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    Your Elvenar Team

Curious about "Parked Cities"

I parked my cities in Chapter 5. When changes to the game (involving chapters 1 to 5) were announced by Beta players, I hurried to move to Chapter 6 for fear my gameplay might get affected. I run three human cities moored in Chapter 6.

I have been annoyed by the idea of chapters in a city building game ever since I started playing Elvenar. What I kept hearing from older players persuaded me to park my city as soon I could regard myself as self-sufficient.
 
I am currently parked at the beginning of 17 in both of my live cities because all I have heard are horror stories about it, so I'm dreading getting started. Also, I value topping the spire weekly and having a relatively high tourney score, so the lack of any troop upgrades in Ch. 16 and 17 means I want to level some of my wonders to offset the increased tourney and spire cost from completing the chapter research. I'm not permanently parked, but l'll probably be parked for a few more months.
 
I am parked at the beginning of Chapter 18, but thinking about moving forward since some people have told me this is a less traumatic chapter than the one I just got through, which took me 8 months. (Granted, I didn't want to destroy more than a quarter of my city for the huge guest race buildings, so that was part of the reason for such a lengthy stay in the chapter.) After I got through 17 I was just plain annoyed with the game and wanted to get back to a happy place, where I could actually enjoy this again. 8 months is too long to hate something and still stick with it, so I didn't want that to happen again. I am now enjoying myself parked without any guest race or portal yet built. I think I may build it after the next FA. I just upgraded my trader to level 7.

The one thing I detest more than anything is that you can't use portal profits to avoid having to trash your city with too many guest race buildings. That was easily possible in all chapters before 16. Now, sure portal profits help a little bit (a tiny bit) with building materials, but unless you have multiple huge guest race buildings, you can't do diddly squat with the portal profits. There are some of us who would be GLAD to empty our portal profit stash and wait for it to take more time to get more, if Inno wanted to make them more precious, just so that we could keep the cities we love and not have to destroy half of it every dang chapter. But nooo .... I just keep collecting more of those easy-to-get (and actually hard to avoid) portal profits that are virtually useless to me. Grrrr.
 
YachtaYachta said:
I agree with Darielle. I'm in Elementals and I've had to cash in on so much of my existing city to accommodate the massive amount of space needed for this chapter. I can't imagine what is ahead of me given what everyone has said.
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If you don’t have a BTG, I highly recommend placing/leveling it. I just made it through Elementals in approximately 7 weeks with only a 4x4 expansion guest race area and no Portal Profits used (I did rush 3 or 4 rounds of productions with timers one day to take advantage of a particularly fortuitous Cauldron boost), but my Bee is at level 30. Of course I couldn’t complete most of the quests to “have x number of these buildings“ in only 16 expansions, but if you’re willing to skip quests, you don’t need near as much space. Good luck!
 
I've never parked my city except for only like 2 weeks just to finish upgrading my roads and make sure my manufactories, workshops, residences, barracks, armories etc were all done being upgraded to that current ch. I was finishing. I'm sure I will run into that again as chapters are getting harder and anytime it does happen I plan on doing the same no matter how long it takes. I like everything up to current chapter before I start the next chapter.
 
Just to give you an idea of chapter 17, I looked up the stats to refresh my memory.

Here are the guest race buildings you'll need for Chapter 17. This is assuming you'll want to do the quests as they come, and not wait until after the chapter is done to be able to decline them. If you want to stop doing quests early in the chapter, you'll need less than what's listed here, but bear in mind that less buildings means more time to get through the chapter. Small ships are much more productive than large ships, but only if you are able to come into the game every few hours... small ships don't have a long build option. Some people forego all but one large ship (of each type) and then build tons of smalls. There are a lot of options. But the following is what you'll need if you like doing the quests and not waiting until the end of the chapter. You need all of them at once to complete one of the early quests ... so you can't build a couple buildings and then delete and build others to save space.

Needed to complete 1 early quest: (all of them in the city at the same time)
Portal 8x8 =64 squares
Red Pearl 9x4= 36 squares
3 large pirate ships 7x4 each 28 squares x3
Sorena 6x6=36 squares
3 large gourmet ships 5x5 each 25 squares x3
Experia 4x9 =36 squares
3 Large Collector ships 4x7 each 28 squares x3

in addition to these, you will need at least 3 of each of the smaller ships for other quests:
Small pirate ship 5x3 (total 45 squares)
small gourmet ship 4x4 (total 48 squares)
small collection ship 3x5 (total 45 squares)

The above all total 553 squares (each expansion gives 25 squares, so between 22-23 expansions for an average size guest race area in Chapter 17)... Bear in mind that you'll need more actual squares than this, because the guest buildings don't fit perfectly without any spaces ... they're all a bunch of mismatched sizes, so it's more likely you'll need 25 expansions for the guest race IF you want to do the quests.

I never did the above ... I just ignored those quests for months until I hit Chapter 18, so I maybe used 19 expansions total ... and because I was so low on space, it took me nearly 8 months to do the chapter. Just FYI in case anyone is interested.

To be perfectly honest, I HATED using even nineteen expansions for a guest race that I didn't like and didn't want. I honestly don't believe that a guest race should take more than 15 expansions tops. I also believe that people should be able to use portal profits to buy the items that are required to do research ... not the peripheral items. Just my humble opinion.
 
