Lordrush Research Calculator: Tech Costs & Time

It depends on your account archetype. Free-to-play players who will primarily be joining rallies (rather than leading them) should deprioritize battle research in favor of growth and economy research. Your combat stats don't apply when you're a rally joiner; you take the rally leader's stats instead. For F2P, the priority order is: Tool Enhancement (faster research), Tooling Up (construction speed), Command Tactics (extra march queues), then economy/gathering research. Low-to-mid spenders who will eventually host their own rallies should invest in both trees, typically following lethality over attack and health over defense within the battle tree due to being more scarcely available in game (and thus having more impact in the combat formula).

Tool Enhancement, which increases your research speed, is universally the top priority across all account archetypes. The sooner you max it, the more total benefit it delivers since it accelerates every research project that comes after it. There are literally thousands of days of research across all tech trees, so a permanent research speed increase compounds significantly. The one caveat: don't let longer, higher-level Tool Enhancement research projects block a time-sensitive unlock, such as a needed increase in troop healing speed or capacity before a big PvP event like a Castle competition.

Gathering research is underrated for most players. In the early game, output from resource buildings feels sufficient, but around TC level 20, gathering becomes your primary resource engine. High-level resource nodes yield over 1 million food or wood per hour consistently, which outpaces town production by a wide margin. Many players get later into the game only to realize that they should have prioritized these techs sooner. Don’t be one of them! Foraging and gathering research become higher priority than production building output research once you can reach level 5+ resource nodes.

Several temporary buffs apply only at the start of a research project and aren't retroactive to running projects. Stack all of these temporary bonuses before clicking start: Scholar's Tower control (if your alliance holds it), Chief Minister position in King's Castle, and any Fresh Ideas king skill active on your Empire. Missing these when commencing a late-game 100-day research project means losing that buff for the entire duration, which could be weeks of time lost.

Early in the game, specifically during the early Hall of Governors (HoG) format, yes. In early HoG, you earn points for total strength gained from research, not just speedups consumed. Some battle research projects can give 10,000+ power for just 1–2 hours of research time. Saving a batch of these for your second or third HoG event can score tens of millions of points in a single day, potentially putting you in the top ranks versus spenders who already have been maxing out battle research. This only works in the early event format of Hall of Governors.

Eventually you will want that battle research anyway, as there are some game modes in which you get rewarded for it even as an individual player. But since you will be prioritizing growth and economy research in the earliest part of the game due to compounding results, this is a nice way to get the most out of your prioritization schedule.