Understanding Obtaining FE+ Troops In Ages before Contemporary Era

This might be a bit of a long post, because there's a lot involved with how this works and rather than saying "just do this" I'm going to try and explain everything that's going on.

If a "just do this" post *is* what you want, look here: https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v1-22.37109/

Ok so the process of getting these troops in Contemporary Era+ I've explained before and is relatively straightforward.  Save what you can for techs, and only progress the continent map and research tree when the story tells you you have to.  The reason you can't do this normally in PME or earlier is because of "hard tech blocks" that once they come up you cannot pass without progressing to the age in question.  At the end of each of the CE and PME continent maps there is one of these blocks.

So how do you get by these quests?  You have to stop them from appearing at all.  Starting in Contemporary Era the story occasionally "breaks" depending on your actions.  Story quests have prerequisites and if you've done something unexpected like fighting ahead on the map past where the next quest would be, it skips that quest - if later quests have that quest as a prerequisite, the story can disappear entirely.  This can be useful to get 3 recurring quests in an age that's not the last - but in this case it's going to be used to skip a "hard tech block".  By completing the last province of the CE continent and moving onto the next map while skipping the optional provinces not required before you advance the quests, it'll skip to Dictator's Death, and then the story will disappear.  Presumably "King of the Desert", the CE blocker quest, requires either you to have completed another CE quest that you skipped or to control the whole map.

So your story's gone, that's all well and good - but how do you get the FE troops then?  At various points, the story is eligible to return without you having completed prerequisite quests - just for being at the right spot on the continent map and not having a Story Quest.  We'll call these "resume points".  FE has a few of these.  So we're able to rejoin the story in time to get FE troops.

Now I mentioned that Postmodern Era also has a blocker, "The End of This Chapter".  I also didn't mention the story "breaking" before Contemporary Era.  So...  this one needs to be avoided via an anomaly in the PME story.  At one point near the end of the PME story, they want to give you a choice as to whether to cover up the actions of Colonel Lang or to tell the truth about what happened, "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Apparently in order to make it eligible to abort, they had to flag it as a Side Quest.  This allows "resume points" checking your quests to see that you don't have a Story Quest and as such let you pick up story from that point.  So the core point for getting them before Postmodern Era is to simply never complete or abort "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".

Ok so that's it for the extra complications in terms of quests...  But there is another detail to deal with - you do have to somehow manage to take all these continents!  To take ME through FE up to hover tanks by negotiation requires ~40k PE+ goods!  That's a lot of goods to purchase, so you might want to fight as much as possible.  

But for large segments of the map you'll be using units 1 or more eras out of date.  Accordingly you need significant amounts of boost.  The attack of units isn't much of a problem in my experience (i.e. if you have the 3 main attack buildings that should cover most of what you need to 2-shot enemy units), but given the awkward armies you're often using the defense of your attacking units is of paramount importance.  So in preparation for attempting this, you may wish to focus on stacking event buildings that offer defense for attacking army.  You will also need a source of a significant number of rogues.

To fight with rogues on continent map you need to move your "real unit" to the corner and keep it far enough away from enemy units that they don't pick it to attack.  Continent map does not prioritize rogues over non-rogues like the AI you're used to from GvG/GBG/Neighborhood battles.  But it does prioritize proximity to a large degree - so parking the real unit in the corner while you fling forward the rogues does often work.  Rapid Deployment units have a tendency to occasionally blast your real unit before you can move it.  And that's a big part of where the need for defense comes in.

Overall summary of process:

BA-LMA: 

• Skip some unnecessary techs - not crucial to reach Hover Tanks or if your target age is Progressive Era but the more you skip the easier it'll be to reach OF troops in Industrial.
• Try to build up rogues and defense bonus for attacking army.  
• Be as caught up as you can be on Story Quests before Colonial Age (you should get stuck on a quest requiring you to build Colonial buildings)

Colonial Age: 

• Carefully enter it researching a minimum of techs.
• Complete Industrial Story and as much of Progressive Story as you can until you get stuck (there's some quests requiring you to build Industrial or Progressive buildings).

