started a new city

[Henroo]

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?"

Of the 2 I would say the expansion is more important. The 3rd builder has not been as useful as you think, getting it was more of a luxury. The first time through the game, I had not bought a 3rd builder for any of my original cities at this point and I still moved pretty quickly through the tech tree.
At his stage of the game, build times are still fairly short. What I have found is that with 3 builders, they are working in bursts. So, I unlock a tech advance and then put all 3 builders to work doing the freshly unlocked upgrades. Then I either finish the upgrades or I run short of population and all 3 builders are idle. If I only had 2 builders, it would obviously take longer to do each upgrade cycle. But I also think there would be less downtime for the builders, which would somewhat compensate. In terms of overall game progress: I probably have come out ahead by having that 3rd builder, but it is nowhere near a total overall 50% difference in speed.

 

[Darielle]

Of the 2 I would say the expansion is more important. The 3rd builder has not been as useful as you think, getting it was more of a luxury. The first time through the game, I had not bought a 3rd builder for any of my original cities at this point and I still moved pretty quickly through the tech tree.
At his stage of the game, build times are still fairly short. What I have found is that with 3 builders, they are working in bursts. So, I unlock a tech advance and then put all 3 builders to work doing the freshly unlocked upgrades. Then I either finish the upgrades or I run short of population and all 3 builders are idle. If I only had 2 builders, it would obviously take longer to do each upgrade cycle. But I also think there would be less downtime for the builders, which would somewhat compensate. In terms of overall game progress: I probably have come out ahead by having that 3rd builder, but it is nowhere near a total overall 50% difference in speed.

I would say that the only time a third builder (or more) is really useful is during FAs when you are tearing down your city and building a shanty. It takes hours. When I build as many as 300 workshops at once, I really, really appreciate the extra builders.

 

[Henroo]

I would say that the only time a third builder (or more) is really useful is during FAs when you are tearing down your city and building a shanty. It takes hours. When I build as many as 300 workshops at once, I really, really appreciate the extra builders.

No, extra builders are useful in later chapters. High level ancient wonders take 2 or 3 days to upgrade. High level manufactories (especially tier 3) take 1 to 2 days. And some of the guest race buildings have long build times. There is a point in the game where you really need a 3rd builder to keep up if you are trying to move fast.
But I honestly have not reached that point in this new city. I got a little impatient while upgrading residences and jumped the gun by buying a 3rd builder. It did speed me up for a few days while I upgraded every residence to level 15. But after I finished that, I had no work for them and all 3 sat idle. So the speed gain was relatively temporary.

 

[BrinDarby]

Henroo is CH5, so soon will catch my newest
city that is progressing slowly in CH6.

I have upgraded MH so all research can be done, I add'd like 20+ expansions, upgraded Magic stuff mostly, add'd a few sets and some coin bldgs (anima dolls x3), and now have a lvl 3 portal with (8) lvl 4 granite and (4) lvl 3 copper (so far). Never before for last 5 years, or even in Khel (1st city) have I had such a shortfall of Coins, somewhat less with tools. In order to use PPs I'll need a bigger portal, but I might chug along as is ( plus lvl4 copper ) and save some PPs. That will take longer, but without the Coins, using PPs won't really help.

This city has (4) lvl1 workshops for events/tasks, and has the remnants of a FA city, so lots of 2x1 marble, and workshops were changed into small armories even if thats kinda temp space.... and those do help the effect of the + to train cap from GS 1x1. Will the std newb have all this city does.... well no, but if they buy some diamonds ( not reccomended ) they would be close to what I have, just as Henroo would be if he had some magic bldgs. I think I'm sufficiently balanced, yet again I have No AWs or T3 reg production.

 

[BrinDarby]

I still have no clue how Henroo is surviving with
so few reg production, but Kudos he is (claps).

 

[Henroo]

For some time now I have been noticing that the magic academy in my new city is utterly clogged with old evolving buildings. This is not entirely surprising: every time they rotate artifacts in the spire, they add a new evolving building base to the magic academy. This has little to no impact on an established city, which likely already has all of the evolving building bases. But it has a huge impact on what a new city sees in the magic academy because they do not have any of them. The odds of seeing any 1 particular evolving building are not that great each cycle. But there are so bloody many of them now that a brand new city has a pretty good chance of seeing 1 of them each rotation.

The solution to this is obvious: make them once and they stop appearing. And before the update to AWs, this would have been a no brainer. I mean: it still would have been somewhat annoying, but it would have been manageable. Keep in mind, I will only be making them for this purpose. I have no artifacts and I don't think there is a single evolving building worth placing at stage 1 (with the possible exceptions of Fire Phoenix and Polar Bear). So, none of them will get placed in my city unless I get artifacts for that building in the future. However, I still would have been totally willing to make them and just let the sit in inventory pre-update. But now I also need CCs and spell fragments to upgrade AWs. Each evolving building I make costs 8 CCs and 1200 SF.

