My Experience with War and Order
I got this because my previous city-building game got bought out and ruined with ads every five seconds. I was desperate. Downloaded War and Order on a Tuesday night while waiting for takeout at a Chinese place near my office. First impression? The graphics are actually decent for a mobile game. I wasn’t expecting much, but the map looks good and the buildings have real detail. That said, I almost deleted it on day three. The tutorial is way too long. I get it, you want to hold my hand, but I’ve played these games before. Let me build my castle and move on. Once I got past that, the core loop started clicking. I’m the type who checks my phone during boring conference calls, and this game is perfect for that. You queue up some building upgrades, send troops to gather wood or stone, and check back later. It fills the gaps in my day. Last Saturday I stayed up way too late because my alliance was attacking some dragon thing called “Morgoth” or whatever. That was actually fun. We had like 30 people coordinating in the in-game chat. Felt like a real team effort. My boss would kill me if he knew I was strategizing on Slack about a fake war while pretending to work.
Features Worth Noting
The alliance system is honestly the best part. I joined one called “Iron Wolves” or something generic, but the people are active. There’s always someone online. The chat works well enough, though typing on a phone keyboard during a battle is a pain. You can share troop positions, send resources to each other, and coordinate attacks. Makes the game feel alive. The building variety is good too. You’ve got your barracks, farms, sawmills, all the usual stuff. But they also have hero towers where you recruit fantasy characters like elves and orcs. Each hero has special abilities that unlock over time. I like that I can customize my army instead of just spamming the same unit. Battles are automated, which I actually prefer. You send your troops, watch a cinematic, and get the result. I don’t have time to micro-manage every fight. The map is huge with different territories to explore. There are neutral monsters, resource nodes, and other player cities you can attack. It gives you something to do when you’re waiting for your building timers. The events rotate weekly. Right now there’s a “Kill Event” where you earn points for destroying enemy troops. Competitive people go crazy for it. I just participate enough to get the free rewards.
What Needs Work
My biggest frustration is the speed. Everything takes forever. A level 10 building might take 12 hours. Upgrading my town hall? 18 hours. Yes, there are speed-up items, but they’re scarce unless you pay. I get that these games are designed to be slow, but come on. I don’t want to open the app six times a day just to press “upgrade” and close it. The resource balancing is rough too. You’ll run out of wood constantly while sitting on 50k stone. It feels engineered to frustrate you into buying packs. The notifications are aggressive. My phone buzzes every 30 minutes saying “Your troops are idle!” or “Your wall needs repairs!” I turned most of them off after day one because it was driving me crazy. Also, the game drains my iPhone 14 battery like crazy. Playing for 20 minutes on the train drops from 80% to 60%. Not great. And there’s a lot of menu clutter. Tabs everywhere, red dots on everything. Takes forever to find where to claim a reward.
Pricing
It’s free to download, but let’s be honest—this is a pay-to-win game. Not pay-to-enjoy, pay-to-win. If you want to compete at the top, you’ll need to drop serious cash. I’ve seen people in chat dropping hundreds of dollars on “Growth Fund” packs. I’m not that person. I bought the $4.99 “Monthly Gem Card” because it gives you daily gems for 30 days. That’s the only thing I’ve spent. It’s reasonable. The $99 packs for instant level 25 buildings are ridiculous. You can play for free and have fun, but you’ll never be number one. Accept that early on. The in-app purchases are everywhere. Every time you complete something, a popup offers you a “special deal.” It’s annoying but easy to ignore. Just hit the X.
Developer Notes
CamelStudio puts out updates pretty regularly. I’ve seen two in two weeks. One fixed a bug where resources wouldn’t load, the other added a new hero. They seem to listen, though slowly. I contacted support once because my alliance donation button was grayed out. Took them like three days to respond via email. The answer was helpful though—turned out I had a pending invite I hadn’t accepted. Embarrassing but they explained it clearly. The game doesn’t crash often. Had one crash during a big battle with 50 players, which was annoying. But generally stable. I wish they’d add a “one-click claim all rewards” button. Currently you have to tap each icon individually. Small thing but it adds up.
Security & Privacy
It asks for permissions to access your photos and contacts? I said no to both. I don’t know why a strategy game needs my camera roll. It works fine without those permissions. You have to create an account with an email or log in via Google/Facebook. I used a burner email because I’m paranoid. There’s no obvious data tracking popups, but assume they’re collecting your play data for targeted ads. The game is clearly designed in China (the developer is CamelStudio, based in Shanghai). Privacy policies are standard. Nothing scary, but nothing reassuring either. I’d avoid linking your real Facebook account. Just use the email option.
