Are you planning to or already running William I in Rise of Kingdoms in one of your marches and want to see how you should invest the talent points, what equipment works best and what other commanders you should pair with? Well, then you’re in the right place, below you will find answer to each one of those questions and this will help you make your William I perfrom as strong as possible in all situations.
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Skill Order
Skill 1
Skill 2
Skill 3
Skill 4
Expertise
Level 5Unlock all 5 sections Hide plans
Best Troops
William is a cavalry commander but he actually doesn’t care that much about it. There’s no skill that requires him to only run cavalry and there are only some skill buffs and talents that will affect cavalry only. I mean it’s better to run him with a march consisting only of cavalry but it’s not mandatory.
Best Commander Pairing for William I
Alexander Nevsky as primary commander with William secondary is one of the best pairings in the game right now and this will pack a punch and is, for me, the one meta commander pairing right now that takes everything down with crazy damage nukes (See full build here).
Saladin was the best pairing before Nevsky was released and it still is – it’s just that Nevsky is so much stronger but this setup is also a march you will live while Saladin adds a lot of tankyness to William so you will have less of a glass cannon (See full build here).
Genghis Khan is also possible as both share a nice synergy and can pack good nukes as well. But as I said, you can run William with a lot of other commanders as well that deal direct damage factor and have some good rage engine going on (See full build here).
Find out more about the most useful commander pairings here.
Best Equipment Forge Order
In terms of equipment, here’s what I recommend to use as the route for William I. There are different builds for wherever you are right now, from beginner to veteran:
Start
Advanced
Progressed
FinalStarter Build
Advanced Build
Progressed Build
Maximum Possible Build
Best Talent Tree Builds For William I
Below you will find the talent tree builds for William I that make sense when running as the primary commander in any march in Rise of Kingdoms. Please also refer to the description below each talent tree as I explain a general route on how you should spend your talents there + some additional background for each talent build that I very likely will appreciate.

Okay, now that I said that William is doing well as the secondary commander why having a talent build?
The reason is that you might want to work on William quite early so at one point you will run him as the primary commander and with the Versatility Tree and the way he works, there’s actually only one solid possible talent build that makes sense in my opinion and this is it.
When building it, here’s the order that I recommend following:
Make your way to Effortless in the Attack Tree first, this gives a nice bonus and you will get some extra rage generation on the way there. From here go for Fight To The Death as this will raise his damage but also make him receive more damage – to make up for that also get Armored Joints.
That’s it with the Attack Tree.
Now go to the Cavalry Tree and get Emblazoned Shield. As I said, William doesn’t have much defensive capabilities so this will help for sure. Then get Undying Fury for more extra rage and make your way to Disarm.
Now there’s not many options left and the best is to get Health (Cavalry) as health is the strongest stat in Rise of Kingdoms before putting your last 4 points into Rallying Cry.
Best Formation + Armaments
Formation and Armaments are supposed to work perfectly with your commanders kit or you will find yourself very quickly in a disadvantage on the battlefield – and with so many variations it can be tough to stay on top. Here is what the works best in today’s meta:

Conclusion
I hope this guide for building William I helped you investing without wasting much time and resources. If you liked it or you further questions (or maybe also annnotations that you believe should be added here in this guide), please don’t hesitate to post them below in the commen section. Thanks for reading and have a great day and see you out in the kingdoms.