I have gone back and forth on this for a few weeks and I finally decided it is still worthwhile to clean all of the evolving buildings out of the magic academy, even though doing this will severely compromise my ability to upgrade AWs for the next few months. So far, I have made Gingerbread Mansion, Chromafrost Glacier, Witch's Hut, and Fire Phoenix. The only 1 of these buildings likely to get placed in my city anytime soon is the Fire Phoenix. But first, I will need to craft some Phoenix artifacts. In addition to 3 blueprints (or 900 diamonds) they cost 10,000 SF each. I never thought I would regard 10,000 SF as the WORSE part of the cost. LOL. But for this city it is true. I am winning a blueprint weekly and I don't have any magic WS or magic res yet to spend them on.

 

[Henroo]

I still have no clue how Henroo is surviving with
so few reg production, but Kudos he is (claps).

I honestly did not think my totals were that low. I've got 7 workshops, 7 tier 1 manufactories, 3 T2, and 2 T3. And in addition to that, I have 2 Potionmaker's Pedastals and most of the Moonstone Set providing extra tier 2 and tier 3 goods daily. I would like a 4th T2 manufactory, but there is no space and no population for it. I don't think I could do much better unless I converted the city to cater only by deleting all 4 armories and the Training Grounds. But I am curious now: how many workshops and manufactories do you run in your chapter 5 cities?

 

[Henroo]

BTW, I am sorry I not posting cool graphics from Elvenarchitect of before and after changes to my city. The reason I'm not is: I never learned to use it and still don't know how. I do all my city planning and arranging in-game and don't use EA. It has always worked well for me and still is. I'm about 2/3rds of the way through chapter 5, but I already have a pretty good idea of how I will need to move my roads when I hit Dwarves to accommodate changes and where I will place expansions to make space for a guest race area.

Now I just need to push through the rest of chapter 5 before the next event starts so that I can win Dwarf level prizes in it. I am guessing 1 or 2 weeks before the Phoenix event starts in live worlds. Don't think I can wrap up chapter 5 in just 1 more week. Pretty sure I can in 2 more weeks. So it should be close...

 

[BrinDarby]

how many workshops and manufactories do you run in your chapter 5 cities?

Since my Fely and Harandar cities are basically
starting CH6, they would qualify as CH5 cities....
I guess you're right, I'm running 3 M.workshops not all CH5,
7-8 lvl8 T1, 5-6 lvl 8 T2, no T3 , but I have Sets/xtras that do
the bulk of the work, and they are not cater only cities.....

In my Sinya city it wasn't till I started moving on, that
I upp'd anything, but I'm running 3 M.workshops, not all
in CH, a buttload of T1, and 2 lvl 8 T2, and no T3. Now
after add'n that land I had stuff to bring out, my city
exploded.

My "impression" looking @ your city, was a lack of manu
because you didn't have any of the xtras beyond 1 event
worth and Seasons.

Anytime I have lvl1 workshops, or baby armories, that
land can be used as flex space. I don't consider them part
of my core city setup beyond some perm baby armories.
( 2x1 T1 can also be perm or temp bldgs. )

If you use a browser, using eArchitect is easy-peasy, even
with hide bldgs now, I can't live without eArchitect for
city planning/re-organization.

My Sinya city also was a FA city mask'd as a reg city for
a long time after a beef with a former FS. I deff approach
things differently because I don't build T3 manu or AWs.
All my cities are hybrid cater/fight cities.

 

[Henroo]

I deff approach
things differently because I don't build T3 manu or AWs.
All my cities are hybrid cater/fight cities.

Why don't you build ancient wonders? I totally get being selective in what AWs you build. But I honestly don't understand why you would cut yourself off entirely from them. For example: Golden Abyss. This is the only AW I have currently built in my new city. My GA there is only level 7, which is not very high. But despite being only level 7, it is still way better than any residence in terms of both population and gold production. GA is 3x3 in size, so it is identical in size to my max level 15 residences. A level 15 residence gives 420 population. GA is currently giving 1008. A level 15 residence produces 2,700 gold an hour. My level 7 GA produces 24,000 gold per hour.

 

[BrinDarby]

Why don't you build ancient wonders?

The Spire catering formula.

---

(same as why I had 23 expansions built up
till recently in Sinya. Placed land and AW
lvls total, are the biggest part of cost to cater.)

It wasn't so bad untill the CH6-10 chgs and
the tweak to CH1-5. Inno has dbbl'd the need'd
coins. It is as bad as when they jack'd up FA coin
badges, in my opinion.

While a lvl 15 residence is 420 pop, a CH5 M.res
is either 700 ( elves 3x3 ) or 940 ( human 4x3 ).
CH6 is either 780 elves or 980 humans. Add to
that, Event bldgs pop/cul .... I don't need more
than a few of them.

