gives you Ace Points for that day
- Thursday: Research Day - Starting a research task costs very little resources. Gaining power (through completed construction or research tasks) earns you Ace Points on this day
- Friday: Troop Training Day - Starting troop training costs less resources. Finishing troop training gives you Ace Points on this day.
- Saturday: Battle Day - Weekends are battle days, and they alternate between Battlefield Purge (where you try to kill the troops of players on your battlefield) and Deep Battle (where you are able to travel to other fields and wage war there). You get Ace Points for killing troops on these days.
- Sunday: Battle Day, Officer Promotion Day, and Air Force Day - The war continues, with either Battlefield Purge or Deep Battle. In addition, the increases from Training Dummies and Promotion Materials are doubled, so wait until today to upgrade and promote your Officers. There is also a 50% bonus on Air Force Tactical Points usage.

Robots:

Your first robot is unlocked at level 11. The Boxing Duck. You must gather spare parts to assemble the robot - 100 pieces can be fused to create it.

Competition:

There are many ways to compete in this game.

Battle
HQ Level / Power
Daily and Weekly Ace Competition
Battle Events (Deep and Silver)