Strategy

These tips come from simulated games. A bot always buys the best investment, captures 85% of rival pieces, and solves 90% of puzzles.

What actually matters

Time (analyses) is the real wall. The ending needs 1,100 analyses, which is 201.7 h with the tab open. Rushing the economy does nothing if your analyses fall behind. Keep the game open: analyses only advance while it is running.
Never prestige when the end is close. Prestige empties the bank, and the ending needs 1e37 in the bank.
Clicking is very profitable, thanks to the “+1% of production per click” upgrades and rival-piece bonuses.
Prestige when it doubles your crowns, not before, and not long after.

Buying at the right time: return on investment

For each possible purchase, compute:

score = cost / production gained  +  cost / current production

The first term is the payback time: how many seconds the purchase takes to repay itself.
The second is the wait until you can afford it.
Buy whatever has the lowest score, wait if you must, then repeat. That is exactly the bot’s strategy.

For a producer, the gain per copy is shown in its tooltip. For a ×2 upgrade on a producer, the gain equals that producer’s current production (the tooltip percentage × total production).

Suggested order at the start

When	Buy	Why
0–2 min	1 Pawn, then “Touch-Move Rule” (click ×2)	clicking is your only income
2–5 min	Knights (best early cost/output: 100 s)	more efficient than pawns (150 s)
from 3 promotions	“Eighth rank” (promotion ×3)	the average click more than doubles (×2.25)
as soon as it appears	each ×2 tier at 1 copy (10 × base cost)	almost always the best buy
~8,000 tempo	“Tactics Study”	puzzles pay up to 20 min of production
then	Bishops → Rooks → Queens… following the score

Base cost/output (lower is better, before upgrades): Knight 100 s, Bishop 137 s, Pawn 150 s, Rook 255 s, Queen 500 s, King 1,000 s, then more and more expensive. The ×2 tiers are what make later producers interesting.

Trophies are worth more than they look

Each trophy gives +1% and 0.04 fervor, which supporters multiply. Easy trophies to aim for:

1 of each producer (20 trophies): buy the first copy of each new producer, even if it is not efficient yet;
the 50 and 100 copy thresholds of each producer, and the producer totals (100, 500, 1,000…);
Full army (all 16 pieces on the board): it also unlocks the “Full army” upgrade, +50%.

Because trophies survive prestige, push producers that are near a threshold just before you prestige.

Clicking: how much does it change?

Clicks per second (average)	Economy goal reached at	End of the game
1	~202 h	202 h
5	68 h	201.7 h (limited by analyses)

Late in the game, each of the 10 upgrades from “En passant” to “Absolute click” adds 1% of production to every click. With all 10, clicking 5 times a second is +50% production, and much more during rival bonuses.

Rival pieces: getting the most from bonuses

Keep a reserve in the bank. Fork pays min(15% of the bank, 15 min of production). It is at its maximum only if your bank is worth at least 100 minutes of production. Same idea for puzzles (min(20% of the bank, 20 min)). For both, keep about 100 minutes of production aside.
Combos (different bonuses multiply):
- Zeitnot (×7) + Fork: Fork counts production with the ×7, so up to 105 min of normal production. It only reaches that if the bank is worth at least 700 min of production.
- Zeitnot (×7) + clicks: the “% of production per click” part also benefits from the ×7.
- Blitz (click ×777): 13 s to click as fast as you can. The best moment for a puzzle.
- Discovered check (×66 for 6 s): click frantically.
Priority upgrades: Provocation (rivals twice as often), Poisoned piece (twice as long), Time trouble (bonuses twice as long). In legacy: Flair and Instinct.

Puzzles

Buy “Tactics Study” early. Each puzzle pays up to 20 min of production, every 6 to 12 min.
Exercise book doubles both their frequency and their reward: ×4 overall.
The 10 positions (and their mirrors) are in Puzzles. Learn them and you will stop missing any.
Do not close the window without a move: that counts as a failure and you lose the puzzle.

When to checkmate?

The simulator compares several rules: “prestige when crowns gained ≥ ratio × current crowns” (1 click/s).

Ratio	Prestiges	End of the game	Comment
0.25 (very often)	73	242 h	too many short runs, you waste time rebuilding
0.5	42	201.7 h	optimal
1 (double)	28	202 h	optimal, and half as many prestiges
2	18	225 h	runs too long
4	12	232 h	much too long

Simple rule: prestige when the panel shows as many crowns to gain as you already have (or at least half). The first prestige arrives naturally around 1e12 to 1e13 all-time tempo, about 1 to 2 hours of effective play.

Endgame: when you approach 1,100 analyses, stop prestiging. Play one last long run to pile up 1e37 in the bank with at least one Caïssa. A bot that kept prestiging “every doubling of 2” lost 35 h because it had emptied its bank just before finishing its levels.

Legacy: in what order?

Priority	Legacy	Cost	Reason
1	Golden Fingers	5	permanent click ×2, useful at the start of every run
2	Philidor’s Legacy	10	+10% production
3	Blindfold Analysis	15	50% of production offline (not analyses)
4	Flair	9	more rivals, so more bonuses
5	Pattern Memory	25	puzzles from the start of every run
6	Prepared Opening	50	much faster restarts
7	Morphy’s Legacy, Instinct	100, 150
8	Correspondence Chess	300	90% of production offline for 24 h: your nights earn almost as much tempo as your days
then	Capablanca, Laurel crown, Cabinet, Fischer, Grand preparation, Kasparov, Carlsen, Caïssa	1,000 → 1e9	in price order

The +1% per crown stays when you spend them. There is no reason to hoard crowns: spend them.

Analyses: spending them well

The ending requires level 10 everywhere. Spending order does not change the finish date, only your production while you wait.
The value of an analysis on a producer at level L is 10% × (that producer’s share of production) / (L+1). Spend on the producer with the best production share relative to the cost of the next level. In practice: the cheap early levels, on whichever producers dominate right now.
Levels are permanent, but your dominant producers change across prestiges. Late in the game, the last producers (Cortex, Caïssa) matter most.
Earning more analyses:
- leave the tab open, even in the background: the game catches up at 100%, up to 8 h at once;
- offline, buy “Blindfold Analysis”, then “Correspondence Chess”;
- by cheating: #caissa (+5 once), move the clock forward (+50% of the skipped time), caissa.analyses(). See Cheats.

Playing idle

Before you close the game, spend your bank: only production counts offline.
Leaving a tab open is better than closing the game, as long as the computer does not sleep.
Temporary bonuses do not apply to offline gains (only base production counts), except the boost: fill it up (up to 8 h) right before closing the game, it doubles the hours it runs.
Early on, keep your gems for the boost rather than time warps: 20 gems = 2 h at ×2, while a 1 h warp costs 15. Warps pay off right before a big purchase or a checkmate.

Key numbers

Figure	Value
Minimum time to the end	~201.7 h of play (the analysis lock)
Optimal player (simulated)	202 h
Relaxed player (0.3 click/s, late prestiges)	286 h
First prestige (optimal player)	~1.3 h
Prestiges until the end (ratio 1)	~28
Crowns at the end	~3e8 to 6e8
Trophies earned at the end (optimal player)	~148 / 214