Things I learned from videogames #2

Castles are like pockets. The thing you are looking for is never in the first one you look in.

War? It's good for targeted advertising.

Over the last few days I've been enjoying Warbook - a little kingdom sim on Facebook. You try and grow your kingdom by conquest, building an army to invade other kingdoms and steal their land and gold (and presumably put their villages to fire and of course, the sword) which leads to retaliation against your kingdom, which in turn suffers the same fate.

Balancing the various building types on your land is key to success. You can build mines for cash, forts for defence, training grounds for attack, barracks to reduce unit costs and amplifiers and barriers to improve magical attack and defence; BUT the bonuses are based on the percentage of your land devoted to that building type, so it is a constant balancing act. Likewise, your army (with various unit types) is expensive to keep - have too big a standing army and you will be secure, but your treasury will be so empty you won't be worth robbing anyway. On the other hand, keep too small a garrison, and while you will earn lots of cash, much of it will be stolen from you regularly.

You can also choose from a variety of starting classes that give you bonuses to some skills and different elite units. I'm playing as a Magician, so I can magic gold out of thin air into my coffers and hurl fireballs at my opponents' armies. Sweet.

As a Facebook (and Bebo) app, the game is free to play, but features ads on some screens. I'd probably be prepared to pay a couple of pounds for an ad-free version, simply because I don't want to see yet another video banner for Adam Sandler's latest opus. I can live with the rest.