Advise...

[Pose]

Morning,

I have long thought I was missing somthing, when players around me seem to be able to build everything at once and i can bearly scratch together a colloship and defence.

I am now in a position to be able to concentrate on attack in 1 isle and can bang out a collo a day (sacraficing catas), but still seem to be going wrong somwhere..


can any of you guys pick out where im messing up?

I have 18 isles 9 of them have between 1500-2000 spear on should I stop for a while? have you guys stopped? I know REALLY i shouldnt but can see no other way to close the gap.

I produce 1 colloship and send it out, and have done for a few days now, but can see others banging out 3-5 every few days.

I dont really farm anything(4-5k a day), and as far as I know(and ive searched long and hard) there is nothing left to farm, other than the odd 1 pointer, but i frankly dont have the ships/time to attack every 1 pointer within 1 days travel

new isles i build gold/lumber storehouse, (after the main house up ! ) so they are self sufficiant, then i get them ready to train spears and have small merchants to pool my resources on my completed isles..

how many catas is considered average? i dont have many, and again cant find the resources to produce them at any regular rate

I have read about tools that auto collect gold etc from 1 pointers, is this what im missing?


strange to have to ask for guidence as I feel ive always been quite good at prioritising and getting to where i want to be, but since the server opened no matter what configuration i sue i am constantly slipping back.

I get the impression that some of you guys have 100's of catas and viable fleets on many isles along with the troops to man them, so any pointer would be of help

[Natmus]

My strategy is to concentrate on killer fleets on a few isles, and totally abstain from building defenses on other isles. Instead, all resources (mainly gold and lumber) are transferred to my 'main battle isles' that churn out soldiers (5 spears to 1 archer), LWS and cats 24/7.

All my undefended isles are right close to my mains, so anyone stealing them will either face complete levelling from the neighbouring isle, or see it retaken within a short time.

The main idea here is that I can build a colo boat on any of my mains with short notice simply by stopping production of LWS (usually I can keep up production of cats). The upside of this strategy is that you get some very powerful fleets on some of your isles.
The downside is that you have a corresponding number of undefended isles, and that you spend a lot of time each day sending resources to your mains.

This whole concept is closely tied into the Scorched Earth policy: If we can't reclaim a lost isle we will level it and keep it levelled.

[bishop]

pose said:

I have read about tools that auto collect gold etc from 1 pointers, is this what im missing?

strange to have to ask for guidence as I feel ive always been quite good at prioritising and getting to where i want to be, but since the server opened no matter what configuration i sue i am constantly slipping back.

Tools that auto collect gold would certainly be helpful, but also completely against the rules.

Colo-whoring is obviously a lot more common here than it was on the UK server. People have the option of cutting back on defence and relying on the security of their alliance. This wasn't possible in the UK, since several large predators established themslves early on, before most people discovered the game.

Also, bear in mind that a large percentage of the new intake arrived here via the tech site digg.com, and have not been averse to putting their tech skills to 'good' use by coding things such as the device you described above, and many others. There are also people who prefer just to stick to old-fashioned multi accounting.

In view of all this you seem to be doing okay. I think your strategy of moving straight to ocean 23 before even colonising in you own ocean has hampered your growth (not that my strategy worked any better.) But now that you have twenty or so islands, the colonisation process is obviously much easier.

[n00bs]

There are so many questions here that I don't even know where to start...

The balance between expansion and military buildup is really a question about when you think the Merda! is going to hit the fan. You need to convert from expansion to military buildup early enough that a buildup player will have a less overwhelming force and will lose more units. Think of it like this, if he has 3 isles and 1x300LWS and you have 10 isles and 3x0LWS, then you are in trouble. But if you start building at that point, then later he will have 3 isles and 1x600LWS, you will have 3x300LWS, better but still not good. 1x900LWS vs 3x600LWS, still better, etc. You need to get your forces up so your higher number of islands will wear him down and you will end up winning...

Another question would be how to expand. The answer the AI I wrote came up with was that this is basically an interest game. That means that resources that are not "in use" are not earning interest, where "in use" means actively building something that will result in more resources, or better resource distribution, down the line. Resources sitting around on an island for 3 hours because you don't have capacity to ship them are losing interest, which will have to be weighed against the cost of building ships to move them. Islands running into the storage capacity is a huge no. Islands waiting to build something is a huge no. It is basically a giant optimization problem, hence the AI that I wrote.

Now you may wonder what I got out of that AI. If you look at it from the score perspective, my daily increase/score has consistently been around .5% higher than anyone else in the alliance. Over the time I have been with FoM, my growth has pretty much been twice everyone else, when I joined I was around 15th, now I am 4th (and that is after at least one player was added above me). And that is probably done without sacrificing much in terms of military buildup compared to the rest of the alliance... My stance has been defensive so I would expect that I am lower on LWSs but ahead on ground forces. I have begun accelerating my military growth with 3 islands adding ~70LWS each a week.

