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Player A Viking in Egypt - Spanning the Worlds

RichinZhills

Corporal
Hello and thanks for stopping by. I started playing FOE about the same time Covid broke out. Gameplay was on the slowside, so I ended up adding a few more worlds. Now up to 12 worlds on the EN server and just joined the Beta server for advanced event experience.

A lot of guilds require you to be active in the guild, setting expectations for the Expedition [GE], or Battleground [GbG] participation. Since I jump around a lot, I'm not always able to comply, so I'm only a member of a few guilds, in the other worlds, I've basically created my own Guild ✴️ Omnis Facies ✴️ to do GE/GbG when I can.

But spanning worlds have given me a lot of access to different guilds, play styles, and information I'd like to share. Maybe some of this you'll find helpful if you're just starting.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
So this may jump around a bit, each post will have a title, so if it's something you may be looking for, give it a read. Keep in mind that my play style is more quantity over quality/focus. Meaning that each of my cities only get a little bit of time. Players with just one world will definitely progress faster and father as all their effort goes into their one city. So a one-world player may have a Level 80 Arc, but I may have 12 Level 10 Arcs. But the great thing about FOE is that it's whatever you want it to be.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Chapter 1: A new Land
The wind, from the east, was brisk and steady and pushed the longship forward. Up ahead, just a black smudge on the horizon lay their new home. Bjorn had chosen well, his scouts said this was a ripe, workable shore where a new settlement could prosper. He looked forward to the challenge.
Aboard we're a hand-chosen group of adventurers he had grown up with. Some were fighters, forgers, explorers, farmers, miners, and a few artisans. Most simply wanted a fresh start and all were enthusiastic about getting their own land and starting their life. Bjorn knew that nothing was that simple though. The Land was always something to seek out and fight for, and even though this land was granted to him, he'd still have to defend his right to own it. He looked at a few of his generals, he knew he'd have to depend on them to start training his army as soon as possible.
As he looked around, he noticed a small group of advisors. He wasn't quite sure what to make of them, but they seemed to understand the arts of negotiation and didn't take offense easily. They said the latter was necessary when dealing with other Clan Leaders, as insults were considered likely and without the ability to ignore them, fighting would always be inevitable. By getting past the insults, pacts & agreements that could be made, Guilds could be established for the betterment of Trade, and there would always be those who felt that force was the only answer.
Ah, but he was happy, the wind died a little and both the men and women took down the oars. The Drummer started a slow enough beat to allow everyone to get into sync. He felt the odd vibrations diminish as all oars started to cut the water in a smooth progression. A sense of pride filled him up and elated him. These were his friends and comrades and he felt there were none a finer group who ever sailed the seas. The Drummer slowly increased his beat and everyone began singing, it was a good omen.
After a few days, land appeared on the horizon, what would he find there? He wondered. He watched as the shore grew, there was a nice harbor and he tasked the helmsman to make for it. He noticed a river not far from that and saw a wide area with sparse trees. This would be his new home.
It was all he hoped it would be! Everything seemed plentiful and his people were happy. Everyone pitched in to build the Townhall, it would be central to the survival of the expedition. Once that was complete, it was time to get busy building. More people were on the way, so living quarters would need to be built. And though everything was plentiful, his artisans needed supplies. His scouts were already out and about looking for resources. There were a few local barons around, but with proper planning, he could bribe them or simply try to beat the local garrisons guarding the land. Yes, this would do. It would do nicely...
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Starting your World:
If anything, this game is about balance. If you have too much or not enough of one thing, that will affect yet a third thing. You'll need supplies and gold to produce goods and to build things. You'll need goods to trade and negotiate. You'll need a happy population to work for these supplies and goods. And all these people will need homes which will also cost gold and supplies to build.
Past the basics, you'll also start earning Forge Points (fps). These are used for researching new technologies and also improving (leveling) Great Buildings (GBs). They're not a currency per se, but you can exchange them with other players by contributing them to their GBs. This is done when trading for higher Aged goods you can't produce. So you basically trade what goods you can produce for these higher Aged goods and give that player a number of fps on their GBs to conclude the trade. That's why you'll see players in the early Ages possessing GB's from several Ages beyond where they are. This is mainly done in your Guild, but you can always ask in the Global Chat for anyone willing to trade.

Stone Age:
It's where everyone begins. After you completed your first research into the Bronze age following through the tutorial, you were rewarded with fireworks and an upgraded Townhall. You learned the basics of building new structures, connecting them to roads, moving them around. And even though you researched a new building or technology, those buildings are greyed out and you can't build them. This is part of the balance of the game. You'll need gold, supplies, and population as well as room to build new buildings.

Houses:
Throughout each Age you progress, you'll get different types of houses. Some will build in little or no time, but in higher ages, may take hours to complete. You will also get Quests (Story, Daily, or Event) that may ask you to build a certain type of house or to have a certain level of population. Houses can accomplish this, but the population can also be adjusted by building or selling supply, goods, or military buildings (more on this later).
Space will always be an issue, so generally speaking, the more population you can fit into a smaller space the better.
Only build houses with the highest population, this will allow for more goods & supply buildings.

