Haypi Kingdom Technology: Every Tech, Its Effect, and the Research Order Veterans Used

Haypi Kingdom technology was the quiet half of the game. Buildings and troops got the screen time, but the Technology Center was where the money went, where long marches got shorter with every level, and where an archer line learned to fire before it was touched. This page lists every tech, what it does, and the order veterans researched it in—then shows how the same tree works today in Prestige: Kingdom War, the independent rebuild.

How Haypi Kingdom research worked

Three things separated research from everything else you upgraded. First, it ran on Money, not wood, stone, iron or crop. You could have every warehouse in the kingdom full and still be unable to afford Marching 5, because the tree drew from a completely different pool—the one you filled by occupying forts, hunting at oases, selling at the Market, or (if you were desperate) exchanging coins at 2,000 Money apiece.

Second, it was kingdom-wide. A building level belonged to one city; a tech level belonged to you. Once you had six branch cities, a single research in your capital was quietly buffing all six, which is why veterans treated the Technology Center as the best long-term investment in the game once the second city landed. Third, the cost curve was brutal: each level cost roughly twice the one before it, so the last few levels of any skill were a genuine commitment measured in days of fort income.

The original was last updated as version 3.20 on August 28, 2013 and has not been runnable on a modern phone since iOS 11 ended 32-bit support in September 2017, so I cannot pull the 2013 numbers straight from a live client. The figures below are the live values in the rebuild, which keeps the same 11-tech structure. Where I remember the original behaving differently, I say so. For the broader story of what happened to the game, the Haypi Kingdom pillar page covers it.

The full tech list and what each one does

Here is the complete list, grouped the way players actually thought about it: economy, mobility and intelligence, combat, and wall defenses. All per-level values are the rebuild’s numbers.

Woodcutting, Digging, Smelting

The three material techs are identical in shape: +5% to that resource, every level, every city. Wood and stone came cheap from oases, so most veterans let Woodcutting and Digging lag. Smelting was the one that mattered, because iron was the bottleneck for every troop type—750 iron per cavalry in the rebuild’s numbers, and iron oases were always the contested ones.

Planting

Planting is +10% crop per level, double the rate of the other three, and it was the single most important economy tech in the game. Crop is upkeep. Every infantry ate one crop an hour, every cavalry four, every catapult ten, and when crop hit zero the troops starved. Planting was how you kept a growing army fed without turning every field in the city into cropland, and it is the tech I would still research first today. If you ever lost half an army to an empty granary, the starvation guide explains the math.

Shooting Skill

Shooting Skill extends range. In a game where archers start at 200 range and catapults at 400, and where ranged units fire before melee closes, range is not a small stat. A few levels of Shooting was the difference between your archers getting a free volley into a cavalry charge and getting run down before they loosed. Catapult players cared even more: a catapult that outranges a wall turret shells it for free.

Scout Skill

Scouting was asymmetric, and that was the point. Scout Skill decided how much your scouts came back with and how much the other player’s scouts learned about you. In the original, the most common mistake I saw was a player with a big army and Scout at level 1, who could not see what was sitting in the fort he was about to hit and could not tell when he was being sized up himself. It is a cheap tech and an information edge, and information decided more wars than stats.

Marching Skill

Marching Skill is +3% speed per level, and it is the core of the Speed stack described below. It compounds with the Speed attribute from title promotions and with Horse and Manual equipment, and the rebuild caps the whole stack at an effective speed of 190. Speed also decides who strikes first, so Marching is a combat tech disguised as a logistics one.

Attack Skill and Defensive Skill

Two percent per level each. Individually unglamorous, but kingdom-wide and permanent, so by the mid-game they were a flat multiplier on every battle you fought. Attack for people who lived on the map; Defensive for people who held forts and expected to be hit at home.

Trap Research and Turret Research

The City Wall holds Traps and Turrets, each up to level 10, and neither can be built or raised without the matching research. Turrets and traps are the wall’s own damage against an attacking wave. A turtle build without Turret Research was a city with a wall and nothing on it. See the buildings guide for how the wall fits with the Cranny and Warehouse.

Recommended research order

There was never one right order, but there were two sensible ones, and which you picked depended on whether you wanted to be rich or dangerous first. Both assume you are already holding a fort or two, because without fort income the tree stalls at level 3 or 4 across the board.

Economy-first

• ▸Planting to 3—it is +10% per level and it stops starvation from ever being a question.
• ▸Smelting to 3, because iron gates cavalry and catapults.
• ▸Scout Skill to 2 or 3 so you can see what you are about to attack.
• ▸Woodcutting and Digging to 2, then leave them; oases cover the rest.
• ▸Marching to 3, then alternate Planting and Smelting up as income allows.

