Still Catering Successfully at Higher Levels ;D

[MaidenFair]

Haven't posted in here re: catering in quite a while, so just thought I would give an update.

I just started ch. 16 this past week, as my progress slowed drastically in the last year, partly due to real life and partly due to the increased demands of these upper chapters. I am still happily catering my way through the game. I top the Spire every week, and have been consistently putting up 8100 points in tourney every week (with a purposeful drop for a few weeks after the AW changes to make sure my inventory was still balancing). I have wondered if my goods are very slowly decreasing in the last few weeks but I haven't been keeping close enough track to be sure of that, and I have done a number of upgrades/builds as I entered a new chapter, so that may be the cause of any perceived discrepancy.

I do run 3-hr productions throughout the day, 4 total most days, 3 occasionally if I get busy doing other things, and 1 9-hr production overnight. I only have 5 Marble Manufactories, 4 Silk, 1 Steel, 1 Crystal, and 2 Elixir (these last three are my Sentient boosts). No T3 manufactories still, lol. I have 3 (soon to be 2) Magic Residences, and 5 Magic Workshops, all but two of those being won in the Spire. No regular residences or workshops.

I spend 1 Pet Food a week on the Astral Phoenix on my last day of Spire and do the last three sections of the 3rd floor during that time. I spend Pet Food randomly and irregularly on other pets, like the Red Panda Master, and the Watchful Winter Owl, as I feel like it; I have 433 Pet Food in inventory. I sparkle 5 manufactories every day (each of my Sentients, and one Silk), 5 culture buildings (ones that produce orcs or mana first), and all 5 workshops. I only produce EEs and MMs in the MA, alternating, but not spending any timers, and my number of all enchantments continues to rise.

I progress through the chapters as fast as I can make the guest race goods, and almost never experience techlock because of regular goods (I can think of one exception due to upgrading too many roads unneccesarily with Mana, and several instances of waiting briefly on coins when a tech required almost a full MH amount).

Looking ahead at the crazy amount of Standard Goods required in research in 16, I do wonder if I'll have to back off tournament at some point to balance that, but we'll see how things go. I still only have 82 expansions at the moment, although I expect I'll have to add several during the course of the chapter; however, I already have an ElvenArchitect plan for fitting in what seems to be a reasonably sized guest race settlement in the current amount of space, so expanding would possibly only happen if there are new event buildings I really want that won't simply replace something I already have.

(I always have trouble posting pictures that are properly sized, so I'll come back and add screenshots when I have more time to fiddle with them.)

 

[Grishnak]

Sorry for the delayed response - I'm a pretty new player and registered on the forums just to respond to this post. Hopefully you'll see this!

MaidenFair, I'd love to hear whatever details you are willing to share on how you manage a catering city. I'll ask some specific questions based on what you said, but whatever details you think are interesting would be great!

• Why no T3 manufactories? How do you normally acquire these? (FS trades? Wholesaler? Event buildings?
• Where are you getting all that pet food? (I have < 10 in inventory and don't feel like I get them regularly enough to use them much.)
• Are your factories pretty much always enchanted?
• You sparkle 5 manufactories, 5 culture buildings, and 5 workshops every day. My level 5 MA takes 4 hours to create EE and 8 hours for MM. So you make 2 of each per day, but are using 5 of each. Where are you getting the rest? (Guessing tournament or spire rewards?)
• How many buildings do you have sparkled at once? How high is your culture bonus?
• I've seen some forum posts about keeping the culture bonus as high as possible, to produce tons of coins and supplies, and then buy goods from the wholesaler. What role does the wholesaler play in your strategy?
• You mentioned sparkling event buildings that produce orcs and mana first; I've seen some forum posts about catering orcs being unsustainable. What does it take for you to have enough orcs and mana?

All that said, if you have suggestions for a low-chapter catering city, I'd love to hear them. And thanks for sharing!

 

[TimeMachine]

Hi @Grishnak, I think these are some nice questions! I will try to answer a few from my versatile point of view.

Why no T3 factories? How do you normally acquire these? (FS trade? Wholesaler? Event buildings?

