Now I understand dead cities

[Risen Malchiah]

So I wanted to start a new city out of curiosity and to test out some things. I made a completely new account using the name I would like, but it didn't put me on the server I wanted. It forced me to go through the tutorial before I could abandon this city and choose the server. +1 new dead city.

After the account was created, it asked for an email address. I entered the alternate email I intended to use for this account but it said the email is already in use. You see, I used this email all the way back in 2016 but I didn't like my username and restarted immediately using a different email address since there's no way to change usernames. That original city is long dead and no longer exists, but apparently the email address is still in use (even though no cities are attached to it).

I then logged in using that old email address but again, it did not present a server choice, so I had to abandon ANOTHER city. Make that TWO new dead cities.

And on my small laptop, I didn't notice right away that the server names are listed below the "Start in a new world" button. So I clicked the button expecting to be able to choose a server. Nope. Yet another server I don't want. THREE dead cities.

So now I finally have my new city on the correct server BUT it still has that old username that I don't want. And with no ability to change the username and no ability to use that email address for a new account, I'm forced to abandon this one as well. End result is FOUR new dead cities.

If I even bother with this, I must create a new email address AND go through the tutorial again on a random server AND abandon a FIFTH dead city just to make a new account with a new name on the server of my choice.

So how was your day?

Edit: Ok, so only 3 dead cities once I created the new email and logged back into the first new city I made. Still, it seems there should be a better way to do this.

 

[shimmerfly]

Do we need to check your pulse? Wow that is just crazy!

 

[Ashrem]

You could create one gmail address. Gmail does not care about periods in addresses, so if you created Elvenarrisen at gmail, you could use elvenar.risen, el.venarrisen, elvenarris.en, and e.l.v.e.n.a.r.r.i.s.e.n without ever making another address. They all get delivered to the same place.

Edit: did you try going directly to the server you want before creating a city? (i.e. using https://us3.elvenar.com/game or us2, or us5, etc) I don't know if that will work, but might be worth a try.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Now for some positive feedback.

It's been a year and a half since I started a new city and was pleasantly surprised that by cycling optional quests, I was able to get almost half way through chapter 1 in just a few hours and even managed a few of the event quests. I don't know if those optional cycleable quests were always there, but they seem to provide way more coins and supplies than I remember, and more than I could possibly get from my wee little workshops.

I also like that new cities are provided with some solid troops. Having barbarians, archers and paladins right from the beginning makes clearing provinces much easier and combined with the cycled quests, I stayed maxed on coins and supplies, even after buying some KP and wholesale goods.

I also like the fact that for my first neighbor visit chest, the camera zoomed over to the chest and included a pop-up explaining it. When I started in late 2016, I distinctly remember scouring the city for over 10 minutes because I just didn't know what I was looking for.

I still think that some improvements could be made for new players though. I quickly exceeded the 10 province goldilocks zone for chapter 1 and face "Very Hard" provinces. As a seasoned player, I know how to handle those and can still fight them or cater to save the troops for later, but new players might have a hard time. The "minimum" provinces to unlock chapter 2 should be nudged higher and/or the difficulty curve on those early provinces should not be so steep.

Overall though, chapter 1 is much easier than I remember. It is helpful for me to re-familiarize myself with the early chapters. Being in halflings in my other 2 cities, it's easy to forget the challenges of the early chapters. It's also funny that while I'm accustomed to 16-40 hr upgrades now, those early 1-2 hr upgrades seem to take foreeeever.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

You could create one gmail address. Gmail does not care about periods in addresses, so if you created Elvenarrisen at gmail, you could use elvenar.risen, el.venarrisen, elvenarris.en, and e.l.v.e.n.a.r.r.i.s.e.n without ever making another address. They all get delivered to the same place.

Edit: did you try going directly to the server you want before creating a city? (i.e. using https://us3.elvenar.com/game or us2, or us5, etc) I don't know if that will work, but might be worth a try.

I did not try either of those. Why weren't you online to give me this advice 5 hours ago before I even thought of doing this?

 

[Ashrem]

Why weren't you online to give me this advice 5 hours ago before I even thought of doing this?

Sorry. Five hours ago was one hour after the dog made me let her out and one hour before I normally get up in the morning. I thought about logging in just long enough to see if anyone needed help, but trying to squeeze in two extra sleep cycles seemed like a better use of my time. Now I know better

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Haha I think you chose wisely. I'm the idiot that hasn't gone to bed yet. Why did I think to start a new city at 5am after not sleeping? I don't know.