 

[Henroo]

I entered Dwarves today. Since I started the city on January 19th, that makes 43 days total to finish the first 5 chapters. I think that is a pretty good pace. The only ways I can think of to have gone faster would have been 1. to spend diamonds or 2. to massively overscout in order to get extra KP. However, in order to have cleared those extra map provinces I would have had to neglect the spire the last few weeks. I would not have had the resources to scout and clear additional map provinces while also doing the spire. Personally, I don't think it would have been worth it. If I'd cleared 16 additional map provinces, that would have been 144 extra KP. Since you get 1 KP a hour, that is only 6 days worth of KP. I think everything I have won in the spire the last 3 weeks is worth those 6 days. Lots of CCs, frags, supply and coin instants, plus time boosters. And 3 weeks worth of silver spire diamonds. All this will really help my city moving forward.

Now that I am in Dwarves, my first priority is to get to the Dwarven chapter residence upgrade tech. Two main reasons for this:

1. I am short of population. I need to upgrade residences and get more population in order to do any more upgrades to anything else.

2. There is going to be a change in both size and shape for my residences. Right now they are 3x3 in size. They will become 2x4 in size. Right now I have 20 residences, which is by far the most of any single building in my city. This is going to require me to adjust my streets and I want to do this ASAP in the chapter. In addition, the change in size from 3x3 to 2x4 means that for every residence I upgrade I save 1 square of overall space and 1 square of road frontage. Therefore, upgrading all my residences will save me 20 squares of space and 20 squares of road frontage. Doing this right away at the start of the chapter will make it that much easier to build the Dwarven settlement.

 

[BrinDarby]

Here's Henroo's current city @ 5pm :

 

[BrinDarby]

Its interesting to watch the 2 road theory, therefore
while my approach is Fig1, I'm guessing that Henroo's
approach will be more like Fig2, also 2 paths.

 

[Henroo]

Its interesting to watch the 2 road theory, therefore
while my approach is Fig1, I'm guessing that Henroo's
approach will be more like Fig2, also 2 paths.

View attachment 16939

Close. My current plan is going to have the mines laid out pretty much like you have. But at the bottom the portal tracks will form a T and the copper foundries will be at the bottom.

 

[Henroo]

The event is going pretty well. I put in a small fellowship adventure style collection of L1 workshop manufactories and workshops to help with quests. I have 39 quests complete so far. My current plan is to knock out a few more quests and then delete many of the L1 buildings to make room for the Dwarven settlement. In fact, I've already got the portal under construction. Just keep in mind if you view my city right now that where I am building the portal is a temporary location. I plan to move it once I get rid of my L1 buildings.

Population and culture continue to be nagging issues. In fact, right now I am so low on population I ran out while putting in L1 buildings. I literally can't place a L1 workshop or manufactory right now. I have my eye on the Phoenix Rider building which will be the next daily prize in the event. This is the best pop/culture hybrid building being offered in the event. There are multiple chapter 3 and 4 pop/culture buildings currently in my city which I can directly replace with these and I will gain both population and culture by doing so. I will likely spend all or most of the event currency I've accumulated so far in order to win as many copies as possible. Hoping for 5 or 6.

Looking further down the road in the event, the best pure culture building in the event is Mysterious Magic Egg on day 9. By the time this rolls around, I hope to have somewhat replenished my supply of event currency. I'd like to win 3 copies minimum of this (more would be helpful). I have 2 Temple of the Ages still in the city as well as the chapter 1 Wonky Walter's building I was given at the start of the game. If I can replace these 3 buildings with 3 Mysterious Magic Eggs, I will come out way ahead on culture and will save 16 squares of space.

 

[BrinDarby]

Garden of Tales and Thrones 4x6 was shown on
iDavis's site but I guess its in the last 2 days. Its
1540 pop/340 culture, might be worth catching
a couple of them, or it could be re-roll'd maybe.

psst, marble for Elfs won't get bigger @lvl5, you
can keep 1-2 @ lvl4 till that task hits ( lvl5+)
then its just 1 upgrade then delete/rebuild back
slowly to 4 after the task. Humans go to 2x3 @ L5.

grats on your residences, I see Spire is being stingy
to you too.... no Magic Res's yet. I haven't won any
in awhile infact. This event is rich in both Culture
and Pop/culture bldgs, great for your current city.

 

[BrinDarby]

I hate being wrong, but the Garden of Tales/Thrones
is part of the royal pass, NOT a possible daily prize.

 

[OakKnoll]

How do you choose which buildings to replace? I mostly add because I cannot figure out how to choose what should be removed/replaced.

 

[iamthouth]

@OakKnoll The biggest limitation in the game is space (tiles). Thus, rate your buildings by production/hr/tile or culture/tile or population/tile. Sell/replace the weaker low scoring ones.