Kingshot troop tiers guide

What a tier actually is

• Eleven main tiers, then an endgame overlay. Community sources consistently describe the ladder as running T1 to T11, with T11 named Truegold. A further Tempered Truegold (T12) tier exists above that as the true competitive ceiling, gated by a weekly resource cap rather than a straight building unlock — so it can't be rushed by spending alone regardless of budget.
• Each tier is a building-level gate, not a gem purchase. Lower and mid tiers unlock as you level your Town Center alongside the matching troop building — sources cite specific gates like a Barracks level for one of the mid tiers — but the exact building level per tier varies by source and likely by patch, so check your own Barracks / Stable / Archery Range screen rather than memorizing a number here.
• T11 (Truegold) is the one gate that's well-documented and consistent across sources: it requires Town Center level 30 and a server age of roughly 220 days before the War Academy even appears, then further War Academy progress and troop-specific research on top of that.
• What actually improves tier-over-tier is the troop's base combat stats (attack, defense, health, lethality) — sources describe the jump from T10 to T11 as roughly 15–20% more stats across the board, which reads as one clean source rather than a cross-confirmed figure, so treat it as directional, not exact.

Training new vs promoting old Community consensus

These are two different actions that both end with more troops at a higher tier, and mixing them up wastes real resources:

• Training builds brand-new troops from scratch at whatever tier you select — full resource and time cost for that tier, no matter what you already have.
• Promoting takes troops you already own and upgrades them one tier up. Community-reported figures put promotion at a real discount versus training the same quantity fresh at the target tier — cheaper in resources and faster, because you're upgrading an existing unit rather than building one from zero.
• The standard play: keep your training queues full at your second-highest unlocked tier for everyday volume, then promote that stockpile up during scoring events (Hall of Governors, KvK, The Strongest Governor) — promotion is reported to generate more event points per speedup spent than training the top tier directly, so the same speedup budget scores higher timed to an event window than spent on ordinary days.

When to push for the next tier

Unlocking a tier and being ready for it are different milestones. The honest decision logic:

• Sustain, don't just unlock. A new tier is only a win if you can afford to keep it fed — training and healing it costs meaningfully more than the tier below (see below). Unlocking T11 and then being unable to heal a realistic loss just means your infirmary fills with troops you can't afford to bring back.
• Community rule of thumb: build real volume at your current tier before chasing the next one, and don't split a fresh unlock across all three troop types at once — sources converge on finishing one troop type (commonly Infantry first for tank/rally-lead roles, then Archers, then Cavalry) rather than spreading resources thin across all three simultaneously.
• The test that actually matters: if healing a plausible loss at your current tier would stall your economy for days, you're not ready to add a more expensive tier on top of it. Push volume and infrastructure first.

The hidden cost: healing and training scale faster than you expect

The number nobody quotes until they're staring at a resource shortfall: higher tiers don't just cost a little more, they cost dramatically more to train and to heal.

• Training cost jumps hard between top tiers. Community-sourced figures put T11 training cost at roughly 150% higher per unit than T10, while training time only rises around 18% — meaning the resource bill outpaces the time bill by a wide margin at the top of the ladder.
• Healing scales the same way. The same sources put T11 healing cost at roughly 150% higher per unit than T10 as well — our own healing cost calculator notes T11 healing running around 25× T1 healing per unit across the full ladder, which is the more load-bearing, better-corroborated comparison if you want a sanity check across every tier rather than just the top jump.
• Do the math before you commit a batch. Run your batch through the troop training calculator for the resource and time bill, the healing calculator to budget what a loss would cost you, and the speedup calculator if you're planning to rush any of it — three numbers, one decision.