Daily Challenges

Overview

Daily challenges are a new feature coming live tomorrow apparently following a long beta phase and an irritating limited live release for the past month to only select accounts.  Each day you choose between two themed chests and are given a set of conditions to obtain your chosen chest.  These conditions are similar to what you'd find in events.  Some of the conditions will not appear if they're not deemed reasonable for you to do in a day (i.e. If your only available scouts are over 12 hours long, you won't be asked to scout).  After completing 7 more than you failed to complete you get a challenger's chest with better goodies in it.

I haven't played it extensively on beta, so the rest of this writeup I'll edit as I get more experience.

Tips

• Have a decent number of supply buildings in your city layout.  You will be asked to complete productions regardless of how many you have.
• Don't scout ahead - If you've scouted territory you might be asked to take it so wait til you're ready to do so before scouting.
• You can adjust the reset time to the start of your own day.  You may miss out on a day by doing this so I'd recommend you pick a time once and stick with it.

Notes

• The chests available to you each day appear to be constant for each city on your account, but vary between different people's accounts.

Challenger Chest

7% Shrine of Knowledge

7% Wishing Well

11% Rogue Hideout

20% Renovation Kit

25% 2 Store Building Items

30% 50 FP

Daily Chests

There are a wide variety of chests available to be won that include pretty much everything you can imagine for prizes.  Some of the ones I've seen so far include:

Researcher's Chest

15% 100 FP

20% 50 FP

30% 20 FP

35% 5 FP

Military Genius Chest

25% 3 Rogues

25% 3 Champions

25% 3 Military Drummers

25% 3 Color Guards

Special Military Chest

5% Rogue Hideout

10% Champion's Retreat

20% Drummer School

20% Color Guard Camp

45% 10 FP

Collector's Chest

5% Wishing Well

10% Hall of Fame

15% Victory Tower

20% Watchfire

50% 10 FP

May Day Chest

20% Maypole

30% Maypole Upgrade Item

50% 10 FP

Workman's Chest

10% Premium Supply Building

20% Supply Building

30% Supply Building

40% Large Supply Package

5 Blueprints

100% 5 Blueprints

Elephant Fountain Chest

5% Elephant Fountain

10% Chhatri Garden

10% Titan Arum Plant

10% Memorial Chhatri

10% Elephant Fountain Gate

55% 10 FP

Items Chest (Actual name unknown)

5% Renovation Kit

15% One Up Kit

20% Store Building Item

25% Boost Crate

35% Mass Motivation Kit

Medal's Chest (Actual name unknown)

5% Gigantic Medal Package

5% Extra Large Medal Package

10% Large Medal Package

20% Medium Medal Package

60% Small Medal Package

Champion's Chest (Actual name unknown)

5% Champion's Retreat

10% 10 Champions
20% 5 Champions
25% 3 Champions
40% 1 Champion

Rogue's Chest

5% Rogue Hideout

10% 10 Rogues

20% 5 Rogues

25% 3 Rogues

40% 1 Rogue

Citizen's Chest

10% Premium Residential Building

20% Residential Building

30% Residential Building

40% Large Coin Package

A Lot of Coins

100% Extra Large Coin Package

City Treasurer's Chest

25% Medium Medal Package

25% Extra Large Coins Package

25% Extra Large Supplies Package

25% 20 FP

Cultural Chest

10% Premium Cultural Building

10% Premium Decoration

30% Cultural Building

50% Cultural Building

Battle Commander's Chest

20% 5 Light Units

20% 5 Ranged Units

20% 5 Heavy Units

20% 5 Fast Units

20% 5 Artillery Units

30 Forge Points

100% 30 Forge Points

Boost Chest

25% 100% Coin Boost

25% 100% Supply Boost

25% 30% Defender Boost

25% 20% Attacker Boost

Shrine Collector's Chest

5% Shrine of Knowledge

10% Shrine of Awe

15% Shrine of Inspiration

70% 10 FP

Summer Chest

5% Bazaar

10% Tiger's Den

20% Oasis

25% Fishing Hut

40% Palm Tree

Yorkton - Week 2

Things have been going great overall luck-wise.  I managed to get two terrace farms the first week of expedition :)  I got two Temple of Relic blueprints and diamonded the other 7 to get that up.  And today I built my Lighthouse of Alexandria.  I've got a layout plan for when I get two more expansions to fit the second terrace farm in which I hope to implement tomorrow.  I'll probably switch two of my goods buildings for 2 soldier barracks, a legionnaire barracks, and a ballista camp to start the week and then move back to pure goods after finishing what I can by fighting.

