Orcs - surviving them with less pain

[DeletedUser3312]

So! tips, cautions, advice. Bring it those of you that made it through this nasty chapter. I'm half through with my lovely fairies and hate that but... I dread encountering the nasty smelly orcs. please post what helped you, what hindered you and so forth. and thank you for sharing!

 

[maeter75]

I built too few mushroom farms at first. That caused supply problems. I should have gone all in with mushroom farms since you need the goods for everything.

 

[DeletedUser43]

I learned it was impossible to keep my regular city going while I tried to do the orcs. So I simply deleted all my culture to make the necessary room. On the first city I tried to upgrade things slowly as I went. It took forever. I also deleted about 20% of my houses. I probably could have gone 30%. When you upgrade them later they will take up more space so you can't keep all those individual houses anyway. Might as well grab the space early and get through the orc chapter as fast as possible. I was reluctant to delete that many houses on my first city. That was an error. Might as well go negative pop as well as neg culture.

I learned to upgrade the portal first. Get that sucker as upgraded as you can as fast as you can. To that end, if you can get a blooming trader before going into orcs that would be helpful.

Make your whole city about hardshrooms and powershrooms at first. Go nuts making that stuff. Don't be balanced. You need tons of hardshrooms and powershrooms to get through the first half of the tech tree. You don't need that many rally points early on, but you need tons of farms. 80 to 100 is best.

Then when you get to the second half of the tech tree delete half those farms and put up rally points. 6 to 8 is best but more if you can. Then go nuts making the shrooms of wisdom and loot. Make the orc dung first...all that you can to make the max amount of shrooms of wisdom...then while your farms are taking two days to make SoW, you can then make what you need for the loot. SoW first, loot second.

When you are almost done with the orc tech tree, don't let your farms just sit there. Make more hardshrooms. You need so many more of them than you think to put up the roads. You'll need a little bit of debris too don't run low on that.

Finally, when you get through the tech tree and you are ready to put your city back together, skip the bbq altogether and go straight for the willow tree in the elves. It comes super early and there is no reason to build the bbq and delete it right away. One willow tree fits where a rally point was, so you can delete the rally points as you put up the willow trees. Then rush to get the houses in woodelves so you can upgrade each house as far as you can and maybe you won't have to make space for every house, you might be able to delete some more.

 

[DeletedUser3696]

Pretty much what BobbyKitty said.

It sounds extreme, but will get you thru the pain the fastest. Plenty of time to breath after Orcs and rebuild your city.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

thank you all so much.. Bobby.. I wish I could do a love rather than a like... smiles.. you my friend are awesome!!

Tim, I love visiting your city. everyday it just gets better! smiles... you know I will be asking about woodelves lol.. so take notes for me. grins

 

[DeletedUser3696]

thank you all so much.. Bobby.. I wish I could do a love rather than a like... smiles.. you my friend are awesome!!

Tim, I love visiting your city. everyday it just gets better! smiles... you know I will be asking about woodelves lol.. so take notes for me. grins

The woodelves are a sneaky group, after all they planned this winter solstice thing which is taking some space away and keeping my builders busy building other things.
I must say I'm very tech locked atm!!

 

[DeletedUser3640]

Thanks, BobbyKitty.

What about armories (breeding grounds) though? Is there any interaction between orcs and farms/rally points (basically techs), or they are used just for negotiation? How many armories would you recommend?

 

[DeletedUser3696]

Thanks, BobbyKitty.

What about armories (breeding grounds) though? Is there any interaction between orcs and farms/rally points (basically techs), or they are used just for negotiation? How many armories would you recommend?

There is no interaction and armories/orcs remain after you finish the chapter.

I went with 2 and had 4 previous to starting the chapter. You need so much space in chapter 8 that I deleted 2 armories not to mention all the culture. If you still are doing a lot of battles and/or tournaments you may want 3 (especially if you can't get online often to queue up the taining).

