Alliance of the Day - Immortal Kings

Happy Friday Siegers! It's the start of a new season of leagues and we have a new alliance of the day! 

Name of Alliance:

IMMORTAL KINGS

Emperor: Chuggles22

Requirements to join:

We usually require new members to be around 350 crowns to join, but we have enough openings currently to let that slide and not be concerned with it. We do ask that potential members be at least Age 6 to join up however. Nothing against those in lower Ages, but we feel they would be too far behind the curve to be able to contribute to alliance relief troops and Wonder donations and they would wind up feeling left out. We're interested in attracting members from all over the world, we have quote a few already, but please know that our chat is predominantly English.

What is the goal of our Alliance?

We have a few goals. Yes, winning crowns and climbing the leader board is one of them, because that's generally how alliance growth is measured in this game. If Alliance War is ever introduced, that goal may change. Our PRIMARY goal however is really quite simple: To have our alliance be a tight knit group of friends who share an interest in sieging, chatting, sharing replays, and helping each other play the game to their potential (whatever that may be).

What kind of commitment do we expect? 

We expect members to show an interest in the game and (eventually) the alliance. To us that means attacking on a daily basis. We know and understand real life comes first, and because there needs to be some sort of guideline for Lords to follow, our MINIMUM requirement is that members have to attack at least once weekly. If you know you will be away for a while a notice would be appreciated and will go a long way to ensuring that you are still in the alliance upon your return.

What separates us from other Alliances?

We major on fun.
 But we also major on getting as much as possible out of the game. This means putting time and effort into building guides and developing our own styles for using Heroes and troop combinations.
 We are ambitious, but not to the exclusion of fun and mutual development. We aim to build the alliance up by coaching and encouraging, not by threats of expulsing the weakest players.

We have a structure, but not a hierarchy. Different “ranks” have different responsibilities. But everyone is as good as everyone else. Regardless of rank and crown count. Each members comments and opinions carry equal weight to everybody else's.
 We have two alliances, Immortal Kings and ImmortalKnights. In broad terms, Knights is for those developing their skills, Kings for the more experienced. Although in practice there are both sorts of individual in both the alliances.

We have all Level 1 Wonders and all of Tower of London boosts completed. Right now we are ¾ finished with Kizhi Pogost Level 2.

IMMORTAL KINGS boasts a community of gamers that team up together in other games as well, I'm not sure if I can mention them by name here, so I will leave it at saying another mobile-based alliance oriented war game and a popular MMORPG.

Please check out our website http://immortalkingz.com/

If you love to game and are looking to connect with like-minded gamers consider joining Immortal Kings! Good luck! 

Battle tactics

There are various battle tactics with certain combinations of units and heroes in game. Here, we will mention some of them:

1) SIEGE RUSH
Army: 6 Halberdiers; 6 Champions; 4 Great Bowmen; 6 Rams; 1 Siege tower; 4 Longbowmen; 3 Teutonic Knights; 1 Mamluk; 4 Trebuchets (66 army space). +heroes: Nikephoros and Conrad
Description: Use Siege Tower to check for engineer traps, fire traps and attracting defense units in proximity. Use Longbowmen and Halberdiers to kill defending troops. Now:

• If the castle is wide, deploy all of the Trebuchets decently spaced with Nikephoros in the middle.
• If the castle is narrow, deploy 2+2 Trebuchets together with Nikephoros in the middle.

Use Teutonic Knights , Great Bowmen and Champions as meats and destroy the defenses in the first layer of castle by activating Nikephoros' ability and destroy as much walls as possible. Meanwhile, deploy 2+2+2 rams and direct them to different defense buildings depending upon the castle. If the Trebuchet Emplacement, Watch signal and Guard Houses are too deep in the castle, don't forget to use the rams on them as they are serious threats. If you are concentrate much enough, you can use them to destroy three more towers.

Drop Conrad, activate the second abolity of nikephoros. Use one treb on the keep and others on different towers. Trebuchets won't be destroyed under Conrad's ability protection even getting hit from cannons, archers and wall troops at the same time. Watch the fun.

Use Mamluk for outer building cleanup and your remaining units to further boost your %.

2) RED RIOT

Army: 3 Rams, 8 Champions, 8 Halberdiers, 8 Great Bowmen, 3 Teutonic Knights, 6 Grenadiers and 20 Raiders. (68 army space) +heroes: Hermann and Sviatoslav.

Description: Deploy 1 Champion to trigger traps and kite defender's troops, and keep them away from your attacking point.