Industrial Age+: 

• Continue carefully dealing with tech only as fast as you have to to complete story.  Extreme option is to win Police Stations from events, daily challenges, or expedition so you don't have to use up techs on researching them.
• Finish PE+ME story in whatever manner you prefer.
• Only negotiate with Che Guerrero when required to take one of his provinces in PME, don't take the other yet and don't fight any sectors inside.  This is necessary to receive the MG Teams that you'll be using to fight for the next while.
• Proceed with story as directed along the peninsula where you negotiated for a province from Che.  Fighting or Negotiating is fine with the other leader.
• Receive 5 MG Teams (and some commandos).
• After finishing the one side and being directed by story, conquer Che's other province by whatever means you prefer (you can fight him now if you prefer)
• Finish PME story up to "Your Choice: Truth or Dare?".  Do not complete or abort this quest until you are done trying to get units above your age or are in Postmodern Era.
• Complete the Contemporary Era map without advancing story while not scouting the 2 optional provinces (in the north-west) that are unnecessary to get off the map (in the north-east).  Once you've scouted the first province of the TE map it is safe to advance story (possibly earlier, but if it doesn't work out you may not be able to get Hover Tanks til Contemporary Era) - it should just vanish for the time being.  Complete TE map as you please.
• TE story can be resumed at "Meet Miguel Mantos" immediately after scouting Rio Roxo - and possibly other spots.  Doing so may enable you to win troops useful to fight the rest of TE and FE continent with but may also require more techs.  If you wish to skip the entirety of TE story, you should do the same as CE and take only what you have to and get off the map before advancing story.
• Only negotiate with Joy Danba in the first province in Future Era.
• Upon finishing your negotiations for her entire province, FE story should be ready to resume telling you to scout the next provinces.
• Follow story as directed until you reach the point where you need to scout Kalabuye and Bisoraba (the two provinces adjacent to Botuku).
• Do not touch Kalabuye until Joy Danba has given you 3 Hover Tanks.
• Continue on with story as you please.  You will get 1 more Hover Tank and some assorted other troops.  Tech count permitting, you may continue following story until about halfway through the OF continent map winning a great deal of additional advanced troops.

Chateau Frontenac and Recurring Quests

This building is one of the great "not-so-secrets" of longtime players.  Pretty much every top player has one, but it's relied on to different extents.  When should you build it?  How high should you take it?  "It's complicated".  

Intertwined with the great building is the game's recurring quest system, so I should take some time to explain that first.

The game has up to 3 quest slots in the "Story" tab at any given point in time.  When you first start the game you just have one.  Shortly into bronze age you pick up a second.  You gain a third for the first time when you unlock the EMA bonus quest series - but it will only be occupied by those bonus quests and go away once you're completed.  You get the third permanently *just* before you unlock the LMA bonus quest series.

These 3 quest slots will contain one of 4 types of quests:

• Story Quest: The main storyline of the game - this will *usually* consume one of the quest slots and is usually not abortable (occasionally they'll allow it to be aborted as a form of making a decision : complete this quest to do A or abort this quest to do B)
• Bonus Quest: There are 3 bonus areas in the game: EMA Barbarian line, LMA Princess Myciena line, and Industrial Age Canada/Mexico line.  Like Story Quests, these cannot usually be aborted.
• Side Quest: These quests are abortable extras.  Once you abort them they're gone forever.
• Recurring Quest: These quests are abortable extras that will keep coming back as long as you're in your current age.  They will start showing up in any open quest slots when you have no other quests to fill them.  Normally to get to these you quickly complete or abort each Side Quest that comes up.  These pay out a "Random Reward" - 1/7 chance each of a "small coin" reward or "small supply" reward, 5/14 chance of "5 goods of current age", and 1/14 chance each of "random blueprint", "forge points" (medium FP pack before Space Age Mars, then 10 FP to your bar instead), "large coin" reward, "large supply" reward, "20 diamonds or X medals" (first time hitting this for each specific recurring quest will be 20 diamonds - each time after that will be medals).