 

[DeletedUser1349]

I always suggest two of each armories(breeding grounds) and rally points minimum (three each is better). Then as many shrooms as you can fit. Upgrade everything to L4 for production boosts and after that you can sell some shrooms. Yes, that means your shrooms are producing nothing but hardshrooms and psychoshrroms for a very long time (why so many) for upgrading. As usual Portal must be at L4 to have capacity for last tech tree points. Have fun!

 

[DeletedUser4778]

Is there a minimum barracks level requirement for any of the guest race chapters? Upgrading my barracks will greatly affect my city plans for later expansions and chapters so I'd like to know as early as possible so I can adjust. Many thanks for any info!

 

[DeletedUser3312]

There is no interaction and armories/orcs remain after you finish the chapter.

Does it matter what level the armory is? I have 3 at level 17. And after I go into woodelves I will still need to make orcs? That does not make me real happy. nasty looking orcs are not welcome in my city. blech.

 

[DeletedUser3297]

After the Orc chapter, you will still need Orcs to negotiate provinces and upgrade workshops. Also, if you plan to use the Training Grounds, you will need Orcs to train the 2 new Orc unit types added to that building.

 

[DeletedUser3312]

After the Orc chapter, you will still need Orcs to negotiate provinces and upgrade workshops. Also, if you plan to use the Training Grounds, you will need Orcs to train the 2 new Orc unit types added to that building.

So we have to keep all the orc rally points, shroom farms, portal and such?

 

[dikke ikke]

not everybody has a city that big that it can house 6 to 8 rally points and 80 to 100 farms, my city e.g. is 68 areas big, rather small for being in orc level, and at more as 95.000 general score. 6 rally points = 7 areas, swamp trail included, 80 farms = 20 areas, swamp trail included. That would make more as 1/3 of my city area. I will try to get 3 rally points and 30 farms, therefor I do not have to rearrange my city too much.

 

[DeletedUser3297]

So we have to keep all the orc rally points, shroom farms, portal and such?

No, you will only need Orcs.

The Rally Points are used to make your "Guest Race Special Goods" once you are done with the chapter, you no longer need Rally Points. Therefore, you do not need the Mushroom Farms to run a Rally Point, but you do need to keep at least one (breeding grounds) to produce enough Orcs for province negotiation at the very least

 

[DeletedUser3696]

not everybody has a city that big that it can house 6 to 8 rally points and 80 to 100 farms, my city e.g. is 68 areas big, rather small for being in orc level, and at more as 95.000 general score. 6 rally points = 7 areas, swamp trail included, 80 farms = 20 areas, swamp trail included. That would make more as 1/3 of my city area. I will try to get 3 rally points and 30 farms, therefor I do not have to rearrange my city too much.

Not everyone rushes thru this game. Choose your pace and be happy/content.

Even those of who rushed were putting points into AWs - just not as many.

Good luck, it can be a slog thru the mud (or orc dung)!!

On a side note, 6 rally points and 30 farms seems a bad ratio to me. I think your rally points may be idle, but I could be wrong too since I've forgotten the specifics of that chapter.

 

[DeletedUser4778]

Oh. My. God. I just revised my city plans for fairies and orcs and even 12 winter stars will not be enough for my pop needs. I'd already planned to sell some manufactories but now it looks like I'll have to sell way more than I thought. I also shouldn't add any new buildings to accommodate all of the orc stuff. Or I could build them and then sell them. I'm also probably making a mistake in the number of province expansions I get. Only 38 residences and it's gonna be tight and I might have to sell some when I hit orcs and, yes, go negative pop and culture like I have before. Is it just me or is this game getting more and more frustrating? Building and selling buildings too often is not my idea of a city building game. Maybe it should be called the city building and destroying game? :-S

 

[DeletedUser43]

If you are just heading into orcs, you might want to keep the winter stars in your inventory. Once you place them, you will lose them forever if you try to delete them. And I am telling you...you want to delete EVERYTHING you can to get through the orc chapter.