Supplies:
Here too you'll find different types. The output is usually based on the hour and size of the building. Keep in mind that no matter how much a building "can" make, if you don't collect from it, it just sits there. Usually, the biggest buildings come closer to the end of an Age research-wise. So when you just enter a new Age, those newer buildings are smaller and make less. Sometimes they make much less than the bigger buildings from the previous Age. But always consider the size. One-to-One they may not compare, but you may be able to fit 2 or 3 of the newer, smaller buildings into the same space as the larger building. Now it's more economical to sell that older building and build several of the new, smaller buildings.
If in question, divide the number of squares a building takes up by its 1hr production:
-Hunter= 9 spaces, 34/hr, so 3.78/space
-Pottery=12 spaces, 50/hr, so 4.17/space
-Fruit Farm= 20 spaces, 130/hr, so 6.5/space
-Blacksmith= 4 spaces, 32/hr, so 8/space.
But before you sell all your big buildings to replace them with Blacksmiths, there's also that balance thing I mentioned. This comes in the form of Aid from friends, guildmates, and neighbors (more on this later), but understand that when someone Aids a building, they double its production. So you'll need four times as many friends to visit and Aid your blacksmiths instead of just one for a fruit farm.

Goods:
These are based on a three-tier system. First, you'll need to uncover which good you can produce out on the Continent, then you'll have to research the building to make it in, then you'll actually have to build the building. The good thing is that these buildings are usually some of the first technologies you can research. The bad thing is you can only produce those two goods you find on the continent. Although you can research and build the other three goods buildings, you take a production hit even though they cost the same amount to produce. So it's much better to produce more of the goods you can and trade for the others. And speaking of Trade...

Trading:
This brings up the "Fair Trade" Topic. In the lower Ages up through Colonial, it's generally considered to be a fair trade if your trading one for one in the same Age. So you can trade 10 Lumber for 10 Wine, and that's considered fair. But you may need goods from advanced or past Ages. It's also considered fair to trade two for one into the next Age, and one for two into the past Age. So that 10 Lumber is fairly traded for 5 Iron. That 5 Iron is fairly traded for 10 Wine. Past this is Advantage/Disadvantage Trades and most Guilds frown on this. Your friends may also not keep you around if you're always trying to take advantage of them, or disadvantage as the case may be.
Advantage trades are those usually made by higher Aged players to those in lower Ages. Usually to assist that player in building a GB they don't have goods for. The lower Aged player will create the unfair/Advantage trade according to the agreement. This can be anything, but usually, it's a two-for-one Bronze Age good for the advanced Age good with negotiation on how many fps may also be needed.
Higher Aged players may also just post Disadvantage (to them) trades to help out other guildmates. These also can range from a one to two for lower Aged goods spanning several Ages. As an example, a Colonial player may offer 20 Paper, for 40 Salt. Normally trading down, the 20 Paper would be 40 Late Middle Age (LMA) goods, which would trade down to 80 High Middle Age (HMA) goods, or 80 Salt. But the max limit in the market is two to one or one to two.
So the frowning usually falls upon lower Aged players trying to trade up more than one Age without a prior agreement. Most fair trade guilds have a trade thread that other members may just click to accept the trade. When disadvantage trades are placed in there, some guildmates feel cheated and will report this to the leaders or founders.
 
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RichinZhills

Corporal
Interacting with your World (PC):

FoE has many platforms and each does things a tiny bit differently. I'm mainly a PC player, so most of this is post is how the web browser interacts and operates. So let's take a look at your world and cover the basics:
When you first start, you'll have your Townhall and a few buildings. As you move your mouse over the screen, you can hover over things on your map to get a popup of what it is. In the upper left (and in many cases most screens) there are different selections available. If you hover, you'll get information, if you click, you'll open secondary screens that give you additional options. If you haven't already, let's do a walkthrough of changing your City Name and seeing what else we can try to break :D:
The first box in the upper left has a city icon usually followed by your player name's city. Click on this and it brings up your Townhall View Profile Tab. Here you have the basics about you as a player. You can click on the pencil under your portrait and change your city name. Don't like your avatar? Click on it or the pencil below it and select one that appeals to you a bit more. You have a little notepad under that where you can add information about yourself. Keep in mind this is public, so everyone can see what you write. You may simply want to add the date you started this world or update it with how you'll react to things that happen. Some players post how they like fp's to be added to their GB's,
The Account button will take you to another screen where you have access to your email, game name, and a few other items. You have the option to change your player name, but you'll have to keep it for about six months before changing again. This is where you can update your password and if this city was a mistake, you can delete it. It's not gone instantly, you have a few days in which to recover it if you made a mistake.
There's the Settings tab where you can configure the browser interface as well as a few other settings. If you don't like your city moving about, you can turn off animations. You'll get unattached troops that just hang around and aren't part of a military building you have. You can choose for these to show a banner so you know which ones they are. These aren't retrainable troops, once you lose them, they're gone. Attached troops can always be retrained at their military building if you lose them (more on this later).
Now close it. Click on your Townhall and the same window opens up, only this time it's on the Boosts tab. This tells you all the bonus boosts you currently have in your city.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Rich's Viking Guide
At one time I was doing 5 Settlements at a time. As you can imagine, I didn't have a lot of spare time to babysit each settlement. Going from one to another also posed issues if I followed the Questline. In short, that route just didn't work. I found that by just focusing on one Good at a time, I could move all my settlements forward at pretty much the same pace. When I finished with Axes in one, the second one would also be close. I found that this method saved a lot of time and cut down on how many times I needed to build each settlement.

