Game Wiki

Prinzessin is a persistent browser strategy MMO: build a city, raise armies, farm resources, and fight for control of the Varentine Reaches. The world runs while you are offline — queues you set before logging out keep working. This guide covers your first week so you are not fumbling around wondering what to do.

What This Guide Covers

• City development, day by day over your first week
• Farming valleys and NPC cities for medals and resources
• Heroes and how to use them
• Preparing for PvP

Open your starting gift chests first (My Items, Chest tab). Then work through these steps in order:

1. Build a Cottage. You need population before you can build most things.
2. Build a Rally Point. Required to send marches to the world map.
3. Build a Barracks. This is where you train troops.
4. Go to your city fields and build one Farm, one Sawmill, one Quarry, and one Iron Mine.
5. Collect your quest rewards as you go — do not let them pile up uncollected.
6. Build an Academy and start Foundation (Tier I) research. Try to get the basic military and economy research started today.
7. Build an Embassy.
8. Upgrade your Walls.
9. Build a Warehouse for the quest reward.
10. Open the Town Hall, set your Tax Rate, and collect your first Levy.
11. Upgrade your Barracks and push your Town Hall up.

1. Push Academy to level 5. This is a major milestone.
2. At Academy level 5 you choose your Order. This is permanent and cannot be undone. Four choices:
   • Arrow Order — archers and ranged combat. Recommended for most new players.
   • Cavalier Order — mounted troops (cavalry, cataphract). Fast and aggressive.
   • Ram Order — siege weapons (ballista, catapult). Powerful late-game.
   • Pike Order — pikemen and defensive infantry. Strong in defence.
3. Start Tier II (Specialisation) research after choosing your Order.
4. Put remaining resources into more resource fields.

1. Build Barracks in bulk. More Barracks means more parallel training queues — troops come out faster.
2. If you have a Politics hero assigned as Mayor, construction moves significantly faster. Check the Hero panel (Tavern tab) and recruit one if you have not already.
3. Upgrade city resource fields to improve income. Iron and Lumber run short fastest.
4. Keep Academy research ticking. Longer researches should be queued before you log off.

1. Begin training troops in earnest. Prioritise Scouts first — they are far faster than any combat unit and essential for checking targets before your army marches. Then train a spread of troop types you have unlocked, filling remaining capacity with Warriors.
2. Send scouts to explore the world map. Find the barbarian camps and NPC cities near your starting position.

1. Upgrade your Walls. Higher wall level increases your city's passive defences and overall staying power against attackers.
2. Push troop training hard. Fill your queues with Warriors and Archers. Start Ballistas once your Academy research allows.
3. Complete Ballista and Cataphract research at the Academy if not already done.
4. When you feel your army is strong enough to defend, you can start attacking other players. Remember: the moment you attack or scout a player city, your beginner protection ends permanently.

Farming Valleys

Valleys are terrain tiles scattered across the world map. Attacking them drops resources and medals.

• Start with lower-level valleys once your basic army is trained up.
• Hill (Iron) and Forest (Lumber) valleys are worth prioritising — those resources run short fastest.
• Attacking valleys is the main way to earn Cross and Rose medals for your first promotion titles.

Farming NPC Cities

NPC cities are computer-controlled towns on the world map. They drop resources and medals.

• Low-level NPCs (1–3): attackable early with basic troops once your army is established.
• Mid-level NPCs (4–7): require a developed army and solid research before you can farm them reliably.
• Level 10 NPCs: endgame content requiring a fully developed army. The only source of Justice and Nation medals, which are required for the top title ranks.

Heroes

Heroes are recruited from the Tavern inside the Hero panel. Each hero has three attributes:

• Politics — when assigned as Mayor, speeds up building construction and boosts resource production. Best choice for your first hero.
• Attack — when assigned as Mayor, speeds up troop training.
• Intelligence — when assigned as Mayor, speeds up Academy research.

Assign a hero as Mayor from the Hero panel. A high-Politics Mayor makes a meaningful difference to construction speed early on. If the tavern shows a better hero than one you already have, it is worth recruiting them — a hero with a stronger base attribute in your priority stat will serve you better even if their current level is lower.