You're right! Event buildings in the lower chapters often provide T3 goods. This is one reason why you might build fewer or no T3 factories.
Back in the good old days when my cities were smaller, I found that there were always plenty of T3 offers of all kinds on the market looking for T2 or even T1 (I guess a lot of players like to bring these offers to the market, especially because of the exchange rate ).
I have often experienced disagreements or even disputes due to cross-trades in general or due to cities that are used to cross-trades and are getting bigger and bigger, so the buyer is no longer able to complete all purchases as usual.
That's why I decided to always have about 10 fully upgraded T1 factories. Very useful for playing the FA and on the market, T1 goods are like an access-all-areas, as they are often requested in the first fifteen chapters and even later on, especially from those who like catering in tournament.

Of course this took me a little more city-space but I could always get my trades picked very fast and or I could pick lots of deals and made lots of players happy.
For short lots of players seem to specialize on T3 goods thats why I tried to do the opposite.
Having lots of my T1 and T2 bonus goods puts me in the position to be able to get all other goods I need quickly.

Are your factories pretty much always enchanted?

Mine are not always but very often enchanted. The best time to enchant is before you pick up your overnight-production.
This way your able to collect for example one harvest of 9h-productions, switch to 3h-production and collect one more enchanted harvest later.

My level 5 MA takes 4 hours to create EE and 8 hours for MM. So you make 2 of each per day, but are using 5 of each. Where are you getting the rest? (Guessing tournament or spire rewards?)

It is definetly the tournament where most of the enchantments are coming from! Every province gives you anything directly and if your fellowship is finishing lots of chests you'll get lots of additional rewards at the end of each tournament.
Those who do weekly score over 10K or even over 20K tournament points do it mostly because of the runes, KPs and all that other stuff that can be captured in tournament.

The spire is good for supply rains (at lower chapters) or portal profits and of course CCs and spell fragments, besides them magic buildings, Genies and Trading Stations.

I've seen some forum posts about keeping the culture bonus as high as possible, to produce tons of coins and supplies

Here's a nice little example from german forum

Spoiler

A culture at this level is of course only possible with the Lighthouse of Good Neighborhood, lots of EEs and lots visting neighbours.

and then buy goods from the wholesaler. What role does the wholesaler play in your strategy?

To be able to use the full power of this strategy you'll ´have to build up the Blooming Trader Guild, which can be researched at the end of the Blossoms of Promise chapter.
The higher you'll level it up the the more goods you get for your coins and/or supplies.

Just as an example for demonstrating the impact of the effect, I 'll show you my wholesaler trading cost with and without the Blooming Trader Guild connected to my roads. The city is at chapter 17 and the Blooming Trader Guild is at level 14.

Spoiler: with BTG

Spoiler: without BTG

 

[TimeMachine]

Looking ahead at the crazy amount of Standard Goods required in research in 16, I do wonder if I'll have to back off tournament at some point to balance that, but we'll see how things go.

Sorry 4 double-posting again!

I've made it through this chapter two times now and I guess it would be clever to do exactly as you've described.
Less tournament - more trading and some little wholesaler offers per day will be helpful to finish the next research!

 

[Darielle]

I am still able to cater the spire all the way to the top, provided I have astral fed. (I'm lucky I have two maxed, but I could do it with one.) It's not that difficult and to me, it's a lot more fun than auto-fight, auto-fight, auto-fight. (Manual fighting would be ZERO fun for me ... can anyone have fun watching paint dry day after day after day after day?)

In tourney, I do fight half the time, and I've maxed 6 armories to be able to do it. I would still much rather cater all of it, but if I want to break 6K on tourney then there's nothing for it; I have to fight. (I'm in Chapter 19).

When I started this game, they said there were two paths, catering and fighting. They should have said that there were two paths IF you don't want to get to the highest levels of tourney and IF you aren't in the top chapters. But then I suppose I shouldn't blame them too much for that, since when I joined they didn't have the higher chapters that make it impossible to compete with the fighters. Still, for anyone willing to stay at around 4K in tourney every week, and who still wants to climb the spire to the top weekly, yes, it is possible to cater, in my humble opinion. But I couldn't do it if I didn't have five t1s out (maxed) and 4 t2s, etc. It's just so darned hard to fit the space. I'm progressing fairly well on 19 but I think I'll clear out my guest race after that and park at the beginning of 20 for about 6 months, just to be able to build up a ton of goods. I'm only at about 3-4mil on each good right now, and that's virtually nothing at these levels.

