Friday, September 16, 2011

City Clusters

Very important concept of the game when you first start out. The city cluster is a good mechanism to aid in your rapid growth. Let's face it the game starts very slow. The best way to maximize your ability to grow quickly is by placing your new cities as close as possible to the old ones. This is building a "City Cluster."

The benefits for building a cluster early on is great.

1. Resource transfers from 1 city to the next takes shorter time.
2. Troops can respond to attacks quicker, thus leaving your enemies to actually wonder what is going to be there in an attack. (Easier Defense)
3. Prevents opponents from being able to disrupt your strategies. You are not sending resources 2 hours away, nor are troops 2 hours away in the event of an attack.
4. Centralization of your empire makes it easier to moderate.

The detractors are minimal.

1. Limited space for growth.
2. Lack of alliance members around you make you an easy target. (only in small or weak alliances)
3. Your troops are all competing for the same resources from bosses.

I like small city clusters of about 10 to 15 cities in an area. In the beginning they will be larger clusters, due to the fact that you will have a need for resource cities. As time progresses throughout the game you will find that your city clusters will become smaller (ideally 8 to 10 cities).  The smaller clusters tend to be military in nature, large amounts of troops to raid, plunder and siege your opponents.

Your clusters become self sufficient and will eventually only need you to tend to them for resource purification, or to start/adjust raids. You may even use them as an attack force, or staging ground. A cluster can hide troop types when you to send troops to attack another player.


See all the flags in the picture, that's one players cities and castles.. This cluster was coordinated within an alliance, so multiple players took part in its planning. The red dots next to the cities indicate enemies; notice how few of them there are. With a coordinated effort this alliance was able to build 21 cities total, a palace, 7 castles, and resources were never disrupted.

This also helps speed up your construction time since you will not be waiting on resources to be produced. You can just ship them in from another city!