Drop another Champion as a decoy for 2 Grenadiers to make the first breach. After the castle breached, drop a line of 3 Rams to make another hole to the keep. Drop 2-3 Champions and survived Grenadiers and direct them same way as your Rams.

Drop the rest of your Champions, Grenadiers, make a line of 4 Great Bowmes and your Teutonic Knight and let them loose. Drop Hermann and shield them all.

After you have an available path to the keep, split your raiders into 3 groups. 3 Raiders on right and left side to ransack resource buildings and 14 Raiders to destroy the keep. Boost their DPS with Sviatoslav's ability.

There you have a Red Riot.

Oh, You have Halberdiers only to kill horses and stop incoming relief troops.

We will regularly update this post with more tactics.
 

3) CAVALRY RUSH

Army: at least 15 Cavalry/Heavy Cavalry/Major Knights, some Infantry/Heavy Infantry/Champions as meatshields +heroes: Charlemagne and Belisarius.

Description: Drop one squad of Infantry to kite defending troops.

When defending troops have been distracted by Infantry, send Belisarius to dig shortest path to the keep.

When path is free, drop all Cavalry and direct them to keep. Right after, deploy Charlemagne and direct his ability to keep (Cavalry must be in Charlemagne's proximity). Then watch Cavalry destroying the keep, giving you 1-star victory.

Gold Sale (May 26th - May 31st)

Hello Siegers,
Good news we are having a Gold Sale May 26th until May 31st!
Starting May 26th at 12AM PST (7AM UTC) ending May 31st at 12AM PST (7AM UTC).
Stock up on Gold to quickly train your troops and upgrade your castle!

Alliance of the Day - Medieval Power

Hello Siegers, 

Happy Friday!. 

Now onto this weeks lucky alliance!
 

What is the Name of your Alliance?

Medieval Power

Emperor: TanskiAOE

What are the requirements to join (crown count, location, age)? 

We don’t have crown requirements.  We just want active players that want to learn more about the game.  We have some very experienced players that are great at sharing replays, tactics, and strategies to help all alliance members.

What is the goal of your alliance (ex. Top 20, skill building, just for fun)?

Right now we have all 3 wonders and working on the reinforcement boost – almost 50% complete.  Our goal is to create an environment where all of the members can achieve their own personal goals while having fun and supporting each other.

What kind of commitment do you expect from alliance members (ex. log on every day, once a week)?

We don’t have a defined set of commitments but do expect activity – logging on at least a few times a week, providing reinforcements, sharing replays, contributing to the wonders, contributing in chat, etc.

What makes your alliance different from other alliances?

We have some very experienced players (like MutableSnake6 – consistently in the top 100 players in the game) as well as some very inexperienced players – people not only share victories but also losses and evaluate what went wrong and what to learn from it.  It’s really a great supportive group deserving of recognition!!

If you are a new player looking to gain experience from some of the top players in the game, you should consider joining Medieval Power! Good luck to Medieval Power!!!

FAQ - Collection of Guides

As we all know, certain issues and questions about the game tend to get brought up over and over again.  To help, it makes some sense to attempt to concentrate our collective knowledge into a single thread.  This has been tried before.  Often those threads get derailed and mucked up.  
Here, the mods will use this opening post for an exhaustive FAQ.  We are keeping the thread open for discussion, but are asking that you guys use that to submit additional content/edits to existing content.  After we review those proposals, we will edit the original post and delete the proposals.  That should allow this thread to remain very concentrated and organized.  
 

Battles

• How does matchmaker work?  Why am I being matched against people with way more crowns than me?