 

[Grishnak]

@TimeMachine Thanks for the informative response. I've got 7 upgraded T1 manufactories and I seem to run low on T1 more than T2 or T3. I'm about to unlock a big upgrade for them; if that doesn't fix it, maybe I'll drop one of my T3 and build more T1. And that culture bonus of 1454! Wow. I am planning on getting the Blooming Trader Guild once I unlock it.

@Darielle ah, good to know you are fighting sometimes. I don't enjoy the fighting in this game at all. I'm not opposed to fighting games, but it seems so slow through the browser, and the app hides too much depth. I try to avoid it if at all possible. (A game is supposed to be fun, and to me, the way it is done in this game is not fun.) I actually enjoy the diplomacy in the spire (makes me think a bit) and catering in the tournament is at least fast. (I guess auto-fight is also just as fast.)

In tourney, I do fight half the time, and I've maxed 6 armories to be able to do it. I would still much rather cater all of it, but if I want to break 6K on tourney then there's nothing for it; I have to fight. (I'm in Chapter 19).

Would you mind sharing why you have to fight to break 6k on tournament? Is there a particular resource, or just all resources, that you are unable to produce enough of?

 

[Darielle]

@TimeMachine Thanks for the informative response. I've got 7 upgraded T1 manufactories and I seem to run low on T1 more than T2 or T3. I'm about to unlock a big upgrade for them; if that doesn't fix it, maybe I'll drop one of my T3 and build more T1. And that culture bonus of 1454! Wow. I am planning on getting the Blooming Trader Guild once I unlock it.

@Darielle ah, good to know you are fighting sometimes. I don't enjoy the fighting in this game at all. I'm not opposed to fighting games, but it seems so slow through the browser, and the app hides too much depth. I try to avoid it if at all possible. (A game is supposed to be fun, and to me, the way it is done in this game is not fun.) I actually enjoy the diplomacy in the spire (makes me think a bit) and catering in the tournament is at least fast. (I guess auto-fight is also just as fast.)


Would you mind sharing why you have to fight to break 6k on tournament? Is there a particular resource, or just all resources, that you are unable to produce enough of?

In the higher provinces (above 30) it just costs so dang much, especially after the 2nd star. It's not hard to find provinces that wants 160K marble, 100K silk, and 80K gems ... or more ... and that's just one province. Sure, sometimes they want gold instead, which is nice, but then they want 15 million per province and that can get steep too. I just don't make enough every week to absorb that kind of loss. I collect twice a day now that I've cut back due to job constraints, and make somewhere around 160K per day of planks, or less than a million a week. I can't lose 3 million t1s weekly in tourney alone. When I collected 4x a day, I guess it would have been better, but even then I could not make up 3 million a week of t1s, even doing 2 star trades for my boost or even 3 star. Fighting is really the only way for me. Now I CAN see a caterer doing it, if they choose not to have a guest race and put a dozen maxed t1 factories in their city, and maybe half dozen t2 and t3. I have tons of event buildings that give me goods, but it's still never enough. If you don't want to do guest races, however, that might be an option.

 

[Grishnak]

@Darielle It seems odd that it becomes so unbalanced between fighting and catering, but it is good to know what to expect. Thanks for sharing your experience!

 

[iamthouth]

I'm end of Ch21, and have just placed Temple of Toads, Dragon Abbey, Heroes Forge and Victory Springs, the unit strength wonders. I have for a long time catered Spire to the top, and fought page 1 of tournament, but going beyond page 2 was always too expensive catering for me. So that left me with 4320 points. Upgrading the Sanctuary and Needles with 5 day building boost gave me opportunity to go further, but I need those wonders to sustain it long term. @MaidenFair seems to have chosen better wonders and sees the tournament benefit for it.

