Middle Ages QI for the Intense

Part of what I like about this round of changes to Quantum Incursions is that it's no longer such a nuisance to repeatedly evolve a city thanks to the lack of roads needed.  This leads to me being willing to at least consider a more intensely optimized startup than I've played in the last year.

My first runs on beta were hallmarked by using Alchemists as cheap initial Alloy production upgrades to ramp into the endgame buildings, and this is still what I'd consider the ideal start if you need to conserve Quantum Shards (QS).  But while their one hour construction is not problematic from a theoretical perspective, it can be from a practical perspective if you don't check in an hour later for their construction to complete and start the production.   It could mess with attempts to gain extra collections by significantly more than the intended hour ; potentially to the extent that you miss one of their collections and mess up your ramp plans.  So this post considers an alternative with a straight shot to T3 buildings which while more costly seems more reliable.

The problem with this is that most "natural" initial builds struggle to hit much more 400 Alloy per collection (the lazy approach in my previous post started at 330, but with a bit of extra collection effort could reach 400).  Which means three collections until your first upgrade and is a big loss over building some temporary Alchemists on the first two collections which can still build a T3 building on the third collection thanks to their additional production.  So for skipping Alchemists to be a plausible win you need to be building a T3 building on the second collection.  And that means 500 Alloy per collection.  

To meet this goal requires your focus to be almost entirely on low-population houses (or a whole lot of expansions), which will require additional starting coins.  You also need to take advantage of quick-build euphoria to have many more Alloy producing buildings than you otherwise would.

Prerequisites

Starting Goods: 50 (for 1 free expansions with goods at the start).

Minimum initial build cost: 630,000 Coins (180,000 extra starting Coin from your main city).

Total QS: 1,395

- 250 QS on initial expansions (assuming 2 are from QS)

- ~35 QS on impediment removal

- 350 QS on rushing construction on your first 7 T3 Alloy producers.

- 760 QS on rushing production on your first Bakery 8 times for 3000 extra Alloy.

You will need to buy ~1,000 additional QS if you use this plan immediately at the start of a new championship, but should be able to make enough QS per round to sustain it for future rounds (~6,500 personal progress per round should cover it; I'm hoping to pass 10,000).

If you need extra troops at some point early on, it costs 11,250 Coin and 5,625 Supply to buy and sell an EMA barracks and 35,000 Coin and 28,000 Supply to train 10.  If you need to do this before first collection it will require additional starting Coins.  By second collection it shouldn't be an issue to pop out enough to last you until they wain in power.

The 500 Alloy Plan

You start with 3 expansions.  You can work in more supply buildings if you have more expansions, or take the house flipping strategy to the extreme.  You would need at least 2 additional expansions to move 8 of the 9 houses to convert a block to 4 additional Tanneries and not lose out too badly (4 Tanneries should payout somewhat more Alloy than a single house).  You would also need additional starting Coins for larger layouts (which is at least in part why you're using just 3 starting expansions).

Initial build:

- 15x Multistorey House, 30x Estate House

- 2x Tannery or 3x Additional Multistorey House (or empty space to save cost)

Total Cost: 654,000 Coins ; you will need 204,000 additional starting Coins (from for example 11 Koi Ponds).  

If you are short a *little* on coins, the 2 Tanneries are not crucial on the first collection (but are on the 2nd then) - this reduces the cost to 630,000 coins.  You can build the Churches that replace them with your first coins from Town Hall collection.

Multistorey Houses are used to the extent they are to increase your coin gain, lower your build cost, and at no loss in terms of number of collections at a given productivity.  i.e. It would still take 3 Churches before you move to 60% productivity even with all 45 houses as Estate Houses, but would add 90k coins to the construction cost and lose coin production.  If you're going for additional expansions and different numbers of houses the math may change in terms of exactly how many of the houses you can get away with being Multistorey Houses instead of Estate Houses.

Collection procedure:

Collect and Sell 2 Tannery and 4 Multistorey Houses at 20% Productivity.  Build 3 Churches.