So at its core, you'll have 3 or 4 goods buildings just making one good, you may have 1 odd building producing goods to unlock the building of the next good (i.e. You may have 3 Smiths and 1 Brewery making goods to unlock your Hunter). Enough Shrines to produce coins to keep your 4 goods buildings going, and enough population for the shrines & goods buildings.
At its peak, you want your settlement to have 12 expansions (4 initial & 8 purchased), 4 Goods buildings, 10+ Shrines, and 6 huts.

Day 1:
If you have impediments, your buildings will have to work around them. You may need an expansion or two to catch up or you'll need to get creative placing your buildings. Below is a typical starting city:
NewSettlement.jpg
This has no impediments, so it allows for immediate placement of shacks, roads, and runestones:
Quests1to4.jpg
When the shacks & runestones finish, you can go to your Quests and complete 1-4. Once this is done, sell your runestones and add your second Smith:
1stHour.jpg
After your first hour, both Smiths are ready to produce, go ahead and set these both for 8hr productions. You'll have two shack collections before the Axes are done. For those of you who have drawing programs, they can be a big help. I use OpenOffice which is free and has a drawing program included. I've taken some screenshots and made cutouts of all the Viking buildings. I set up my grid to match the settlement and exact building sizes:
OpenOfficeHelp.jpg
I mark which expansions I want to purchase, place the impediments, and build my settlement ahead of time. That way I can move my buildings around to give me the most production I can. This is very handy if you have to work around impediments as you may see a configuration and try it out before having to touch your settlement. In this picture, I've already chosen which two expansions I'll purchase as well as what my shack, smiths, and shrines will look like.
So once my Axes finished, I simply build my settlement as pictured and continue on:
RushingIt.jpg.

Resources:
These play an important factor in your order of production. My first consideration is Mead when starting, those are bigger buildings and require less population, so that may allow an extra shrine. Arranging my city around the bigger buildings first also allows for an easier transition when I start on Axes or Horns, those 3x3's will fit in the Brewery's 3x4, but not the other way around.
ResourceStrategy.jpg
In this playthrough, Axes have the majority, and wool is also pretty high. This simply means that I'll need at least 2 days for Wool, so I may need to rush the questline a little bit faster to unlock Wool sooner. But since Mead & Horns are very close, and my mead will be counting down as I produce more to unlock the Beast Hunter, I may only need two Breweries by the time I get all 12 expansions.

Faster Coins:
You'd think that the longer something produced, the more it would make. In FoE, the opposite seems true and can be compared to tables at a resturant. The longer one couple sits and eats, the less money the restaurant makes. That same table could have 3 or 4 couples in the same time period and quadruple the money. Same with Shrines:
ShrineMath.jpg
In 5 minutes a Shrine can make 16 coins which doesn't seem like much compared to 113/hr, or even 449 in 8hrs. But let's compare:
You can make 12 5m collections in an hour, so 16 coins x 12 collections = 192 Coins/hr, 768 coins/4hrs, 1536 coins/8hrs
You can make 4 15m collections in an hour, so 38 coins x 4 collections = 152 Coins/hr, 608 coins/4hrs, 1216 coins/8hrs
You can make 1 1hr collection, so 1 x 113 = 113 coins/hr, 452 coins/4 hrs, 904 coins/8 hrs
At 4hrs, you get 300, 600 at 8hrs.
And at 8hrs, you get 449.
So by cleaning your tables faster, you can get almost 4x the number of coins in 8hrs doing 5-minute productions. This is also a way to catch up if you fall behind and need more coins. Just go to shorter production times.

I need a drink:
So as you rush your few shrines to keep up with your goods, you will only be able to keep up with the 4hr productions initially. Meaning you'll only be able to produce 2k of coins in those first few 4 hours. So as soon as you get enough Axes, buy your third expansion and add two more shrines (which will require two more shacks). You're basically at 1 for 1 right now, you need 1 shack for every 1 shrine. But you'll max this out at about 6 shrines.
So now my settlement looks something like this:
TwoforTwo.jpg
To get all 6 shrines, I had to move the bulk of my shacks offroad. If you can't keep up with the 5-minute productions, then it's probably better to keep it down to just 5 shrines with most of your shacks still making coins. The shacks can sometimes meet the gap your 15 or 1hr collections will leave.
Eventually, you will get enough Axes to unlock your Brewery. You should have enough shrines to give you the culture, but if not, sell one Smith, build enough runestones in the space, unlock the Brewery, then build it. I had already mapped this out in my drawing and found I couldn't hit all 6 shrines, so I also sold a shrine and a shack to allow me to reconnect 8 shacks:
BreweryBuild.jpg
So now that I have both Mead & Axes coming in, my next steps will be to add my next two expansions using Mead. This should allow me to add back in 4 or 5 more shrines and allowing me to go to longer production times. I'll cover that in my next post.
 

