A fantasy-themed game about upgrading your base, fighting your neighbors, and increasing the power of your alliance, War and Order is similar to a less cartooney Clash of Clans. Steal your neighbors' resources while defending your own and engage in epic fantasy battles as you build a powerful kingdom.

War and Order is a massively multiplayer mobile strategy game that focuses on doing battle with neighboring alliances. It’s most succinctly described as Clash of Clans, but different. In War and Order, you use resources to upgrade your base and make units, then send your units to fight computer-controlled monsters and units belonging to other players. If you defeat the other players, you can ransack some of their unused resources and use them to make yourself stronger.

War and Order was released in 2016. Despite this, the game continually spins up new realms that you can start playing the game on. Each “realm” is a little world of players that are totally isolated from other realms. Because you play on a single realm, each of these has its own personality. More importantly, however, they’ve also got their own start date. A realm started a few days ago will have everyone at a very low level, whereas it’s hard to catch up on a realm that’s been around since the game started.

Like other similar mobile games, War and Order is a patience simulator as much as it is anything else. Upgrades take lots of real-time to complete, and saving up for certain things can take days, weeks, or even months of playing. You’ll want to log into the game two or three times a day to manage attacks, upgrades, and resources. Beyond this, however, your playtime will have fairly dramatic diminishing returns. Spending an hour on War and Order will enable you to knock out a bunch of chores, but spending twelve hours on War and Order won’t slingshot your power level out of the solar system. Instead, you’ll probably spend most of it having fun chatting with your alliance mates.

The social system in War and Order is a big part of the game. Alliances fight for control of the game’s resources on a constant basis. You’ll want to find a reasonably active, reasonably powerful alliance as soon as you start the game, but don’t be fooled into thinking that you need the strongest alliance immediately. Instead, try to find some like-minded players that you enjoy talking to and allow them to guide your journey through the game.

War and Order is incredibly complicated. The first several days of gameplay are going to be a bit overwhelming, even if you’re a gaming veteran with experience in similar titles. There are a lot of interlocking systems and complex rules that you have to learn in order to succeed. Once you’ve got this down, however, your basic gameplay loop is pretty simple. 

If you’re after one of the more complex strategy games on the mobile market, War and Order might be up your alley. If you’re not sure, however, don’t fret – there are lots of other similar games that you can choose from. War and Order is definitely neat, but it’s not the only fish in the sea.

We described War and Order as a patience simulator earlier, and that’s definitely something that you’re going to need to keep in mind as you play. When you’re starting out on a fresh realm, there’s not a lot of difference between free-to-play accounts, low-spenders, and whales. Over time, however, you’ll see a big difference in between accounts that log into the game three times a day and people who don’t have the self-discipline or patience to pop on and get their in-game chores done. You can get incredibly powerful in War and Order by forming a daily routine and sticking to it.

If you’re new, one incredibly important tip is to make sure that you don’t leave a bunch of resources open. Open resources can be stolen by other players, which will not only make you poor but will also make your enemies stronger. Instead, spend your resources as fast as you get them. It’s okay to use a few speed-ups early on in order to blast through the first few upgrades. Not only will this let you spend resources, but you’ll find yourself in a great position at the head of the pack.

Are you a War and Order fan? What attracted you to your current alliance? What legendary equipment do you use? How long have you been playing? Let us know in the comments below!