Collect and Sell 9 additional Multistorey Houses at 60% Productivity.  Build 4 Churches.

Collect and Sell 2 additional Multistorey Houses at 80% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 4 Estate Houses at 100% Productivity.  Build 2 Churches.

Collect and Sell 3 Estate Houses at 110% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 4 Estate Houses at 120% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect 19 Estate Houses at 150% Productivity.

This will net you 503 Alloy (15 + 10 * (6 * 20% + 9 * 60% + 2 * 80% + 4 * 100% + 3 * 110% + 4 * 120% + 19 * 150%)).

You will also collect at least 1,863,000 Coins (could be boosted slightly further by city buildings but the 600% boost from Estate Houses is pretty dominant), which should eliminate any worries about Coin costs of buying and selling stuff.

Sell the Churches and rebuild everything sold after the first collection and after the second collection you'll have enough Alloy to build your first Bakery to start addressing supplies.  You should probably spend at least 50 Quantum Shards to complete its construction.

Now that you have a building producing 375 Alloy per collection at 150% Productivity you should use Quantum Shards to finish production repeatedly on your Bakery and immediately blitz more T3 buildings.  Without this step you're just falling behind plans that would build Alchemists on the first 2 collections.

The Blitz

Start by converting as much of your city as you can to Breweries while maintaining 150% Euphoria.  This allows you to convert some of your excess coins from the start into additional supplies as you finish the Bakery's production repeatedly.

Each additional 1,000 Alloy building requires 3 finished productions from your Bakery.  Which will also produce at least 3x 222,000 supplies in the above configuration.  A second T3 building will cutoff ~1.5 collections worth of ore.  A third T3 building will cutoff ~1 collection worth of ore.  A fourth T3 building will only cost 2 additional rushes because of the leftover.  Launching directly into 4 Bakeries (construction rushed) is a good spot to stop.  Include a Ropery to start making additional goods expansions next collection.  The next two images below have "too many" Estate Houses due to a revision ; will update next week.  9 Multistorey Houses is the new recommendation.

Before Collecting, make goods and place 4 expansions, these expansions can be any ones without impediments.  Sell the Ropery and move 16 houses to the new expansions.  Build 8 Churches.

Collection procedure:

Collect and Sell 2 Tannery at 80% Productivity.  Build 2 Churches.

Collect and Sell 4 Multistorey Houses at 100% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 2 Multistorey Houses at 110% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 3 Multistorey Houses at 120% Productivity.  Build 2 Churches.

Collect 22 Estate Houses at 150% Productivity.  Sell 4 Churches and 8 Estate Houses.  Build 6-7 Breweries.

Collect 4 Bakeries at 150% Productivity.

This yields 1,959 new Alloy.  Build 1 Clapboard House (construction rushed) and 1 Pillory.  Rebuild with a mostly-normal layout focused on boosting your T3 buildings coin and supply production, including the Ropery once more.  You will still be reliant on some temporary buildings converted to Euphoria.

Collection procedure:

Collect and Sell 1 Tannery and 4 Multistorey Houses at 60% Productivity.  Build 2 Churches.

Collect and Sell 2 Multistorey Houses at 80% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 3 Multistorey Houses at 100% Productivity.  Build 2 Churches.

Collect and Sell 1 Multistorey House at 110% Productivity.

Collect and Sell 3 Multistorey Houses at 120% Productivity.  Build 1 Church (or Palace; not needed here but may be a relevant option if you have more expansions since Churches don't fill the space of a standalone 4-House expansion).

Collect 14 Estate Houses, 9 Breweries, 4 Bakeries, 1 Clapboard House at 150% Productivity.

This yields 2,358 new Alloy.  Combined with the leftover from prior, you're past 2500 Alloy.  Build 2 Clapboard House (rushed) and 1 Pillory.  If you can afford additional goods expansions, build them (2 additional planned here).

Collection Procedure:

Collect and Sell 6 Multistorey Houses @ 100% Productivity.  Build 1 Palace.