MaidenFair said:
If you don’t have a BTG, I highly recommend placing/leveling it. I just made it through Elementals in approximately 7 weeks with only a 4x4 expansion guest race area and no Portal Profits used (I did rush 3 or 4 rounds of productions with timers one day to take advantage of a particularly fortuitous Cauldron boost), but my Bee is at level 30. Of course I couldn’t complete most of the quests to “have x number of these buildings“ in only 16 expansions, but if you’re willing to skip quests, you don’t need near as much space. Good luck!
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I love my BTG ... it's currently maxed at 2 star trades (for the first deal per day) as far as wholesaler goods go, but I can add a few more levels to max the extra portal boost. You're right; it makes a great difference.
 
Thanks @Darielle. I never follow the questlines, so that part won't be an issue for me. I won't start the planning phase for awhile yet, but I know space is a big pain point in that chapter. I have several expansions saved up that I can use if I need to, although I try to keep my city size down to minimize costs. My dread stems mostly from the very short production times you need to use if you're trying to be maximally efficient.
 
Lady Dastardly said:
Thanks @Darielle. I never follow the questlines, so that part won't be an issue for me. I won't start the planning phase for awhile yet, but I know space is a big pain point in that chapter. I have several expansions saved up that I can use if I need to, although I try to keep my city size down to minimize costs. My dread stems mostly from the very short production times you need to use if you're trying to be maximally efficient.
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Yep, if you can manage the short times, I would suggest doing what I did to save space, and just have one large ship each and as many small ships as you can fit around each. You'll need all three types at once, because each ship, in order to produce goods, requires the items from the other ships ... but you are also trying to build up all three goods. So it's two steps forward and one step back.

What I'm trying to say is, you need to make tons of shrimp, keys and pearls in order to make the goods that allow you to progress in the research, but in order to make shrimp, you use up pearls, and in order to make pearls, you use up keys, and in order to make keys, you use up shrimp ... so in that chapter, you're always losing some goods while making the others. You're never just building up your resources for the research. Sure, you're making a "little" bit more than you are losing, but the losing is why the chapter feels like ssssuuuucccchhh aaaa llloooooong ssslllloooogggg. Best of luck to you. I hear Chapter 18 is much better, but I haven't gotten around to building my portal yet to find out.
 
Lady Dastardly said:
I am currently parked at the beginning of 17 in both of my live cities because all I have heard are horror stories about it, so I'm dreading getting started. Also, I value topping the spire weekly and having a relatively high tourney score, so the lack of any troop upgrades in Ch. 16 and 17 means I want to level some of my wonders to offset the increased tourney and spire cost from completing the chapter research. I'm not permanently parked, but l'll probably be parked for a few more months.
Click to expand...
I've done the same thing for similar reasons. I've been sitting on starting this chapter since before the last FA and it hasn't been any more appealing to think about starting it than it was then.
 
I have a few parked cities:

*end of chapter 3 - old tech tree, just for fun spire catering city, not a diamond farm since it has no other worlds to share them with loI. All my big cities fight the Spire but I love the Mastermind game, so even though I started this city to test the tournament /spire formula changes, I never went past chapter 3 and negotiate to the top every week to my heart's content.

*end of chapter 7 - almost all the barracks troops have their three star upgrades (minus mortars for humans / treants for elves) and the spire enemies are still two star. At this point my cities are true hybrids, though still leaning towards catering, which I enjoy. Even if I don't park a city here forever, I tend to linger here to upgrade the Bulwark and Monastery/Sanctuary especially, since once you enter chapter 8 the Spire enemies become three star forevermore (for now).

*end of Elementals (chapter 12) - same reason as someone gave earlier, to avoid sentients in the Spire. I was parked here for two-ish years, but finally the lure of Timewarp was too great. :-) This city will park indefinitely at the end of chapter 15.

*end of chapter 15 (Elvenar) - all the three star troop upgrades are accomplished. Timewarp and Simia Sapiens were unlocked at the end of 14. The two cities that will be parked here indefinitely are in FA - focused fellowships, and chapter 15 had a T1 upgrade, so bracelet-making is more efficient here at the end of the chapter vs the beginning of chapter 16.

*my beta city is lingering at the end of chapter 7, but I'm thinking of eventually parking it in Woodelves (after at least T1 and MH upgrades). Then there's no expiring resources to deal with in the Spire and many pop /culture buildings get a huge boost in the upgrade from orcs to woodelves.

Besides the chapters with Spire reasons, I park at the end of a chapter instead of the beginning mainly for FA /event reasons, since requirements go up for each chapter right at the start. When I'm just lingering between chapters (my two biggest cities take turns going through chapters), I linger at the beginning of the new chapter so any buildings I get are at that chapter level.
 
I park in the middle of each chapter. I'm in the middle of chapter 19 now. I say "the middle" because I do all the researches of the chapter I can do without putting any of the guest race building out, while I upgrade everything and get ready to do the guest race thing. It sometimes takes me months to get to where I'm ready, but when I finally get going it goes very fast. "Getting ready" also includes building up my mana, seed, sentient goods, etc, as well as AW's mfrs, armories and all that. Everything is at the top before I begin. In other words, while I'm in the parking lot I turn my city into a racing car. Then I take off. That's my strategy.

AJ
 
About a year and a half ago, I parked at the start of chapter 16. My reason for doing so was that you have all the 3 star unit promotions and all the military ancient wonders at that point. And at the time the only 4 star promotion available for what I consider to be a key unit was Orc Strategist. And that promotion did not occur until chapter 18. Slogging through multiple chapters to get 1 unit promotion I liked seemed a bit much.

However then chapter 19 was announced in November of 2021. It had 4 star promotions for Cerberus and Rangers. Those are 2 of my most used units and I wanted the promotions. I then resumed my advance through the tech tree in Nov 2021. I've done 16, 17, 18, and 19 since. I've got about a week left on chapter 20.
 
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