Mid-game at levels 20-40

Level 20 is the moment when the game stops holding your hand. The tutorial is complete, you have a few walls, your first soldiers, and now it will show whether you can play or just click. Here I will tell you what breaks the bread in the mid-game and where people most often unnecessarily lose troops and resources.

When to stop just building and start attacking

Up to level 20, most people just click on buildings and collect resources. That's fine, but now you need to change your mindset. The rule is simple: as soon as you have stable production of wood, stone, and food, and your storage is regularly hitting the ceiling, send your troops out. What overflows from your storage is wasted.

Start with the raiding barons on the map. These are NPC camps where you can safely test your attack formations without the risk of retaliation. Send a scout, read the report from the reconnaissance, and build your army based on the defense. Combat in GGE is divided into the front (front wall and gate) and two wings, left and right. The attacker chooses where to strike and sends their units in that direction. If you ignore which side the baron has concentrated their defense and shove everything into the front where their main force is sitting, you will unnecessarily lose half your army. Look for where the baron has a gap and direct your attack there.

On the first barons, focus mainly on melee units supplemented by a few ranged units and make sure to assign a commander with an attack bonus; this is worth more than twenty additional soldiers. Don't mix in dragoons until the report tells you that there are no towers and cauldrons against you.

Don't jump right after other players. Attacking a live opponent exposes you to retaliation, and at levels 20-30, you still don't have the defense to fend off an angry veteran with an experienced army. Barons will give you experience, resources, and success points, and no one will burn your castle for it.

Join an alliance first, everything else can wait

If you are not in any alliance yet, close this guide and go sign up. Seriously. A solo player in the mid-game is a wolf without a pack. An alliance will provide you with reinforcements when someone attacks you, daily bonuses from alliance buildings, access to the combinator (an alliance building where you can exchange surplus of one resource for another that you currently lack), and most importantly, people who can advise you faster than any wiki.

Don't choose the first alliance that invites you. Look at the activity, watch the alliance chat for a few days. A good alliance has active leadership, runs alliance events, and will send you reinforcements for defense when the alarm rings. A dead alliance with a quiet chat will give you nothing but a name under your castle.

Once you are inside, get involved. Send reinforcements to teammates, participate in alliance wars, and most importantly, ask questions. Most seasoned players are happy to advise you on where to place the next level of barracks or how to build defense at your level. This will save you weeks of your own mistakes.

Which buildings to upgrade first

In the mid-game, you don't have the resources to upgrade everything at once, so you have to choose. Three things take priority: production buildings (sawmills, quarries, farms), storage, and barracks with training grounds. Production gives you fuel for everything else, storage raises the ceiling of how much you can hold, and it also protects part of your resources from being plundered. Barracks unlock better and faster training.

Don't forget about residences and taverns; they maintain the happiness of your citizens and thus your coin income. If the mood in your castle drops into the negative, coin production will collapse, and suddenly you won't have money for wages. Keep happiness in the positive with decorations and taverns so you can afford higher taxes.

Upgrade defensive buildings (walls, towers, gate) continuously, not just when someone attacks you. Upgrades take hours or longer, so you won't have time to build defense reactively during an attack. Economic buildings take precedence, but keep your defense a step ahead of what an attacker at your level might send against you. Don't forget that defense is also held by deployed units on the walls; mere stones are not enough.

Economy versus army

Success points are the silent workhorse of the mid-game. Open the achievements list and treat it as a checklist. You will get many of them incidentally (defeat X barons, collect Y resources, upgrade a building to a certain level), but when you consciously complete them, they yield experience and rewards that you would otherwise miss.

Events are your shortcut to equipment that you would otherwise grind for months. When the first major event starts (typically a collection event where you complete tasks for points and climb the rewards ladder), plan for it. Save resources and troops in advance so you can complete tasks right from the start and not two days later when the event is halfway done. The best rewards are at the top of the ladder, and without preparation, you won't reach them.

Don't rush to spend rubies on the event just because 'there are a few points left.' Rubies are premium currency; save them for things that will really advance you, builder slots, and premium units, not to make up for a single event.

Balancing economy and army

The most common mistake in the mid-game: a player pours everything into the army, trains a huge army, and then realizes they are in the negative for coins. In GGE, it doesn't work that soldiers run away in real-time, but as soon as you fall into a negative coin balance, the game blocks further training, and the municipal treasury quickly empties. You stand with an army that you can't expand, and your economy is grinding. Maintain a ratio so that your coin income covers wages with a buffer and that you always have something to build with.

Keep in mind the upkeep for each unit you train. Large, expensive units consume coins even while sitting at home. If you leave five hundred soldiers at home just for decoration, you are paying their wages and getting nothing from them. Train an army that you will actually use against barons, in defense, and at events, not an army for display.

Always keep in mind two separate pockets: resources for development (building and upgrading) and resources plus coins for military operations. When you mix them, it always happens that you want to attack and have no food for the march, or you want to build and have spent everything on the army. Plan production so that you can manage both in parallel.

The mid-game is a marathon

Around the mid-game, you will have the opportunity to expand, whether with a second castle, outposts, or unlocking a new area on the map. It is tempting, but only expand when your first castle is in good condition. An unfinished second castle will only split your forces, and both will then be weak.

The advantage of more bases is in resources: each area has a different production profile, and more castles mean more builders working in parallel. The disadvantage is management, defense, and additional upkeep. If you can't properly defend either castle, the second will only add another target for raiders.

Before you expand, ask yourself: do I have my first castle with decent defense, a stable economy, and an alliance behind me? If yes, go for it. If any of those three things are lacking, resolve that first. Spreading thin and weak in the mid-game does not pay off.

Back to Guides, Tips and Tutorials.