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RichinZhills

Corporal
We need more Land!
So with the first mead collection, we can add our 4th expansion. By moving my shacks offroad again, I'm able to get 7 Shrines while keeping 4 shacks still on the Road. We're still dealing with the 1 for 1 shack to the shrine, but the extra expansions help with that:
Quest6.jpg
There's one more expansion to be purchased with Mead and then we'll be onto Quest 7 having huts. This will be a major city rebuild, and it will also include the first impediment. From the start I had already planned which expansions I wanted, so I knew beforehand I'd be dealing with a total of 3 single ones. So going to the drawing program, I removed all the shacks and converted them to my 5 initial huts and hopefully 10 shrines:
Quest7.jpg
I may only get 9 due to population, but that still puts me at 144 coins/5 minutes or 1728 coins/hour. This is the time to start stockpiling coins. Your two goods buildings won't need that much, so you can get into the 15-20K coin range by the time you get enough Axes/Mead to unlock your Beast Hunter. Once that's unlocked and you get your next expansions, you'll add another hut and your two last goods buildings. Then it's just a race to finish them off one at a time.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
⛳ Guild Expedition ⛳
This starts about every week and runs for about 6 days. It consists of 4 levels, 12 encounters, 4 temples, and 16 reward alters. The temples all have 2 waves of attack, but only 1 negotiation. Most encounters are only 1 wave attacks, however, in the higher GE levels, some have two waves. You have 8 initial turns when the GE starts and these regenerate 1 per hour. There are extra turns in some of the rewards, so you can keep going. You can also purchase extra turns with medals and that price grows exponentially.
You have two options to complete an encounter either fight or negotiate. This is where having a completed Friends Tavern helps. You can purchase an extra Turn for negotiations or extra attack %. Keep in mind that the goods you negotiate come out of your inventory. So keep an eye on your stock so you don't run out. GE4 can cost a lot of goods, 8 per negotiation times 5 people, times 4 attempts, so easily 200 goods per attempt.
Throughout the GE, you'll receive rewards, in the higher levels you can win 50-100 diamonds on some encounters. You can also pick up the terrace farm & its upgrade, two small decorations that when upgraded give your troops a boost, and a few other items.
In the top center of the screen, you'll see the Guild's Ranking and its current contribution. If you click on either, the Ranking will show you the other Guilds we are competing against, and the contribution will show the Guildmember's participation.
The GE relates to each player in several ways. The first is actually opening up the GE levels after 1. The game computes a number of goods according to each player's Age and how many guild members there are. So even if you don't play, it costs goods to open the levels. And it's not your current Age that the goods are pulled from, it's the previous Age with Iron being the lowest.
The second way GE relates is to the Guilds overall Level. You can find this by clicking on the 2nd tab (3 heads) and selecting Level in the Guild window. After each GE finishes, that contribution gets added to the Guilds Level, if we place in the Top #3, our contribution gets the additional reward points. This is where those FP's in the Townhall are determined. The higher the level, the more FP's you'll get each day. There are additional rewards as well that aren't as visible but also aid the player. Support pool which is assistance out on the Guild vs. Guild grounds, Recruitment bonus which cuts down on the time it takes to train your units (your Traz won't need 24hrs to respawn due to this bonus), and the Building rebate which makes it cheaper to build buildings. The Prestige we have determines our World Ranking (2nd box upper left with the Green Wreath).
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Terms or Useful Tips:

Circular Trades
These are two equal trades for the same two goods.
The purpose is to complete Daily Challenges/Special Event quests that ask to collect or trade x amount of goods. This type of trade completes that quest.
Please try to use Bronze Goods and accept both trades if they're equal and for the same goods.

