Construction Speed

This is is very, very, very, very, very important. The higher your construction speed the faster you build your buildings. The 1st city there is nothing you can do but have a slow construction speeds. After the 1st city you can use a cottage build method. I am going under the premise that you have followed earlier advice and installed the city planner. It also uses the presumption that you will be building quarry and woodcutter huts along with the cottages to ensure you have resources.

The method goes like this:

Level 1 Town Hall (TH): 5 cottages built to level 2; Build TH to level 2.

Level 2 TH: 5 new cottages built to level 2, increase 1st 5 cottages to level 3; Increase TH to level 3.

Level 3 TH: 5 new cottages, All cottages to level 3; Increase TH to level 4.

Level 4 TH: 5 new cottages, All to level 3; Increase TH to level 5.

Level 5 TH: 5 new cottages, All to level 4; Increase TH to level 6.

Level 6 TH: 5 new cottages, make all to level 7; by this point you have 30 cottages! Build TH to level 7.

Level 7 TH: 5 new cottages to level 4, increase the others to level 8; Build TH to level 8.

Level 8 TH: 5 new cottages to level 4, build TH to level 9.

Level 9 TH: 5 new cottages to level 4, increase level 8 cottages to level 10; build level 10 TH.

Level 10 TH: no new cottages, increase 15 cottages to level 6.

Build all other buildings to level 10 under the speed of 4000%+. Once your buildings are all to level 10, begin destroying cottages, to replace them with resource buildings. You want to only destroy 2 cottages at a time to build just as quick the replacement buildings.

You modify this a little for castle builds. you change the number of cottages to 6 instead of 5, and build your recruitment buildings 1st since they take longer than barracks.

This should help speed up your constructions; once perfected you can build a castle in 36 hours! I have made several this way in that time frame.

Happy building!

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!

Castles

Castles!
  This may be the most difficult part of the game. Every player wants to castle every city they have built. DON'T! The first mistake I made with my 1st castle was building from a resource city. Never build a castle from a resource city. You will lose it, or end up abandoning the city.


   As a general rule you need 3-4 resource cities, 1 hub, 4-5 military support cities, 1 gold city,  before you castle a military city. This is a general rule. As you start out it is a very good rule. But as a whole...It is actually quite weak.


I say this because there are 2 thoughts on when to castle a city. 


FIRST THOUGHT:
       When you have met the criteria listed in the general rule, then you may castle a military city. Expect to become a target many times over. Do this for 5-6 castles, then you can start focusing on castled cities, sieges, raids, plunders, and assaults. The castles should be 2-5 mix of offense/defense troops types. For every 2 Offensive castle you want to build 3-5 Defensive Castles.
 I don't care for this line of thought. But, I put it in to give you an opposing view.


SECOND THOUGHT:
      When you max out troop count in an all military city 50-60K troops, castle that city and begin raiding dungeons for resources. Build up troop count to 230-270K (ships and siege castles recruit far less) of a specific troop (1 type only per castle). If you build a castle on water, make it a ship castle with supporting magic troops. It will be attacked from the water as well as from land. 


Build hubs to send resources from 1 city to the next close by. Also, build Castles close by the others. Try not to have them spread out for the fact that it will take longer for reinforcements to arrive. There was a player on the opposing alliance who built 10 castles all besides each other. He tried to spy on us once, found out that he built his castles right next to each other solely for intimidation. 


     Since he had them clustered together, the only way to capture them was to have the entire alliance attack at one time with 4-5 sieges on each castle. and then we needed to search out his hub, to choke off his resources.We were finally able to defeat him by capturing 4 of his castles, and then reducing 2 of his other castles to level 1 TH and level 1 Castle (7pting a Castle).