Article written by player Kappot
I’ve recently joined up again on the .org server. Main reason isn’t to play FT, I just can’t bring the amount of time to the table as yesteryear, but to try out certain tools I’ve recently found through a couple of Google searches.
It’s no accident I stumbled upon them. While I had no pre-knowledge of their existence, I’ve tried to learn to use JavaScript in the past to solve a particular problem (enumerate and use particular information), but it took time which I – in the end – couldn’t justify. I figured smarter people than I would surely hit the same idea, and started searching…
First thing I found was http://www.kahelper.com
It seems the founder of this site created a Firefox add-on called kahelpertool which KingsAge players can install in order to enumerate map data, on settlements, player and alliance statistics. One has to register a kahelper.com username in order to upload data. kahelper.com collects, analyses and presents this data on their website. Data for the following servers (see pic left) are available at this time of writing. A caveat is mentioned: Data is only ever as accurate as the last time kahelpers uploaded it. Rankings stats such as this for s2.kingsage.org are readily available though…
Second thing I found was a Greasemonkey script by Arxleol calledKingsAgeX, available from userscripts.org. (Find all KingsAge scripts here)
It’s been downloaded close to 8000 times. That’s quite a spread! Note: a search for “KingsAge” on userscript.org will show 21 results….
The author seems to host his own blog domain over at http://www.axino.net/ covering topics on programming, operating systems, and KingsAge 
I decided to give this a go and found the following options are made available in the build context:
I dialled in my coords in the “XXL map” box and hit Show! This generates a 5 x 5 map, (your coords /map in center)
The result can be viewed here.
I specifically like the “Generate server map” option which stitches all [C|K]ontinents in to one beauty of a map in under 5 minutes….!!
s2.kingsage.org – legend
s2.kingsage.org – quick overview
Download the 1.83MB w2 PNG file here (5250 × 4746)
The author states that usage of this script is hard to detect, but may lead to an instant ban should a Game Operator find out (not verified). Seeing this script has been downloaded over 8000 times, would Gameforge instantly ban that many players if they could track its usage?
There’s certainly nothing illegal at running GreaseMonkey through FF in order to re-arrange data in your web browser to give you a better experience. userscripts.org (the repository for some 2.000.000+ GreasemMnkey scripts) bares witness. However the point is that some (not all) “features” in KingsAge’s “premium” (a paid for) account improve game play by giving access to more information. A free javascript will do the same thing and claw back valuable dollars.. For one, it seems to me that KingsAge needs to give it’s user base better reasons to pay for a premium account….
What do you reckon?