For the moment I'm running the terrace farm I have built as a supply building most of the day.  I get about 16k supplies a day running it on a 1 hour cycle, which allows for about 12 quests (8 unbirthday and 4 supply collection quests combined with my goat farms(they take longer than 4 hours without the terrace farm's help so I can't complete them between coin collection quests)).  This amounts to about 4 FP and 20 goods over the portion of the day when I'm active and then an 8 hour 10 goods production overnight.

I expect I'll be aiming for one to two more weeks of Iron Age while I work on getting my great buildings in better shape and hopefully start getting to build up a small goods stockpile.

The Yorkton Plan

Been a long while since i made a post, but figured I'd share my (current) plans for the new server.  Overall my goal for this server is an expedition-centric city that while not dragging its heels is not in a rush to advance either.  The main target is GE4 every week including the current one :)  To that end my build plan:

Bronze Age : The goal here was an expedient push to Iron Age, faster than I usually do.  Instead of hanging out for slingers I went to get my Iron Age goods up asap.  This was in part because I wanted my unlock goods for GE4 in before the week started to set a good example, and in part because I'm just not so serious about the game as to want to run the 4 Slinger + 4 Spearfighter quest hourly for as many days as possible.

Iron Age : My target here is to run enough barracks to fight 2.5 difficulties of GE, with enough goods to negotiate the last 1.5 difficulties.  Overall I'm on track at the moment I believe.  My tavern is developing nicely to be able to use the Extra Turn buff.  The Halloween Event caused me to keep a bunch of blacksmiths around for a while so I could finish it and get my Black Tower, which i just did today.  After taking down the blacksmiths and putting up more cottages I now have 3 soldier barracks, 2 archer barracks, 2 stone thrower barracks, 2 Bronze Age goods buildings, 5 Iron Age goods buildings.  I hope to finish the week with enough ballistae to not need the stone throwers next week.  I also hope to be able to get a Temple of Relics up before next week's expedition.

Early Middle Ages through Late Middle Ages : Unlike some of my previous servers, I do intend to actually play EMA rather than skip through it with FP packs (for one I'm not doing enough recurring quests to make that many packs probably).  All of these ages are going to in general follow the same plan I'm using in Iron Age.  Fight 2.5, Negotiate 1.5.  Make tons of goods.  Hopefully some of that will be covered by Fountains of Youth as i age along.  No major stalls planned along these ages.  I will be skipping any province I don't need to do for story or bonus quest lines so that i can scout/complete them when events require me to once I reach an age that I want to sit in.

Colonial Age : This is the first age I might camp in.  I'll hopefully acquired some rogue hideouts by this age.  I'm going to get ahead on the map for it and use at least Industrial Age troops to fight the majority of GE - eventually all of it probably but I'll need to work on my Great Buildings some possibly before I get there.  I'll be supporting the South in the Industrial Age map as that allows you to keep both side quest slots available without unlocking the Bonus quest line (which requires you to be Industrial Age to complete).

Industrial Age : Extended camping expected - I know I'm able to fight all 4 difficulties in this age using the rapid fire cannon + 2 snipers path in the Progressive Era story.  There will be a number of uncompleted Industrial Age provinces available for events.  I need to complete my great buildings and acquire enough terrace farms and renovation kits from GE to cover my goods needs in advanced ages before I leave this age.

Progressive Era : Back to the fight 2.5, negotiate 1.5 I go.  No real new challenge to this age but it doesn't lend itself as well to camping as the previous two ages - It will be an expedient trip through.

Modern Era and Postmodern Era : Refined goods and frequently a difficulty trading on new servers make these ages a challenge.  The plan is to rely on Terrace Farms to produce a balanced array of refined goods.  I'll need approximately 10 in total (5 for current age, 5 for previous age) to be safe.

Contemporary Era : Possibly another long camp.  Anti-Aircraft Vehicle + rogues make fighting GE easier here than any other age as when the AI pops the rogues, you get a retaliation in from the Anti-Aircraft Vehicle it turns into for free due to the Contact ability.  This was sort-of possible in Postmodern to some extent too but MG Teams are relatively slow and thus a bit less straightforward to win vs artillery.

Tomorrow Era and Future Era : Advancing to these ages would mostly be to produce FE goods for the free players of the server to build The Arc.  Whether or not I make it this far depends a lot on how much I've enjoyed the server.

