started a new city

[iamthouth]

For visual explanations, below is Henroo's US6 Ch4 city (from yesterday, EA didn't want to update)


And some visual comparisons; Brindarby's very established cities in US3, US4, US6, US8 (all Ch6, from 10-12 days ago)


and my newish Beta Ch6 city (started just before wonder changes);

 

[BrinDarby]

@iamthouth , my Sinya city was only started when
Iyapo did the racing city thingy. Its the only city I
wouldn't say is (very) established, but yes Everything
has been Chaper-ized, and I do have small stockpiles
of stuff there.....

(edit) : Due to RL , all my cities are in thier own FS.
Not accrue'n BP/RR//Ect, and paused. Once RL gets
better I do hope to return to my former FSs.

 

[Ihrlaen]

I don't plan on using either. As far as infinite patience, I just went through ch 1 and ch 2 in 6 days. I'm not a patient man! LOL

As for the fat credit card, I'm not going to buy diamonds just for the new city. However, I *DO* have 3 chapter 21 cities on the same account which win diamonds in the spire weekly. So far I have not gone overboard using these diamonds. I want to play the new city fairly closely to what a brand new player would experience. My only diamond purchases so far have been 1 premium expansion (450 diamonds) and 1 extra builder (500 diamonds). So 950 diamonds total. A brand new player would have won enough diamonds by chapter 3 to have been able to afford 1 of these. And would have some of the diamonds needed for the 2nd purchase. So I really have not been extravagant. Especially since I currently have over 14,000 diamonds accumulated on the account I *COULD* spend.

First, I want to say I am very glad to hear about this adventure and I encouraged my fellowship to peruse this great read.

Second, a question about spending those precious early diamonds (from a new player perspective). Did you consider spending any on Magic Workshops? With the Chapter I-V update, the costs for those dropped dramatically such that, in chapter III, a pair of them would be in the same range as the Premium Expansion and 3rd Builder (420 ).

Third, did you get the offer to cash buy 2k diamonds with bonus 3rd builder? Just wondering if that offer is still around.

 

[Henroo]

First, I want to say I am very glad to hear about this adventure and I encouraged my fellowship to peruse this great read.

Second, a question about spending those precious early diamonds (from a new player perspective). Did you consider spending any on Magic Workshops? With the Chapter I-V update, the costs for those dropped dramatically such that, in chapter III, a pair of them would be in the same range as the Premium Expansion and 3rd Builder (420 ).

Third, did you get the offer to cash buy 2k diamonds with bonus 3rd builder? Just wondering if that offer is still around.

So far I have not bought any magic workshops or residences. I am still in chapter 4. Right now a magic residence is 360 diamonds and a magic WS is 480 diamonds. I do believe they were chapter in the earlier chapters, but I did not take note of the exact cost. The first reason I have passed on them so far is because you move through chapters rather quickly at this stage of the game. So although I might have saved some diamonds upfront had I bought a magic WS in chapter 2, it would still cost 2 blueprints to upgrade to ch 4. And since I am just unlocking the tournament, I don't have any blueprints yet. So that would be 600 diamonds worth of upgrades. The 2nd reason I passed on magic WS is because expansions are still very cheap. The next premium expansion is only 750 diamonds. At this stage of the game, I believe it would be better for a new player to save up diamonds and buy an expansion for 750 diamonds than to buy a magic WS for 480 diamonds.

The builder deal is still around and I did see it. However it is really not that great a deal. A builder is only worth 500 diamonds. You get 2400 diamonds for $20. That is only slightly more than a 20% bonus. It would be a much better deal to wait until you see a 100% bonus offer. You then buy a total of 4800 diamonds for $20. Spend 500 for that builder and you still have 4300 diamonds left.

 

[Ihrlaen]

Thanks, Henroo!

In regards to the offer, knowing that it is still around is good to know. Unlike other offers it is “guaranteed”, both in terms of value and timing (scare quotes intentional), better than normal but not as good as others.

Helya provided the costs of the Elven Magic buildings Here. I like the value proposition for a 2-4 early Magic Workshops for long term play, but those costs are advancement-sensitive (chapter III-V), unlike expansions or builders. Something to merit consideration, I think. Not better than a Premium Expansion, but a good value addon. (IFF your are going into an FS with Blueprint capability, of course.)

Elves	Residences -Original tree	Workshops - Original Tree	Residences - New Tree	Workshops - New Tree
Chapter 1	290	290	80	80
Chapter 2	320	320	180	180
Chapter 3	330	350	210	210
Chapter 4	560	590	360	480
Chapter 5	690	630	405	540

 

[Henroo]

As I mentioned upthread, I built the Magic Academy before I would have preferred to because there were quests in the Tournament of Magic event which could only be completed with a magic academy. In retrospect, this has worked out better than I could have hoped. My biggest fear was that I would run out of relics to make CCs with before unlocking the tournament in chapter 4. And then the academy would just be sitting totally idle. This did not happen and now that I have the tournament unlocked it is unlikely I will run out of relics in the future.