An easy way to identify friends who don't aid:
>Aid everyone in your Events tab first, that's usually about a week's worth of Social Interactions.
>Go through your friend's list on the Social tab at the bottom. Anyone with the Aid button highlighted hasn't aided you in a week. Just visit the Tavern one last time then remove them. Don't Aid them yet, if they're in your neighborhood, it will change the Aid button to 24hr and you might resend them another friend invitation.
>Now go through the neighborhood, and add anyone showing the 24/hr. These are players who go through and just aid their neighborhood looking for gold/bp's, so it's good to have them as friends.
>You can also look through the Guild tab, kind of a way to see which guildmates aid and those that don't :)
>Since neighborhoods are balanced and you'll only be adding neighbors from your age, you might visit the Global tab (green wreath) and send out a few invites to higher level players that have GB's you might want BP's from. It's a longer process, but you can find players that aren't in guilds, so no threads to worry about, and a lot may be self-levelers so there isn't much competition for their prints.
--Keep in mind that polishing & visiting may not be the only thing to look for in a Friend, do they take your trades, can you get blueprints from some of their GB's, do they contribute to yours. Were they one of those that attack everyone in the neighborhood? Maybe you friended them simply to avoid them pillaging you. Who knows, but if they have a fully developed tavern and you get coins or FP's when you visit them, or blueprints when you aid/polish them, they're not a bad friend.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Decorations & Culture Buildings - Basic
While Happiness is very important to city growth & production, having too many decorations or cultural buildings can have a detrimental effect on your overall growth:
-Decorations/Culture Buildings will usually get buffed first when friends/neighbors/guildmates visit. So your supply/home/event buildings may not be double producing or protected from pillage.
-Try for the minimum number of high happiness buildings. Use a bath instead of two Taverns. Possibly sell a house if you have a huge population but low happiness.
-Check your Happiness first before collecting gold or supplies. Possibly adding a temporary decoration or selling a house might be enough to get you to the 120% output level.
-Upgrade your Roads. Newer roads will add happiness to your city. If you keep up with your Storyline, one of the first few side quests you receive should be Build x amount of xx roads. So you may wait a few quests after you gain the new road type to see if you can get additional rewards by upgrading.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Combat - Basic
Unless you have a lot of offensive/defensive buffs, never use auto-battle. Follow the guide below and you should become very efficient at fighting and keeping your units alive:
After you determine what your best units are using the Combat Circle [ Heavy -> Light -> Fast -> Ranged/Artillery -> Heavy], drink any +% attack potions you may have & try using your Tavern attack buffs. If you have a Color Guard or Drummer, they can make a big difference, just tuck them into a corner on their move instead of bringing them out to battle. Click on attack :)
-Fast Units will usually always get the first move. So the mounted units usually start it off. If you're battling mounted archers, I found it best to have as many rogues/light units for those as you can. They'll usually always score the 1st hit. As mentioned, Rogues, Color Guards, Drummers are highly targeted, so play to that and use them as bait or to have the enemy waste their first attack on them.
-When it's your turn, you can hover the mouse over each enemy unit to see where it can move/attack next. Heavy color is their move, and that lighter color is squares they can attack. If you can avoid it, never move into these squares first. You want to have the 1st attacks & as many of those as possible. >>Ranged units come in real handy here. They can usually gang up on fast units before the light/heavy units come into range. Against fast/heavy armies you can usually kill everything without getting hit. Stay one square away to avoid revenge hits and use the rocks & terrain features if you can. When you attack, back out to where the enemy unit is on the outside edge of your attack. Keeps you out of range of the other units attacking next.
-Try to avoid attacking Rogues if there are other units to kill first. Even if it means sacrificing a unit. Focus on killing the other units first, then the rogues are all killed with 1 shot or hit.
Good Hunting!
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Antique Dealer - Basic
This is a good place to obtain parts and upgrades for special buildings as well as the odd decoration or two. You have two screens in here Exchange & Outcome, you toggle between the two by clicking on the round circles.
-The Exchange
First, you'll need to gather coins. You do this by clicking on the Exchange button. Initially, you'll only have 1 slot available to place items in. If you click on the next tab's grey x, you'll see how many exchanges you'll need to open another slot (Some of the special events tasks may be to exchange x amount of items at the Antique Dealer, so having two or three slots open will aid you there).
Once you click on the open slot, your inventory will open and show you any items you haven't locked and can exchange. Select which item you want to sell and select how long you want the item to post for. Longer times increase your return. Once time has elapsed, you'll see a grey exclamation point on the Antique Dealer, go back in exchange to collect your coins.
-The Outcome
