Fair trade is always a contentious topic, even more so when it comes up after a guild is already well established. In one of my guilds there's been a long standing (and in my opinion pointless) 'compromise' that both common systems, "cost-of-production" and "2:1 1 age difference only" are acceptable. It occasionally causes confusion and for me often a source of irritation as in helping out I may wind up screwed both ways. There's nothing worse than someone complaining that no one wants their 1:2 down-trade when the person accepting would then turn around and be expected to fill someone else's 5:4 up-trade with the goods they just received. It defeats the point of having a fair trade rule at all. So what is the point of a fair trade rule?
There are those who feel they have an innate sense of what's fair and are therefore thoroughly offended that anyone would want a system other than the one they have in mind. To them having a fair trade rule is about playing with good people who would never try to screw them. I don't really feel ANY fair trade rule accomplishes that but it's one viewpoint that has to be considered.
Personally, my original acceptance of fair trade was based on the idea that in a fluid market where I was always able to efficiently trade back my excesses of a good for other goods made it easier for me to help people. I'd regularly clear the entire guild market of trades and then post trades myself that would restore balance to my goods. This worked fine for a good while. Everyone buys in, people try to target their goods either to produce a balance of both their boosts, or a single good that the guild is short on and everyone got the goods they need. So what changed?
A few things happened. The first is stratification of the ages of players. In the upper ages the fluidity was lost. There were goods that were genuinely short and had no-one yet able to help out with supplying the shortage or oversupplied and helpers were unable to avoid massive stockpiles. I was able to help with this somewhat by using recurring quests to supply my goods and provide a little of everything but ultimately this mostly wound up with me winding up with too much of the oversupplied good as I helped out everyone else. Some of the players who had pushed ahead of me when I stalled for a bit left over the problem that they couldn't get the trades they needed to keep advancing. I wished them well and before long I was once again at the top of the guild's advancement having lost many of our useful players. Lesson learned: trade system only works if you have someone at the top willing to supply everything going down.
The next problem is rope and paper mass producers. These two buildings are way tinier than any of the other goods buildings in the game at a mere 6 squares. How is it fair that 6 squares of paper and 16 squares of porcelain are valued the same? Well someone decided age of the goods was all that matters. If everyone means well it wouldn't be a problem but inevitably some opportunist comes along and says 'gee i can put up 15 paper mills!'. Oof. This works out great for them as, at first, the helpers just keep clearing trades and Mr Paper Producer gets all the goods he needs fast in a fraction of the area but before long you have your helpers all staring at 5k paper they're unable to rebalance because no-one else wants paper either. So much for no-one getting screwed. Once again the idea of a fluid market is dying and taking paper trades is just throwing away your goods for nothing. This problem has never really gone away. Sometimes it goes on vacation.
Another problem that struck is the need for a low age goods sink to deal with people camping those ages. Inevitably it came to pass that I had all the colonial goods I needed and was staring at a market full of people looking to trade up colonial goods (especially the dreaded paper) for my shiny progressive goods so they could build those amazing Progressive Era great buildings. Believe me I understand. And want to help. But when you already have thousands of colonial goods, a treasury sufficiently stocked for the amount of GvG your guild is likely to want to do (and even if there was a demand for more treasury goods how is it 'fair' that the higher age helper is trading away all their goods for stuff they'd only donate to the treasury), no more personal use for colonial or lower goods: what the heck are you going to do? I eventually did stop taking the trades, and the problem did eventually die down to a more tolerable level - I think most of the up-traders eventually got to Progressive and at least I can always sell those goods off for forge points to folks.
The final problem, the one all the fair trade fanatics obsess over but is really the least consequential in my eyes, is what exact ratio is declared fair. Both of the common systems are probably way off the mark as to true market value. The only reason they work at all is people buy into them. 2:1 every age up way overprices the value of going up an age. Space consumption varies wildly and it's almost always more efficient under 2:1 to produce only the most recent age of goods and trade them down which under a 2:1 system leaves a void in terms of people willing to trade up. At the same time cost of production adds little value to the person who actually advances. It also makes paper more valuable for trading up which might add incentive for producers to keep at it longer. Modern goods buildings are arguably no more valuable than colonial despite taking more space as by trade calculator 2 colonial goods = 1 modern good, and the modern goods building is destroying a colonial good to make that modern good. As a person who does recurring quests for goods this bothers me little but I'm probably a corner case.
What do I think really is fair? My simple answer somewhere around 1.4:1 1 age up no matter the age. this makes 2 ages difference a little under 2:1 and for refined goods makes the refined good worth 2.7 times the unrefined good (which would still make a Modern Era goods building a LITTLE less valuable than a Progressive Era goods building, but at least markedly more valuable than a Colonial Age goods building).
This still doesn't do anything about the aberrations caused by small footprint buildings but I don't think there's a reasonable system that does. It's incredibly hard to account for the true space required for a given good because of the sheer number of ways one can increase efficiency (including not using goods buildings at all). The only real answer to this problem is a free market where people only take trades they truly want and stop trying to help others blindly. Alas that is probably not a world anyone wants to play in either.