 

[samidodamage]

@Risen Malchiah
Didn't have the problems you encountered (just used same account/name), but I started my second ever city yesterday afternoon in Khelonaar! I'm playing as an elf again, and I agree with your assessment. I'm about halfway through the tech tree for Chapter 1, but I'm straining to stay within the 10 provinces. I'm at 6 right now, with #7 having only one more encounter to complete. Everything available is 'very hard'. That should decrease a bit when I finish this SS upgrade.
It's easier than I remember, but I knew exactly nothing the last time I did it. Since I've gone forever (?never since they put in the rating system) without opening a 'very hard' province, I have nothing to compare. I'm finding enemy squad sizes over 6x mine. That said, I had fun with an experiment where terrain was with me. I tried one of the 6x fights where it was 1 swamp monster and I threw in 5 archers. Won with zero losses! But, yeah, true newbies will have a hard time with them.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Yeah, those fights can be fun. It's been a long time since I had the chance to fight encounters with just 1 or 2 enemy squads. It takes a couple rounds to bring them down with our weak troops. I would love it if we had occasional fights like that later in the game.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Yeah, those fights can be fun. It's been a long time since I had the chance to fight encounters with just 1 or 2 enemy squads. It takes a couple rounds to bring them down with our weak troops. I would love it if we had occasional fights like that later in the game.

They start again in ring 14.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Something to look forward to I guess, but I'm hoping that kind of encounter will show up more often and in tournaments as well. I haven't seen any change in encounter variety since the announcement.

 

[DeletedUser3468]

Ah ha! I knew there was a thread about dead cities and why they happen!

How about this reason... everyone of the few people actually active all have the same tier one boost so no one has anyone to trade with unless they can convince a Fellowship to take them while they're still in chapter one or two!!! I've got a second account with the sole purpose of setting up a new city in Arendyll as a "teaching city" to show our newbies how you can advance faster using the technique that I've been using... work with as little space as possible, upgrade all your buildings; residences, factories, workshops, military buildings, as much as possible in what space you have. Concentrate on boosted only, etc. (Now if we could only get more of the group to actually pay attention!!! We do have a couple people who are, and they're growing fast!) Interestingly, the main problem I've run into with this technique is that I get to the end of the chapter and have to scramble to finish 5 to 10 more provinces quickly so I can open the next chapter! Still much better than overexploring!

That city isn't the problem. The problem city is in Winyandor, where I got stuck first and since I hate dead cities, I've tried to keep it going. Yeah, right. Hard to do when all 4 of us that are playing all have planks as our T1 boost! MOVE ME PLEASE!!! Seriously!
I'm not really into investing enough time there to look for a Fellowship but would love to be able to do a bit more on the occasions I check in without having to buy what I need from the blackmarketeer... I mean, wholesaler!

Most people wouldn't bother... they'd just quit and there we have another reason for dead cities.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

How about this reason... everyone of the few people actually active all have the same tier one boost so no one has anyone to trade with unless they can convince a Fellowship to take them while they're still in chapter one or two!!! I've got a second account with the sole purpose of setting up a new city in Arendyll as a "teaching city" to show our newbies how you can advance faster using the technique that I've been using... work with as little space as possible, upgrade all your buildings; residences, factories, workshops, military buildings, as much as possible in what space you have. Concentrate on boosted only, etc.

I found your point about trades amusing because for the longest time, my active trading neighbors were all trading in my own boost which I didn't need. Fast forward almost a year and I'm in a fellowship that desperately needs my boosted goods so I'm trying to get as much as I can from my neighbors and my new neighbors are NOT the same boosts as me so I can't refill my fs from neighbor trades.

I like your plan for teaching new players. I have one tweak though. The Orc chapter is particularly difficult due to the expanding size of the settlement while at the same time not having unlocked as many expansions as the later chapters. For this reason, I recommend planning ahead in Dwarves & Fairies by NOT upgrading every factory to its highest level if a player is a fighter (and thus has lots of armories and combat AWs). Let the factories lapse 1 chapter behind which allows you to get through Orcs with less residences and more space for the settlement. I see many people with 40+ residences, while I have limited myself to 20 residences and a handful of pop/culture event buildings.

 

[DeletedUser3468]

Considering my little training city and the people it's supposed to help learn are between chapters 2 & 3, I don't need to warn them about Orcs right away, but that is a very good suggestion! About the only things I've been telling them about Orcs is that it is important to have at least one armory that they continue to upgrade because when they reach the Orcs chapter they are not going to want to have to do upgrade after upgrade to get them up to level 20 as soon as they unlock the tech for it. When they (and my training city) are a bit closer, I'll go with your suggestion and include it in the training post/tutorial for that chapter.