The main use of Chateau Frontenac is to combine it with Recurring Quests that you do many times a day to get a whole bunch of random rewards.  This can be one of the most efficient ways of making current age goods in the game.

It *is* possible to lose your quest slots to Bonus Quests you cannot complete in your current age - specifically the Canada/Mexico line is not completable until Industrial Age but can be unlocked at any point as it triggers solely off map progress.  It's important if you care about your quest slots and want to work the Industrial Age map early that you *not* take Las Penas (the Southwestern US).  The trigger for unlocking the bonus line is taking both Garrincton and Las Penas.  Garrincton must be taken to move to the Progressive Era map.  Las Penas is optional however.  A further note that if you're trying to get advanced troops without losing a quest slot in Colonial Age, you should also support the south (fight against the north and leave the south untouched) so as not to get asked to take Las Penas by the story.

If you *don't* particularly enjoy that style of play then Chateau Frontenac will be a lower priority for you.  You probably still will want one eventually as there's some rather large rewards from Story Quests you'll be doing anyways.

If you *do* like doing at least a few dozen Recurring Quests a day then a Chateau Frontenac should be among your first great buildings.  You should level it to 10 relatively quickly, and it might be your second building to be taken past 10 (after the Arc which is useful to get the blueprints needed to level the Chateau high).

On the extreme end of Chateau Frontenac usage is the "perpetual motion machine" where you get to a point where you can do as many quests a day as you can stomach because the average payout from the quests exceeds the cost.  This essentially comes down to printing money.

So...  once you're taking your Chateau Frontenac past 10, where should you stop?  

It should usually be a multiple of 4 plus 10 - i.e. 10,14,18,22,26,etc.  This is where the 5 current goods random reward goes up by a good, because Chateau's boost rounds.  Levels past 10 gain 5% boost per level so at level 10 (150% boost) you gain 5 * (1+1.5) = 12.5 rounded to 13 goods and then at level 14 you gain 5 * (1+1.7) = 13.5 rounded to 14 goods.  Level 70 would be a good initial stopping point if this is your only consideration.  Your random rewards will be paying out 28 goods at that point and the levels will be getting more expensive quickly.

The reason to go further than that is if you're not just looking for more rewards from the quests you do, but also the ability to do more quests.  i.e. to come closer to the "perpetual motion machine".

In most ages this is done with the "Unbirthday Party" quest where you pay coins and supplies for a random reward.  If your average rewards from that quest is greater than the costs, then you can just keep aborting around to it and doing it again.  You may also be satisfied with being able to sustain an "Unbirthday Party" between each time you run another quest (like "R'lyeh" - spend X FP).  

Notably in low ages where the costs aren't so high in the first place, you can instead opt for "more than I want to do" amount of quests without worrying about perpetual motion.  You can use a Himeji Castle for large amounts of supplies for your age, and Chateau Frontenac for large amounts of coins.  It's pretty easy to be able to do 1000+ quests a day with a level 70 Chateau Frontenac and Level 58 Himeji Castle in ages through LMA.

The first *big* advantage in trying to approach perpetual motion is to use your Recurring Quest rewards to complete "F'nord" (collect coins) and "The Spink" (collect supplies) Recurring Quests.  This gets you extra Random Rewards that can contribute to your discount on your "Unbirthday Party".  For this to work you need to have at least two quest slots on Recurring Quests (not possible until LMA).  Reaching Chateau Frontenac levels that allow you to complete those extra quests in less total reward instances makes a big step forward towards affording more quests.  What levels help with that vary from era to era.  Following is a table of notable levels.  In brackets you'll find the total FP investment needed to reach that level using a 1.9 thread to help you decide whether a level is something you want to try for.  Lg/Sm = large/small.  C/S = coin/supply.  so the 1 Lg C column for instance is the level of Chateau Frontenac required for 1 large coin reward to complete the quest to collect coins.