This is a fixed price/auction area of the Antique Dealer. By obtaining coins, you can try to outright purchase any item for sale, or you can try to win an auction. Auctions usually take around 2 hours. When you first visit, you'll see the countdown timer start anywhere from 1:59 to 1:51 usually. There is an initial starting price, but there is also a strategy you can use.
-Winning Strategy
Any bid made within the last 30 seconds automatically resets the timer back to 30 seconds, so there is no chance to win waiting for the last second to bid. But, you can also win by simply adding 1 more coin to the item if no one else is watching. A lot of players initially bid on an item, but simply forget to check back on their bid. If you can set a timer for 2-3 minutes before the auction ends, you can come back to see if there is any action. If it gets down to a minute or so and no one has increased the bit, you might have a great chance of winning.
Simply wait until the timer gets to about 33 seconds, then bid 1 more than the current offer. As was mentioned, if anyone bids within 30 seconds, the timer resets. This will let you know you're actually bidding against another active player and it'll be up to you on how many coins you want to spend. But if no one bids in that 30 seconds, the Auction gets finalized and you've won it!
-Recommendations
Some items are upgrades to buildings or the building itself. Some of these have minimal benefits at level 1, so they just take up space. It's better to hold onto these and try to win more upgrades so when you do build it, you can immediately upgrade it to a higher level. If you find you have a building you can't upgrade yet, don't sell it. Try to store it back into your inventory. That way when you do get the upgrades, you can place it again at a higher reward rate.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Story, Daily & Recurring Quests - Basic
From time to time an Advisor will show up in your Story tab and offer you a reward for completing one type of task or another. In the Story tab these may be "Story" or "Recurring" quests. "Story" quests are usually required quests you'll need to complete to move the story forward. They won't have an "Abort" button, so they'll need to be completed. Other "Recurring" quests are simply cycled quests that loop around. You can Abort these quests and get another one. Some are easier than others and usually show some type of Random Reward. The rewards for these quests are adjusted by the GB Chateau Frontenac modifier.
Your Daily quests will only be available on a 24hr clock. When one expires, the next one starts, whether you start it or not. If you start it too late, you may not be able to complete it due to it requiring production goods you just don't have time for (i.e. you have 6 hours left, but it asks for 10x 8hr productions). So unless you have rush potions, it's best just to wait for the next one. You do have the option of modifying the start time. You can add or subtract a few hours to have it coincide with your city collection. If you subtract too many hours, it will still change the time, but add 24hrs to it so the next challenge will start at the time you selected the day after.
After you complete 7 Daily Quests, you win the Challenger's Chest. If you hover over it, it will show you the prizes and their probabilities.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Incidents - Basic
Incidents are those random events that pop up on your land from time to time. Some are really easy to find as they're on a grassy field and have a halo when you mouse over them. Others, like the SOS in the sand, may blend really well into the background. Then there are the fallen trees in the streets. Some are easy to spot, but if they're obscured by your buildings they are easily missed.
A quick simple method is to go into your Build Menu, click on your Move icon, then simply move your mouse along your roads. The buildings fade allowing you to see your streets and possible trees blocking the roads. This may come in handy during events when the quest asks you to collect x amount of incidents.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Viking Collections - Change of Plans:
If you want to finish as fast as possible, you'll need to be flexible on your plans, and by the way, have a plan. It's just good practice.
So on this last collection, I received a 4x in Axes. That actually gave me enough Axes to unlock both the Huts & Hunter which is my current plan. I want to unlock the Hunter and get enough Horns to unlock my last expansions.
AxesHutsHunters.jpg
So as you can see I currently have 83 Axes, my Huts will cost 24, and my Hunter another 48, so that's 72 Axes out of 83 and I'm covered. However, my mead is a lot behind at only 15 and needs 49 for both advancements. With only one Mead, that's another 4 x 8hr productions. By selling my Smith and adding another Brewery, I can now cut that time in half.
Updateon7.jpg
So with a little shuffling, I'm able to keep 7 shrines, but after selling the Smith, I had enough population where I could also sell a shack. Doing so created a little more space so I could add roads in. This allowed for 5 shacks to now producing coins. I'm still just barely keeping up, but now I get an 8hr production in there as well as the 4hrs. On the flip side:
UpdatedHuts.jpg
I had to go back to my drawing program to allow for the bigger Brewery. By moving things around I found I can still get 10 shrines in there with the 5 huts and 2 Breweries. All that's left will be swapping one of those with a Hunter when I get it, purchasing those next 3 expansions, selling the Hunter, adding 1 more hut and three Breweries (remember their the biggest, so getting rid of them first means the following buildings will fit without modifying the settlement).