 

[SoggyShorts]

. The Orc chapter is particularly difficult

I found that the easiest route to take to overcome orcs is

• Start scouting non-stop somewhere around late dwarves/early fairies, so that you hit ~210 cleared by the time you start making orcs in the breeding grounds.
• Since you pretty much must make armories for the orc requirements, switching to a military build at the end of fairies makes sense.
• You can go zero military up until the end of fairies, and take 2 armories from zero to max in between chapters if you want to.
• Then comes the hardest thing-- accepting that 3 of each factory is more than enough, and nuking the rest. This allows for a very nice settlement size, and you can breeze through the chapter in about a month.

 

[DeletedUser3468]

...Then comes the hardest thing-- accepting that 3 of each factory is more than enough, and nuking the rest. This allows for a very nice settlement size, and you can breeze through the chapter in about a month.

So very true! I'm slowly convincing myself of that in most of my high level cities. The ones where steel is my boost, it's fairly easy for me to cut back to three because, by the time I reached the end of Fairies, I had such a ridiculous amount of surplus even I could see the benefit of having more space over more steel! For some strange reason, it became much easier to purge the extras when I went to solo play in 3 of my cities... mainly because I didn't care as much about my drop in ranking when I didn't have other Fellowship members to compare mine with! I'm still not there yet with my Sinya city where I have planks as my boost but I have reduced the numbers a bit. By the time I finish upgrading a few of them as high as I can, I'll probably be at the point of dropping a few more of them.

 

[Risen Malchiah]

It might take a little longer than a month now that tournament chests no longer award KP for the tech tree, but your suggestions are valid. I would still be hesitant to get too close to 210 provinces though since many events require solving encounters. I've seen too many people get stuck in events due to the lack of orcs before that chapter and I found it a luxury to not need orcs for encounters til half way through woodelves.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I would still be hesitant to get too close to 210 provinces though since many events require solving encounters. I've seen too many people get stuck in events due to the lack of orcs before that chapte

Yeah it all depends on speed through fairies, but realistically fairies only takes about a month, so that shouldn't be more than 2 events, and shouldn't require more than a half dozen provinces. 222 is the limit before orcs, so 210 should be safe.

It might take a little longer than a month now that tournament chests no longer award KP for the tech tree.

One way to overcome this is to not clear all of those ~210 provinces, stockpile goods, and using the 8 KP per once you are in orcs.
I managed 39 days with a vacation in the middle, and hardly did the tournament at all while in a 4 chest FS last time. I also started 24/7 scouting far too late.That was before the invention of time boosters which, if used well, can really help in the orc chapter too.(portal upgrades and some loot productions can each save a day)

 

[Laochra]

I found that the easiest route to take to overcome orcs is

• Start scouting non-stop somewhere around late dwarves/early fairies, so that you hit ~210 cleared by the time you start making orcs in the breeding grounds.
• Since you pretty much must make armories for the orc requirements, switching to a military build at the end of fairies makes sense.
• You can go zero military up until the end of fairies, and take 2 armories from zero to max in between chapters if you want to.
• Then comes the hardest thing-- accepting that 3 of each factory is more than enough, and nuking the rest. This allows for a very nice settlement size, and you can breeze through the chapter in about a month.

I never had more than 3 of Tier 2 or Tier 3 factories & I cut back to 3 Tier 1s at the end of Dwarves. I have always kept 3 armories & am only upgrading 1 of them to the Fairy level. When I got the DB, I nuked one armory & am thinking of replacing the second one when I unlock the Hero's Forge & can plant it--just for the extra orcs.
By the time I got into Fairies, I already had enough provinces completed to unlock the Orcs chapter (normally, I was way behind). I am averaging 30-33 houses in each of my elf cities & I really don't want anymore. I keep 10 workshops at all times, but am now only upgrading 5 of them into the Fairy levels & beyond. I am purposely taking my time with the Fairies chapter, only because I am not looking forward to Orcs. Also, I am not willing to give up 1/3 of my city to the guest races. I am sure someone will say that in the later chapters, I won't have a choice.

We casually played the last FA & went all out for the one prior to it. With helping in all the tourneys, I am just now getting my cities back up to where I want them. We were getting all geared up for the Summer Event & then we get thrown a major curveball with the FA annoucement.
It would be nice if Inno would tell us Live players what we did wrong to receive such a harsh punishment, so we will know to never do it again!