Arctic Future : Many would say to stop at FE, but I kinda liked it in AF - it's a bit more enjoyable fighting in my opinion.  I would make sure to have MANY FE terrace farms before I moved up though :)

Oceanic Future : Serious improvements to the game going forward would need to occur before I consider taking another city this far.

Fighting GE4 : Getting troops ahead of your age from the continent map

Alright, so in many ages fighting GE4 largely seems like an impossibility (others are not so bad) - one way to tip the scales beyond ridiculously levelled GBs is to fight ahead of your age on the continent map and win units from story quests.

Update (07/01/21): Fleshed out the later age possibilities.  Apart from trying to get FE+ troops in PME you should generally not let map or tech get ahead of story, and save as many optional techs as you can.

1) Iron Age - Obtainable (2) Armored Infantry : If you complete the story up to the point where you unlock the EMA bonus area (barbarians), and finish the bonus questline, the final reward is 2 armored infantry.  How much does this help?  Well it'll make fighting through difficulty 3 a breeze - but 4 might still need significant boost and care not to lose your precious unattached units.

2) Late Middle Ages - Obtainable Grenadiers, Musketeers, Field Guns : If you complete the LMA story it unlocks the LMA bonus area to the south.  At various points along the way this questline rewards Colonial Age troops.  To finish it entirely you will need to research the tech for Cannons - but some of the units are available very early.  How much does this help?  Some...  I'm not sure it's enough to fight 4 without losses so as with iron age some care may be required not to lose your precious unattached units.  I've heard someone say they got Jaeger Infantry (Industrial Age) in LMA and that would make things a breeze - but I can't see how that's possible as Colonial Age story has quests that require construction of Colonial Age buildings.  Only thing I can imagine is unlocking the Industrial Age bonus area but as far as I know those don't reward units.  (Note if trying that, you cannot finish the Industrial Age bonus questline and get that quest slot available for other quests again without Modern Roads (Industrial Age))

3) Colonial Age - Obtainable All Industrial Troops, Conscripts OR 1 Rapid Fire Cannon + 2 Snipers + 1 Armored Car.  The Industrial Age troops are relatively straight forward to do and enough to fight most of GE4 without difficulty combined with rogues.  The progressive era troops you have to enter Colonial age with it in mind that you're going for them.  There are a number of quests that will request things like 'Build a Residential building from the Industrial Age OR Research a tech that unlocks a residential building' so you'll need to save as many techs as you can to make sure you can fulfill that option.  In doing the Industrial Story, you should note there are 4 ways it can progress: Support the South, Support the North, Fight both, Peace.  I recommend supporting the South (fighting only the northern provinces).  The combat might be a little more challenging but you can complete the story without unlocking the bonus questline and maintain your extra sidequest slot til you're ready.  It also gives you a nice mix of all Industrial troops (I can't say for sure what troops exactly you get in the other route).  When it comes to Progressive Era, you again have the same sort of options.  Peace gives you conscripts.  Fighting the germans gives you the RFC+snipers+car.  I believe fighting the brits gives the same troops.  The good news : either progressive era troop option should be plenty to breeze through GE4.

4) Industrial Age - Obtainable PE, ME, PME troops - Most notable is the MG team from PME.  To get these it's important to stay at peace with Che Guerrero, and not to finish his last territory for as long as possible.  This will give you "Business with Che" quests which will reward you with MG teams.

5) Postmodern Era - You can get a few CE troops "normally".  There's also a method to skip the CE blocker quest in PME and get to the advanced troops listed under CE...  I've not done it myself to recommend it but the gist is that *before* finishing PME story quests you skip way ahead on the continent map, working your way through to FE map.  Once on FE map you start catching up on story and it'll bypass the CE blocker hopefully.  There are more details on this elsewhere - look around if you're interested :)

6) Contemporary Era - If you've skipped enough technologies, you can get through to OF quests here.  FE Hover Tanks are perhaps the most notable troop at this point - to get 4 Hover Tanks instead of 1 you should negotiate with Joy Danba at the start of FE story - then when you meet her again later in the map she'll give you 3 Hover Tanks.  An OF quest requiring you to finish productions in an OF production building acts as a final block preventing you from getting any further troops above your era.

7) Tomorrow Era - You can certainly finish whatever you didn't in CE here in getting to that OF blockade.  OF Sub Cruisers I find quite useful in TE.