*You may be saying they're not the biggest, the wool farm is, and you're right. But in this strategy, I group the wool farms in with the final settlement configuration. I may carry over an Axe or Hunter if I can use it on the final quest, but the wool configuration will usually be cut down to the 4 wool farms, 4 huts, two markets. By that time, you should have enough coins stocked up to complete the final quest (usually 6k as one wool farm will already be in production for the last quest), and only need the two markets to complete the 2k Coin quest at the end. Once all wool is done, you'll sell the three farms, build totems everywhere, unlock all buildings, then rush to quest 19.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Tavern Development
The Tavern provides several bonus boosts that you can purchase for Tavern Coins (TC's). But some of these come with a heafty price tag. You'll also need to come up with a certain amount of TC's or filled seats to complete event quests. The only way to do this efficiently is to fully develope your Tavern.
It has five (5) areas that can be upgraded and these cost TC's. It's not hard to do, just requires that you give it a little attention to keep your seats filled, and sending those who had a few too many, home again, so more friends can visit. Each friend can visit you once in a 24hr period, but if your Tavern is full, no one else can sit.
So the first area is Chairs, this determines how many friends can visit at any one time. These max out at 16 and past the first 3, you have to purchase every one. Their cost is usually between the other 4 major upgrades.
Your Table determines how many chairs you can have. When you purchase a bigger table, you'll get two additional chairs you can now buy. After the first two upgrades, the cost is equal to the other 3 major upgrades.
Sometimes your friends make a mess and having a Tablecloth helps. The first upgrade cost 1000 TC's, the same as the others and the same as the 3rd Table upgrade. The Tablecloth gives your friends a chance to gain a forge point or two when they visit, just a way to keep them coming back.
Your collection tray is another major upgrade, the prettier it is, the more coins come in. Its first upgrade is also 1000 TC's. So this benefits you directly. When quests say to collect 1000 coins, it doesn't matter if those coins are for people or bonuses, they all amount to the same thing, a finished quest.
Your floor is the last major upgrade, this gives you a chance of getting TC's when you visit your friend's Tavern. While this is just a % chance, if you're close on a quest, visiting all your friends could result in you gaining those missing TC's. So it's not to be missed.
Since costs will be the same after the 3rd Table upgrade, it's easy just to follow a pattern when you gain enough coins:
Starting off will be: Chair, Table, Chair, Chair, [Table, Tray, Floor, Tablecloth, Chair, Chair], Table. Then start the pattern again. It's your Tavern and you can upgrade it how you like. Some events ask you to spend a certain amount of TC's. If you can, save up enough to where you can upgrade your tavern while spending those TC's instead of wasting it on a boost you may not use.
May your Tavern be full and merry!
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
City Development
Each of your cities is unique, and you may like a lot of this or that to dress them up. Keep in mind that everything you place in your city has a purpose. This post is just an opinion of how to develop your city for faster production of goods & supplies. Until you develop some of your combat GB's, negotiation is a very fast way of getting you through quests, events, GE, GbG, and challenges.
A well-balanced city looks nice and does what it's designed for. But when you're starting off, you actually want your city shifted towards production. This means you'll need a lot of people to work in your supply & goods buildings, and enough happiness to keep your production at 120%.
A good target is to have 6-8 goods buildings in your current Age, and then 2 per each lower Age. As an example, if you were in Iron Age, having 4 Iron foundries, 2 Jewelry, 1 Lumber, and 1 Stone.
When you just start, the main way for you to earn gold is through housing. These houses usually come in 3 or 4 varieties, with different times for collection, different gold, and different capacity. Always try to go for capacity over gold. The reason being, higher gold usually means, shorter collection times. So to really earn a lot of gold, you constantly need to collect. Otherwise, the gold just sits there. Waiting 4-8hrs to collect may seem like a long time, but then you only need to visit your city 2-3 times a day instead of every 15 minutes. So with higher capacity, you also gain more population for the same space.
When friends/neighbors/guildmates visit to aid/polish, decorations & culture buildings will usually get done first. So that aid/polish just increases your happiness, not your supplies or gold. We want just a few, 2-3 if you can get away with it, happiness/culture buildings. Once in Iron Age, target having 3 taverns or 3 schools until you research Baths. Then have 2-3 baths. Have enough that when they're not motivated, you're still at 120%. Then, when people visit, your houses and supply buildings get aided and you double your gold/production.
A note on early GB's. The Storyline pretty much forces you to build the Oracle, I'd advise you to sell it as you're reading this. Avoid the temptation to build any other GB except the Zeus, Lighthouse of Alexandria (LoA), Cathedral of Aachen (CoA), Castel del Monte (CdM). These 4 will be the basis for your supply & combat growth. Another bit of advice is to stay in Iron Age while you get these GB's. You won't be missing anything and it will make your game actually move faster once you establish your foundation. It'll only get harder and more expensive as you progress upward through the Ages, so don't push yourself into a wall.
Space is a premium, so try to minimize the roads you need. Place bigger buildings around the perimeter, create avenues of 4x, 6x, or 8x and stack two buildings between roads. On bigger event buildings, try placing houses or smaller buildings around them and then use just two road pieces to touch them. All buildings only require 1 bit of road to touch them, so running a road across the entire length of a building is wasting space. Your Townhall should at most only have 2-4 pieces of road touching it. The less the better.
 