/rantover, and heads off to accept another 2k in paper trades.
Thursday 29 September 2016
An Introduction to Manual Battling in GE
OK so now I've covered a general solution to the first difficulty of expedition by negotiation, and a specific solution to clearing all 3 difficulties in Early Middle Ages. What I'd now like to offer is a primer on fighting manually in most of the early ages (Iron Age, High Middles Ages, Late Middle Ages, and Colonial Age although things are starting to change significantly by this point). Fighting in these ages share most of the same strategies with minor variations. The Mounted Archer in Early Middle Ages throws a wrench in the strategic assessments as you won't see units quite like it again until Progressive Era but if there's none of those in the fight or if the battlefield isn't too flat, the strategies will still hold. In the case of expedition you can surrender and restart to attempt to get another battlefield if you wind up with a bad start due to Mounted Archers rushing your fragile troops like artillery. Before we get too far into this I should note that to accomplish this without a large collection of rogues or a high military boost you will need a city significantly oriented towards military barracks; say 10 or so barracks of your current age oriented towards the types of troops you're likely to damage in the strategies of your choice.
First off the troop types (from here on out I'll refer to troop types usually instead of a specific troop):
Fast units have bonuses against Ranged units but are weak to Light units. As their name suggests they have high movement. They have middle of the road base stats for attack and defence which tends to put them at a disadvantage against Heavy units as well. Towards colonial they will start to bias towards more defence than attack. As such the only time you really should use them is if you're facing a large number of Artillery and Ranged units and their closing speed is important.
Light units have bonuses against Fast units but are weak to Heavy units. They also gain defence bonuses in bushes and forests. Use the terrain bonus when you can but don't go out of your way to be on good terrain. They have moderately fast movement speed that allows them to be used against everything but Heavy units well. Towards Colonial they bias more towards attack than defence and become more capable of dealing with stray heavy units. If there's one or two Heavy units on the field they can take them out by ganging up on it one turn as only the first attack will be retaliated. In colonial, Rangers gain the ability to hide in forests and are unable to be attacked in this state except by units directly adjacent to them.
Heavy units have bonuses against Light units but are weak to Ranged units and Artillery units. They have defence bonuses on flat terrain. Since flat terrain is by far the most common you should usually be able to keep them on it but as with Light units, don't avoid a square you need to go to just because the terrain is wrong. Despite Artillery units having bonuses against them, the high base defence of Heavy units protect them from taking too much damage, especially if you have some military boost. The main problem with artillery is getting to them as Heavy units tend to be quite slow. If the battlefield has a reasonably flat path all the way across though they can usually get to them in time. In Colonial, Grenadiers gain the ability to attack with a range of 2 and avoid retaliation.
Ranged units have bonuses against Heavy units but are weak to Fast units. Truth be told, Ranged units with moderate boost can two shot anything their own age, including the Fast units strong against them. But even with high levels of boost anything can two shot them too! This makes their biggest problem opponent Artillery units which can in general hit them before the Ranged units have hope of being in range of the Artillery. Fighting either with or against Range units primarily becomes a game of who hits first. Do your best to stay out of enemy units range until you're ready to start killing them - first strike makes a BIG difference. Mounted Archers as mentioned are different than other Ranged units in these ages. Their combined movement and ranged can allow them on relatively flat battlefields to hit slower opposing units before they can move. This makes bringing Artillery in against a defence of Mounted Archers a risky proposition. If there's only a couple Mounted Archers I sometimes still risk it though.
Artillery units have bonuses against Heavy units. While nothing has bonuses against them, it's really not needed. Anything can two-shot their low defence. Their bonus against Heavy units just allows them to do about the same amount of damage against Heavy units as they do against Light units or Fast units. Towards Colonial their attack increases slow down dramatically. Starting in Late Middle Ages they gain a 'Dug In' defence bonus against long distance attacks. Combined this means that they start requiring more and more boost to keep using them the same way as you can before Late Middle Ages even against a zero boost opponent.
Before I get into further details - what do I mean by boost? Boost is provided by buildings in your city and scales the base stats of units you are using to attack or defend your city. In all cases in this article I'm referring only to the buildings that affect your boost while attacking which are: Statue of Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, Castel del Monte, Drummer's School, Speaker's Corner (a one-time event building), and select barracks in Contemporary Era or higher. In the case of the great buildings, it is not enough to merely place them and let them sit. You will need to put some effort into levelling them to get worthwhile amounts of boost via swap arrangements such as GB chains, clubs, and private swaps or via self-donation and alerting your guild or global when they're close to level and the rewards are worth donating for.