Collect and Sell 2 Multistorey Houses @ 110% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect and Sell 4 Multistorey Houses @ 120% Productivity.  Build 1 Church.

Collect 11 Estate Houses, 14 Breweries, 3 Clapboard Houses, 4 Bakeries.

This yields 3,145 new Alloy.  Build 2 new Bakeries, and 2 new Pillories.  It is now more optional as to whether to rush new buildings as existing buildings now represent over 80% of your Alloy production compared to new construction.

Further Progression

From here, try to keep your Supply and Coin production balanced (more Bakeries than Clapboards; Breweries preferred to Estate Houses when it comes to filling extra space.  Quantum Supply Boost from your main city is particularly useful because of how much space Breweries take up to provide it).  Build additional Pillories as needed to stay at 150% productivity (you want them at the end anyways).

Drop the Ropery once the cost of further goods expansions seems hardly worth the work.  You could also drop it temporarily as a micro-optimisation if you're going to wait more than 1 collection to buy another expansion.

Build a Trebuchet or LMA barracks when your EMA troops are starting to feel insufficient.  (In preparation for Day 6 when the opposition becomes HMA troops may be a good moment).  Sell it when you have enough trained to make it to the end (possibly as soon as the next cycle if you've built up enough Coin and Supply before you place it)

Trebuchets or Cannons only care about sword boost for practical purposes but desire it quite high for day 11 (it takes an even larger amount of shield boost to let them survive even 2 hits, so that's not practical).

Longbow Archers or melee LMA troops only need modest sword boost but desire high shield boost for the later days.  Melee troops are easier to come close to capping shield boost for reliable wins, but will usually still cost you 1 troop per encounter while capped.  Longbow Archers will often have cleaner wins and with enough shield will also become reliable.

Final Goal

Whatever your initial build plan involves leads to a similar spot: Get to a point with high Alloy, Coin, and Supply production to setup for the final goal - a settlement with enough boost and saved up troops to win through the final day, and convert the rest of the space to AP generation (Pillories), ideally with most goods expansions purchased.  Optimising the start is all about getting to that point earlier so you can have your max AP generation for longer.  With that in mind, there's also motivation to try and get "extra" collections by being on precisely 10 hours later.  5 days in could be 12 collections instead of 10 and buy you an extra day of high AP.

An expansion's worth of Pillory costs 2,000 Alloy, 480k Coins, 480k Supplies for 800 AP/hr.  3 Expansions (less 6 tiles) are wasted on the Town Hall.  This means that say 19 usable Expansions will cost ~38k Alloy, 9.1M Coins, 9.1M Supplies for 15,200 AP/hr.  Given that it takes an unrushed Clapboard House or Bakery 40 hours to be profitable (10 hours to build + 3 productions to get ahead), once you're around 8-10k Alloy production it's time to stop thinking about increasing it and just focus on Coins and Supplies for the switch (selling your producers will recover an additional ~5k).  That's somewhere around 20+ combined Bakeries + Clapboard Houses.

If you need military boost, your options:

- Tower Ruin/Group of Trees at 800 Alloy, 400k Coins, 300k Supplies for 180% Boost/Expansion.  

- Gargoyle/Signpost at 3,200 Alloy, 1.2M Coins, 1M Supplies for 240% Boost/Expansion.

- Nautical Statue at 12,000 Alloy, 6.4M Coins, 4.8M Supplies for 480% Boost/Expansion of *both* colours.

Keeping Clapboard Houses a little longer can allow an earlier conversion to Pillories, Alloy-wise, if you don't need all your boost yet.  2 Clapboards make an extra 750 Alloy every collection.  That could be 1 Nautical Statue or Almost 4 Gargoyles/Signposts per collection.  If you can delay their sale by 2 collections that's all the Alloy needed to replace themself with Gargoyles/Signposts.  If you can delay their sale by 7 collections that's almost all the Alloy needed for Nautical Statues.  Of course that doesn't help with the Supply cost (and keeping Bakeries without Breweries would struggle to do much either while taking a lot more space), so you need to budget that into your pre-sale agenda still :)