The three trees, by the numbers
We maintain the complete Academy dataset, every tech and level with its cost and time, so this guide can tell you what the trees actually contain instead of guessing:
| Tree | Techs | Total power | Total research time (base) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battle | 102 | 6.07M | ~3,915 days |
| Growth | 45 | 1.51M | ~883 days |
| Economy | 44 | 0.24M | ~166 days |
Two things jump out. Battle holds 78% of all research power but costs over a decade of base research time, so you'll never finish it early and sequencing matters. The whole Economy tree costs less time than a single late Battle tier, which makes its useful parts cheap enough to just take.
Priority 1: speed, because it compounds
Every hour of research speed you buy early pays back on every tech you research afterward. The efficiency math agrees. Ranked by power per second at level 1, the top six techs in the entire game are all Growth utilities: Tooling Up (construction speed), Ward Expansion (infirmary capacity), Tool Enhancement (research speed), Bandaging (healing speed), Trainer Tools (training speed), and Camp Expansion (training capacity).
- Take Tool Enhancement I–VII first. One honest caveat from our data: the whole line totals only about +11% research speed, because the big research-speed numbers come from your War Academy building levels. It still goes first, since it discounts everything after it.
- Take Command Tactics (march queues) the moment each tier unlocks. Its power number is tiny, which is exactly why efficiency rankings undervalue it: an extra march queue beats any stat line for gathering and events. This is the one place to override the math.
- Take Tooling Up and Trainer Tools as they come. Construction and training speed compound the same way research speed does.
Priority 2: the cheap Economy picks
Take the gathering-speed techs (Food Foraging, Wood Gathering, and their siblings) and skip most of the production-output line. Tile gathering outpaces city production from the mid-game on, so production techs are farm-account material. At ~166 days for the entire tree, cherry-picking gathering costs you almost nothing.
Priority 3: Battle, aligned to your army
Battle is where the power lives and where the time goes, so don't spread evenly:
- Troop capacity first (the Regimental Expansion line). Bigger marches multiply every other stat you own.
- Then the stat lines for your main troop class: attack and lethality for your damage class, defense and health for infantry if you garrison. A focused class hits usable thresholds years earlier than a balanced spread.
- Finish tiers you've started before opening new ones. Completed tiers gate the next tier's unlocks, and a half-finished line is power sitting idle.
F2P and spender paths
Free-to-play, follow the strict efficiency order: speed utilities, march queues, gathering, then single-class Battle. Your bottleneck is time, so power per hour is the metric that matters, and that's what our tracker's Best Power/Time ranking computes from your actual progress.
Spenders break the time bottleneck with speedups, so resource efficiency takes over (the tracker's Best Power/Cost ranking), and rushing Battle capacity plus your class stats ahead of schedule is the correct luxury.
The endgame tree
Once your War Academy opens Advanced Truegold Research (roughly server day 485; check the Server Timeline), a second 92-tech tree appears, costed in Truegold Dust. Dust is its real constraint, so our tracker ranks that tree by power per Dust. The same principle applies there: economy utilities like Limited Supply pay compounding dividends before raw stat lines.
FAQ
Is there one correct global order?
No. The best next tech depends on what you've already researched, your speed boost, and your troop focus. This guide teaches the shape; the tracker computes your personal answer.
Should I research evenly across all three trees?
No. Growth utilities first, then the cheap Economy picks, then focused Battle. The first two make everything else faster, and the third rewards concentration.
What about power for events like Hall of Governors?
Research power counts in progression events, which nudges you toward whatever finishes inside the event window. The tracker's Fastest Tech card exists for exactly those days.