My city layout here.
I have 8 of each standard goods boosted manufactory fully upgraded, but didn't have the ETC until recently as well.

Catering deeper may be possible with a fully upgraded ETC for the Magical Manufacturing duration and strength boost, fully evolved BTG, and combined with the above explanation of using triple neighbour wonder boost with GBA/CL, WR and LGN providing gold and supplies to buy more goods. Have a read of this thread for more in-depth explanation.

 

[Darielle]

I'm end of Ch21, and have just placed Temple of Toads, Dragon Abbey, Heroes Forge and Victory Springs, the unit strength wonders. I have for a long time catered Spire to the top, and fought page 1 of tournament, but going beyond page 2 was always too expensive catering for me. So that left me with 4320 points. Upgrading the Sanctuary and Needles with 5 day building boost gave me opportunity to go further, but I need those wonders to sustain it long term. @MaidenFair seems to have chosen better wonders and sees the tournament benefit for it.

My city layout here.
I have 8 of each standard goods boosted manufactory fully upgraded, but didn't have the ETC until recently as well.

Catering deeper may be possible with a fully upgraded ETC for the Magical Manufacturing duration and strength boost, fully evolved BTG, and combined with the above explanation of using triple neighbour wonder boost with GBA/CL, WR and LGN providing gold and supplies to buy more goods. Have a read of this thread for more in-depth explanation.

That's probably why I can go as far as I do with catering. I have a fully maxed ETC and a level 35 BTG. Yes, those Magical Manufacturing spells really extend well ... can't remember how long they last but well over a day, anyway.

 

[Deborah M]

I'm amazed and pleasantly surprised. Today is my first day to see what it might look like to follow some of the suggestions made above. I just looked at planks factory which says regular + relic boost is 10,800 on 3 hour production. My additions are Mountain Halls & Elvenar Trade Center AWs, MM spells, Storm Phoenix level 10 fed and Aureate Phoenix level 8 fed. That brings me up to 40,920 on 3 hour production. I am really WOWed! I feel like an old dog that learned a cool new trick from newer players Thanks!!! I had no idea I could do this. Now to get 2 more Phoenix artifacts.

Just for reference, I have 8 planks factories. That will yield 327,360 planks in 3 hours

@ajqtrz
All done 20 provinces x 6 rounds in the tournament. It took even more than I expected but it wasn't too bad. I got hung up on trades some. I'm not used to needing trades quickly so I will have to prepare for that next time. It does stink that I did world map visits for a coin boost and I have 300+ neighbors and 100+ coin cities. I think now that I have gone ahead and tried catering the tournament, I may switch to every other week catering and battling. I think this would be a bit much to cater every week. Again, I have all expansions available for research, map provinces and premium. I also have 891 AW levels so it shouldn't get much more demanding than this.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	Total
Coin	35,200,000	40,430,000	62,500,000	110,600,000	55,900,000	49,500,000	354,130,000
Supplies	6,500,000	2,490,000	6,000,000	4,990,000	5,700,000	4,960,000	30,640,000
Orcs	136,000	7,200	160,000	179,600	19,000	82,000	583,800
Mana	-	760,000	1,550,000	823,000	483,000	1,810,000	5,426,000
Marble	233,000	380,000	81,000	710,000	351,000	810,000	2,565,000
Steel	500,000	1,096,000	570,000	186,000	821,000	643,000	3,816,000
Planks	746,000	700,000	581,000	748,000	1,380,000	1,131,000	5,286,000
Crystal	593,800	140,000	53,000	278,000	544,000	630,000	2,238,800
Scrolls	392,000	458,000	424,000	463,000	710,000	970,000	3,417,000
Silk	538,000	465,000	870,000	525,000	332,000	490,000	3,220,000
Elixer	281,800	764,000	239,000	321,000	547,000	470,000	2,622,800
Dust	243,800	358,000	294,000	649,000	704,000	629,000	2,877,800
Gems	439,000	377,000	679,000	368,000	554,000	245,000	2,662,000

This was done May 2023. I recently pretty much quit the game. Now I came back, stored some factories and set out my favorite old culture buildings again. I am a bit more pleased with my city. This post reminded me that catering the tournament is well within my grasp. I think I would be even more pleased with my city if I didn’t have to battle. I started this game 8+ years ago because I didn’t have to battle. I have got to try it again.