War-first

• ▸Marching to 3 immediately—every fort run and every return trip gets shorter.
• ▸Scout Skill to 3. Attacking blind is how armies die.
• ▸Shooting to 2 or 3 if you run archers or catapults; skip it entirely if you run pure cavalry.
• ▸Attack Skill to 3, then Planting to 3 because a big army eats.
• ▸Turret and Trap Research only once you hold something worth defending.

The doubling cost curve means that past level 5 or so you should stop thinking in terms of “max one tech” and start thinking in terms of “raise the cheapest useful tech.” Level 6 of Marching costs about as much as levels 1 through 5 combined, and the same Money spread across Planting, Smelting and Attack usually moves your kingdom further. The rebuild-specific version of this ordering, with the current costs, lives in the technology research order guide.

Forts are the money engine

Because research runs on Money, the tech tree was really a question of fort control. Occupied forts paid out Money on a schedule; hunting at oases paid Money and treasure; the Market converted spare resources to Money at whatever price the server would bear. Of those three, forts were the only one that scaled with how many you could hold, which is why the classic mid-game loop was: take a fort with a meatshield of infantry in front of the real army, bank the income, pour it into Marching so the next fort is closer in hours, repeat.

The rebuild keeps this loop intact, with forts on a 600×600 map, ten levels each, and NPC garrisons that scale with level. The fort farming income guide is the current version of that loop, and how oasis bonuses work covers the resource side, which stacks on top of the percentage techs rather than replacing them.

The Speed stack: Marching, attribute, equipment

Marching Skill is one of three speed sources, and veterans treated them as a single build. Every title promotion in the 20-rank ladder grants Attribute Points, and Speed is one of the four attributes you can put them into. Horse and Manual are two of the five equipment slots, and both can be enhanced. Stack the three and the rebuild caps the combined result at an effective Speed of 190, which a dedicated cavalry raider can reach well before every individual multiplier is maxed.

Two consequences. One: because the army moves at its slowest unit, a catapult at speed 50 makes your Marching levels nearly irrelevant for that march, so siege armies and raiding armies were always separate sends. Two: because the stack has a hard ceiling, there is a point past which Money into Marching is wasted and belongs in Attack or Planting. Check the equipment enhancement guide before you sink another level into Marching you may not need.

Then and now: the tech center in the rebuild

Haypi Kingdom never posted a shutdown date. The last build was 3.20 in August 2013, players were reporting servers in the 130s disappearing by 2016, and from September 2017 the app could no longer launch on current iOS. The store listing is still visible, but it cannot be installed on anything modern. The tech tree went with it.

Prestige: Kingdom War, released on the App Store on May 28, 2026 and also on Google Play, is a ground-up rebuild inspired by the classic, published by console.log LLC with no connection to Haypi Co. Its Technology Center has the same 11 technologies, the same Money-based, kingdom-wide research, and the same roughly-doubling cost curve. The Speed cap of 190, the +3% and +2% and +5% and +10% per-level rates in the table above, and the Trap and Turret prerequisites for the City Wall are all live values in the current build (v1.2.6 on iOS as of August 25, 2026). What it does not do is copy Haypi’s code or numbers line for line; if you remember a specific 2012 cost, expect it to differ.

Common research mistakes

• ▸Maxing one tech early. The doubling curve punishes this. Three techs at level 4 beat one at level 6 for almost every player.
• ▸Skipping Scout. It is cheap, and it is the difference between knowing a fort holds 200 archers and finding out on arrival.
• ▸Researching Shooting on a cavalry-only account. Range only helps ranged units. Put that Money in Marching or Attack.
• ▸Ignoring Planting until the starvation letter. By then the troops are already gone.
• ▸Trap and Turret Research before you own anything. Defenses are for players who have something to defend; fund income first.

For the rest of the classic loop—tasks, titles, alliances, troops—the Haypi Kingdom guide ties the systems together, and the troops page has the base stats every tech multiplies.

Bottom line

Haypi Kingdom technology was 11 techs, bought with Money, applied to every city you owned, with each level costing about double the last. Planting and Smelting fed and armed the kingdom, Marching and Scout decided how fast and how well-informed your armies were, and the fort loop paid for all of it. Prestige: Kingdom War keeps that tree intact, and the research order that worked in 2011 still works there today.

Prestige: Kingdom War is an independent game and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Haypi Co. Haypi Kingdom is referenced as the classic that inspired it.