| Subject: Game Openings Tips |
Author:
Ldr
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Date Posted: 18:50:20 06/15/02 Sat
Game Openings Tips
The purpose with the game opening simulated in the spreadsheet is to help you to advance through the ages until Castle Age with a 24 villager strong economy, allowing you to
· build a second town center immediately in castle
· have the option to build a defensive tower without sacrificing the stone for the second town center
· produce some knights from a stable, for offensive or defensive use
· produce a healing monk from a monastery.
The Dark Age
Resource collection
It is important to understand that the resource collection is proportional to the number of villagers allocated to collecting resources.
Resource collection rates (resources / villager-second, i.e. the amount of resources collected per villager and second)
· Berries 0.310
· Shore Fishing 0.426
· Hunting 0.408 Mongols 0.610
· Shepherding 0.330 Britons 0.408
· Farming(Dark) 0.316
· (Fish Ship) Shore Fishing 0.280
· (Fish Ship) Deep Sea Fishing 0.487
· (Fish Ship) Fish Trap 0.206
· Gold 0.379 Turks 0.435
· Gold w/ Gold Mining 0.435 Turks 0.500
· Gold w/ Gold Shaft Mining 0.500 Turks 0.575
· Stone 0.359
· Stone w/ Stone Mining 0.412
· Stone w/ Stone Shaft Mining 0.473
· Lumberjacking 0.388 Celts 0.444
· Lumberjacking w/ Double Bit Axe 0.465 Celts 0.533
· Lumberjacking w/ Bow Saw 0.556 Celts 0.640
· Lumberjacking w/ Two Man Saw 0.613 Celts n/a
· Relic Gold 0.500
For the game opening (no technologies researched), and considering the overhead and taking into account some “villager-bumping”, an approximation reasonably accurate would be
· Berries 0.28
· Hunting (boar and deer) 0.37
· Shepherding 0.32
· Farming 0.29
· Lumberjacking 0.35 from forest with lumber camp, from stragglers without lumber camp (deposit at TC) 0.3
· Gold 0.34
· Stone 0.34
If you want to use other rates in the model, feel free to do so.
First goal: Reaching feudal
To reach feudal, you need
· 500 food
· Two dark age buildings (mill, dock, lumber camp, mining camp).
Food is of hence of paramount importance. Period.
The Town center
The main purpose of the town center is to produce villagers. Of secondary importance is its ability to function as a safe haven and as a deposit for resources. The town center should never, never be idle during the game opening. This means that after every 25 seconds (the time it takes to give birth to a villager) you should have at least 50 food in the stockpile, or your TC will idle and you will lose valuable time.
Let us develop a strategy where the TC never, ever idles. In theory, given an unlimited supply of food resources readily available close to the TC (sheep), you should be able to reach the required 500 food after approximately villager 17-18.
If you try to do this, a number of things will happen.
· First, sheep will run out. You should be able to find 8 sheep (800 food).
· Second, you will be “housed”. Immediately start by having two or three guys build a house and possibly use the third villie and the scout to find sheep nearby. Rally all sheep at the TC and send all villies to eat sheep after the house is build. This make take 10 seconds or so in theory, due to lag etc let us assume it takes 25 seconds. Set the TC rally point on the killed sheep and bring the other sheep out of sight from the shepherds, behind the TC.
· Third, your shepherds will bump and get stuck. Experience shows that you can have up to 6 villies on one sheep. And 6 are enough to generate a sufficient food flow for now.
· Sheep rot at a speed of 1/sec so you will not be able to collect more than 64 food per sheep with 6 guys working on it. Also, never kill more than one sheep at the time to avoid unnecessary rotting! You will also have to take one of the villies to build a house no later than after villie #8 is born.
NB Pay-off time (partly off-topic)
A villager costs 50 resources. With a collection rate of a little more of 0.3, it means that pay-off time is about two and a half minutes. If a villagers survives this time, you have passed break even and are on the plus side :-)
Now, after you have 6 villies on sheep, what to do with the new guys? Although the target is food, put them on wood in the meantime as strange as it may sound. (You will need to collect wood anyway). Villies 7-9 go chopping stragglers (you always have at least 3 stragglers trees close to the TC). Remember to build a house with no later than villager 8.
By the time villie #10 is born, you should have scouted your home base thoroughly and found the following in the surroundings:
· 2 boars
· A patch of berries
· A herd of deer
· A forest nearby where to build a lumber camp
· Two gold mines
· A stone mine, possibly two
Although hunting is faster, I recommend to build a mill by the berries just to have a complementary and safe food resource to sheep. Also the food flows in smoother from berries than from hunting since foragers only carry 10 in opposite to hunters’ 35. If you master the opening well, or if you find boar and deer close together, then of course go for a mill by the pigs and deer! But, usually, this is not the case. Also sending villies far from the TC before loom is researched is hazardous. This is why I recommend berries as second food source.
Villagers 10 and 11 go and build a mill one tile from the bush. Also set the TC gather point for villagers 12 -15 on the berries. One of the berry pickers will have to make a break and build the third house, then goes boar luring. A very good idea is to research loom now before resuming TC production.
Shoot two arrows on the pig and run back towards the TC. The pig will follow and at this stage the shepherds should have munched more all less all mutton. If not, then drop excess sheep food and kill the pig. After a while take a healthy villager and have him lure the second boar. You can also use the foragers instead of the shepherds, which ones depend on how much food is left on the sheep carcasses.
Now put the TC gather point on a nice forest nearby and have the next villie build a lumber camp one tile away from the forest. Send all but three berry pickers to cut wood. Quite soon the 3 closest stragglers should run out, send these guys to the lumber camp too. One of the lumberjacks 17 or 18 builds house number 4.
You should try to balance to have 11 lumberjacks, 6 or 7 hunters, 3 foragers and you will likely have a villager building the last house or walking around.
The two last villagers are sent to the closest gold mine and build a mining camp.
After villie 24 comes out, you should have some 500+ food and be able to click feudal immediately. In theory time should be 9 minutes and 10 seconds, in reality it will be closer to 9.30 since it is likely that you have messed up at some stage.
Feudal Transition
The dark to feudal transition is a stretch during which your natural food resources will run out and you have to switch to farming. (Deer hunting/fishing is of course an option, often better than farming but is not covered in this opening for the sake o simplicity.)
You should have the wood required to make 8 farms when the boar is eaten. Build the farms around the TC, rather than around the mill because the TC can be used as a safe haven.
The Feudal Age
In feudal your objectives is to build three buildings: smith or market + barracks and stable. You should have enough wood to take 3 builders from the lumberjacks to make all four buildings. If you are low on wood, go for market + smith.
With the correct build order, you should have the prerequisite 2 (market+smith) or 3 (barracks+stable and market and/or smith) up by 800 seconds (13:15 minutes) in theory, at the same time when your food stock has reached 800 and your gold stock 200.
Click the castle upgrade
Castle transition
Send two of the builders to the stone patch and build a camp. The stone will be needed for additional town centers and also to build towers, to repel enemy feudal troops (archers), or to build a hideaway before you have several Town centers.
So basically what you do is nothing except research two important techs:
· Double bit axe because you will need lots of wood in castle
· Horse collar to save wood when replenishing your farms
Also remember to build at least one more house since you are already at pop limit!
Castle Age
When entering the castle age at 16 minutes or so, immediately resume the villager production from the first town center. Set gathering point on stragglers if they are some left, or on the forest close to the lumber camp.
You should have enough gold to train one or perhaps two knights.
Build a second town center with a handful of woodcutters.
Build a monastery
and so forth...
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