Dikke, you can have as few farms and portals as you want, it will just take you a LOT longer. It took me a long time to get through that chapter and I hated every second of it. I couldn't build anything else because I had no culture and no population. The buildings are very ugly to me, so I didn't even want to see them. Plus, there was a contest that happened while I was stuck in orcs and I had so much trouble doing it because of how messed up my city was.

But heck, you can build 5 farms and 1 rally point and take a year to get through the chapter. Whatever you want.

As far as armories go, I have 3 and I think that is about right. They suck because they take SOOO much pop and culture. But I bit the bullet and maxed them out. As I was going through the orc chapter, I thought, oh hey...I don't seem to need that many orcs right now, I won't worry about making them all and just save the supplies. Boy was that a mistake! When it came to upgrading workshops...dang those orcs go fast!!! And even now I am stuck in the world map because I don't have enough orcs. So, don't let the armories sit idle. Make as many orcs as you can. I think I had 30,000 saved up and then all went in a few days! whooosh!

Is it just me or is this game getting more and more frustrating?

Not just you. The wood elves may be my last race. I am so bored. It has turned into a real snoozefest. I don't have any room for the tons of things you need and I won't destroy my whole city again...besides....I need all the culture/mana buildings now and can't do that. Because of all the stupid new "don't scout" stuff and the stupidly high scouting times anyway, I don't have room for this race. You really need to buy expansions to have the room for the woodelves. It is a lovely race, but it is so slow I just don't care about the game any more. I am not angry, or passionate, or fighting for anything. I just simply don't care. I make 200 mana tears a day and I need 3000 to get something done. Yeah sure. Oh, I could make more if I sat here every 3 hours to get them, but there just isn't anything for me to do except that, and it isn't worth it to sign in just for that and there is no other time frame to make them in. Whatever. Fighting has become wayyyyyyy too complicated for me and I don't care about it at all either. What difference would it make if I did care? I don't have any room to put up all these new military buildings because again, I don't have any room. All I seem to do is log in and do chores every day. Instead of an interesting puzzle, this game has become chores and watching paint dry. The contest is cool, but I don't have any room to put any buildings down anyway, so whatever. For me it all boils down to no room means no game mostly. These end races just take sooooo much space and there isn't any space to put them in.

And I have had some experiences lately with the game having a bad bug, it ate 500kp out of a wonder that I had, and support wouldn't replace the kp and just told me basically...too bad...so sad for you...the game policy is that we don't replace resources lost because of bugs unless you bought them with diamonds. That left a very bad taste in my mouth. Very very bad. 500kp out the window. Do you know how stupidly long it took to get all that finally built up in a stupid ancient wonder that is so stupidly impossible to upgrade anyway and they keep nerfing the things the ancient wonders do, so after the year or more that it takes to get one to nothing more than a mid level and all that kp got destroyed in one second? Those damn ancient wonders are torture. How is something that will take a year or more to build a fun thing? Not fun for me in the least. Talk about frustrating. It is past frustrating into total apathy. So not only am I playing a boring game, not only do I not have any room to build anything, not only do I have to do really bad chores each day that we have all been complaining about since day one ....yes...neighborly help I am talking to you....but on top of all that, players are treated very poorly by the policies. This has led to my best friends all quitting. So...you know....

Idk. Things might change. Might not.

 

[dikke ikke]

@Bobbykitty : my plan is to have around 30 farms and 3 rally points and hopefully that will get me thru in 3 months. I noticed already that I will need a lot of supplies so I advise everybody to have a MA and produce as much POP as you can so you can boost your workshops from time to time.
An advice I get from a player in my neighborhood that has finished orcs is not to focus on the tech three and produce shrooms, shrooms and more shrooms. So once I get to orc workshops in the tech three I will focus completely on shroom and other orc production like dong and debrie. I will have for breading grounds soon so that is ok. I always have tried to max out my military buildings because to me that is the fastest way to move up.

 

[DeletedUser4630]

As far ahead as you guys are, it will take me another 6-8 months before I even get to orcs. In the middle of Chapter 4 right now and I am already looking ahead to plan my city for when I get to Dwarves.