 

[MaidenFair]

Sorry for the delayed response - I'm a pretty new player and registered on the forums just to respond to this post. Hopefully you'll see this!

Now it's my turn to apologize for the delayed response! Real life has been taking all my energy recently and I haven't had the thought process to draft a coherent response. Welcome to the game and the forum!! I hope you're still playing, and enjoying the game.

MaidenFair, I'd love to hear whatever details you are willing to share on how you manage a catering city. I'll ask some specific questions based on what you said, but whatever details you think are interesting would be great!

I could probably write a novelette on my catering experiences/theories (and have come close to doing so before on the forums, lol), so I'll try to stick to answering your questions for this post. If you're still around and interested, I'd be happy to give even more detail in follow-ups.

• Why no T3 manufactories? How do you normally acquire these? (FS trades? Wholesaler? Event buildings?

This is a little tricky to summarize, but basically I realised early on when I was investigating how to make my city more efficient that all buildings have an obvious footprint (their stated size) and an invisible footprint (their stated size, plus the sizes of all the buildings required to run them). So in order to run a manufactory for instance, you need to have space to put down the manufactory, but you also need population (residences) and culture, as well as a small amount of gold and supplies. Therefore, for maximum efficiency in a city, a manufactory (or any building) needs to be judged not only on what it produces, but how much space it *actually* requires to function. I explain it more fully in this post: https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....th-a-surprising-conclusion.30001/#post-251708, and have detailed spreadsheets in this post: https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index....ciency-by-chapter-revised-and-complete.31072/
As for how it relates to T3 manufactories specifically...they're space hogs. They don't produce very much but need lots of population and culture relative to the T2 and T1 manufactories. T3 is also required in much lower quantities, e.g. for Spire catering, so it's not too hard to fill in the gaps with event buildings.

• Where are you getting all that pet food? (I have < 10 in inventory and don't feel like I get them regularly enough to use them much.)

I started making it as soon as possible in the MA, and I craft it every time it comes up. That stash is almost 3 years worth of crafting it now, and not needing to use it often. Make sure that you see all four rotations of the MA every day if possible (you can do that by only logging in twice a day around the time it would switch!).

• Are your factories pretty much always enchanted?

My regular manufactories are actually never enchanted, with the exception of the one silk manufactory I mentioned. I do sparkle the Sentient manufactories, because those goods are much harder to come by.

• You sparkle 5 manufactories, 5 culture buildings, and 5 workshops every day. My level 5 MA takes 4 hours to create EE and 8 hours for MM. So you make 2 of each per day, but are using 5 of each. Where are you getting the rest? (Guessing tournament or spire rewards?)

Yes, Spire and tournament rewards, plus an event building or two that produce spells every few days (actually can't remember what they are/it is off the top of my head, sorry!).

• How many buildings do you have sparkled at once? How high is your culture bonus?

Because of the Lighthouse of Good Neighbourhood, my 5 culture buildings that I sparkle every day last long enough that for most of the daytime hours, I have 25 culture buildings polished. My culture bonus is usually 470% at the highest, and sometimes drops to 300-something if I've forgotten to do neighbourly visits for a while. It averages low to mid-400s.

• I've seen some forum posts about keeping the culture bonus as high as possible, to produce tons of coins and supplies, and then buy goods from the wholesaler. What role does the wholesaler play in your strategy?

This is something that only really works post-chapter 13 (at least for me). I mostly relied on simple production (from event buildings and manufactories) up until then, although I did make a wholesaler purchase probably once or twice a day because they were very lucrative with the BTG fully upgraded, and with low costs in Spire and tourney I always had some gold to spare. Now I make many wholesaler purchases each day, because my supply production is so high I can't even collect all my workshops at one time without having to dump some supplies in the wholesaler. My strategy changed pretty drastically after the end of chapter 13, because the LoGN was able to boost the culture bonus so high that my wholesaler purchases skyrocketed, which meant my goods did as well, and I was able to increase my tournament scores a lot, which in turn meant more rewards of spells so I could use them daily on the buildings, and so on.