The factors that contribute to who you get matched against are your “power level”, which is based on the upgrades you’ve purchased both for units and buildings, and the number of people close to your power level who are currently available to be attacked.  Keep in mind that not all Age IV players are much weaker than those in Age V. An Age IV player that only has his keep left to upgrade and an Age V player who has only upgraded his keep are effectively the same power, and we account for this.
In addition, the game presents a range of potential targets; enemy castles that are more or less powerful than you can be potential matchmaking targets. This gives players an opportunity to challenge themselves or to go after a weaker player. We scale potential resources with this as well: attacking a stronger player nets you more potential resources while attacking a weaker opponent means less potential resources to raid.
Because making matches is highly dependent on the number of players available to match to, there will never be a system that is "balanced" all the time. The total pool of people who can be matched against is changing all the time so the way matchmaking feels, subjectively, changes as people enter and leave different levels. It also changes based on the number of people with peace treaties. Higher level players also tend to be more active and also get longer peace treaties. Ever person under a peace treaty is removed from the match pool so each player's pool of potential matches is fluctuating constantly.
Since the launch of the game, we have never taken your crown count into consideration when matching you with opponents. However, as you climb the leaderboard, matchmaker starts to skew things toward people with similar crown counts. 
We keep you "logged in" for a few minutes after you log off, so that intermittent loss of internet connection due to bad cellular or wireless connections won't immediately open you up to attack.
What are power levels?  Where can I find out what mine is?Your castle's power level is the sum of the power of its economy, troops, and defenses. It does not correspond with your crowns, your castle's age nor your siege results. You can raise your power level by upgrading buildings, walls, defenses and troops. You cannot lower your power level. Each building you build/upgrade and each troop you upgrade irreversibly adds a little bit to your overall power level. We do not know how much each building/upgrade attributes to your power level.
The game does not disclose your castle's power level to you. You have no way of finding out your power level on your own. However, you can tell other people's castle power levels because the loot in the chest you recieve when you destroy a keep is calculated based on your opponent castle's power level:
Calculations for normal chest:
Power level = (Amount of food - 25) / 60
Power level = (Amount of wood - 25) / 60
Power level = (Amount of stones - 15) / 30
Power level = (Amount of gold coins - 1)
Power level = (Amount of pennants) / (1 + Reward Chest Bonus)
Calculations for jackpot chest:
Power level = (Amount of food - 75) / 180
Power level = (Amount of wood - 75) / 180
Power level = (Amount of stones - 45) / 90
Power level = (Amount of  gold coins - 3) / 3
Power level = (Amount of pennants) / (3 + 3 * Reward Chest Bonus)
Example: If you smashed the castle of your enemy and got 1525 Food in the chest, his power level is 25.
Some players have made the effort to collect these values for an assortment of players. Your castle might already be in the lookup sheet found here: AoE CS PowerLevel lookup sheet
 

• Why is my castle being attacked by someone 1, 2, or even more ages more than me? How do I overcome this?

Again, matchmaking is based on the power level of your castle, not on the age of your castle. So it could well be that a highly upgraded Age 7 castle has the same power level as a barely upgraded Age 9 castle.  If this starts happening to you, consider it time to age up. Because with every other upgrade to your castle in your current age, you risk only make it worse.  If you do not like being matched against higher ages, then do not upgrade everything before you age up.  Consider not upgrading troops and heroes that you do not use.
Caveat for lower age players with many crowns:
There used to be a loophole where low age players (often done in Age 5) could stop upgrading and grind enough crowns to grow to such a number that they'd appear on the top 200 leaderboard. (One guy, Cavalry Cat , reached first place this way.)  Due to the high player population in lower ages, it is very rare to get attacked.  And because high age players could not attack low age players,  those grinding low age players were essentially immune to ever losing crowns.  To constrain this a new rule was introduced. Basically for each age there is an unknown crown cap, that once exceeded opens your castle up to attack from higher age players. The "Cleverly Cat Flag" you can buy as an honor item in game is also a reference to Cavalry Cat's clever strategy. 
Should you find yourself falling under the "Cav Cat rule," aging up your castle will get you rid of those high age bullies.
 

• I seem stuck at this number of crowns, I can't find more, what's happening?

If you do a constant number of attacks per day, you'll gradually gain crowns at an increasingly slower pace, and after some time you'll reach what is known as a 'glass ceiling'. Your castle has a power level, and matchmaking is based on it. Because crown rewarding is based on a levelling system of diminishing returns, this means that each power level has a distribution of crowns. And as you gain more crowns and approach the top crown numbers for your power level, you'll find it increasingly hard to gain more crowns.
To find more crowns, you must therefore either increase your attack frequency, or move up in power level (or both). You will directly find out that you've moved up a bracket in power level once you encounter castles (whether in defense or offense log) with such high numbers of crowns you never saw before.
A way to assess your crown growing potential is perusing your defense log. As long as there are many players in there with many more crowns than you, you've still got headroom to grow crowns at your current power level. 

• How is the amount of resources available to be looted determined?

The amount of loot is decided by not only the amount you have in your storage, but also the amount you haven’t collected from your gathering structures. The chest loot is awarded mid-battle immediately upon destroying the keep. If for whatever reason you close the client or get disconnected before the post-battle rewards screen, you will still have received your loot, but not necessarily know what it is.
This is needs to be updated, but is presently the gold standard:

• How is the amount of pennants available to be looted determined?

