The Priority Order
Headquarters, Always First
HQ level gates almost everything else in the game — max troop tier, hero level cap, building level caps, and feature unlocks all trace back to it. Keeping HQ moving forward should always be your top priority, and every other building decision should be filtered through "does this help my next HQ level?" See Buildings & Base for what HQ actually unlocks.
Tech Center, Second
Keep the Tech Center at or just ahead of your HQ level — it's consistently the building that stalls players the most, since it's required for HQ upgrades but easy to neglect. Within research, the recommended order is Development first (build speed and cost reduction compounds fastest), then the Alliance Duel tech branch (funded by Valor Badges rather than resources, so it's effectively free progress), then Special Forces once Tech Center reaches level 20 (the path to T10 troops). See Research for the full tree.
Wall and Barracks, As Required
Both are needed periodically for HQ upgrades rather than continuously — the Wall becomes iron-expensive at higher levels, so upgrade it steadily rather than letting it fall far behind and facing a huge jump later. If you have multiple Barracks, stagger their levels instead of pushing them all to your highest tier at once (see Waterfall Training on the Troops page) — this trains more total troops over time than maxing every queue in lockstep.
Pick One Combat Center and Commit
Avoid switching laterChoose one troop type (Tank, Aircraft, or Missile Vehicle) early and commit to it. A single higher-tier squad of one type will outperform several lower-tier squads, so splitting investment across all three Combat Centers early just slows every one of them down. Switching your main type later means catching up from behind — commonly cited as one of the more expensive mistakes new players make.
What Can Wait
Resource Production Buildings
Lower priority than it feelsIt feels intuitive to upgrade Farmland, Iron Mine, and Gold Mine early, but most early-game resources actually come from map gathering, alliance gifts, and event rewards rather than passive production. These buildings become worth prioritizing once your HQ level is higher and other bottlenecks are cleared — not before.
Material Workshop
Commonly recommended to skip entirelyThis building produces materials used in gear crafting, but its return on investment is poor enough that several guides recommend not upgrading it at all in the early-to-mid game, letting other priorities absorb those resources instead.
Training Base
Useful for Hero EXP generation, but not worth spending premium resources on early. Upgrade it opportunistically — when a builder is free and there's nothing higher-priority queued — rather than deliberately routing resources toward it.
Structural Tips
Get a Second Builder
A single builder is one of the biggest early bottlenecks in the game — it forces you to choose between HQ-critical upgrades and everything else, one at a time. A second builder lets you run HQ-chain requirements and side upgrades (mines, walls, warehouses) simultaneously, which meaningfully speeds up overall progress.
Prepare for the Age of Oil Before HQ 30
Common late-game trapOil becomes a required resource once the Age of Oil tech unlocks (around Tech Center level 30), and it's a hard prerequisite for HQ Expansion past level 30. Many players hit this wall unprepared, with build timers ready and speedups in hand but no Oil infrastructure built up — treat Oil Wells as a priority the moment Age of Oil becomes available, not after you've already stalled. See Research for how Age of Oil unlocks.
HQ Milestone Roadmap
| HQ Level | What Changes |
|---|---|
| ~20 | Stronger troop tiers and more production buildings unlock — a reasonable point to start thinking about alliance wars. |
| ~25 | Gateway to endgame content; Combat Centers and Hospital capacity become genuinely critical rather than optional. |
| ~29 → 30 | One of the largest single jumps in build time in the entire game (community estimates put base HQ 29 around 39 days versus roughly 101 days for HQ 30) — a deliberate pacing wall, not a bug. Oil requirements also appear here. |
| 35+ | Late-game territory: max-level troops, elite defenses, and the game's largest time and resource sinks. |