In addition, there were some early game quests related to the magic academy that gave me a couple dozen combining catalysts and about 5 or 6 thousand spell fragements. The quest lists at iDavis do not start until Dwarves so I had no idea these quests were coming up. They were a very pleasant surprise.

I knew from the start that my #1 priority was going to be getting the Moonstone Library set in order to have a long term daily source of crafting materials. I hoarded all the CCs and spell fragments I had won from the quests for this purpose. I also set the MA to making CCs and I have won a Potionmaker's Pedestal already in the event, so that is an extra daily source of CCs.

I have had pretty good luck in getting the Moonstone buildings so far. Mana Plant, Gum Tree, and Endless Scroll came along last week. Having the Endless Scroll with 2 links has been providing me with a small daily source of SF for a week or so. By an additional stroke of luck, one of the Moonstone buildings appeared at the same time I had a quest to collect some vision vaper. So I was able to do the quest and get a Moonstone building at the same time. Today the Moonstone Library itself appeared. I had the CCs needed but was about 6000 spell fragements short. I had to frag virtually every excess building won so far in both the event and season, as well as a couple of 5% portal profits won in the event. But I did come up with the spell fragments needed. Now all that is missing is Moonstone Gate.

I have also had a quest come up to "have an ancient wonder" which is worth 3000 spell fragments. Since it only costs 1000 SF to build an AW, I will come out ahead by 2000 SF. Right now my residences are 3x3 in size, so they are the same size as Golden Abyss. At this stage of the game, a level 1 GA will not give me as much population as a residence. However, GA WILL out produce them in terms of gold, even at only level 1. Since gold is my biggest bottleneck right now and since I will come out ahead 2000 SF on the deal, it looks like I will be building Golden Abyss sooner than planned. Just have to come up with 1000 spell fragments and finish the rune wheel on it.

 

[BrinDarby]

Henroo,
a reoccuring problem you describe is Coins. If I look
at how many Coins/tools CH6 chg'd to, its prolly very
simmilar in the 1st five CHs, hense why Coins has been
a constant pain. True newbs won't be as adept in
total efficiency as you are. So it puzzles me why they
doubled the need for Coins/tools.

I had to frag

Ahh so thats how you got the crafting materials, and will
assume its how you also got some earlier stuff once you
got a few CCs together, well done.....

 

[Henroo]

Henroo,
a reoccuring problem you describe is Coins. If I look
at how many Coins/tools CH6 chg'd to, its prolly very
simmilar in the 1st five CHs, hense why Coins has been
a constant pain. True newbs won't be as adept in
total efficiency as you are. So it puzzles me why they
doubled the need for Coins/tools.

There are 2 reasons I think gold is a bigger issue than supplies:

1. Power of Provision will dramatically enhance the output of a single workshop. There is not a similar enchantment to greatly enhance the gold output of a residence. The best you can do is Ensorcelled Endowment, however this is giving a boost to supplies as well as gold. The boost is much smaller, although it makes up for this somewhat by applying to all gold and supply producers. I do not yet have enough Power of Provision spells to be able to cast them on every workshop daily. So, what I did was focus on upgrading a single workshop to a higher level than the others. I can afford to cast a single Power of Provision daily on the highest level workshop in my city. This has really helped with supplies.

2. There is a gold cost every time you place a research expansion and every time you scout a new province. But gold is the only cost, doing either of these does not require any supplies. I won some Spectral Moths in the event last night, which allowed me to finally fix the culture issues I described upthread. With the aid of some active EE enchantments, I am currently at 195% culture boost. The highest level residence I can get right now is L15. Even with a pretty high culture boost AND with the hobby room bonus to gold active, they only make 3,075 gold and hour. Total daily output of 73,800.

The next research expansion I put down will cost 195,000 gold to place. That's a little more than 2.6 times the daily output of the best residence I can build. Keep in mind that expansions are front loaded to the early chapters. Chapter 4 has 5 research expansions in it. Later chapters do not have nearly as many. I'm not really complaining, I certainly need the space. But putting all these expansions down is certainly a gold hog!

I will need a total of 70 provinces to advance to chapter 5. I am currently scouting province 69. It cost 120,000 gold. That's 1.6 times the daily output of a max level residence. I do plan to pause scouting as soon as I reach #70 until I open the next chapter. So once that happens, at least I will have 1 less thing draining my gold.

 

[BrinDarby]

@Henroo ,
We both mentioned Coins in the new scheme(chgs),
and shortfalls, in different ways ...(recently/diff threads)
Its clearly evident that new players/cities will have a
much harder time than before.

