Forums / Guides and Articles / guide III

to lazy to see if this was alrdy up. i didnt make it but it was posting in my kd's forums and looks helpful

Note: These are just tips and recommendations. They should all be used in conjunction with common sense. That being said, generally all of the top players employ these same strategies:

Science

Picking sciences on a whim is a bad idea - it results in "rainbow" sciences where you have a little bit of everything, but are good at nothing. For everyone except mages, get mining science first. L10 for dwarves, L9 for non-dwarves. Why mining instead of military? Because more mining = more income = more troops = stronger armies, and later on when you switch to military science, you have the best of both and are training 50% or more troops than the sucker who went for military science early.

Next is magic science. Why magic science and not military? Because magic is the most expensive by far, and you won't be able to afford it if you get military first. Also, around the time you get L9/L10 mining will be when magic is very important. Magic science provides magic defence. Have you ever been slowed, or rain of fire'd? Magic science Level 4 will protect you. Also, it gives you access to all of the main spells if you decide you want them. Thus, get magic level 4 (all races).

Next is military science. L7 for dwarves, L6 for non-dwarves. (L8/L7 is possible but takes longer). Then medicine L5, which will greatly increase peasant growth in large cities (>40k buildings). Finally, L4 farming if you decide you want it, and L4 lumber if you are non-dwarf.

The first 45 ticks

The location of your first city has to be near a mountain. Even if you have to travel 12 ticks or more to find a spot. Never ever start more than half a tick from a mountain. You can start 24 hours late, build next to a mountain and within 12 hours you will have a higher income than someone who starts on the plains.

Get the first 3 mining sciences (non-elves only). Dwarves get one extra (L4). Start your first city. Build homes and mines only. Buy food and tree off the market. In your first city, recommend a ratio of 1 home to 4 mines. Create 4 scouts and send them in all directions. Create a 5th scout and send it to create a second city. Build a second city (50k gold) within 5 ticks. Build homes and mines in a 1:3 ratio.

Expend your entire 250k gold (300k starting minus 50k for 1 city) on buildings, 2/3rd in your first city and 1/3rd in your second. When it is gone, save your money for a 3rd city (66k gold). This is your armory city. You need to build it before you have 25 ticks to OOP.

Max discounts (50%)

Type of troop         Homes      Armouries

Level 1                       100                 300

Level 2                       200                 400

Level 3                       500                1000

Level 4(mages)          1000               2500

Level 5                      1000               5000

Once your armory is built (no more than Level 2), continue training troops until you are OOP.  Using this strat, a dwarf can easily train 2000 hammerthrowers in a L2 armoury before getting OOP. Kick some butts, and then keep expanding your cities. Do not build in your cities if your productivity is less than 80%. Once it falls below this in both of your cities, start a third and then a fourth mining city. Build 500 homes 500 mines in both before returning to a 1:3 or 1:4 ratio. Build troops/buildings in a 50/50 ratio until you hit 200k income, then increase troops to 2/3rds of your income. When you hit 500k income, increase to 3/4 troops. Once you pass 100k buildings, if you are dwarf, stop building and train cavemasters - 1 per mine. 200k buildings is about the max you will ever need to explore for any race, and it will probably take 3 weeks to get there. Naturally, if the Kingdom comes under such a threat that defeat is imminent, everyone would be expected to train 100% troops.

Why so many homes? Isn't it 1 home per 5 mines? Well yes, but if you build twice as many homes, you will get 50% more peasants. After 4 days, your income will be 50% higher than anyone who didn't.

Economy Versus Military

In order to build a strong army and be able to kick butt, you need a strong economy. However, if you just explore all era, it will get you in trouble as you do not help the Kingdom. So, I like to concentrate on the "single big army" tactic. Spend 24-48 hours building one really good army. Then, take 12-24 hours to expand your economy before starting a new "big army", so every 1-2 days you are sending out new armies to help, but still growing.

Conquering enemy cities

More buildings are always good, right? Wrong. Each building increases your training cost, so everything needs to be justified. Guard towers are only good for LOS, and anything more than 2k is useless. Mage towers, if not being used, are useless. Taverns are useless. Farm cities making 7 food per farm are useless. Mines that aren't 5/7 or 5/9 are useless. Rainbow cities are useless. Raze the buildings. Only keep mines that produce max bonus or can be expanded to that, and cities for armories. Imagine conquering 100k of enemy buildings, and it causes you to train 25% less troops. It happens all the time.

Elves

Elves are completely different - the science strategy is to get L10 magic before any other science, including mining. This applies to elven attackers and mages. Each magic level increases archmage power. Elves are good for the first 24 hours OOP, and then can use their very powerful defensive units for 10-12 days until they hit L10 magic. During this time, Elves can use Stone to Gold to enhance their economy.

Halfling

Halfers have the option of a unique strategy - 100% food production, and L10 farming science before getting L4 magic and L7 military. Putting farmers (L1 troops) in cities, 1 farmer per farm building, will increase food production. It is risky, especially if the food price collapses on the market.

