Top Lords: How to Use Staircase Promotion for Friday Points

To maximize score during the Friday soldier enhancement event in Top Lords, use staircase promotion: passively train units one tier below your highest unlocked level mid-week, then promote those units to your maximum tier using speedups once the event begins.

Promoting an existing soldier costs only the difference in time and resources between tiers, but event scoring awards substantial points for the finished tier. Upgrading pre-trained units yields significantly more event points per speedup minute than training high-tier units from scratch.

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How Staircase Promotion Works

Staircase promotion (also known as staged upgrading) avoids locking your barracks into lengthy training queues on scoring days. When you recruit a high-tier unit directly, you pay the full training duration in hours or speedups. When you promote a unit:

Lower Speedup Requirements: Upgrading from Tier N-1 to Tier N consumes a fraction of the time needed to recruit Tier N from zero.
Higher Point Velocity: Because upgrade batches finish quickly, you can spend speedups in short bursts to claim milestone reward chests early.
Efficient Off-Day Queue Usage: Training intermediate troops without speedups from Tuesday to Thursday ensures your facilities remain productive between events.

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Step-by-Step Staged Upgrading Routine

Executing this strategy requires planning your barracks queues before the Friday server reset.

1. Pre-Train Intermediate Troops Mid-Week

Between Tuesday and Thursday, queue troops that are exactly one tier below your current maximum unlock (such as Tier 7 if your highest unlock is Tier 8). Let natural queue timers complete the batches without using speedup items.

2. Distribute Across Unit Types

Split your training queues evenly across your infantry, cavalry, and ranged buildings. Building an even reserve across all barracks types gives you multiple parallel queues to accelerate when the event begins.

3. Promote and Accelerate on Friday

Confirm that the Friday soldier enhancement event banner is active before spending any items. Select your intermediate troops, set them to upgrade to your highest unlocked tier, and apply training speedups to finish the batches immediately.

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Direct Training vs. Staircase Promotion

Factor	Direct High-Tier Training	Staircase Promotion
Speedup Cost per Unit	Full timer required	Only pays tier-difference timer
Points per Speedup Minute	Standard baseline	Significantly higher
Preparation Window	None (on-demand)	2–3 days of passive mid-week training
Off-Day Facility Use	Often sits idle or wastes speedups	Utilizes natural daily timers productively
Resource Timing	Entire resource cost paid on Friday	Base cost paid mid-week; difference paid Friday

Direct recruitment remains useful if combat losses leave you without any base units. For regular weekly milestone farming, staircase promotions provide a far better return on your speedup inventory.

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Common Execution Mistakes

Staging Tiers Too Low: Avoid pre-training Tier 1 or Tier 2 units if your barracks can produce Tier 7 or Tier 8. Upgrading through multiple low tiers wastes facility queue time and yields poor point returns. Keep your reserve strictly one tier below your current peak.
Depleting Resource Reserves: Batch promotions require large reserves of grain, lumber, and gold. Gather or stockpile these resources before Friday so you do not stall your upgrade queues midway through your speedup inventory.
Upgrading Before the Reset: Upgrades completed even minutes before the official Friday server reset grant zero event points. Always check the event interface to verify that scoring is live before accelerating queues.