I've always known you play your cities more focused
on fighting than catering. Watching your city has more
reinforced that thinnking. You also tend to do all of
the researches, all of the time, and it seems use all/most
the land you earn. This is 1 of the reasons I wanted to
watch your approach.

Your city is post-forced migration, post-CH1-5 chgs,
and post-CH6-10 chgs. Your city won't experience some
probs my ( and other ppls ) cities are/have. I can only
figure chgs to CH 11-20 will follow.

Unlike Iyapo's "racing city" city/thread, yours is just
playing a new city in the new format. Yes, because
the new format is getting to CH5 minimum, it will
be interesting to see if your approach shifts from
speed to structure after Spire is open. You're not
the type of person to blindly hit the Orc wall then
become stuck, you were supportive of the AW chgs
other than upgrade costs, and nothing seems to
phase your new city.

It just goes to show your mastery of Elvenar, 'cause
I've watch'd other ppl with new cities start as you did
and they haven't/didn't fare as well.

 

[Henroo]

@BrinDarby I thank you for your many kind words. But I don't think I have proven anything yet. I remember the first 5 chapters being fairly easy the first time around. And so far I have not surpassed that with my new city. It has been a long time, but I think that under the old tech tree I made it to Elementals (ch 12) and sentient goods in my first year for my original cities. To truly prove it is possible to move as fast under the new tech tree and new AW rules, this is what I need to accomplish.

 

[BrinDarby]

But I don't think I have proven anything yet.

You've proved a few things to me, thats for sure.

 

[Henroo]

The first tournament went well for my new city. When the tournament began, I had 8 available provinces and about midway through the week I cleared an additional crystal province on the world map and opened up a 9th tournament province. I primarily fought the first 3 or 4 tournament provinces and switched to catering for the later tournament provinces. Because the squad size increases with each province and the odds get worse, it would have been impossible to have fought them all successfully. I was able to complete all 6 rounds of the initial 8 provinces and got in 3 rounds in the 9th province I opened up after the tournament had started.

I feel the rewards from the tournament significantly helped my city. Over the course of the tournament I won enough relics that each of my boosts increased multiple times. The KP I won sped up my progress through the tech tree and I am finally starting to get a stockpile of enchantments due to tournament winnings. I believe my city would be much further along right now if I had gained access to the tournament as soon as I joined a fellowship, the way it was in the old days. Now that I have experienced the early chapters first hand, Inno's decision to restrict the tournament to chapter 4 under the new tech tree seems even worse than I first thought.

After the tournament was over, I made the jump from the casual fellowship I started in to a 10 chest fellowship (Goldengods). So far they seem like an active, friendly group and I am looking forward to playing with them. I also think that 1 more week of play and 1 more tournament cycle will get me to the end of chapter 4. Shortly after that, I will gain access to the spire.

edit: It did feel a little weird switching fellowships. In over 4 years playing the game, I have never done this before. Each of my 3 previous cities is still in the fellowship it started in.

 

[Gordix]

I tried twice with my main account to get snips of EVERTHING from the beginning for chapters 1-5. Both have failed and I spent diamonds on them. I will likely have them deleted so they aren't staring in my face all the time. However, yesterday, Feb 11, 2024, I created a new account on Beta and started a new city. I was quite surprised with the difference. There is an entire set of quests solely about how to do the basics in the game. Things such as building, upgrading, collecting, culture, etc. I've managed to capture everything by it not being in my main account. It is VERY slow with a new account, new city. Not much can be done about it though. I got 100 diamonds to begin and another 50 for verifying my email addy. I'm still in Ch1 and not very far. Coins and supplies are the bane of my existence right now. I don't think I will join a FS when I get there so I can focus on what I'm trying to do. I will just create one and do what I can to get clips. I'm guessing though that I will wind up being forced to join one in order to not take a year to get through Ch5.

 

[Henroo]

I opened chapter 5 today. Since I started the city on January 19th, that means the first 4 chapters took just under 4 weeks to complete. The first priority in chapter 5 is to unlock the spire. But I still think it is utterly nuts to have to wait until chapter 5 and then pay 50 knowledge points, 300K gold, and 700 of each tier 2 good just to get something that once upon a time was given for free to any city that reached chapter 3.

 

[Henroo]

It was a pretty good week for the baby city. I was able to unlock the spire before it closed for the week. And then was able to time boost my way all the way up to the frog and beat it! After the first 8 encounters at the bottom, it was almost entirely negotiating. Because chapter 5 level troops without any military AWs or Fire Phoenix are NOT up to multi-wave spire fights. Even if I had them in sufficient numbers (I don't) they would still lose much of the time. This much negotiating is a dramatic shift for me, since my established cities are almost entirely combat oriented. In fact, I would say I probably did more spire diplomacy yesterday than I have done in the last 2 years.