When you attack another player, a percentage of their entire stash of pennants--across all civs--is up for grabs. All pennants you take, however, will be converted into pennants specific to the defender's civilization after combat.
For example, if a Saracen player has 100 pennants (20 Franc, 30 Briton, 50 Saracen), and they lose 10 pennants as a result of combat, then they will lose 2 Franc, 3 Briton, and 5 Saracen, all of which will be converted to Saracen pennants on the attacker’s side. If the numbers don’t divide evenly, the remainder is taken from the pool with the most pennants. This is why it looks like you're leaking pennants after you're attacked. This keeps you from hoarding pennants of other civs indefinitely, but still allows you to look for pennants specific to a certain civ to bolster your own stashes.Unfortunately, things look confusing in the Defense log, since the icon shown for resources lost is specific to your own civilization. This is giving the false impression that you're only supposed to be losing your own civ's pennants on defense. We're working to make this clearer in a future update.

• How do crowns work?  Why do I lose more than I gain?

To determine the number of crowns an attacker can take from a defender, the game uses the ratio of the number of crowns the defender has to the number of crowns the attacker has to choose a percentage. If the ratio is low (meaning the attacker has few crowns relative to the defender), then the percentage will be low. If the ratio is high, then the percentage is high. The number of crowns that the attacker can possibly take is equal to the number of crowns the defender has multiplied by this percentage. Note that the percentage is not equal to the ratio – there’s a lookup table, and higher ratio values return higher percentage values. This design rewards players for attacking other players that have a lot of crowns, and makes it less valuable to attack players that they have many more crowns than.  
The result of the battle determines the actual number of crowns the attacker takes from the defender: 
One star: Attacker gets 33% of possible crowns Two stars: Attacker gets 66% of possible crowns Three stars: Attacker get 100% of possible crowns 
The game uses a similar process to determine how many crowns the attacker will lose if he attacks the target and fails. It determines the ratio of crowns of the attacker and target and uses that ratio to choose a percentage of the attacker’s crowns that they will lose and the defender will gain if the attack fails. There’s a different lookup table here - attackers generally stand to lose a smaller percentage of crowns than they stand to gain. 
There is one additional step. If the number of crowns a player would win is less than 2 crowns, then they actually win 2 crowns minimum. If the target doesn’t have 2 crowns, then new crowns are generated. When a player has above a certain number of crowns in an age, this minimum begins to decrease, and eventually becomes 0. This is to prevent players in low ages from rising to the top of the leaderboard by repeatedly attacking weak targets for 2 crowns at a time.

• How are the total number of the defender's crowns that are offered to the attacker calculated?

There are two ingredients: (1) the crowns the attacker had to begin the battle and (2) the crowns the defender had to begin the battle.  The difference between these two numbers determines the percentage of the defender's crowns that are offered to the attacker.
For instance, if the attacker has 5k crowns and the defender had 1k crowns, then the difference is 4k.  If the attacker has 1k crowns and the defender has 3k crowns, then the difference was -2k.Those differences result in the percentages based on the following graph:

The only exception is when the percentage would result in more than 1200 crowns offered.  In those situations, the game simply caps the total crowns offered at 1200.  This little table gives (approximately) how many crowns are offered for any plausible match-up.  Again, this is not going to be perfectly accurate, but should be relatively close to the real thing.

It is color coded kinda on the premise that anything below 100 crowns is lame and anything above 250 crowns is usually worth jumping on.However, it shows some interesting trends.  
For instance, it should put us all on the same page about grovelling about nexting.  So where it takes a guy with 3k crowns a long time to, say, find someone offering 250 crowns (he needs to find another guy with 3k), in the same period of time, the best a guy with 8k crowns would find is someone offering 105 crowns.
However, it isn't that the 8k guy is getting offered worse castles than he was when he was 3k.  He is being offered the same castles.  They are just worth far less to him.
This is the glass ceiling.
Similarly, let's pretend there is a guy with 3k crowns who gets thrown into matchmaker.  He gets attacked in 5 minutes.  Since the vast majority of players have far less than 3k, let's say he gets attacked by someone with 2k.  In this situation, the defender with 3k offers 270 crowns.
Now, a week later, if the same defender now has 8k crowns and gets thrown into matchmaker, he will likely still get attacked by someone with 2k crowns, too.  This time, though, because of his whalish figure, he now offers that guy 928 crowns.
The game is not treating him any better or worse this week.  The same game that presented him with enough crowns to get to 8k is now exposing him to losing a larger chunk of those crowns.

• How do peace treaties work?

A defending castle is awarded a peace treaty based on two things: what percentage of the castle was destroyed in its last battle, and whether the Keep was also destroyed.

• What is a time bucket?  