RichinZhills

Corporal
Working with Timers:
I hit a wall with about 6 cities. I was lucky if I could keep them all growing and thought I bit off more than I could chew. I knew I needed some type of clock, so I tried adding one to my spreadsheet that I had for all my cities. But if you've worked with spreadsheets, you know you need to update or refresh them for formulas and macros to work. Each city also needed its own timer, so that didn't work out.
TimingIt.jpg
So what I eventually found was Alarms & Clock, a standard app in Windows. This is what I had been looking for. This allowed me to set timers for whatever I needed to be timed. I found that I could collect on-time, foiling pillagers. I could start production as soon as a building finished, and it allowed me to start more cities once I was able to get the ones I had to progress. It also allowed me to begin settlements because I could time those.
So now, instead of just trying to visit each city when I can, my timers let me know which city needs attention. This is invaluable during Events. Some cities will progress a bit faster than others. But in no way do I want a production just sitting there. So when that 8hr quest finishes, I pop in, collect, finish the quest, and reset those buildings for the next production.

So even if you're only doing one city, think about timers for your city collection, when you're Traz is ready, when your settlement goods need collecting, when it's time to check on a city that you want to pillage, the uses you'll find could make your game a bit more fun if you're not always sitting there just waiting...
 
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RichinZhills

Corporal
The Middle Days - Viking Production

So I got caught up in the Wildlife Event and missed a few screenshots. But basically, I followed my Langendorn plan after I built my Beast Masters and got enough horns to buy my last 3 expansions, so now at 12:
UpdatedHuts.jpg
So with all three goods buildings available, it was just a matter of collecting all of one good. Selling those buildings and replacing them with the next good, until all three were finished:
3goodsdone.jpg
At this point, you have all the goods to unlock up to the Wool Farms which will also include your Markets. Up to this point, with 9, 10, or 11 shrines, they were not needed. But since the Wool Farms, now the biggest goods buildings need to be built, we need more space. So two Markets and 3 or 4 shrines should give us enough coins to cover wool and the last 3 goods productions (6k coins, 2k already used on the last Wool Farm).
But our first step is to go ahead and sell our last 4 goods buildings and add in the quickest culture which is basically our shrines and runestones. At this point, you may need to sell some roads to add a few more runestones in:
SellBeastallculture.jpg
This gives us enough culture to get our Wool Farms unlocked, you'll notice some shrines aren't connected to a road and this is fine. As long as the building is completed, you can get the culture from it, even if it isn't connected. Be careful here, if you're currently on the quest to build a Market, you may want to build it, complete the quest, and see if you still have enough culture for the next quest. If not, sell the Market, add the culture back in to complete the quest:
GotCulture.jpg
So now that we've unlocked our Markets & Wool Farms, we'll sell down to "close" to our final settlement, we'll keep 5 huts at the moment and 4 shrines. We'll add in the two Markets and 4 Wool Farms, you may also decide to build your 4 totems to complete your quest with, but sell afterward - no need to let them complete:
NewMarketofWool.jpg
After the hour of construction is done, now it's just a race to collect all your wool. If you're sitting well on coins, just set everything to 8hr productions and collect. If you're tight on coins, maybe go to a 4hr, or just spend a few hours doing 5/15/1hr productions to get your coins higher.

Before you know it, and with a little luck and 4x's, your wool is done:
GoodsCompleted.jpg
Now we're into the final quests and last major city reconstruction. If you were careful with your last wool collection, you may have been able to save one. Same with your Markets (but they also add culture), you want two full 8hr collections along with your 4 huts to give you your final 2500 Coin collection. So we'll sell the other 3 wool farms. Here you may also need to get rid of some roads because we're going to go for our maximum culture:
FinalCulturetounlock everything.jpg
After the totems build, you should now be able to unlock everything, this is our first step:
everythingunlocked.jpg
The next quest is to have a Clan House, you just want to clear a big enough space for it. You'll still need to try and keep as much culture as you can. Once you have the space cleared, build it, complete the quest, and sell it:
ClanHouseDone.jpg
Next quest should auto-complete if you have enough culture, otherwise, just add some shrines or runestones in to get back enough culture. The quest after that is your Willow, which is fairly small, so build that, complete the quest, sell it:
oldwillow.jpg
You don't need culture anymore, so you can sell all your shrines, totems, and runestones. Once you have enough space, build your final Meadhall, finish the quest, and sell it. You can now go down to 4 huts - caveat here, if you're really bad on coins and don't have the 6k saved up, keep some of your shrines to do 5-minute productions while your goods buildings are constructing. These coins will count against your 2500, so that's an extra bonus. But you'll need 6k for your final 3 8hr productions:
Donewithwool.jpg
After your buildings finish constructing, set them for 8hrs, and complete your final collection when they finish:
Finishedwith1dayleft.jpg
Nothing quite like that last screen with the final collect button highlighted!
CompletedFinalQuest.jpg


So just to sum up:
-Get your first 3 goods buildings unlocked as fast as you can. You'll add 3 expansions with Axes, 2 with Mead, and 2 with Horns. Your 12th can with Horns, but if you've got a few 4x's with other goods, you might use one of those instead.
-As soon as you get huts, you should have 5 of them with 9-10 shrines depending on impediments with 2 goods buildings. It will be give and take with the shrines as your Axes & Masters require 45 people, so if you have 4 breweries first, you'll have more shrines, but as you sell them, you may need to sell shrines too, or if you have space, add a shack for the extra population.
-At 10 expansions, 6 huts, 2 Goods, 9/10/11 shrines, 11 expansions 3 goods buildings, and at 12 expansions 4 goods buildings.
-Try working on one good (4 of the same building), try doing your Mead first as these are the biggest buildings, and when you sell them the Axes & Masters will easily fit in that space.
-Focus on goods first, then worry about quests. Usually getting all your goods done will auto-complete your questlines.
Good Luck!
 

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RichinZhills

Corporal
Newest World Uceria! Started Primordial Oozers and we're not doing too bad! It was like I figured, several guilds already had their teams arranged beforehand and they've rocketed to the top. Kind of like taking a NASCAR pit crew to local car race, no way to compete. But it will always be like that, diamonds transcend boundaries! Actually spent a little money this time, and I can't complain though. If you look at what someone would spend on 1 xbox, playstation, or nintendo game, spending a bit of money on something I spend hours on every day is worth it.
Happy Hunting out there!
 
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