Preparing to Defend

Before you start fighting other players, make sure your city can take a hit. Keep your Warehouse upgraded to protect as many resources as possible. Keep troop training queues running — an idle Barracks is wasted time. The best defence is having enough troops garrisoned that an attacker looks elsewhere for easier targets.

Welcome to Prinzessin, a free browser-based medieval strategy MMO set in the Varentine Reaches. You are a Lord building a city, training armies, and vying for power in a world shattered by the fall of a great empire.

Prinzessin is a persistent browser-based game (PBBG). The world runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your city produces resources, your buildings construct, your troops train, and your marches travel even while you are offline. Log in, set your city to work, and come back hours later to collect the results.

This wiki covers all core game mechanics. Whether you are just starting out or looking to sharpen your strategy, use the table of contents on the left to jump to any topic.

If you are brand new, start with the New Player Guide for a step-by-step walkthrough of your first week.

The game takes place in the Varentine Reaches, a broad land of river valleys, coastal plains, and highland passes. For four centuries it was unified under the Auric Compact, the greatest empire the world had known. Forty-three years ago, the Compact collapsed in a catastrophe called the Sundering of Valdris, and everything that followed has been fragmentation, struggle, and the slow question of who, if anyone, will build something to replace it.

The Four Factions

Lords of the Reaches tend to align with one of four groups, though none forces your hand:

Wyrms

Wyrms are the great winged creatures of the Reaches. The Compact was named for Aurum, a rare mineral that allows a person with the right bloodline to bond a wyrm permanently. That mineral is nearly exhausted now. Some lords still find fragments; others learn the old taming tradition. Wyrms in the game appear on the world map and can be claimed to fight alongside your armies.

Your city produces four main resources continuously, even while you are offline:

Gold is a fifth resource earned through population tax (Levy), trade, and combat loot.

Food and Troop Upkeep

Every troop in your city consumes food per hour. Large armies eat quickly, and siege weapons have a particularly high upkeep. Watch your net food balance carefully: a negative balance means your army is slowly starving, and troops will desert if it persists.

Storage and Looting

Your Warehouse protects a portion of your resources from being looted if another player attacks you. Resources above the warehouse cap are at risk. Upgrade your Warehouse to protect more.

Levy

You can collect a tax levy from your city's population once per day for bonus Gold. The amount scales with your city's population and development.

Your city is the foundation of everything. Buildings unlock new capabilities and scale up your production, training speed, and troop capacity as they level up. Most buildings can be upgraded to level 10.

Twelve troop types are available in Prinzessin, each with a different combat role. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses is the key to building effective armies.

Food Upkeep

Every troop in your city eats food continuously. Large armies eat a lot. Siege weapons consume significantly more food per hour than infantry or archers. Before training a large army, make sure your Farms can cover the upkeep or you will find troops deserting over time.

Combat in Prinzessin is round-based and resolved on a one-dimensional distance line. Understanding how it works is the single most important thing for building effective armies.

How Combat Works

When two armies meet, attackers and defenders start at opposite ends of a battlefield and close the gap each round. Two stats decide everything:

• Range: how far a unit can strike. A unit with longer range attacks while the enemy is still out of range, taking no return fire.
• Speed: how much distance a unit covers per round as it advances.

The critical consequence: archers (range 1200) and siege weapons (ballista and catapult both range 1500) get free rounds of fire while slower melee units walk toward them. Those melee units take damage without being able to hit back.

The Layering Strategy (Fodder)

The most important skill in Prinzessin combat is understanding fodder layers:

• Defending or attacking armies stack cheap, slow, high-HP units (workers, warriors, pikemen, swordsmen) in front of the archers.
• Enemy melee units must kill each fodder layer before they can reach the archers.
• Every time they stop to fight through a layer, the archers get another free volley.
• Adding fodder of different speeds multiplies the number of stops, and therefore the free volleys.

Troop Counters

A rough rock-paper-scissors pattern exists on top of the range model:

Wall Defences

Your city walls can hold fortified units that fire on attackers automatically:

• Archer Towers: The strongest and most consistent wall defence. High attack and defence, do not die when firing.
• Traps: Hit any foot or mounted unit. Even one trap sets wall range to 5,000 (see below).
• Abatis: Hits cavalry and cataphract only. Deters mounted rushes.
• Rolling Logs: Hits foot troops but cannot hit cavalry. Generally considered the weakest fortification.
• Defensive Trebuchet: Hits anything. Also a range fortification.