When we are online, we cannot be attacked.  However, we cannot stay online 24 hours to prevent ever being attacked.  The most time we can stay online and be protected from attack is 8 hours.  
It works like an 8 hour hour-glass. While you’re online, the amount of time you have to be protected is decreasing. While you’re offline, the amount of time you have to be protected is increasing. You can’t have more than 8 hours total of protected time.
When you receive a message that you are "vulnerable to attacks," your time bucket is full and so you can get matched during your attacks, which will result in you getting disconnected while your castle is under attack.  Therefore, it is very risky to ever start a battle after receiving this message. 
You are warned with the following messages:1. "You will be vulnerable to attacks soon..." Several minutes before you're actually vulnerable.2. "You are now vulnerable to attacks..." You're now vulnerable.
It's better to stay offline and rely on your PT for protection during your vulnerable time. If you choose to attack, then you're taking the risk.The bucket holds 8 hours of time. Once it's empty, you're dumped into the same matchmaking pool you're in whenever you're offline without a peace treaty. No special pools for this sort of thing. 
You are using up "safe time" from the bucket every second you've got Castle Siege open. So if you're battling, building, chatting with your alliance, watching replays, or just admiring the way your spearmen aimlessly wander the castle grounds, you're draining time from the bucket. Time gets put back into the bucket whenever Castle Siege is closed. For every second you're offline, another second of "safe time" gets put back into your bucket.
Remember, if you remain idle in the game for a few minutes, you will likely be automatically logged off, though there have been reports that this may not always happen, especially if you are running a security program.
 

• What's up with revenge battles?

Presently, you cannot be revenged while you are in a peace treaty (or when you are online).  The Devs made treaties revenge-proof to solve the problem of people having all of their resources pillaged as soon as they signed off due to getting hit by 10+ revenge attacks. The Devs have said that they changing the revenge rules is possible, "but it'll have to be something a bit more nuanced than just reverting to the old system."
 

• How does defense work?

Defending units, in general, are slightly faster than the attacking units, even if their levels are the same. The Devs wanted to make sure that the defending units are able to catch up to the attacking units, and avoid incoming projectiles as much as possible.  
 

• What are zombie castles and how do they work?

Over time (roughly 60 or 90 days), a zombie castle will be pulled from rotation until someone logs back into one of them.  Because zombies do not log in, they do not empty their production buildings.  Emptied production buildings look very different from full ones:

Alliances and Wonders

• How do alliances work?  What are their benefits?

Alliances have three levels of membership: Emperor, Lord, and NobleEveryone is a noble when they join an alliance. Nobles have no special perks (other than chatting).Lords can invite other players to join the alliance.  Lords can kick nobles.  Lords can make and delete announcements.Every alliance has one Emperor.  The Emperor can do everything nobles and lords can do, plus the following:  Promote nobles to lords, demote lords to nobles, and promote a lord to be the new emperor; edit the alliance name, shield, description, and settings; choose which wonder boost to research.  
You must be in an alliance to use your watch signal.  Only members of your alliance can donate troops.
Also, you must be in an alliance to activate wonder boosts or to contribute to the research of additional wonders/wonder boosts.
HOW TO FIND AN ALLIANCE: QUESTIONS About Alliances & Misc. Information

• Help! My emperor is inactive.  How can we get a new one promoted?

The Devs' policy is not to interfere in Alliances’ selection of their emperors; if you have an issue with your leader, you’ll have to work it out within your Alliance. They are willing, however, to depose an emperor who has become inactive (defined as 60 days of inactivity in the game). If your emperor hasn’t logged in for at least 60 days, have a lord in your alliance send a private message to Empress_Phama with the following: - Your Gamertag:- Alliance Name:- Emperor’s Gamertag:- New Emperor: The Devs recommend that you first establish a unanonimous agreement on the new Emperor. Holding a vote prior to sending them a message is preferred.
 

• Help! Some lord just kicked everyone out.  What's the deal?
• Is there any generally accepted advice about wonders?
• What happens to wonder boosts when someone leaves?
• Who owns a wonder?  Can my Emp just kick everyone out?
• How do watch signals work?

Leagues

• How do leagues work?

Each league season lasts two weeks.  The second that one season ends, the next season begins.  Each season, upon finishing your first offensive attack, you are automatically sorted into an individual league based on the total number of crowns you have after that match.  
Similarly, each season, upon the first person in your alliance to finish an offensive attack, your alliance is automatically sorted into an alliance league based on the total number of crowns your alliance has after that match.  Where there are more than 25 alliances or 100 individuals qualifying for a league, the leagues are randomly sorted into pools of those sizes.
The objective of leagues is to finish the season with the most total crowns of anyone else in your pool.  Once a player or alliance has been sorted into a league, they will remain in that league for the whole season, even if their crown totals grow (or shrink) beyond the parameters of that league.
Note:  In order for a player's crowns to count in their alliance's league and for that player to be eligible to receive any prizes that season, that player must be in an alliance before the season begins and must remain in that alliance without leaving throughout the entire season. The crowns of a player who joins an alliance after a season has started do not count toward that alliance's total crowns that season.  
If your alliance finishes in the Top 3 in its league pool, then each player whose crowns counted as part of the win will get the loot listed below. In the individual leagues, each player in the top 3 of their pool will get the loot listed.  A player can win both an alliance loot prize and an individual player loot prize.

