City Layout: GOLD & FOOD

As I promised in my last post, I am posting city layouts. I have layout for food and gold since they have similar needs within the game. You will need a lot of both resources, and not have enough cities producing them. So, why not make the best layout for the most production of these resources.

Gold City You want to put your gold city on water because harbors actually give a better increase percentage on taxes from town homes. Your layout my be slightly different due to node placements.

I start all my cities by building 20-30 cottages first (after you have more than 2-3 cities this becomes easier). If you are building your first city, build up your resources first. Then a city like the gold or food city can be very easy.

Food City Layout A food city needs to have a Moonglow Tower (MGT), and markets. I use 3 because at 120,000hr production rate, you will need a lot of carts to transport the food to other cities. You will also need  the MGT to purify any resources if you are attacked by an opponent.

All cities need to have a MGT as a defensive measures anyways. If you fail to have a MGT and/or markets in your city. You will be opening up your city to be plundered many times. I will go over the different types of attacks at a later date (including plunder).

You can use these layouts if you like of you can open the City Flash Planner and tweak the layouts. I have several cities that produces 120,000 food per hour. As you progress in the game, you will use large amounts of food to feed your armies.

UP NEXT:
RESOURCE  LAYOUTS
and
RESOURCE HUBS

Leveling Up

To do what is called "leveling up;" you will need to advance in titles. All players begin as "sirs." During the tutorial you will be awarded the title of "Knight" and eventually as a "Baron." The first 2 title advancements, you get awarded access to artifacts. From the 3rd title advancement and on you get to begin producing barons. I capitalized the title "Baron," to differentiate from barons, the troop type. When you reach the level of "Baron 1" from that point on, each level you gain gives you the ability to recruit a baron. 

The baron allows you to create new cities. Here is how to start earning barons.

You will need to have a Moonglow Tower (MGT) advanced to level 10 to purify your resources.

You will purify X amount of resources to do "Research" (Green Button at top center). 

You will need to produce X amount of gold as part of the research.

You will need a Trinsic Temple (TT) advanced to level 10 to recruit your baron.

A baron cost resources to recruit. 50,000 iron and 100,000 gold. Don't worry about cost, you should be able to produce that much by the time you get to level 10 MGT and TT.

Once you have your baron, you can launch a settlement caravan, when you have enough resources to start a city. Cost: 100,000 wood and stone each, 25,000 iron and food each. 

You will need either 2 Markets, with a total of 250 carts, or a Harbor with 25 merchant ships. This is to transport your goods for the new city along with the baron.

Sounds harder than it actually is. By your 6th or 7th city, you should begin to be able to create a city a week. About the 20th city you should have the capabilities to create a city a day. And anything above 40 cities, you should be able to create a city when you want to or need to. 

Sounds like a lot, but consider the average Alliance that has won the game. Their alliance members averaged about 200 cities each (alliance has up to 99 members).  

City Planners/Optimizers

  These can be found when you open up the city notes. City planner 1 is just that a planner. City planner 2 (CP2) is a planner/optimizer. CP2 can only be found using scripts to enhance the game features found at userscripts.org. You must be using Firefox, with GreaseMonkey Add-on or Google Chrome for the scripts to work. There is a third city planner that is useful, but difficult to use City Planner 3 (CP3). I don't like it cause it causes extra work that was eliminated when EA added the button for CP1. So i won't discuss it any further. Just know it results into the 1st one if you find it and use it.

CP1 is an in game planner found in your city note pad, click the button that is marked "city planner."  This will take you to a manual planner that you can use to optimize your layout and improve resource/troop production. You will want to save your layout when you are done. Copy and paste is all that is needed, follow instructions below:

There is a button that says short URL on the bottom right of the map (CP1). Click it!
Highlight short URL then copy it.
Return to LOU, click on notepad anywhere in box.
Then paste link to note pad.
Then hit red X. Your done.

If you type something into your city notes, it stays there until you delete it!
You can Check it if you like! It will be there.

To get to CP2 you need to click on the L button to the right of your construction speed after installing the scripts. Click on Open Flash City Planner 2 (CP2). Flash planner 1 is CP1 as listed above (like I said, it was added into the game by EA). CP2 actually gives you a grid to work with, as well as an optimizer.

Instruction can get very detailed with this CP, so I recommend you play with it for a while, at least until you see a layout you like.

To copy the short URL, you will need to click on the Import/Export button at the top of the planner.
Highlight the short link, Copy it. Then paste the link on your city notepad. Just as before it will stay there until you delete it!

I will eventually offer example layouts that you can use at any time during your playing of the game. I will post them as a Short URL in CP1. As I am still trying to tweak my game play layouts.

Communication is all about listening

As you begin to play the game, you will have tons of questions. Very simply put ask all your questions, one at a time. Then listen to the answers, all of them. You will get a lot of answers; all pretty much the same responses. Then act on those answers as you would in any normal situation. As being advised by coworkers or supervisors.

This game is a team competition, so join a team or create a team. Then rely on your team to give you the answers you need. Will I tell you that all the answers you receive will be the right ones. No! There are people who are self serving and will take advantage of you from day one. This is why I say listen to the answers. Those who are self serving will stand out very quickly.  Yet, there will be those that are genuine in their desire to help you. So LISTEN!

I will go ahead and tell you a piece of advice. Start off by following the tutorial. It is time consuming but will give you basic instructions in the game. Then begin by building your first city for wood and stone resources. These will be the resources most used early on in your game. By the time you get to the sixth, seventh, or eighth city; you will begin looking into specializing your cities.  

Second piece of advice, build your castle after you have 20 to 30 cities in your empire. So listen to those that tell you this. When you get to this point you will be able to handle the tasks required to build, defend and advance an Empire with a Castle.