I would like to give some simple tips for absolute beginners. I wanted to write it in another topic (as a reply to someone), but thought "hey, the academy topic is really dead, and that's a bad thing". I learned some nice tricks here back then (like the winefield tree removal trick
), and we don't really have any resources for new players - the multiplayer mode it too damn hard without any help. So, here are my tips:
- You usually need 5 stonemasons, 4 woodcutters, and 2 sawmills
at the start
- Later you
MUST build
more woodcutters (you should have
2 woodcutters for 1 sawmill) if you don't want to have wood shortage, especially if you plan making leather weapons.
- Try to build woodcutters
far from the center of your city (even if there is no trees - they will get planted). If you have trees in the city center at start, build a woodcutter here, set it to "cut only". That is because
trees in city center mean less building space, and you need as much building space as possible!
-
Block unused wares in Storehouse: basically you can block the first 2 rows - except wood (you need to make 30-50 wood first, then you can block it), gold, wine. If you have trouble building corn-dependent buildings fast enough, you can also not block corn. All this blocking makes your serfs much more effective.
- After (or while) building the necessary woodcutters, the
first thing you need is gold - you need to have at least
2 goldmines, 2 coalmines, 2 metallurgists(gold smelters) and 2 schools.
- Depending on how much gold you have at start, you might consider making the
second school at start. If you have much gold, you can make it while building stonemasons, if not, you can build it after metallurgist.
- Your school(s) need to
CONSTANTLY be used. If the schools are not making anything, make
more serfs and builders. If you have 60 starting gold, you can make
~25 serfs and ~20 builders before you have gold production (that's a safe amount). When your gold production is up and running (when you have ~20 gold in storehouse) you should make
much more serfs and maybe some more builders. Most players play with
30 builders and at least 70 serfs, the faster you produce them, the faster your city will be. Of course you need to have a good food production then, but with that much serfs and builders, building farms will be also much faster.
-if you have difficulty making enough food and army - try making
bread only for the start (bread production needs less corn than swinefarms, and is much faster), if the map has fish then make
2 fisherhuts, if not then build
2 vineyards (each one needs 9 winefields, so you need to have ~18 wood for that, plus the wood for the buildings themself). This should be enough to rush for iron. (I usually make swines so I'm not sure how many farms and bread makers you need if you play like that, anyone could tell me, so I can update this message?)
-a good iron army production has at least
3 iron mines, 2-3 iron smithys, 2 weapon smithys and 2 armor smithys.
-If you can't make food and army fast enough for the peacetime,
don't bother with making food. I know this is a bad practice and some guys here are going to argue with me there, but an army without food is still better than much food but no army.
-if you make
only one type of food, you need 2-3 Inns - or the serfs won't be quick enough to bring that one type to 1 Inn, and your city will be hungry even if you have 100 sausages...
-make your buildings with sense. If you just built one iron mine, you should build metallurgist as fast as possible, the second and third iron mine can wait. Also, think about delivery times when planning a city. It's better to build weapon workshop near sawmill, not near barracks - serf needs to go from sawmill to workshop twice, but from workshop to barracks once. Similar for butcher/bakery, but this time you need to build them near... Inn. Why? Because bringing one pig from the swinefarm takes just a one serf, but taking 3 sausages from butcher to the Inn requires 3 serfs. It's better if they walk a short distance here.
-one building needs one coal mine. If you build 2 metallurgists, 2 iron smithys, 2 weapon smithys, 2 armor smithys, you need AT LEAST
8 coal mines. I'd build 9 though to be sure.
I am open to comments and will edit out the post if someone tells me that something might be done better