• Why are there so many high age players in my low ranked league?

Because players are sorted into leagues based on the total number of crowns that player has after their first offensive match, many high powered players artificially reduce their crowns in order to qualify for lower ranking leagues on the expectation that they will be able to then skyrocket their crowns and win that league.
 

• Is there any time between each season?

No.  The very instant one season ends, the next season begins. 
Should we expect any changes to leagues?MS dariakus has said: "I wouldn't expect to hear anything until after the third season. It's tempting to want to knee-jerk and attack immediate issues but we want to have a few seasons under our belts to make sure any changes we make address any broader scale problems that arise."
 

Miscellaneous

• What happens if I change my civilization?

You won't lose any of your progress by changing civs. Your civ-specific buildings will simply switch over to your new civ's type.  It does, however, cost 500 gold.

• How can I change my gamertag?

To change the name given to you for this game, you must log in to Xboxlive, and edit your gamertag. They allow you to change your gamertag once for free. The name you choose for your gamertag will be the name that shows up in the castle siege game. 

• Is it legal for players have multiple accounts?  How can I?

It is legal. (But having multiple forum accounts is grounds for exile.)  However, the Devs have said that they are aware of various shenanigans made possible by having multiple Castle Siege accounts. The same can be accomplished (albeit with a bit more effort) by any two players agreeing to said shenanigans. They are watching to see how widespread and consequential some of these things are, but any change will be a system-wide change as enforcing unique accounts is as effective as pouring raindrops back into clouds.

• Where did my missing road go?

• How do you make a gate with just one road piece?
  

Set up 3 walls and 1 road tile. Then put the keep on the other side of the wall and you get the gate. Afterwards you can move the keep and the gate stays (as long as you don't change anything of the 4 involved tiles).
There is another hidden feature: You can have a single wall piece as a gate if it's directly placed at the keep.  It's nice for some wall gren protection. It feels like a feature, because the wall changes by itself if you place it between the keep and a road tile.

 

• How do you make three roads connect to one gate piece?
  

 

• Do you know any other useless tricks with walls and roads?

Why yes, yes, we do. In any 3x3 grid on your map, build a road as follows:

R=road, _ = space, W = wall, 

Now, where the middle _ is (second row, second column), put a wall. This will turn into a gate, and one of the roads will turn into a 3-road intersection with green scenery.

• How do towers work and what is the best way to drop them?

Archer towers and cannon towers work the same way.
-If the attacking unit is closer than the distracting unit, then it will switch to the attacking unit.-If two units are attacking the same tower, then it will switch to the nearest target.-If a unit goes out of range or dies, then the tower will switch target-For destroying them:Your best options. (1) trebs, (2)Grenadiers, or (3)knight templars-In general: While initiating the attack, It's always better to use trebs+ meatshields to take down towers.Archer Towers: The best distracting unit is champions.   Grenadiers can be used on archer towers. Some layouts have archer towers well spread out and placed on outer walls. In this case, you can't expect your trebs to roam around the castle.It is much time consuming. A squad of grenadier and a champion will do this.  Knight templars can also be used. Also you can use them on towers at the end of the battle to take out some more towers.  (For example, after martel's taunt).Cannon Towers: The best distracting unit is archers (since they are spread out).  If you use champions against cannons, it is better to use them on resource buildings or on opened wall piece. If you use it on a closed wall piece, the cannon splash damage will take half of the squad. However, Cannon Towers are inaccurate, so if you move the units here and there, mostly it will miss the target.  Pro Tip: If the cannon switched its target on your trebs unexpectedly, quickly redirect an archer to fire cannon so that it switches the target over that archers. For this purpose, many players use a mix of archers+champions as meat shields.  Finally, if you have to take the last cannon tower and if you have no trebs to deal with it, you can distract them with some units and direct a grenadier inside the short range.