OK so... the battlefield! Once you've selected your 8 troops to attack with and pressed attack you enter the battle. There's several key features you should know about:
Some general advice:
And finally a handful of standard armies I've used many times in these ages:
First off the troop types (from here on out I'll refer to troop types usually instead of a specific troop):
| Age/Unit Type | Fast | Light | Heavy | Ranged | Artillery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron Age | Mounted Warrior | Soldier | Legionnaire | Archer | Ballista |
| Early Middle Ages | Heavy Cavalry | Mercenary | Armored Infantry | Mounted Archer | Catapult |
| High Middle Ages | Knight | Berserker | Heavy Infantry | Crossbowman | Trebuchet |
| Late Middle Ages | Heavy Knight | Greatsword Warrior | Imperial Guard | Longbow Archer | Cannon |
| Colonial Age | Dragoon | Ranger | Grenadier | Musketeer | Field Gun |
Fast units have bonuses against Ranged units but are weak to Light units. As their name suggests they have high movement. They have middle of the road base stats for attack and defence which tends to put them at a disadvantage against Heavy units as well. Towards colonial they will start to bias towards more defence than attack. As such the only time you really should use them is if you're facing a large number of Artillery and Ranged units and their closing speed is important.
Light units have bonuses against Fast units but are weak to Heavy units. They also gain defence bonuses in bushes and forests. Use the terrain bonus when you can but don't go out of your way to be on good terrain. They have moderately fast movement speed that allows them to be used against everything but Heavy units well. Towards Colonial they bias more towards attack than defence and become more capable of dealing with stray heavy units. If there's one or two Heavy units on the field they can take them out by ganging up on it one turn as only the first attack will be retaliated. In colonial, Rangers gain the ability to hide in forests and are unable to be attacked in this state except by units directly adjacent to them.
Heavy units have bonuses against Light units but are weak to Ranged units and Artillery units. They have defence bonuses on flat terrain. Since flat terrain is by far the most common you should usually be able to keep them on it but as with Light units, don't avoid a square you need to go to just because the terrain is wrong. Despite Artillery units having bonuses against them, the high base defence of Heavy units protect them from taking too much damage, especially if you have some military boost. The main problem with artillery is getting to them as Heavy units tend to be quite slow. If the battlefield has a reasonably flat path all the way across though they can usually get to them in time. In Colonial, Grenadiers gain the ability to attack with a range of 2 and avoid retaliation.
Ranged units have bonuses against Heavy units but are weak to Fast units. Truth be told, Ranged units with moderate boost can two shot anything their own age, including the Fast units strong against them. But even with high levels of boost anything can two shot them too! This makes their biggest problem opponent Artillery units which can in general hit them before the Ranged units have hope of being in range of the Artillery. Fighting either with or against Range units primarily becomes a game of who hits first. Do your best to stay out of enemy units range until you're ready to start killing them - first strike makes a BIG difference. Mounted Archers as mentioned are different than other Ranged units in these ages. Their combined movement and ranged can allow them on relatively flat battlefields to hit slower opposing units before they can move. This makes bringing Artillery in against a defence of Mounted Archers a risky proposition. If there's only a couple Mounted Archers I sometimes still risk it though.
Artillery units have bonuses against Heavy units. While nothing has bonuses against them, it's really not needed. Anything can two-shot their low defence. Their bonus against Heavy units just allows them to do about the same amount of damage against Heavy units as they do against Light units or Fast units. Towards Colonial their attack increases slow down dramatically. Starting in Late Middle Ages they gain a 'Dug In' defence bonus against long distance attacks. Combined this means that they start requiring more and more boost to keep using them the same way as you can before Late Middle Ages even against a zero boost opponent.
Before I get into further details - what do I mean by boost? Boost is provided by buildings in your city and scales the base stats of units you are using to attack or defend your city. In all cases in this article I'm referring only to the buildings that affect your boost while attacking which are: Statue of Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, Castel del Monte, Drummer's School, Speaker's Corner (a one-time event building), and select barracks in Contemporary Era or higher. In the case of the great buildings, it is not enough to merely place them and let them sit. You will need to put some effort into levelling them to get worthwhile amounts of boost via swap arrangements such as GB chains, clubs, and private swaps or via self-donation and alerting your guild or global when they're close to level and the rewards are worth donating for.
OK so... the battlefield! Once you've selected your 8 troops to attack with and pressed attack you enter the battle. There's several key features you should know about:
- At the bottom left there's 6 buttons. The flag is surrender. You can only do this when it's one of your units' turn to move. All of your troops will leave the battle in their current state (dead/alive, hp remaining). If a battle is not going according to plan you should use this as soon as possible. The swords button is automatic. You can press this and then the red 'Results' button at the top of the screen to finish a fight FAST! Note that this will typically involve you taking additional losses and is not recommended unless the battle is going to be very lopsided in your favour or if you're fighting GvG and time matters more than losses. The 4 smaller buttons are sound-effects, music, full screen mode, and animation speed. I recommend you switch the animation speed to 'fast'(3 arrows) to reduce frustration with how slow units trot along.