Era	1 Lg C	1 Lg S	3 Sm C	3 Sm S	2 Sm C	2 Sm S
LMA	30 (11k)	40 (13k)	10 (3k)	14 (6k)	30 (11k)	40 (13k)
CA	103 (83k)	90 (48k)	56 (17k)	52 (16k)	103 (83k)	98 (67k)
InA	138 (345k)	110 (112k)	67 (21k)	51 (15k)	120 (170k)	97 (65k)
PE	147 (481k)	117 (150k)	85 (39k)	65 (20k)	147 (481k)	117 (150k)
ME	147 (481k)	120 (170k)	100 (73k)	87 (43k)	170 (1.1m)	151 (556k)
PME	120 (170k)	89 (46k)	88 (44k)	76 (28k)	152 (576k)	134 (296k)
CE	83 (36k)	85 (39k)	68 (22k)	65 (20k)	122 (185k)	117 (150k)
TE	60 (18k)	88 (44k)	57 (17k)	77 (29k)	105 (91k)	135 (308k)
FE	54 (16k)	94 (57k)	54 (16k)	94 (57k)	101 (76k)	160 (761k)
AF	60 (18k)	60 (18k)	63 (19k)	60 (18k)	114 (133k)	110 (112k)
OF	51 (15k)	110 (112k)	56 (17k)	114 (133k)	103 (83k)	191 (2.1m)
VF	127 (226k)	51 (15k)	138 (345k)	56 (17k)	227 (5.9m)	103 (83k)
SAM	161 (787k)	94 (57k)	171 (1.1m)	101 (76k)	276 (22.3m)	171 (1.1m)

With some rather painful math and some assumptions it's possible to derive what level of CF will

• allow the 50% discount needed to be able to always afford an extra "Unbirthday Party" quest in between doing some other quest.
• allow the 100% discount needed to simply be able to do "Unbirthday Party" quests for as long as you have patience
• note that unlike the earlier table of useful levels to hit if you're *close* to these numbers it's probably fine - you are after all making some coins and supplies from other sources to pay for a small amount of cost.  Exception would be if the levels you're missing would take you past a breakpoint in the previous table for your era.

Era	50% Discount	100% Discount
BA	121 (177k)	282 (26.0m)
IrA	16 (6k)	72 (25k)
EMA	38 (13k)	116 (144k)
HMA	74 (26k)	147 (481k)
LMA	40 (13k)	96 (62k)
CA	76 (28k)	166 (932k)
InA	128 (235k)	258 (13.9m)
PE	88 (44k)	187 (1.8m)
ME	95 (59k)	200 (2.7m)
PME	88 (44k)	187 (1.8m)
CE	73 (26k)	161 (787k)
TE	59 (18k)	135 (308k)
FE	88 (44k)	187 (1.8m)
AF	71 (24k)	171 (1.1m)
OF	130 (254k)	261 (15.0m)
VF	227 (5.9m)	458 (2.2b)
SAM	250 (11.2m)	510 (7.8b)

You might notice that in both of the tables provided SAAB was omitted.  Starting in Arctic Future the recurring quests on offer started getting experimented with.  Through SAM though the "Unbirthday Party" option in combination with "F'nord"/"The Spink" (or something close to them) still existed to some extent.  In SAAB they do not - though with the trends you see above you might realize even if they did exist trying to sustain "Unbirthday Party" wouldn't be a great option.  I will however now discuss other quest options and changes in advanced ages with different recurring quests.

