Dorks! (Historical Allies)

One of the recent features Inno has been shoving down our throats, Historical Allies (hereafter referred to as dorks for brevity and to reflect my opinion of the feature) have now reached the point where they're hard to ignore, especially Rare dorks.  Every event main building has a room for one, and they represent a decent chunk of the building's potential value.

This is still a feature in progress that isn't as fleshed out as they plan (there's tabs marked coming soon), so I'll need to update this at points still.

Summary of dork "Power":

Rarity	Base Value	# of Stats	Total Value	~XP Cost
Common	10%	1.0	110%	6.2M
Uncommon	15%	2.0	230%	7.8M
Rare	25%	2.0-3.5	250%-438%	9.0M
Epic	35%	2.5	338%	15.5M

1 "Stat" = Generic Single-Color Sword or Shield or Venue-Specific Single-Color Sword and Shield.  Rares always have 3 stats, but often 1 or 2 of them are "half stats" (Venue-Specific Single-Color Sword or Shield)

There's 3 tiers of rare so far in terms of value:

• Ragnar Lodbrok and Freydis Eriksdottir have Generic Single Color Sword and Shield for a double stat plus 1 full stat plus 1 half stat for 3.5 Stats.
• Artemisia I, Pompey the Great, Septimia Zenobia, and Thermistocles have 2 full stats plus 1 half stat for 2.5 stats.
• Qin Shi Huang and Fu Hao have 1 full stat plus 2 half stat for 2 stats.

100% Gets added to the Base Value for each stat from the levelling process.

Some of the first dorks came with levels already in place, but new dorks arrive at level 1 and need to be levelled by Heroic Endeavours in the Heroic Taverne to unlock their full value.

There are 5 types of tasks with 20 entries each per week that reward 10 1k xp scrolls:

• Win a Battle with red stats (0 - 10000% boost opponent)
• Win a Battle with blue stats (0 - 10000% boost opponent)
• Pay FP (10 - 10k ; total = ~49k)
• Pay Medals (1k - 1m ; total = ~4.9m)
• Win a Negotiation (5 rounds, 10 options, 1 - 589 goods multiplier)

For each 5 tasks total you complete per week you're rewarded with an additional 100 1k xp scrolls and 5 fragments of an Epic dork.

Maximum earning per week is 3m xp of scrolls + 100/1000 fragments of the Epic dork, but it's likely that some of the tasks will either be too much for you (high boost opponents), or that you'll deem them not worth the cost (high FP payments or high multiplier goods negotiations).  Do what you feel is no big deal and wait for the next week to do more.  It'll take you 3 or more weeks to fully level a single dork in general.

When you've got some scrolls you can view the status of your dorks in the building next door:

In the level up tab for the dork you're interested in, hit the "use multiple scrolls to level up" button (there's no sense in using 1 scroll at a time):

Some general advice:

• Only level dorks you have rooms for.  The house symbol on the icons on the left of the overview mark which ones you currently have placed.
• Rare dorks generally provide the best value.  You should be willing to pay twice or more the cost of a common dork's level to level a rare one instead.
• Higher levels cost more.  If you have many dorks sitting in houses don't neglect grabbing a few cheap lower levels (generally level 25-30 on a common makes sense before level 100 on a rare as an example) on all of them before focusing on the ones that have the best value to you.
• Most dorks come from events.  Recent events have included the possibility to obtain 2 rares each event.  If you fail to complete a dork during an event options to finish them have been lacking (though Care for Tomorrow appears to be including an option in the shop to buy a few missing fragments for previous dorks).

There's really not much interesting about this feature yet, just boring free power with additional busywork.  But enough that it'd be silly to continue to neglect them.

Quantum Incursions for the Lazy or New Cities

As I'm considering a return to the game for a (possibly short) stint, I've been thinking on Quantum Incursions.  Specifically how even on many of my diamond mines it'd be really nice to get a prize or two to make GE more relaxing; yet even on my main I'll be contemplating how to do less of QI.  So the question is what is the least effort one can do and still get decent access to rewards in a timely manner.  Note that this is not an optimized approach if you want to try hard at the feature - rather it's based around "I don't really want to play it, but I would like some rewards for the least effort".

Prerequisites and General Strategy

So the starting point is going to be an assumption that you're in a solo guild with no QI support at all provided by your city.  The concept also can be adapted if you're in a guild that clears the bosses and gets you to the farming nodes (actually even easier then as you don't need to make goods or troops; just donate coins and supplies); but the in-between situation where you're in a guild that finishes the early donation nodes but doesn't open the farming nodes will be a struggle.

Because of the nature of QI, you're going to want to be online twice a day between 10 and 14 hours apart (between 11 and 13 hours apart being slightly preferred as that means the 1 hour build time on tailors is of no consequence).  This allows you 2 collections a day and, barring a whole lot of bonus AP production, an ability to always spend before you get capped.

You will be using 250 Quantum Shards per round for 2 expansions.  This only gives you 2 rounds per championship guaranteed (you start with 500 free QS), but should be sustainable if you're actually playing to the extent discussed here (which should make you ~400 Quantum Shards per round from random rewards alone - plus sometimes some from the pass).  You can use extra shards to open chests after the last round of the championship you decide to play.

You want to select archers or soldiers as one troop type (assumed archers going forward); and iron as one goods type as you ideally want a 3x3 or smaller building when you need to make stuff to donate.