- Beside these buttons you can see the timeline. This is the order in which all units in the battle will move. You can highlight units in the timeline to see where they are on the map which can be useful to focus fire on units you can kill before their next turn and save yourself some damage.
- On the field to begin with you can see highlighted the range of your current unit's movement. When you highlight a square you could move to a new highlight will show defining where you could attack from this square. If you click one of the squares you could move to you will move there.
- You can highlight enemy units to see their movement and attack ranges. movement will be a darker highlight and attack range a lighter highlight around that. It can be confusing with 3 highlights (your movement, enemy movement, enemy attack) all overlapping but you get used to it after a while.
- Units that are in range of your movement+attack will have swords over their heads. You can click one of these units to directly move and attack them from the square closest to your origin that it is possible. This is usually not ideal, but sometimes it doesn't matter and is faster.
Some general advice:
- Combat in early ages is usually defined by the presence or lack-there-of of Artillery. You should endeavour to either bring more Artillery than your opponent or none at all. Usually twice as much is a clean option. Remember that in Late Middle Ages and Colonial using artillery to take out artillery is more difficult and will require boost to do reliably in 2 shots.
- Ranged units should not be brought if your opponent has more than 1 Artillery and you're not bringing Artillery of your own to take it out fast. Stick to melee units in this case.
- Heavy units can generally hold their own against any balanced set-up, but are seldom ideal in teams with other melee units as their slow movement either makes them late to the battle or has them slowing down other melee that would like to be moving forward faster.
- Repeating this from the overview of the battlefield screen but it really is very important: Use the highlighting of the timeline and range of enemy units to pick targets and avoid unnecessary damage.
- The defensive AI will always attack if there's something in range. You can sometimes use this to bait enemy units away from your squishier targets. If there's nothing in range but a target just one square out of range it will often still chase that target even if it's the 'wrong' direction. Fast units are particularly good at this style of baiting.
- When facing two-wave defences you should aim to annihilate the first wave and take 7-8 units into wave two even if they're the wrong units. The last 4 fights of difficulty 3 are deliberately mismatched badly and you might need to find compromises in the first wave to get by them in ok shape with units that can still win against the second wave (or possibly wait for rogues).
And finally a handful of standard armies I've used many times in these ages:
- Artillery/Melee mix. The strategy here is to have your melee form a defensive line just outside the range of enemy Ranged units and give your Artillery one turn to take out some of the enemy Artillery and Ranged unencumbered. Typically Light units make good choices for the melee since what you're blocking out is usually enemy Fast troops and Light have bonuses against Fast. A Heavy can be useful to plug flat spots in the line sometimes though and Fast have the advantage of being able to reach pretty much wherever they need to. I have used near-exclusively Soldiers and Ballistas to complete difficulty 2 of guild expedition with no boost in iron age. The last 4 fights of difficulty 2 I did have to surrender and restart several times to get battlefields that I could set-up acceptable blockades on. Note that the Fast units you're trying to stop from getting to your Artillery cannot go over rocks or water and are slowed down by swamp. After you position your troops highlight the enemy fast units to see if you succeeded in blocking them. Sometimes you may have to resort to bait tactics with your last couple Artillery and last melee in the second wave of a fight to buy extra attack turns for the Artillery.
- Artillery/Ranged mix. The strategy here is to use the high damage of Ranged units to knock out any melee that's getting close to your Artillery while your Artillery shields your Ranged by taking out enemy Ranged and Artillery. Against many balanced setups this works with less headache than the Artillery/Melee mix but you need a moderate amount of boost to be able to take out enemy Fast using Ranged in two hits. Sometimes this set-up can be used acceptably on auto.
- 8 of a kind. When the defence is unbalanced (4+4, 8 of a kind itself, or just a notable omission of the unit needed to counter a good general-purpose unit), you can often take advantage of it by sending 8 of a unit that acceptably counters everything there. This has the advantage that you have none of the weaknesses of other units to cover for. Examples: 8 Heavy against a target with no Ranged and only 1 or 2 Artillery. 8 Light units against a target with no Heavy. 8 Fast or Light units against a target with only Ranged and Artillery.
- Light/Ranged mix. This flies in the face of most of the other advice I've given but I did successfully make use of this on one server in LMA with no boost. The motivator to try it in the first place was that I was using Greatsword warriors and Longbow Archers for recurring quests since they were obtainable early in the age. 8 of a kind Greatswords were able to handle most of the high-cannon set-ups and with only 1 or 2 cannons the high damage of Longbow Archers was enough to make up for their extra deaths. I may have needed to negotiate a sector or two (Imperial Guards+Cannons would not have gone well). Note though that LMA is where Artillery is beginning to become weaker. I do not believe equivalent set-ups would be as successful in earlier ages.