Two Defensive Postures

• Compact Defence: Archer towers only. Beats cavalry rushes; weaker against dedicated siege (ballista/catapult) waves.
• Range Defence (5K Defence): Includes at least one trap, abatis, or trebuchet. The presence of any of these sets your wall's maximum firing range to 5,000, so it starts firing immediately when attackers enter range. Strong against melee and mounted armies; more exposed to siege waves.

Scouting Before Attacking

Always send a scout to check a target before committing your army. A scout report shows troop counts and wall fortification types. Any trap, abatis, or trebuchet present means Range Defence. Pure archer towers or none means Compact Defence. Knowing the defensive posture lets you choose the right army composition.

Marches are how you interact with the world map: scouting enemies, attacking targets, transporting resources, and more. Every march is a round trip; your troops return home after completing their mission.

Travel Time

Travel time depends on two things: the distance to the target (measured in tiles) and the speed of the slowest troop in your march. The whole army travels at the pace of its slowest unit.

The return trip is always equal in duration to the outbound trip.

March Types

• Scout march: Sends scouts to gather intelligence on a target. Returns a report of troop counts and wall fortifications.
• Attack march: Sends an army to fight. Combat is resolved when the troops arrive. Survivors return home.
• Transport march: Sends transporters carrying resources to another city.
• Reinforce march: Sends troops to garrison a friendly city.

March Capacity

Your Rally Point level determines how many simultaneous outbound marches you can send. Upgrade the Rally Point to send more waves at once.

Prestige

Prestige is your overall score and rank signal. High prestige deters attackers and opens better alliances. It is earned by constructing and upgrading buildings, completing research, training troops, and winning battles against higher-level targets.

The more cities you hold and the higher their Town Halls, the slower each individual action contributes to your prestige. To keep growing at scale you need to keep tackling bigger upgrades and higher-level targets. Spreading thin across many cities without scaling up what you build and attack will plateau your prestige growth.

Losing a battle costs prestige proportional to the troops you lost.

Honor

Honor is a separate PvP score. NPC cities, barbarian camps, and valley attacks do not change honor. Only player-vs-player combat affects it.

• You gain honor when you kill expensive enemy troops while losing cheap ones.
• You lose honor when you lose expensive troops while killing cheap ones.
• Both sides of a PvP fight earn or lose honor independently.

Promotion Titles

Titles raise the number of cities you can hold and grant a prestige bonus. Each requires a prestige threshold, specific medals, gold, and a military rank. The prestige requirement doubles at each tier.

Each title also requires specific medals and a gold payment. Medals are the real gate for most players. See the Medals section for how to earn them.

Valleys are terrain tiles scattered across the world map. Conquering a valley by reducing its garrison loyalty to zero grants your city a permanent production bonus while you hold it.

Valley Types and Bonuses

Flat valleys give no resource bonus, but a player with a spare city slot can build a new city on a conquered flat valley (costs 250 Workers and 10,000 of each resource).

Valley Cap

Your Town Hall level equals the number of valleys one city can hold. A Town Hall 5 city can hold up to 5 valleys. There is no separate player-wide cap; total valleys scale with your cities and their Town Hall levels.

Valley Levels and Cycle Farming

Valleys have levels from 1 to 10. Level increases by 1 per day and resets to 1 after reaching level 10. Experienced players time their conquests to take high-level valleys right before they reset to maximise the bonus during their tenure.

NPC Cities

NPC cities on the world map are separate from valleys. Attacking them repeatedly yields medals and resources. Their garrison regenerates over time, making them renewable targets. See the Medals section for which NPC levels drop which medals.

Heroes are named characters recruited from the Inn. They have three attributes that determine their value in different roles:

Mayor vs Army Commander

Each hero can be assigned in one of two ways:

• Mayor: Stationed in your city. A high-Politics mayor boosts production and construction. A high-Intelligence mayor speeds up research. A high-Attack mayor speeds up troop training.
• Army commander: Leads a march. A high-Attack hero dramatically increases your army's combat power. Hero level differences are decisive in PvP: a high-level attack hero can flip an otherwise losing fight.