When donating coins or supplies try to keep them roughly balanced - the city I'm recommending produces them roughly equally and you need equal amounts for goods and troops.  It should be ~13 coin donations to 4 supply donations, if you're following the plan exactly, because you start with many more coins than supplies.

Settlement Layout

Part of the requirement to be lazy is not changing your settlement layout too frequently.  Accordingly we'll be doing very little buildup, and a fixed road grid.

The 2nd tailor, marked by the yellow circle, you cannot afford immediately and can be replaced with 2 additional rooftile houses in the initial build.

The 4th butcher, marked by the green circle, will be replaced with your goods building or barracks when you need it and has room for 1 additional rooftile house in that configuration as long as it's 3x3 or smaller.

The two expansions can be any adjacent plots without an impediment, they don't need to be any specific spot.

When you collect you will need to sell down to 6 rooftile houses to get full enthusiasm (from 7 in the plot as is; could be 9 before you get your 2nd tailor; or 8 when you've got a goods building or barracks replacing the 4th butcher) but do not need to build any culture.  Just collect the extra rooftiles, sell them, collect the rest, rebuild the rooftiles.  If you don't like to do the sell and rebuild while collecting at all you can just stick to 6 roof-tiles (instead of 7-9) and have some additional wasted space and a few less coins and AP (you will want to donate supplies somewhat more often).

The Play

Donation amounts assume you start between 8am and 9am eastern and will be available shortly before or after midnight eastern to drain your AP bar at the end of a day or start of the new day.  In general the primary goal is to avoid capping your AP bar, but the amounts here are also intended to maximize your most efficient donation days (2,4).  If you need to do more at a moment or different stuff because of your situation do so - better to have spent early on a less efficient day than to have sat at cap because you couldn't be there when you were about to cap.  Fully spending your AP bar should give you 17 hours before you have to spend again.

• Day 1, as soon as possible, construct your settlement with 1 tailor, and all 4 butchers from the above layout.  Include 2 rooftile houses in place of the missing tailor.  Donate 17 sets of goods (finish the first node) and 7 sets of troops.
• Day 1, collection 1, collect 3 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, build 2nd tailor, and rebuild 1 rooftile house.  
• Day 2, after reset: Donate 17 sets of goods and 10 sets of troops
• Day 2, collection 1: collect 1 rooftile house, sell it, collect everything else, rebuild 1 rooftile house.  Donate 7 sets of troops and 2 sets of coins.
• Day 2, collection 2: collect 1 rooftile house, sell it, collect everything else, sell marked butcher, build iron foundry, build 2 rooftile houses.
• Day 2, before reset: Donate 15 sets of coins or supplies and 13 sets of troops. 
• Day 3, collection 1: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make 80 iron.  Sell iron foundry, build archery range.  Donate 9 sets of goods. 
• Day 3, collection 2: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses. Make 32 archers.  Sell archery range and rebuild iron foundry.
• Day 4, after reset: Donate 17 sets of goods and 8 sets of troops.
• Day 4, collection 1: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Donate 9 sets of troops and 8 sets of coins or supplies.  
• Day 4, collection 2: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make 60 iron.
• Day 4, before reset: Donate 9 sets of coins or supplies, and 14 sets of goods.
• Day 5+, every collection: collect 2 rooftile houses, sell them, collect everything else, rebuild 2 rooftile houses.  Make as many multiples of 20 iron as you can.  Donate all you can.  You will be wasting AP on these days because you don't have enough coin and supply production to fully donate.

Expected Results

Average expectation is 631 fragments per round of the 2 seasonal rewards and the selection kit for old rewards.  This means a bit less than 2 seasons should, on average, get you a level of each of those from random rewards.

You should also get ~2700 progress per round on the pass.  Which means ~3 rounds to get 2000 fragments of the selection kit for old rewards from that using the current pass.

To the extent that one of the old rewards is your goal, 3-4 rounds (=6-8 weeks) should get you 2 level 2s of whatever it is you were hoping for - one from pass and one from random rewards.

Further Optimisation

If you're looking to put in just a little additional effort, some small changes while keeping the core of the lazy approach are possible:

• If you can get enough main city support to build one out of the gate, 1 Goat Farm replaces *all* of the supply producers in the above layout.  Or 1 Arch replaces *all* of the culture.  This would be a slightly different grid but can save you expansions or enable you to build more production so you can do more on later days.  You can come up with a bigger plan based around what you can afford from your main city support.
• Fighting is cheaper when it works and if you can autobattle it's not that much additional effort.  Especially on day 1, fighting can be nearly "free" (no troops lost) with 8 ballista or 6 ballista and 2 archers.  If you have some boost to your QI troops from your main city it can last for more days.  This means additional coins and supplies saved for later days.  It is more clicking though compared to "check the max box and donate all".  If doing this you may wish to work to replace 1 of the culture with an arch so that you don't need to sell rooftile houses.  and upgrade 1-2 of the rooftile houses to better houses so you can have both archer and iron production available when the fighting days end as you'll have some extra coins and supplies to donate troops too.
• If day 11+12 aren't too useful to your guild (which if you're in a solo guild = up to you), you can start day 1 after midnight eastern and have a full 24 hours for day 1 instead of 16 hours. And 8 hours for day 11 (no day 12).  The expected difference in the above strategy is ~17 fragments less and ~60 progress more for starting at midnight on the first day instead of 8 am.  It could have more of an advantage if you fight on early days.

You will need to adapt the timing and amounts of goods and troops produced to match your optimisations.