There were some other good improvements I was able to make. I don't think I mentioned it in my previous posts, but I ran out of population last week. This caused me to have to stop the upgrade cycle for my workshops. I was able to win a Chicken Glade from the season and several Unexpected Mornings from the event. Now I fully realize that these are not truly great buildings. They would not make the cut for my advanced cities. But for a brand new city which has been forced to rely on Mysterious Cyclones for culture because there is NOTHING better available, these were truly a gift from the Heavens. I was able to delete 4 Mysterious Cyclones and place 1 Chicken Glade and 2 Unexpected Mornings. I took a slight hit on overall culture but I gained a large amount of population and was able to resume upgrading my workshops.

I was also able to add 3 expansions to the city in fairly short order. I got a tech advance expansion right at the end of chapter 4. As soon as I got the chapter 5 Advanced Scouts tech, I put my scout back to work and was able to get enough additional provinces cleared for a province expansion. And finally, there was a 10% sale on premium expansions this morning. I have been trying hard to play this new city with similar resources to what a new player would have and not to dip heavily into the diamond stash from my existing cities. But I just went silver in the spire yesterday. And when I beat the Frog, that chest gave diamonds. So I felt justified in this.

I was able to do quite a bit with these 3 expansions. With the extra space and with an adjustment of the position of my Moonstone Set, I was able to add 2 more residences, place a 2nd Potionmaker Pedestal, add a 2nd tier 3 manufactory, and upgrade the final 2 of my workshops (they needed space to expand and I had ran out). After adding the second tier 3 manufactory, my total stands at 7,3,2. In addition, I have the Moonstone set and 2 fully evolved Potionmaker Pedestals providing extra tier 2 and tier 3 goods. So far I am doing really well with goods. We'll see how things go after a few weeks now that the spire is unlocked. I am betting that tier 2 might be the potential shortfall and that I might end up adding a 4th T2 factory. But we shall see!

 

[TimeMachine]

@Henroo I really like your thread.

These detailed reports of how to walk through the chapters should be very helpful for humans and elves who are new to Elvenar.

 

[JackofShadows]

These detailed reports of how to walk through the chapters should be very helpful for humans and elves who are new to Elvenar.

I politely disagree. New players are unlikely to see this thread because - unless someone links it to them on Discord, or they're lucky enough to get in a FS that peruses the forums, there's no way for them to find it.

This thread, however, is extremely helpful for established players who - for whatever reason - want to start a new city.

New players, though, won't have the diamonds to purchase both the early expansion and the 3rd builder that Henroo did. Unless, of course, they purchase some. Those two purchases are, IMHO, responsible for much of Henroo's early rapid progress. And his knowledge of the game is responsible for much of the rest.

New players make bad decisions occasionally unless they have someone watching over their shoulder saying "Don't do that!" Example: not knowing about the requirement to be in a FS for advancement further down the road, they may decide they want to play solo - so they build factories for their non-boosted goods to minimize the trading they have to do.

I know, because I was that player. But I found these forums shortly before I unlocked FS, and I spent 3 days combing through them. Then I deleted my non-boosted-goods factories and did more trading. And when I got FS unlocked, I was fortunate enough to get into a good one - with players who answered (and STILL answer) my questions about "Why do this?" and "How does that work?"

 

[OakKnoll]

I found this thread. I’ve only been playing since the end of December/first week in January. This has been very helpful. I did join a fellowship almost as soon as I was able. I was invited which helped the decision and they have been great and answered so many questions. I found this link while searching online for some detail and have been following ever since. I’ve rearranged my city and made other building choices based on the various posts. Thanks.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

I have started a new city around the same date if anyone's interested in a bit of a different approach. I focus on scouting to get expansions, do only minimal tournament for relics and only fight 7 encounters in Spire. So far haven't spent any diamonds but I would definitely recommend to spent some on three builders.

Here's link: https://www.elvenstats.com/player/en2/1184125

 

[Silver Lady]

Just Being Different:
I started one a little before @Henroo & @Silly Bubbles and have a different approach from either of them. I‘m start of chap 6, never built a barracks, cater everything (10 provinces for tournament currently and 1st floor of Spire). Built the MA as soon as I could and upgraded it to level 4 but didn’t and won’t spend diamonds on a 3rd builder (he’ll only be sitting on his hands most of the time).

I have a previous post Here

My baby city has 2 AWs (GA level 6 & CL level 3) both added before the “Great AW Change” and right now lacks the resources to level anymore.

My boosts are T1 at 491%, T2 at 538% and T3 at 472%. Not having a barracks puts my supplies, population & culture in a slightly better position than having one. If I decide I need troops I’ll build something I can sell. Also, so far in events & season I‘ve been able to work around the troop/fight quests.