• You mentioned sparkling event buildings that produce orcs and mana first; I've seen some forum posts about catering orcs being unsustainable. What does it take for you to have enough orcs and mana?

Mana has never been a problem for me, because I planned ahead and made sure to have plenty of buildings that I could upgrade to producing mana the second I entered the chapter (Woodelves was the old name, I can't remember what it is now - ch. 9). From there I just monitored and added buildings as needed, when I would up my tournament production or hit a particularly mana-hungry guest race. I never built the wonders to boost production or slow decay. Just didn't need 'em.
Orcs were more of a problem, although I've never been seriously in danger of running out of them. The tweaks to the LoGN that made it boost those productions was a huge boon to my hoarding tendencies. I pick up event buildings that produce orcs: I got lucky that several really good ones were made available right as I entered that chapter (Echoes of the Forgotten, and the Dwarven Ruins set). I also craft the Orc Nests in the MA. Those have been, really, my one concession to my personal preference of having as few repeated buildings as possible in my city; I have 9 Orc Nests out currently. Don't build armories for producing orcs; they are terrible in terms of efficiency, compared to event buildings on a square-per-square basis.

(cont. in next message)

 

[MaidenFair]

All that said, if you have suggestions for a low-chapter catering city, I'd love to hear them. And thanks for sharing!

A lot of my strategies were developed in a different era of Elvenar: the first chapters were arranged differently, I had access to the Spire much sooner, Spire gave out a lot more diamonds, it was easier to ignore the chapter quests if they didn't serve my plans, the wonders didn't require hard-to-get resources to build, and so on. My city was developed enough and balanced so that it has been able to weather these changes with fairly minimal disturbance, but I suspect a new city starting out may not be able to pursue the same exact strategies I did with much success now. That said, here are a few of the most important things to remember for catering:

Efficiency is king. If you don't want to do math yourself, rely on sites like iDavis or ElvenArchitect for the relative production abilities of any event buildings, or make use of my spreadsheets for manufactory levels, but in any case, make sure you're putting out the best ones you have available.

As a follow-up to that, don't place all your available expansions. Yes, I know space is tight, but it not only forces you to pay more attention to the efficiency of the buildings you're placing, but it also keeps the cost of tournament and Spire so much lower. I half-heartedly run a second city in Ceravyn. I'm in ch. 10 there, and so is the friend I play with. She has placed all or most of her available expansions, and I...have not (the city is abnormally small there because I haven't bothered to run the math on a lot of things, and simply never bothered to upgrade/place new things, lol). However, she struggles to keep a decent inventory of goods and be able to advance in the tech tree, while I can easily match her in Spire and tournament where her costs are almost twice what mine are, despite my city being completely non-optimized and having so many fewer production buildings than hers, simply because my costs are sooo much lower.

Plan ahead. Look at upcoming chapters and see what resources will be needed, and start making a plan for how you'll deal with those. In the past, I suggested stocking up on event buildings that produced those resourcess and keeping some RRs in reserve to upgrade them as soon as you enter the chapter where you'll need those new goods. However, now that RRs are in much greater demand, that may not be a useful strategy for a smaller city. Planning ahead is still good, though.

Don't assume that bigger is better. This applies to the city size, manufactories, the Main Hall, and AWs especially. I already explained about expansions, and touched on the concept with manufactories, but it's also important to make sure that every AW level serves you. Because their upgrades are on a curve, the later levels don't provide as much benefit as the early levels do, but they increase your spire and tourney costs just as much. Make sure they're working for you, not against you, and as much as it hurts to say it...don't be afraid to scrap one if necessary. I have deleted AWs that were in the high teen levels before when I realised they were no longer working for my strategy.
Also, it is really only necessary to upgrade the Main Hall if your cap won't be big enough to do the next techs in the research tree (another place to apply planning ahead). Until then, it's just a population and culture eater, and because it's non-delete-able, every time you level it, that population and culture are gone for good, which is really hard for a newer city to support.