- Rogue combos. I've avoided discussing this for most of the post because I felt it important to stress the viability of fighting without having access to large numbers of Rogues. Rogues are a special unit available unattached or from Rogue Hideout buildings obtainable during events. By default a Rogue Hideout contains 2 slots with 3 unlock-able for diamonds. Alcatraz can produce them if you have Rogue Hideouts in your town and is most people's main source for them. At any rate, the combos of interest: 1 something + 7 Rogues - GvG/GE/hood AI will almost always target untransformed rogues before any other unit. So essentially this becomes an 8 of a kind where the first 7 hits you take are free! This works particularly well with and against melee units as you'll get a free retaliation as well. 2 somethings + 6 Rogues - when facing two waves often if you send only 1 something it'll wind up dead and you will have to surrender before taking on the second wave - so to be safe a second something is recommended in these cases. It can be the same unit type as the first something, or it can be a different unit if you want a little something else available to you - most of the time for reliability if possible it's better to pick 2 of the same. 6 Artilleries + 2 Rogues - slightly different numbers may also be appropriate but the idea here is similar to the Artillery/Ranged combos. You hold back the rogues out of range and then use their large attack value to clear melee coming close or use their free hit transformation property and offer them up as bait depending on the situation. I will discuss Rogue-centric combat further at some other time. Note that you should not try Rogue-heavy attacks against the Continent AI as it will ignore the rogues and go for the untransformed unit.
This has been a VERY long post and doubtless I've left out something important. Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions if you feel there's updates needed :)
EMA Expedition Auto-Battle Setup
One of the things some of us have taken on since the advent of guild expedition is running it on many servers for the purposes of diamond mining. Diamond mining is play alt-worlds to win diamonds to use in your main one. Diamonds are the only thing that crosses between worlds on your account (note that beta and other regions are separate accounts and thus do not share diamonds).
Traditionally the optimum strategy for doing so has been to participate in events to get diamonds from quests and to place wishing wells. Between events you log into the world once a day and collect your wishing wells which have a roughly 1% chance each of giving you 50 diamonds.
Running expeditions for diamonds is a little more work intensive but doesn't take quite so many events to get the ball rolling. Still, the question I was most interested in at the time is what age(s) were ideal for setting up to run all 3 difficulties of expedition with the least amount of work. I had one server where I was in contemporary age and found that to be an exceedingly simple age to clear quickly, but obviously getting a server to contemporary age to begin with is a lot of work! In general, an Alcatraz, Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, and Castel del Monte would make most any age doable, but these are all buildings that need serious levelling work to be effective. Ideally I also wanted to avoid too much dependence on rogues as they can be difficult to obtain in large quantities without an Alcatraz and an Alcatraz is a serious extra investment.
The conclusion I ended up coming to was that because of how weak the mounted archer is in Early Middle Ages (it has lower attack than an Iron Age archer as a trade off for its mobility) perhaps an all armoured infantry set-up would be able to roll through the whole thing without even needing any rogues and at a reasonable level of boost. As it turned out, it works! Once I reached around 45% boost from Statue of Zeus and Cathedral of Aachen I was able to complete all 3 difficulties rogue-less. My initial city that accomplished this was running clapboard houses for population and had 10 armored infantry barracks and 6 or so tanneries. The first week I got it done every single fight I did with 8 armored infantry. Most of the fights were done on auto. Fights that involved many catapults or two waves I fought manually to make sure the troops that could get to the catapults fastest did so. I would also surrender against catapults if the map lacked a flat path to them. Since then on the servers where I'm doing this I've increased my boost further, added rogue hideouts, and started using unattached heavy cavalry won from expedition for a few fights. This has resulted in almost every fight being won on automatic now.
How much does a difficulty 3 clear make per week in diamonds? Averages for the 3 difficulties are 8 diamonds, 17 diamonds, and 27.5 diamonds for a total of 52.5 diamonds. Effectively this makes clearing difficulty 3 of expedition worth about the same as collecting 14 wishing wells daily for the week. Worth it? I think so but it is a fair bit of effort, YMMV :)
Traditionally the optimum strategy for doing so has been to participate in events to get diamonds from quests and to place wishing wells. Between events you log into the world once a day and collect your wishing wells which have a roughly 1% chance each of giving you 50 diamonds.
Running expeditions for diamonds is a little more work intensive but doesn't take quite so many events to get the ball rolling. Still, the question I was most interested in at the time is what age(s) were ideal for setting up to run all 3 difficulties of expedition with the least amount of work. I had one server where I was in contemporary age and found that to be an exceedingly simple age to clear quickly, but obviously getting a server to contemporary age to begin with is a lot of work! In general, an Alcatraz, Zeus, Cathedral of Aachen, and Castel del Monte would make most any age doable, but these are all buildings that need serious levelling work to be effective. Ideally I also wanted to avoid too much dependence on rogues as they can be difficult to obtain in large quantities without an Alcatraz and an Alcatraz is a serious extra investment.