Troll/dwarven mages

These races are also very effective mages, but can never get L10 magic and can never cast armageddon. Trolls have cheaper mages, and dwarves have more money for upkeep and for rebuilding mage towers. If you want to go early-mage, you have 3 options. One, get magic science right away. Two, get L5 mining early and then use higher income to get magic science. Three, get L9/L10 mining science and get magic later in the era. It depends on when you want to start using magic, but even in case 1, once you hit your magic goal, you need to get as much mining science as possible (L9 minimum).

Buying food

If you choose to go without farms, keep 48 hours of food on you. It is much cheaper to buy food than it is to make your own. However, some people don't like this. If you don't, it is still recommended you not build farms for the first couple of days. Make your 4th city a farm instead of a mine. Don't build farms in each city, build it near a lake (not river) - they will make 11 instead of 7 or 9 and you will require up to 63% less buildings for food- and remember more buildings raise your training cost.

Troop Training Strategy

As soon as you can, train the highest level troop you can afford to keep your upkeep down. The exception is troll berserkers - stick with Warlords as the zerks have almost 100% losses if you ever attack or are attacked with less than 75% chance to win.

Train lots of mages. Ask someone experienced if you don't know how many - it will increase throughout the era, generally at a rate of 1 mage per 1 military troop, and generally starts to stabilize around 100k late-era, if you have L4 magic.

Dwarf Guide

Build your first town on brown mountains, fairly close (I personally prefer a 25600 max). Travel as far as necessary! We want 5 stone and 9 gold per mine, not 1 stone and 3 gold. Build 1 home for every 4 mines and no other building types. This will allow space to put in cavemasters at larger land size. You can buy Level 4 mining immediately as it's cheap.

After getting about 1000 homes and 4000 mines, start a nearby armory with about 30 ticks left in protection. 200 homes 300 armories should give you minimum cost Hammerthrowers. Try to get 1000 Hammerthrowers by out of protection.

Your third town should be another mine (25600-40000 max). By now your first mine's productivity is bad so it's better to start a new one at 100%. Explore this mine up to 10-20k. Get levels 5 and 6 mining as your income increases. You can build up your armory to get minimum cost Axemen, should be about 200 homes 1000 armories. We'll want to clear our area at this point.

Fourth town can be a farming town if you don't like buying all your food off the market (supply can be erratic). Build it near a lake if possible (11 food/farm), if not then by a river (9-11? food/farm) will do. 1 home per 5 farms and no other building types.

Finally you'll want a third and fourth mine. Your third probably shouldn't be much larger, ~40k. Finally your fourth can be 90k max.

You should have Level 10 mining by 80-100k land total. The final level costs 8 million gold. At this point you can start making Cavemasters (they're too expensive compared to more mines before this). You'll need an armory of 1000 homes and 5000 armories to get these at half cost. You can have one Cavemaster per mine, they generate 5 stone 5 gold each and are modified by Mining tech. They are powerful because they don't add to your train cost. Once you fill your mines you can get L4 Magic, then L7 Military. Now you can really start cranking out big armies! Transfer peasants from mines to armories as you're likely to run out with the insane amounts of gold coming in.

Max discounts (50%)

Type of troop
 Homes
 Armouries
 
Level 1
 100
 300
 
Level 2
 200
 400
 
Level 3
 500
 1000
 
Level 4(mages)
 1000
 2500
 
Level 5
 1000
 5000

10x more... HAHA!

*Laughing to hard to comment any more*

this is a bad guide :(

It's a very opinionated guide... for example, you may not want to spam 4 or 5 mining cities right away because you may not be able to defend them all in an OOP war.

If you prefer mining over military... then the "sucker" who went military sci may have already killed you before you can get your own military up.

Early era it may be better to train lvl 1s and 2s, because while the higher troops are more cost-efficient, the lower troops are more attack-efficient, and if you can kill your enemy fast and take their cities and stick your troops in them, you can avoid upkeep costs.

Guard towers do provide defense for your cities (5 d points each, I believe).

Not all rainbow cites are bad.  Let's say you have a city between a lake and a forest, it can recieve equal benefits from lumbermills and farms and may be handy in early era.

@ Mr. Dramborleg:

You really don't know what your talking about.  And, if I were not in pain from an ear infection and on 3x the Vicodin I should be and going crazy just sitting here, I might take the time to explain it to you.  But I'm having a hard time seeing the screen now, it's kinda blurry, maybe I'll do it tomorrow if no one else does.  I'm gonna go pass out.  And thank God for spell check in Firefox, otherwise this would not be readable.

erm, you only recieve one bonus, whichever you are closer to, not two.

it isnt bad, but it should be known that its flexible, and there are parts that are opinionated

jester should read the part of this guide on making cities cos i took one of there cities n it had 12k houses 2k mines 1k farm 1k lumbermill loads of taverne walls and guardtowers.

Yeah some idi0t from nemesis who was former luna wolves gave this guide to this luna wolf nub

yes some people cant keep thier mouths shut ;)

you maybe should have asked the creator before posting it publicly ;)

glad you didn't post asystole's guide as it holds all the secrets :P

why..???? why revive this thread...