Climb the Spire, early and often. This is probably less helpful advice than before, since Spire is now available later in the tech tree than it was, and also with the new Spire changes that were just announced to be in the works, it may be even less useful. **sigh** However, I built my city on Spire rewards: diamonds let me build RRs in the MA when I wasn't getting them fast enough from tournament, winning MR and MWs made my city immensely more efficient, I always had plenty of timers and CCs and Spell Fragments when other cities at my level were struggling.


I could go on, but I'm approaching novelette status already, so I'll end here for now. I'm happy to add more or discuss particular facets of catering, if you like! Hope this advice isn't too late to help, and my apologies again for such a tardy response!

 

[MaidenFair]

In tourney, I do fight half the time, and I've maxed 6 armories to be able to do it. I would still much rather cater all of it, but if I want to break 6K on tourney then there's nothing for it; I have to fight. (I'm in Chapter 19).

When I started this game, they said there were two paths, catering and fighting. They should have said that there were two paths IF you don't want to get to the highest levels of tourney and IF you aren't in the top chapters. But then I suppose I shouldn't blame them too much for that, since when I joined they didn't have the higher chapters that make it impossible to compete with the fighters. Still, for anyone willing to stay at around 4K in tourney every week, and who still wants to climb the spire to the top weekly, yes, it is possible to cater, in my humble opinion.

Just wanted to clarify for anyone else reading the thread, that's probably true for a city that wasn't built specifically with catering in mind. Almost at the end of chapter 16, I'm still doing over 8k in tournament and topping the Spire every week on catering. I'll admit my inventory isn't super happy with that since the major increase of research costs in chapter 15, but I also did this chapter in a quick 3 months, while simultaneously dealing with the great decrease in incoming goods due to the nerfing of the BTG, so it's still sustainable for the nonce. Now, I don't think I could put up 20k+ points to *literally* compete with the top server tournament scores (at least not without completely depleting my inventory and ability to progress in the game, although I kind of want to try it once just for one wild hurrah, LOL), so if someone's goal is consistently having *the* highest tournament scores on their server, than yes, fighting would be necessary; however, 8100 is an even share of a 20 chest tourney, and I finish in the top 100 tourney scorers most weeks, despite my ranking being 2245, lol. Feels competitive enough to me. I also have not put much work into the city in, oh, probably the whole last year, and I'm sure I could tweak it better if I did.

 

[Meadowlark]

Pursuant to @MaidenFair's comments regarding looking at the total footprint of a building (counting culture and population requirements) and the expense of t3 factories, I'd like to highlight the evolving building in the upcoming Marine Marvels event (Puff's Nautical Theater) for players around chapters 4-8. The building takes up the same amount of space as the "advanced" t3 gems factory and produces more than the factory would -- and adds culture and population rather than taking it away.

The building also produces orcs at higher levels, which is going to be handy. I don't know how useful it is at really high chapters, but in those mid-chapter levels it seems to meet criteria for efficiency. I'm going to make a significant effort in this event.

 

[Darielle]

Just wanted to clarify for anyone else reading the thread, that's probably true for a city that wasn't built specifically with catering in mind. Almost at the end of chapter 16, I'm still doing over 8k in tournament and topping the Spire every week on catering. I'll admit my inventory isn't super happy with that since the major increase of research costs in chapter 15, but I also did this chapter in a quick 3 months, while simultaneously dealing with the great decrease in incoming goods due to the nerfing of the BTG, so it's still sustainable for the nonce. Now, I don't think I could put up 20k+ points to *literally* compete with the top server tournament scores (at least not without completely depleting my inventory and ability to progress in the game, although I kind of want to try it once just for one wild hurrah, LOL), so if someone's goal is consistently having *the* highest tournament scores on their server, than yes, fighting would be necessary; however, 8100 is an even share of a 20 chest tourney, and I finish in the top 100 tourney scorers most weeks, despite my ranking being 2245, lol. Feels competitive enough to me. I also have not put much work into the city in, oh, probably the whole last year, and I'm sure I could tweak it better if I did.