In Arctic Future:

• There's 2 Spend FP quests which allows you extra completions with quests to "Spend 99 FP" and "Spend 200 FP".  on average this gives you 3 quests every 200 FP which is the best rate since Industrial.
• There's also extras with higher values for collecting supplies, and paying coins & supplies.
• There's a quest to build 8 decorations.  Using the Ice Flower at the end of the AF tech tree this is possible to do indefinitely even with a relatively low level Chateau.  It is however a fair bit more nuisance as you have to both build and eventually sell those decorations adding a good 32 more clicks per quest.
• There's two quests to gain happiness.  Using lower era happiness buildings this is possible to be done indefinitely even without a CF - but involves even more clicking.  Using the Friends Tavern's construction boost + building a bunch of Bronze Age Taverns every 10 minutes to complete 2 quests was a strategy I employed for a while on my first world but will not be doing again.

In Oceanic Future:

• There's a quest to "Buy 5 FP" which can allow you to turn your billions of coins into quest completions at the same time you're turning them into FP.  Buying FP is much faster on the mobile client if you're planning to do a lot of this.
• There's 3 quests to "Complete 6 24 hr productions" (of any age).  It's possible to finish OF story and have 3 slots with Recurring Quests.  The story doesn't restart until you advance to Virtual Future.  So you can have all 3 of these up and collect 6 buildings.  On average this allows you to complete a quest per 2 production buildings.  This works particularly well with Sleigh Builders which happen to be the most efficient goods producers in the game when run on 24 hr cycle.  I plan to take advantage of this on Yorkton to have Sleigh Builders making previous age goods as well as supplying me with quests.

In Virtual Future:

• There's quests to "Buy 15 Forge Points" and to "Buy 20 Forge Points and Spend 150 Forge Points" in addition to "Spend 200 Forge Points".  You can try juggling these, but overall I found their overlap less useful than I'd like.
• There's an extra supply gathering quest with higher values
• The first of the "combat" recurring quests shows up - you need to win 20 battles and gather 800 goods.  You can use this to do many quests by having a guildmate post a bunch of circular trades and grabbing one every 20 battles.
• There's a quest to finish 5 1hr productions in the Holographic Research Lab.  If you've got a good amount of space this can add up.  5 Research Labs can easily yield 16 quests a day.  Incidentally if you're finding yourself short on supplies as the needs for those are going up this can also help with that.
• There's still the generic "Complete 6 24 hr productions" quest, but only 1 copy so it's not as efficient as in OF

In Space Age Mars:

• The FP from a Random Reward is now 10 FP to your bar instead of a 5 FP package.
• There's quests to "Buy 15 Forge Points" and to "Buy 20 Forge Points and Spend 150 Forge Points" in addition to "Spend 200 Forge Points".  You can try juggling these, but overall I found their overlap less useful than I'd like.
• There's an extra supply gathering quest with higher values
• The combat quest comes back - now win 20 battles and gather 1000 goods; still about as efficient
• The 1hr production quest is now 6 1hr productions in a Rocket Testing Site.  Rocket Testing sites are 2/3 the size of Holographic Research Labs so this is a bit more efficient.
• There's still the generic "Complete 6 24 hr productions" quest, but only 1 copy so it's not as efficient as in OF

In Space Age Asteroid Belt:

• There is an absurdly large number of quests that are unconditional - meaning that you need to abort more times to get to the one you want to do.
• There's no "Unbirthday Party" and the only collect quest requires you to gather both coins and supplies.
• There's two Spend FP quests (150 FP and 200 FP)
• There's alternatives or requirements to pay goods for many quests - they require too many goods to be useful if you want to use quests to make goods
• There's many tasks that you do daily that can now also give you a quest (spending Tavern silver, aiding people, recruiting units, exchanging items in Antique Dealer, collecting Incidents)
• The combat quests lose the need to trade goods and there's two of them (defeat 40 units, win 20 battles without losing).  There's also one to win a "very hard" battle provided and gather 500 goods but it's usually easier to just find the battles elsewhere and not worry about the goods collection.
• The quest to finish production in the building of the age no longer specifies a duration.  Any 8 productions in a Space Farm is a quest.  This means 8 Space Farms could put out 10+ quests an hour if you happen to enjoy running 5 minute productions.
• There's still the generic "Complete 6 24 hr productions" quest, but only 1 copy so it's not as efficient as in OF

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 :)