The conclusion I ended up coming to was that because of how weak the mounted archer is in Early Middle Ages (it has lower attack than an Iron Age archer as a trade off for its mobility) perhaps an all armoured infantry set-up would be able to roll through the whole thing without even needing any rogues and at a reasonable level of boost. As it turned out, it works! Once I reached around 45% boost from Statue of Zeus and Cathedral of Aachen I was able to complete all 3 difficulties rogue-less. My initial city that accomplished this was running clapboard houses for population and had 10 armored infantry barracks and 6 or so tanneries. The first week I got it done every single fight I did with 8 armored infantry. Most of the fights were done on auto. Fights that involved many catapults or two waves I fought manually to make sure the troops that could get to the catapults fastest did so. I would also surrender against catapults if the map lacked a flat path to them. Since then on the servers where I'm doing this I've increased my boost further, added rogue hideouts, and started using unattached heavy cavalry won from expedition for a few fights. This has resulted in almost every fight being won on automatic now.
How much does a difficulty 3 clear make per week in diamonds? Averages for the 3 difficulties are 8 diamonds, 17 diamonds, and 27.5 diamonds for a total of 52.5 diamonds. Effectively this makes clearing difficulty 3 of expedition worth about the same as collecting 14 wishing wells daily for the week. Worth it? I think so but it is a fair bit of effort, YMMV :)
Thursday 22 September 2016
High Level Great Buildings and The Arc
You may have noticed how The Arc has taken over a large portion of the top of the Great Building rankings and when you look at it at first glance there's really no doubt that it is indeed worthy of the title Great, but the obvious questions comes up: how far should I take my Arc before I focus on my other objectives? Below i have a chart of the non-refunded FP cost of completing one level of Arc at various tiers when the donors all have Arcs of their own:
| Donor | Levelling Arc | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 19 | 29 | 39 | 49 | 58 | 68 | 80 | 90 | |
| 0 | 790 | 802 | 865 | 1010 | 1265 | 1618 | 2189 | 3200 | 4404 |
| 10 | 726 | 666 | 640 | 692 | 850 | 1111 | 1577 | 2456 | 3547 |
| 19 | 708 | 626 | 575 | 600 | 729 | 964 | 1399 | 2240 | 3298 |
| 29 | 688 | 582 | 503 | 498 | 595 | 801 | 1202 | 2000 | 3022 |
| 39 | 667 | 538 | 430 | 395 | 461 | 637 | 1004 | 1760 | 2745 |
| 49 | 647 | 494 | 358 | 293 | 327 | 474 | 807 | 1520 | 2469 |
| 58 | 628 | 454 | 292 | 200 | 206 | 326 | 629 | 1304 | 2220 |
| 68 | 618 | 432 | 256 | 149 | 139 | 245 | 530 | 1184 | 2081 |
| 80 | 606 | 406 | 213 | 88 | 59 | 147 | 412 | 1040 | 1916 |
| 90 | 603 | 402 | 205 | 77 | 46 | 130 | 392 | 1016 | 1888 |
Of particular note here is first off the diagonal bold line of entries. This represents the true levelling cost (with refunded forge points subtracted) of an arc via fair deals with similarly levelled arcs. Notice by level 58 how it's less than a quarter of the no arc cost. At level 58 two things happen that cause it to start tailing off. First is the arc drops to only 0.5% contribution boost per level. Second is that while the FP cost of next level is a slow exponential growth of 2.5% per level, the refunded FP increases linearly from level to level and past level 50 the exponential growth becomes faster than the FP growth.
Also of note is the line across for high level donors - this curve holding for nearly all buildings they donate to. With such a small 'true cost' compared to the total cost, and since the majority of refunded FP are held by the top two spots, it doesn't take much wasted FP for a high level arc to hijack a level 29-58 building. It takes even less for two coordinated FP donors with high level arcs to do so - they may even do so without a single point having been donated yet! They may do this for profit or they may do it to seize your building from going further as the remaining 3 spots won't offer much incentive for donors to contribute. As such, it can be important to have your swap partner lock first place immediately after levelling the building! Save your packs :)
Guild Expedition by Negotiation
A current hot topic in the guilds i'm in has been getting people involved in expedition since the guild championships came out and carrying 0/48 progress people started to hurt guilds. I primarily do them via the combat route and believe that to be the cheaper option by far if you're setup to do so, but giving advice on that is specific to each age and the person's level of tech advancement. Also, the desire amongst those who are primarily traders not to put up as many barracks as would be needed is fair enough and negotiation has the advantage that pretty much everyone will have what they need to complete the first 16 encounters over the week.
Negotiation runs into a wall by difficulty 3 (or possibly towards the end of difficulty 2) but difficulty 1, that's quite doable and I'm going to give an example of doing so on one server this week here. First though, a description of the mini-game
Encounters 1 through 3
These all fall under the category of 3 or less options to start and there's not much to say about it so I'll just show my guess sequences.
Encounter 4
The first 4 option encounter. I encountered a bit of bad luck on my first try in that my initial guess got 4 corrects and an incorrect. This leaves me with only one square i can change so no way to do anything more than try 2 of the remaining 3 presents. And in this case it was the 3rd one that ended up being right, so i had to redo.