Musket Towers: These are very dangerous because they have huge range, health, reload speed, and damage per second.  Though they do not have any splash damage, they never miss the target (even mamluks) and it takes forever for the trebs to reach them. It shouldn't be a problem with Martel, Conrad and infantry rush attacks. But it's a bit tough with other heroes.  Use units with higher number of soldiers as distractors (champs, archers and pikeman).  Knight Templars also work if the cannon tower is not within its range.Emplacements: These are tricky.  They switch targets frequently. If it is just behind the wall,  then use archer/ trebs. If the wall is breached, use two squad of mamluk.  Laddermen can work, too.

• How is damage for units calculated and dealt?

Damage is dealt to individual units of the squad. Damage is per hit, not per second. Each squad type has an attack rate that determines how often they deal damage.
However, the damage dealt from a unit is expressed in terms of damage per second per solder (not per squad).  So if you want to figure out how much damage your squad does, you would multiply DPS by the # of soldiers per squad. 
 

• How do bonuses against certain units or structures work?

Bonuses act as multipliers, but the exact numbers are not published.  To complicate things further, the Developers are pretty sloppy with stating each and every unit or structure that is subject to a bonus.  For instance, the ingame statistics of Grenadiers state that Towers and Siege Weapons are its "Preferred Target."  However, the Developers have stated in the blog that Grenadiers have a bonus against Siege Weapons, Towers, Cavalry, and the Keep.
Short of isolating instances of every unit or tower attacking every unit or tower, we can't say for certain who has a bonus against what (or of how much).
But we are able to piece things together. We know the following from the Devs:
Knights Templar: Large bonus against Towers and Walls. Small bonus against the Keep that makes them less effective than both Grenadiers and Cheiros.  
Grenadiers: Bonus against Siege Weapons, Towers, Cavalry, and the Keep. Their bonus against the Keep makes them more effective than Knights Templar but less effective than Cheiros. Their bonus to Towers is large. Their bonus to Siege Weapons is somewhere between a multiplier of 4 and 5.99.
Cheirosiphons: Bonus against the Keep that makes them more effective than both Grenadiers and Knights Templar.
Crossbowmen/Arquebusers: Bonus against grenadiers.

• Is the health stat for each unit or the whole squad?

The health stat shown is for each unit of the squad, not the squad as a whole.

• Why is it that Laddermen have a need to go over a wall even if there is clearly a gap of completely destroyed walls into the enemy base?

When choosing a path, units calculate what takes the shortest amount of time. In the calculation for laddermen traversal time we have a factor for how long it takes to set up the ladder and climb over the wall. The other factor is that units have a limited sight distance so sometimes the breach isn’t visible to them so isn’t consider as a viable path.

• What do Knight Templars do?

Knight Templars get a bonus damage to towers.  They are like crossbowman in that they are designed to take out defenses.

• How does Conrad work?

Conrad's ability is only available when Conrad is in the Tower. Once he leaves, there is no ability. He only ever has one use of the ability.
Level 1 =  Short duration and lower dmg resistance"Level 2 = Improved duration, but still short and lower damage resistance 60-70% I think?level 3 = Improved duration and max damage reduction. about 90 or 95%level 4 = Max duration and max damage reduction. about 90 or 95%

• How does Winrich work?

 
Winrich can shoot over walls, but he must be very close to the wall to do so.  Regardless of walls, his range appears thus:

Note:  Winrich can destroy a maxed musket tower.  His damage bonus doesn't apply for watch signal because it is more an emplacement than a tower..
 

• How does Maslama work?

Use Maslama's ability not on towers but on your attacking units. His ability protects your surrounding attacking units (that are within the smoke) from tower damage (including Flame Towers). It may look like the towers are still hitting your smoke-covered units, but they will not be taking any damage from it.  However, your units are not protected from defending melee units + Cheirosiphons. On the other hand, your units are protected from ranged units; his ability protects you from all ranged attacks (this includes Catapults).
Here is a screenshot to illustrate his ability better. NOTE: This illustration is old and Maslama now protects units in his smoke field from flame, such as from flame towers.  So Please disreagard the "Aieeee! We're on fire!!" bit.

Future Content

• How often are patches released?

What is the process that patches go through before release?After a patch has been developed, it goes to through a review process to be certified for release.  Once the title has cleared Windows and Apple store review, we schedule them to be published at a specific time. In this case, 9AM Pacific. At that point, everything is out of our hands. Sometimes the update shows up within a few minutes, sometimes it shows up within a few hours. Sometimes Windows 10 is out before all the rest, sometimes the iOS build beats everyone out the gate. And even then, different regions can see the update in the store at different times.
In the past, the server would only support one version of a client meaning that on patch day, nobody could play until they had the newest version. We modified that back in the spring to allow people to continue playing on older builds for a while to accommodate for these sorts of propagation delays.
 

