Banner Realms beginner guide, water maps included

Banner Realms is real-time strategy in your browser. You start with a Town Center and four villagers, gather food, wood, gold and stone, advance through three ages, and build an army to knock down every rival realm on the map. It plays with a mouse and keys, by touch on a phone or tablet, or with a game controller. This guide gets you from your first skirmish to beating the computer on Hard, including the new water maps.

Setting up your first skirmish

• Opponents: 1 vs 1, 1 vs 2, 2 vs 2 (you and a computer ally) or a 4-way free-for-all.
• Computer level: Easy, Normal or Hard. On Easy the first attack comes late and small; on Hard expect a real army at your door around the five-minute mark.
• Map: Small, Normal, Large or Huge, and Terrain: Land, Inland Sea or Islands.
• Population cap: 100, 150, 200 or 300. On a phone, 150 on a Normal or Large map runs smoothest.

Start with 1 vs 1 on Easy, a Normal land map and the default cap. The tutorial covers the controls in a minute. Skirmishes save as you go, so you can leave and come back.

The opening: keep villagers working

Every realm begins with 200 food, 200 wood, 100 gold and 150 stone. The single most important habit in the game is never letting your Town Center sit idle. A villager costs 50 food; keep queuing them.

• Send your first villagers to berry bushes near the Town Center for food, and the next ones to trees.
• Build a House early. Each House raises your population cap by 5, and running out of room stops your villager production cold.
• Put a Lumber Camp by the nearest forest and a Mill by the berries. Shorter walks mean faster gathering.
• When the berries run low, build Farms around the Mill. Each Farm gives endless food for one villager.
• Research Carry Frames at the Town Center: villagers carry 5 more and walk 10% faster.

Use the hotkeys if you have a keyboard: Period jumps to the next idle villager, H to your Town Center. On touch, double-tap a unit to select every one of its kind on screen.

The three ages

You advance at the Town Center, and each age needs two buildings from the one before.

• Hamlet Age: where you start. Villagers, Spearmen, the Barracks, Houses, camps, Farms, Palisade Walls and the Dock.
• Town Age (450 food, and two of Barracks, Mill, Lumber Camp, Mining Camp or Dock): archers, Scout Riders, towers, stone walls and the Blacksmith.
• Crown Age (900 food and 175 gold, and two of Archery Range, Stable, Blacksmith or Watch Tower): Knights, Battering Rams, Catapults and the Keep.

A good first goal is reaching the Town Age around 20 villagers. Aim for the Crown Age once your economy has 25 or more villagers and steady gold.

Who beats whom

Fights in Banner Realms are decided far more by counters than by numbers. Learn this triangle:

• Spearmen stop cavalry. They are cheap and deal heavy bonus damage to riders.
• Cavalry run down archers. Scout Riders and Knights also hunt siege engines.
• Archers shred infantry from range.
• Rams and Catapults flatten buildings but cannot stand up to soldiers; guard them.
• Towers, Town Centers and Keeps shoot at anyone close, so do not fight under an enemy's walls without siege.

A mixed army of spearmen in front and archers behind handles most of what the computer sends early. Add Knights in the Crown Age, and bring a Ram or two to finish buildings.

Choosing a realm

• Highmark: buildings have 20% more hit points and stone mining is 20% faster. Forgiving for defensive players.
• Riverfolk: villagers walk 10% faster and farms give 15% more. The easiest economy for beginners.
• Steppe Clans: cavalry costs 15% less and rides 10% faster. Built for raiding.
• Greenvale: archers get +1 range and train 20% faster, and wood cutting is 10% faster.
• Fjordborn: ships cost 20% less with 15% more hit points, Docks go up twice as fast, infantry march 10% faster, and they train the Axe Raider. The pick for water maps.

Water maps: Inland Sea and Islands

Pick Inland Sea or Islands under the map options. Inland Sea puts a sea in the middle that every realm borders: fish it, and fight for it with warships. Islands puts every realm on its own island, so you need ships to reach anyone.

• Dock: a villager builds it on the water by a shore. It is also a food drop-off, and on water maps it counts toward the Town Age.
• Fishing Boat: catches fish and brings it to the Dock. Fish is food with no farms to build, so a few boats early pay off fast.
• Transport: carries 10 soldiers or villagers across the water.
• Arrow Cutter (Town Age): a quick light warship that shoots arrows, good against boats.
• War Cog (Crown Age): a heavy warship that hurls stones, sinks ships and batters the shore.

To cross the water, pick soldiers or villagers and tap or right-click your Transport: they go aboard. Then pick the Transport and tap or right-click the land where they should go ashore, or press Unload by a shore. Soldiers on land cannot hit a ship, but archers, towers and Town Centers can.

A plan for Islands

• Build a Dock early and add Fishing Boats alongside your villagers. Two food sources grow your economy faster.
• Reach the Town Age and build Arrow Cutters to clear enemy fishing boats from the water near you.
• Scout the enemy island with a ship before you land, and pick a quiet beach away from their towers.
• Land a full Transport, with spearmen and archers together, and a villager to build a forward Barracks if you can.
• Protect the Transport. Losing it with ten soldiers aboard is the most painful mistake on water maps.

Beginner mistakes to avoid

• An idle Town Center. Queue villagers constantly.
• Getting housed: build Houses before you need them.
• Floating resources: a thousand unspent wood is an army you do not have.
• One-unit armies: mix counters, or a single enemy type will beat you.
• Attacking towers with infantry. Bring siege or go around.

More strategy to try

If Banner Realms clicks for you, a few other games scratch a similar itch in less time. Rampart Rush is a three-minute real-time card duel between two sandcastle forts. Tin Brigade is turn-based tactics for two, capturing cities for income with a toy army under fog of war. Tessera grows a tribe on a small map, one decision at a time, and Rise and Ruin lets an empire fade and rise again across a crowded map.

Playing a friend

Make a room and share the code to play a friend head to head, or together against two computer realms. Both browsers run the whole battle in step, and either player can pause for both. If you prefer slower strategy with friends, Bogmoor beginner strategy guide is our trading game guide, and The best 2-player games to play online has more head-to-head picks.