My latest realization is that there is basically no warfare going on in the game. Almost all nights see less than 20 islands going through a hostile takeover. If that continues, even the defensive stance means resources wasted. Even the people in ocean 1 are not slugging it out, they are just establishing their new colonies in fresher oceans.

Edit: Just to make it clear, the AI didn't interact with the game, it simply notified me about what to do, thus it is not against the rules (as I read them).

[Arminius]

Yes, I have decided to expand for the moment, as all the big guys are just doing that as well. They're probably very much under-defended, but by the time it comes to war they will have been able to build something up. And then the large number of islands allows you to have more fleets than those who didn't expand.

I'm now slowly switching to army build-up, as the number of isles becomes a bit unmanageable for me...

[Haymaker]

I have a good 5 isles feeding resources to every coloniser, that sees me building a cs on colonisers (I currently have 3) about once in 40 hours. I build spears 24/7 on all isles. Isles that don't colonise or feed colonisers build fleet independently. I also have catapults building on my colonisers when I want to, and just switch from building CSs to catas.

It's risky, because I'm expanding quite fast, but this week, for instance, a large number of my poorly defended ocean 5 isles are building spears 24/7. Like n00bs said, just gauge whether you think war is a likelihood. If it's not, you're probably safe to expand quickly. If it is, focus on military and only take imminently strategically important isles.

[Tomthebuffalo]

I didnt build many large warships on built up colonies for a while. Just 50 spears a day, and transported the excess around for colony ships.

I generally assume that because large warships take less time to build then spears, I'm hopefully wont be too far behind when I need to build up. (Like I'm doing now actually!)

My main isles getting close to 5000 spears. Think I'm on 4800something. I know.. Spear Puttana!! - But it works.

[Arminius]

I think I will stop at 64 isles, at which point I should get the imperialist-world-domination-colo-Puttana!-ribbon-with-stars.

[intchanter]

I'm reaching the point where I'm starting to wonder if it would be worthwhile to specialize a bit on future islands.

My main is built up about as much as it seems to make sense at the moment (lab, main house, and barracks are level 15; everything else is level 20), and I have a couple of isles that are feeding to help with production of warships (large), catapults, and the occasional colonization ship.

Would it make sense at some point to have two adjacent isles as the core of a colony group, with one building warships and the other building catapults and moving them to the first using a small number of small warships? It seems that may save some resources overall, but I haven't done any really deep analysis yet.

Has someone tried out something like this?

[AeroS]

I am also thinking of figuring out what I have, and how to use it for full time military so I can stop colonising. I don't know if I want to even reach 64 islands.

[Haymaker]

intchanter said:

lab, main house, and barracks are level 15; everything else is level 20

I strongly suggest level 20 barracks.

[n00bs]

intchanter said:

Would it make sense at some point to have two adjacent isles as the core of a colony group, with one building warships and the other building catapults and moving them to the first using a small number of small warships? It seems that may save some resources overall, but I haven't done any really deep analysis yet.

Has someone tried out something like this?

A built up island is capable of producing both warships and catapults, so it is cheaper to have one do it all and have the second be a feeder.

Edit: I seem to be hitting a motivational barrier. I figure I am slowly going to keep expanding until I hit 50 islands, just because it is a round number, but that is about it for me... I am currently trying to reduce the load of the game to the point where I only have to touch a built up island every 2, preferably 3 days.

There are simply too many unowned islands, and I think the people that are worried about being small are wrong. There is an individual point between 50 and 100 islands where your empire reaches a size where it gets unmanageable. So, the position in the hierarchy is more about how much time you are willing to spend (ie how many islands are you willing to operate) rather than how fast you grew.

Yet another problem with this game...

[Null]

Somewhat related to managing isles...Do any of you use XXL and its scheduling feature to automate building army/navy?

[bishop]

hafbaked said:

Somewhat related to managing isles...Do any of you use XXL and its scheduling feature to automate building army/navy?

Yes, kind of. I have them more as a safety net at the moment, for building spears if I let the queues run dry for whatever reason. I see the schedules being a great help in the future, though. Once I've finished building up a decent number of colonies, I plan to fully automate production on them, so all I'll have to worry about is shipping resources around. I think this will make a larger empire much easier to manage.

This is a good thread, by the way. It's interesting to hear about everyone's trade secrets.

[Arminius]

I have started setting my islands on autopilot using XXL, which means I won't have to touch them. I only manage the newly acquired ones and one or two which I keep on 'manual' to build colo ships.

Haymaker: why barracks 20? I have them at 10, mostly, but can't see why 5 wouldn't be enough. My standard isle produces 35 spears and 5 LWS every day, and for that level 10 barracks are enough.

Granted, when it comes to actual attacks it might be better to have the ability of faster troop building.

I leave the lab at level 1 (apart from the cat producing isles where it's 15), the harbour and barracks at 10, and I try to avoid building up the quarry too much. Everything else is level 20.