The insane numbers of goods in 19 is the problem in catering to 8K. Although I can't remember exactly, I think the goods have doubled just in the last two chapters for each encounter. I really hate it when they want over 100K of an item in a negotiation, sometimes over 100K of each of two items, plus 70 or 80 K of something else. I don't recall, so you can probably tell me, but I don't remember any caters for more than 100K of one good in 16, and the thing is, you can't upgrade all factories in every chapter. You'll have one tier to upgrade in one chapter, another tier in the next, and another tier in the next chapter ... and the chapters are far apart. It took me 7 months to do the chapter from hell, 17. I know others have done it faster, but only when they were willing to devote a third of their city to it. For caterers who need those factories, that's nearly impossible. When you can't produce more goods from the factories, but have to pay double the goods, it's tough. I remember when I thought chapter 16 was hard. Chapter 17 is a nightmare beyond proportion. I don't want to discourage anyone, but there isn't a single fellowship member (and several are going through it right now) who don't say it's the worst chapter by far.

The only good news is that 18 is definitely better, as far as getting through it.

 

[Pheryll]

It took me 7 months to do the chapter from hell, 17.

Fortunately now, a level 19 Blooming Trader Guild gives the same settlement bonus as a level 30 one did previously, and chapter 17 is all about having settlement bonuses turn a profit in the exchange of settlement goods.

 

[iamthouth]

Ch21, catering costs for Tournament province 28-1


And for 26-3

 

[MaidenFair]

The insane numbers of goods in 19 is the problem in catering to 8K. Although I can't remember exactly, I think the goods have doubled just in the last two chapters for each encounter. I really hate it when they want over 100K of an item in a negotiation, sometimes over 100K of each of two items, plus 70 or 80 K of something else. I don't recall, so you can probably tell me, but I don't remember any caters for more than 100K of one good in 16, and the thing is, you can't upgrade all factories in every chapter. You'll have one tier to upgrade in one chapter, another tier in the next, and another tier in the next chapter ... and the chapters are far apart. It took me 7 months to do the chapter from hell, 17. I know others have done it faster, but only when they were willing to devote a third of their city to it. For caterers who need those factories, that's nearly impossible. When you can't produce more goods from the factories, but have to pay double the goods, it's tough. I remember when I thought chapter 16 was hard.

Yes, I acknowledge, as always, that I haven't hit the very latest chapters yet, and with the new mechanics introduced (Unurium, Community Work, Ascended Goods etc.), it may not be possible to continue at the level I have been through those. However, I've gotten 3 years of solid play out of catering, and it *has* been fine up through ch. 16; when I started and mentioned that I wanted to try not fighting, I got inundated with advice telling me it wasn't possible past chapter 8! I can't guarantee it's possible all the way to the end of game, but I can guarantee it's possible well past where people told me it wasn't. Potential caterers get a lot of cold water thrown on them, and I want to make sure they know they can play that way at least for a very long time, quite happily.

Also, re: the goods required doubling...MinMax's spreadsheets unfortunately don't go past 17, so unless some other math whiz out there wants to do more data gathering, we are rather in the dark about how the formula works in later chapters. However, unless there's a logarithmic progression of the chapter techs increasing the difficulty, that wouldn't be solely due to being in later chapters, it would also be an amalgam of wonder levels and expansions added, which, if kept to a minimum, should produce a less drastic increase in catering costs. Like I said though, that is all guesswork, since MinMax's data doesn't cover the uppermost chapters.

Chapter 17 is a nightmare beyond proportion. I don't want to discourage anyone, but there isn't a single fellowship member (and several are going through it right now) who don't say it's the worst chapter by far.

The only good news is that 18 is definitely better, as far as getting through it.

I am definitely not looking forward to 17. My BTG is at 32, so I'm helping that will help, but still...eep! lol Small mercies, though, the cost for regular goods is down by a huge amount from 16, which I'm sure my inventory levels will be much happier with. XD

 

[Darielle]

Just an example ... this is not a high level province. It's the third star towards the bottom of the third page of the provinces. If you want to just get through the first 25 provinces every week, then believe me, it gets much, much worse than this by the time you reach the last star.