Tech & Research — What to Run and When
Updated 7 Aug 2026 · 4 min readI remember staring at the research trees for the first time and having absolutely no idea what to click. There are so many nodes, the names don't always tell you what they do, and nobody in my alliance could give me a straight answer on what order to run things. It took me about three weeks and a few genuinely expensive mistakes before I figured out a system that actually works.
Here's what I'd tell myself if I could go back to day one.
RESEARCH ORDER — FOLLOW THIS SEQUENCE
Badge-free. Universal training speed for all three troop types. Do this first and complete it fully before anything else.
Badge-free. Construction and research speed. Runs in Lab 1 continuously. Never stop it.
Badge-free. Unlocks after Shelter Building. Reduces build timers. Keep it running.
Your first badge investment and your most important one. Doubles weekly duel rewards, unlocks chests 4–9. Expensive but pays back every single week forever.
Stop at 9 chests, then reassess. Full cost estimate: 143,000–200,000 badges.
Cheap badges. Unlocks Peace Shield tree. 10–15% HP boost — genuinely changes fights.
Urgent Rescue branch gives 20% unit survival. Recharge Shield starts HP stacking. Do this after Military Strategies.
Second HP stacking tree. Combined with Peace Shield gives 35–40% extra HP total. That is a significant survivability upgrade.
Get to Cockpit level and stop. Extra attack tier costs badges but the return isn't there until you have T10 troops.
LAB STRATEGY
Lab 1: Run badge-free trees continuously — Shelter Building, Elite Troops, HQ Management, Rapid Growth. Never let this queue empty. These trees cost nothing and they compound silently every day. Treat Lab 1 as your permanent free research factory.
Lab 2: Run badge trees timed to Alliance Duel Day 3 only. Start expensive nodes so they finish during the Wednesday window. This earns research AND duel points simultaneously. That's double value from a single action.
Second lab requires the Research License purchase. It's one of the few paid items that's genuinely worth it for serious players. If you're F2P, you can still run badge trees in Lab 1 during Day 3 windows — it's just slower.
BADGE RULES
Never spend badges randomly during the week. I know the temptation — you hit enough badges for the next node and you just want to click it. Don't. Save them all for Wednesday.
20,000 badges on Day 3 earns millions of duel points. The same 20,000 badges spent on a Tuesday earn you almost nothing. Same badges, completely different result. This is not a minor difference — it's the biggest single efficiency gap between players who feel stuck and players who feel like the game is accelerating.
If you only take one piece of advice from this entire guide, make it this: badges go on Wednesday. Everything else is secondary.
WHAT TO SKIP
- Alliance Recognition first — always
- HP stacking trees (Peace Shield + Siege to Seize)
- Badge-free trees running 24/7 in Lab 1
- Time badge research completions to Day 3
- Fully Armed Alliance early — whale tech only
- Zent Plunder — terrible value for badges spent
- Extra attack tiers in Hero Training before T10 troops
- Starting expensive nodes with no event scheduled
The Two Lab Approach
Once you unlock Lab 2, the game changes. Here's the thing most players don't realise at first — you should be running completely different kinds of research in each lab. Lab 1 stays on badge-free trees permanently. Shelter Building, Elite Troops, HQ Management, Rapid Growth — these cost zero badges and they compound quietly in the background every single day. Lab 2 is your badge lab. This is where Alliance Recognition, Hero Training, Military Strategies and the other expensive trees go. And here's the part that matters: you time your badge research completions to land on Alliance Duel Day 3 whenever possible. Completing a badge node on Day 3 scores you massive points in the event. Same node finished on a Tuesday? Almost worthless. The two-lab split sounds simple but I've seen players months into the game still running badge trees in Lab 1 and wonder why they're always short on research progress.
What to Research First
Shelter Building — start this immediately and never stop running it. It's free, it boosts your base stats across the board, and every level completed makes everything else slightly faster.
Elite Troops is the next priority. Zero badges, universal training speed bonuses that apply to all three troop types at once. In my experience this is one of the best-value trees in the entire game.
OK so now we get to the expensive stuff. Alliance Recognition is your first real badge investment and honestly it's the most important one. AR research multiplies the badges you earn from future Alliance Duels. It also unlocks chests 4 through 9 in your weekly rewards. You're literally generating badges while spending them. Trust me — the maths works out.
Military Strategies includes the Destruction Value nodes, which directly affect your SVS scoring. Fully Armed Alliance has the Annihilation node that makes enemy troops die instead of being wounded in PvP. Expensive to unlock but in a serious war it changes the outcome.
Mistakes That Cost Weeks
Spending badges outside Day 3. I've said it three times now and I'll keep saying it. This one mistake alone sets players back by weeks.
Running badge trees in Lab 1. Your Lab 1 should be running free research 24/7. If you put a badge tree in there, you're competing with Shelter Building and Elite Troops for time.
Ignoring the lab entirely. I've seen strong players with labs sitting idle for days because they forgot to queue something. Research compounds. Every idle hour is stats you'll never get back.
Starting an expensive badge node with no event scheduled. If you begin a 4-day research and Alliance Duel isn't for another week, you've just wasted the completion window.