How Heroes Level Up

Heroes gain experience whenever your troops die in battle. Losing fodder (workers, warriors) is the standard way to level an attack hero quickly. Sending your hero on repeated NPC attacks with cheap fodder mixed in is an efficient leveling method.

Hero Loyalty

Heroes have a loyalty value. If it reaches zero, the hero can be lost or captured by an enemy. Keep loyalty maintained through the Feasting Hall. A captured hero can sometimes be won back, but it is easier to keep loyalty high.

A high-Attack mayor speeds up troop training as well as boosting combat power, making Attack the most versatile hero attribute.

Skills are your personal progression system, separate from buildings and research. They represent your lord's own expertise, and their bonuses are applied to all troops you send into battle. Each skill level adds a small multiplier. Bonuses from multiple skills stack multiplicatively for compounding advantage at higher levels.

Combat Skills

Economy Skills

The Academy is where you research permanent technology upgrades for your city and army. Research takes time (resolved on server time, so it continues while you are offline) and costs resources.

Tier I: Foundation Research

Foundation research is available to all players from Academy level 1. It covers broad improvements across military and economy:

Military:

• Military Science: Reduces troop training time. A high-priority research for any lord building a large army.
• Archery: Increases range for archers and all siege weapons. More range means more free-fire rounds before melee closes.
• Iron Working: Increases attack for all ground troops.
• Shield Craft: Increases defence and HP for all ground troops.
• Horsemanship: Increases speed for cavalry and cataphract.
• Logistics: Reduces food upkeep for all troops. Essential once your army grows large.

Economy:

• Agriculture: Increases food production.
• Logging: Increases lumber production.
• Masonry: Increases stone production.
• Smelting: Increases iron production.
• Commerce: Increases gold production.

Tier II: Specialisation Research

Unlocks at Academy level 5. Requires completing relevant Tier I research first. Each branch deepens your chosen military specialisation.

• Precision Archery (requires Archery): Further extends archer range; more free-volley rounds.
• Siege Engineering (requires Archery and Military Science): Boosts ballista and catapult attack; reduces siege training time.
• Cavalry Tactics (requires Horsemanship and Iron Working): Boosts cavalry and cataphract attack.
• Fortification Doctrine (requires Shield Craft): Strengthens wall fortifications and archer towers.
• Formation Drill (requires Shield Craft and Military Science): Improves how infantry fodder layers force attacker stops, giving your archers more free-fire volleys.

The Order System (Academy Level 5)

At Academy level 5, you choose your permanent Order. This is a one-time, irreversible decision that defines your military identity for the rest of the game.

Medals are required for promotion titles. They drop randomly when you attack valleys and NPC cities. Higher-tier medals only come from higher-level targets, so advancing to top titles requires a strong army capable of farming level 10 NPCs.

Farming Medals Efficiently

Each attack on a valley or NPC city rolls for a medal drop. You do not need to hold or fully conquer the target. The standard method is to send repeated attacks on the same NPC city, letting the garrison regenerate between waves. Valleys regenerate too.

Alliances are player-formed groups that coordinate strategy, share intelligence, reinforce each other in battle, and control territory on the world map. Playing solo is possible but much harder; joining a strong alliance is one of the best things you can do early.

Joining or Creating an Alliance

You can search for alliances to join or create your own from the Alliance menu in the game. When creating an alliance you choose a name and a short tag shown beside your lord name on the world map.

Alliance Ranks

Diplomatic Relations

Alliance leaders can set formal relations with other alliances:

• Allied: Friendly relationship. Visible on the world map; members avoid attacking each other.
• NAP (Non-Aggression Pact): Agreement not to attack each other.
• War: Formal state of war. Honor gains from attacking war-declared targets may be improved.

Reinforcement

Alliance members can march troops to reinforce each other's cities. Reinforcing troops defend the host city alongside the owner's garrison and return home when the reinforcement ends or the city is attacked.

Alliance Territory

Alliances can claim and hold territory on the world map, including valleys and resource nodes. Territory is visible to all players and helps demonstrate the alliance's strength and reach.