• Should we expect buildings like markets which will allow trading among allies? Perhaps a new feature for gifting of items among allies?

No.  MS dariakus has said: "This is an idea that’s come up a lot, both internally and externally. Allowing players to straight up trade resources has a significant impact on the game economy, and not something we’re ever likely to do."

• Can we expect Alliance Wars?  More Civilizations?

We do not know.  Over the years, the Devs have repeatedly alluded to the possibility of ongoing content like this.  But recently there has been little to go on.  (And in 2015, there were far more hints, but those hints have grown fuzz and are starting to smell, so digest them at your own peril.)
But let's start with the most recent hints, obtuse as they are.
At the launch of Age X, upon someone expressing surprise to see that the Keep can hold additional pennants, Phasma stated, "Yes we did increase the max amount in the Keep...... at this time there isn't anything new to buy, but it may come in handy in the future. [cool]  ."
That day, she also stated in relevant part, "Focus on the new update for now. :) We are still at work on new things, but when these come and what they are get announced once they have been developed and shown as working in the game. Please stop asking." 
Working backwards, in early 2016 when dariakus was working on AoE, he said: I'd like to take a moment to stress that we have not announced that either Age X or Alliance Wars are coming to Castle Siege. They are absolutely things on our mind--I don't think it's divulging state secrets to say we've discussed adding another Age or bringing the most-requested feature of all time to the game. When we have something concrete to discuss about future plans, especially anything around Alliance Wars, trust me--you'll hear about it from us [smile] We are absolutely dedicated to the game and the Age franchise [...], and Castle Siege still has a lot of life left in it."
Earlier, back in November, 2015 , dariakus teased us with the following:
"So here's a roadmap. Please do not take it as hardened truth or as a promise of future features--the farther out in the future it goes, the less reliable. But this is where our headspace is at. Hope it's useful. I'm going to be purposefully vague on some of the Long Term™ features because they're not confirmed, and definitely not fully designed yet. Have fun:Short term (2-4 weeks): Tweaking/fixing treaties and crowns. More flags. A much-requested alliance feature (requesting troops).Mid term (2-3 months): More robust alliance searching and finding functionality, Leagues, and a smorgasboard of quality of life upgrades. More on what those are in the new year.Long term (3+ months): Alliance wars, Age X, Exploration, New heroes and cultural units (perhaps from civilizations presently not in game), and more..."

 
Other
 

• My bogus justification about how it is legal for me to use an auto-clicker is OK, right?

No.  You are an idiot.  Autoclicking is illegal.  If anyone uses an autoclicker, the Devs will reset your castle and/or simply ban you from the game and the forum.
The Microsoft Services Agreement explains:
"1.9 Are there things I can’t do on the Services? You must not use the Services to harm others or the Services. For example, you must not: [...]  Enable unauthorized third party applications to access the Services; [...] Use or attempt to use any unauthorized means to modify, reroute, or gain access to the Services; Use any automated process or service (such as a bot, a spider, periodic caching of information stored by Microsoft, or metasearching) to access or use the Services, or to copy or scrape data from the Services; [...] Fraudulently increase the play count or otherwise manipulate the Services in any way, including using a script and/or otherwise automated process"
The illegality of autoclickers has been confirmed by the Developers many times.
Here is the source from the former executive producer of the franchise:
"Today we have once more taken action to punish players who were violating the Xbox Live Terms of Use. The use of exploits or external programs to remain logged in is a violation of said terms, and can result in punishment up to and including a ban from all Xbox Live services. While we cannot update the community with the result of every investigation, know that we take every report of exploits and cheating seriously."
Here it is again from another former staff member:
"Just a quick reminder to not publicly post the names or Gamertags of users you suspect to be cheating or using methods to stay online indefinitely. Please send a PM with the GT in question to me or another moderator so we can pass it on to the development team for investigation."
 

Other Resources
Age of Empires: Castle Siege 101Developer Answers to QuestionsReplay of the WeekCivilization Tree - BritonsAge of Empires Castle Siege Wiki (unofficial)Unit Counterparts and Information (unofficial) by Xyranius42Beginner's Guides & FAQ (unofficial) by TheJohnnyBangDefense & Attack Tips (unofficial) by Riches to Ruins allianceCastle Siege 100% Guide (unofficial) by benjer3  Thanks to the following contributors, in no particular order: Queen Matcha, Joyson Joy, AL997, benjer3, SpelerWeetIkHoeveel, DrPivot, Dave0564, Empress_Phasma, The Flying Rurik, Jackadsa, Good Times LP, Norse Skadi, Screaming Cat, Wulf & Dove