Second try i got a more cooperative pattern. Two correct answers and both coin offerings were wrong. This means i know where the coin is and don't have to place it this turn, instead using that centre offering to help test whether there's a 2nd supply or 2nd dye.
Encounter 5 and 6
These are again only 3 options.
Encounter 7
4 Options. This was an odd one. It turned out after the first check that the only thing possible was supplies!
Encounter 8
5 Options. With the second try on this one i avoided claiming the correct spot with the dye to try 2 of the 3 that could be in the remaining unknown spot.
Encounter 9
4 Options. Nothing new.
Encounter 10
4 Options that went down to 2 after the first guess.
Encounter 11
5 Options.
Encounter 12
6 Options. This is the first one that might get a little rough on retries. It's not terribly abnormal to get it on first try or two though. I did get quite lucky on the first guess with 4 incorrect answers reducing it to only 2 options for a guaranteed victory.
Encounter 13
5 Options.
Encounter 14
5 Options.
Encounter 15
6 Options.
Encounter 16
7 Options. This one usually takes about 3-5 tries. This week it took me 8. Ouch. I did win the 25 diamonds from the chest after it though so goods well spent! (except for the part where i could've won it by fighting first try, but let's just ignore that.) Many of these come down to third tries where i have a 1/3 or 1/2 shot. You just need a bit of luck to get one of those right or to cut down the possibilities a lot more on the first guess. Or 10 diamonds to make a 4th guess but let's presume you're doing this to try and make a few diamonds not spend them :)
In total I spent about 120 Bronze Age goods (so say 1 goods building's worth for the week traded around). On average completing difficulty 1 will provide 8 Diamonds, 9 Previous Age goods, 12 Current Age goods, 1.2 Forge Points, 4 unattached Current Age units and a 10% chance at a minor event building (The Queen or Victory Tower are two of the possibilities i know of for difficulty 1 - it changes from week to week), as well as the love of your guild for providing a meaningful contribution towards their championship. The personal rewards get much better in higher difficulties, but negotiating becomes much more difficult without spending diamonds for most encounters - if you'd like to clear more, i recommend working towards your fighting infrastructure and I'll start covering strategies for that "soon".
Update: Since the release of tavern, the extra turn buff makes previously difficult negotiations much easier - depending on your silver availability you can use 2 or 3 of those buffs a week to get almost every negotiation first try without spending diamonds!
Negotiation runs into a wall by difficulty 3 (or possibly towards the end of difficulty 2) but difficulty 1, that's quite doable and I'm going to give an example of doing so on one server this week here. First though, a description of the mini-game
- Upon selecting negotiate you are presented with 5 chiefs to give gifts to
- When you click the 'Select Resource' box below the chief you will have between 2 and 12 options to select for a gift (increasing options with increasing difficulty). You may change your selections until you click 'Pay and Negotiate'
- After selecting a gift for all 5 chiefs and selecting 'Pay and Negotiate' each offering will generate a response of 'Correct', 'Incorrect', or 'Wrong Person'
- Any 'Correct' answers will result in that chief requesting no further gifts. 'Incorrect' means no chief wants that gift any more. 'Wrong Person' means at least one other chief still wants that gift.
- You have 3 rounds of payment to get all 5 'Correct' by default. You may pay for additional rounds at a cost of 10 diamonds or you may give up and come back to try again. If you give up, your attempt will be consumed and the next attempt will be a new arrangement of 5 gifts (you can't use information you learned the first attempt).
- If a negotiation starts with 3 or less options. Or there's only 2 options left after the first guess because of options eliminated with 'incorrect' guesses then you're able to finish it up exhaustively by first trying whichever resource you consider 'cheapest'.
- For the first two guesses, always try as many options that you don't know if there's any left first. These guesses are primarily about eliminating possibilities, and finding an 'incorrect' is most valuable in this regard.
- Next try as many 'Wrong Person' resources as you can in different positions.
- Finally duplicate as many different 'Wrong Person' resources as you can. Since you know there's at least 1 of them, it's more likely you get both a 'Correct' and either an 'Incorrect' or 'Wrong Person' as opposed to 2 'Incorrect' responses which provides no extra information.
- Absent any other guidance, duplicate what's cheapest to you.
