Most early questions about 9 Kings are the same handful: the kingdom is full, the gold is piling up, a card did more or less than it said. This guide answers those with the game's own numbers, in the order a new player runs into them.
How a run is laid out
A single player run is 33 years. Each year you play cards onto the plots of your kingdom, then an enemy king's army attacks it. You have 3 lives, and a lost battle costs one. Survive year 33 and the run is won, with the option to carry on in endless mode.
The big events land on fixed years, and knowing them is most of planning. Your first blessing pick comes in year 3. Decrees are chosen in years 5, 13, 21 and 29. The merchant visits in years 7, 19 and 31. The construction pit opens in years 15 and 25, and the Jack of Rainbows sends his own army in years 17 and 27. The Run Calendar page lays out every year.
Plan around the decree in year 5. It is the first choice that can change what the run is about, and the build pages say which decree each engine wants there.
The kingdom is full: getting more plots
Room runs out fast, and there are two ways to fix it: open new plots, or clear one you already have. New plots come from the Expansion Tower. Select it to enter expansion mode; each plot after that costs 30 gold, and the construction pit years give you one for nothing.
Several cards open plots for free. Earthworks unlocks every plot around its target. A Dwarf unlocks any locked plot it walks onto, and gains 50% to all stats for it. The Wilderness decree unlocks 3 random plots with a level 3 Forest on each, and the Expansionist perk starts the run with an extra plot already open.
Clearing a plot does not have to waste the card on it. Earthworks hands the target's cards back, up to 3 copies, so a good card on the wrong plot can be moved. Sacrifice destroys a plot and levels everything beside it, and Offering destroys one for 3 random tomes. Use Earthworks on a plot at level 3, where it returns all three copies.
What gold is for
Every king earns 9 gold a year before anything else. It buys three things. A merchant card costs 30 gold, and each further card in the same visit costs 15 more, so the third card of a visit is 60. A reroll costs 10, then 10 more each time you use one; the card reroll and the store reroll keep separate counts. And a new plot costs 30.
Rerolls are the cheap one, and the button is easy to miss. At 10 gold, a first reroll costs a third of a card, and it is the best way to find the one card an engine is missing.
In a run you mean to end at year 33, gold left over after the year 31 merchant has almost nothing to buy. Unless your build counts the gold itself, as the King of Greed's Mercenaries do, spend it at that last visit. A Vault is the usual way to earn more; the gold and Vaults guide covers it.
Kings, difficulty and experience
You do not have to level every king one by one. Difficulties are shared: the game keeps one unlock per difficulty, so a level opened with any king is open for all of them. Climb with the king you play best, then bring the others along.
Climbing also pays. Every difficulty carries its own experience multiplier, from x1.3 on Peasant to x4 on King and x7 on King IX IX. The higher you can still win, the faster your account grows.
Finish your runs, even the bad ones. Leaving one early throws away its experience; the game warns you that the run's progress and EXP points will be lost. A poor start is still worth its years.
Rules the card text leaves out
Some cards do a little more than their text says, and a few do less. These are the ones that change decisions.
"Towers" in perk and decree text means every building except your base. So Engineering, which doubles tower damage, and Fortifier, which adds 10%, also raise the damage of what some buildings summon: the dragons of a Dragon Den, the demons of a Demon Altar, and Sporelings.
Your base counts as a building for the Quarry: its +2% damage a year reaches the base too, which matters most for the King of Nomads' Warlord, a base that also fights as a ranged troop. Balance is the reverse. It cannot be played on a base at all.
A troop lost to a card is different from one lost in battle. Sacrifice, Offering, Earthworks and the other plot destroying cards count it as lost for good, which is what the Ghost Pagoda adds to its Ghosts. A Cemetery reacts to it as well: a troop plot beside one that a card destroys comes back as Skeletons, outside battle. Migration is never a loss: the moved troop is still yours.
Orbiter copies enchantments onto itself from the plots beside it, including the ones a troop already has when it is placed, such as the Adrenaline stack from the Brutal perk.
One setting worth changing
Building pop-ups add a pause to every year, and over 33 years that is a lot of waiting. The main menu's options have "Skip building pop-ups", which turns them off without changing anything in the run.
Mistakes to avoid
Filling every plot by year 4. A new plot costs 30 gold, the same as a merchant card, so keep one open for the card that turns up later.
Playing Earthworks on a level 1 plot. It returns one copy and opens the plots around it, when on a level 3 plot it would have returned three.
Never pressing reroll. At the merchant, 10 gold is the cheapest way to see a new set of cards.
Abandoning runs to restart for a better draw. The experience goes with the run.