Encounters 1 through 3
These all fall under the category of 3 or less options to start and there's not much to say about it so I'll just show my guess sequences.
| Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | Supplies |
| Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies |
| Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | |
| Stone | Stone |
Encounter 4
The first 4 option encounter. I encountered a bit of bad luck on my first try in that my initial guess got 4 corrects and an incorrect. This leaves me with only one square i can change so no way to do anything more than try 2 of the remaining 3 presents. And in this case it was the 3rd one that ended up being right, so i had to redo.
| Coins | Supplies | Lumber | Dye | Coins |
| Supplies | ||||
| Dye |
Second try i got a more cooperative pattern. Two correct answers and both coin offerings were wrong. This means i know where the coin is and don't have to place it this turn, instead using that centre offering to help test whether there's a 2nd supply or 2nd dye.
| Coins | Supplies | Lumber | Dye | Coins |
| Lumber | Supplies | Dye | ||
| Coins |
Encounter 5 and 6
These are again only 3 options.
| Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | |
| Stone |
| Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | |
| Lumber | Lumber |
Encounter 7
4 Options. This was an odd one. It turned out after the first check that the only thing possible was supplies!
| Coins | Supplies | Dye | Wine | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Supplies | Supplies |
Encounter 8
5 Options. With the second try on this one i avoided claiming the correct spot with the dye to try 2 of the 3 that could be in the remaining unknown spot.
| Coins | Supplies | Lumber | Dye | Wine |
| Coins | Wine | |||
| Dye |
Encounter 9
4 Options. Nothing new.
| Coins | Supplies | Marble | Dye | Coins |
| Supplies | Dye | Marble | ||
| Supplies |
Encounter 10
4 Options that went down to 2 after the first guess.
| Marble | Wine | Coins | Supplies | Coins |
| Supplies | Supplies | Marble | Supplies | |
| Marble | Marble |
Encounter 11
5 Options.
| Stone | Lumber | Wine | Coins | Supplies |
| Supplies | Coins | Lumber | ||
| Lumber | Wine | Supplies |
Encounter 12
6 Options. This is the first one that might get a little rough on retries. It's not terribly abnormal to get it on first try or two though. I did get quite lucky on the first guess with 4 incorrect answers reducing it to only 2 options for a guaranteed victory.
| Coins | Supplies | Dye | Stone | Marble |
| Stone | Stone | Stone | Stone | |
| Lumber |
Encounter 13
5 Options.
| Stone | Dye | Wine | Coins | Supplies |
| Coins | Dye | |||
| Dye | Coins |
Encounter 14
5 Options.
| Stone | Lumber | Marble | Coins | Supplies |
| Coins | Supplies | Supplies | Coins | Stone |
| Stone | Supplies |
Encounter 15
6 Options.
| Coins | Supplies | Dye | Stone | Wine |
| Coins | Dye | Lumber | ||
| Stone | Supplies |
Encounter 16
7 Options. This one usually takes about 3-5 tries. This week it took me 8. Ouch. I did win the 25 diamonds from the chest after it though so goods well spent! (except for the part where i could've won it by fighting first try, but let's just ignore that.) Many of these come down to third tries where i have a 1/3 or 1/2 shot. You just need a bit of luck to get one of those right or to cut down the possibilities a lot more on the first guess. Or 10 diamonds to make a 4th guess but let's presume you're doing this to try and make a few diamonds not spend them :)
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Marble | Dye |
| Marble | Lumber | Wine | Stone | |
| Supplies |
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Marble | Dye |
| Dye | Coins | Lumber | Wine | |
| Coins | Dye | Coins | Wine |
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Dye | Marble |
| Dye | Stone | Wine | ||
| Wine | Wine | Lumber |
| Coins | Supplies | Dye | Stone | Marble |
| Supplies | Dye | Lumber | Supplies | |
| Wine |
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Dye | Marble |
| Wine | Lumber | Coins | Supplies | Coins |
| Supplies | Coins | Wine | Lumber |
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Marble | Dye |
| Coins | Supplies | Wine | ||
| Dye | Dye | Stone |
| Coins | Supplies | Stone | Dye | Wine |
| Supplies | Marble | Lumber | ||
| Stone | Dye | Marble |
| Coins | Supplies | Dye | Stone | Marble |
| Supplies | Lumber | Wine | Dye | |
| Dye | Marble |
In total I spent about 120 Bronze Age goods (so say 1 goods building's worth for the week traded around). On average completing difficulty 1 will provide 8 Diamonds, 9 Previous Age goods, 12 Current Age goods, 1.2 Forge Points, 4 unattached Current Age units and a 10% chance at a minor event building (The Queen or Victory Tower are two of the possibilities i know of for difficulty 1 - it changes from week to week), as well as the love of your guild for providing a meaningful contribution towards their championship. The personal rewards get much better in higher difficulties, but negotiating becomes much more difficult without spending diamonds for most encounters - if you'd like to clear more, i recommend working towards your fighting infrastructure and I'll start covering strategies for that "soon".
Update: Since the release of tavern, the extra turn buff makes previously difficult negotiations much easier - depending on your silver availability you can use 2 or 3 of those buffs a week to get almost every negotiation first try without spending diamonds!
Introduction
Greetings. I play on an assortment of worlds on the US server of Forge of Empires as xivarmy. My main worlds are Langendorn, Parkog, and Vingrid. I spend a lot of time analysing the myriad of systems in the game and frequently find myself trying to help others with questions about how best to accomplish their goals. Often these answers are rather long-winded and so i'm going to start collecting them here along with occasionally some of the analyses i do for my own sake and noone asked to see. Hopefully someone finds some use :)
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