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PROTECTION:
OOP basics:Hour 0: if your race needs them, build ~15 docks. If your race needs ore, build 5-25 ore mines. Build 13-25 towers (lots of vets either agrre on 13 or 25. If you go with 13, you often have to add in some more before oop). Build the rest of your land into alchemies. Set your draft rate to 90%.
Hour 1 to 10: build the land you couldnt on hour 0 into alchemies. If you still have unbuilt land 3 or maybe even 4 hours before your first explore, stop, and wait until later to build it.
Hour 11 (see explanation): explore 29 acres. No more. No less. If you dont have enough draftees, or plat, stop building before you did in last step.
Hour 12: build the rest of your land into alchemies again (continue step"hour 1 to 10")
Hour 22: explore as much land as you can. probably plains, because you want 20% smithies by oop and alchemies are always useful.
Hour 23: build the 29 acres of land you explored on hour 11.
Hours 24-33: if you want to go oop on 500 acres (lets say that for this guide). take 500-250(starting acres)-29(first explore)-60(3 bonuses)-???second explore= the land you explore in the third explore. Explore it as soon as you can, but before hour 33. Probably plains too, depending on your strat.
Hour 34: build your 2nd explore land.
Hours 35-47: Build your 3rd exlpore land as soon as you can.
Hour 48: all your land*0.2= number of smithies you want. If you dont have enough smithies with your 2nd and third explore, destroy some alchemies, and rebuild them into smithies.
Hour 60: train your elite troops, spies and mages (about 50 spies and 50 mages is good enough on 500 acres).
Hour 63: train your specs.
Hour 72: Have fun
A couple of other hints: 1- At hour 0, release your troops. All of them (except maybe archmages). then release your draftees. Your population will go up faster, resulting in a bigger income sooner, and more draftees sooner
2- 2-Take your bonuses (land and plat) at 11pm server time for the 2 first days. The third land bonus should be taken at 1am the third day while the plat bonus should be taken at hour 60
3-Sim and try all the different combinations for op/dp using specs op and elite dp, and then try again with specs dp and elite op. You could be surprised with the results
Explanations: Why the weird explore hours?: Exploring "costs" draftees. At 300 acres, every acres cost one more draftee than at 299. If you follow those explore hours, you will explore ALL your land while still under 300 acres, thus reducing your draftee "cost".
You can wait until hour 14 to do your first explore, and then do your next 11 hours later. Try playing around with those numbers until you find the way that suits your sleeping schedule, and gets you the best results.
Why take the bonuses at the end of each day?: The later in the day, the more peasants you have, the bigger your plat bonus will be. Building cost is dependant on your number of acres, so taking your land bonuses the later possible reduces that cost, leaving you with more money to train troops
***These are very standards oop builds. They do not provide with the BEST oop's, but are good pointers to help you get started and have your own perfect oop build. Some races will need more boats than others. Some races will need more or less towers than others. Some races will need more farms. Some races will need more ore mines.
I KNOW!!!
If you realize that, then include more in your strat ***
A few things you can try to have better results (I don't recommend using those hints if it's your first round, since you probably won't understand all of the game's mechanics): Hour 0: Destroy your homes. Build 63 to 67 factories, 17 to 25 towers and a few temples. Don't release your draftees. Hour 60: Convert a bit of lumber to platinum for more troops.
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BARRACKS:
What are barracks for? Well, simply put, barracks house military units. One barrack can fit 36 military units so if you have 50 units and no barracks, they would stay in homes or barren/built land. Now, military units don't make plat for you so no income from them (unlike employed peasants, who give you 2.7plat/hour, probably from taxes:p).If you were to build 1 barrack, 36 out of those 50 units can move into barracks and 36 peasants will move into the military units' old place of lodging. So, you get 36 peasants to make more money for you. Now if you were to build a home instead, 30 new peasants can move into the new home and work and pay taxes
There is a difference of 8 peasants so, I guess we can say that it's much better to use barracks instead of homes. Now the tricky part is that barracks are not affected by any bonuses at all, this includes population bonus from improvements (keep), racial bonuses or the very small prestige bonus. So, if you have a high population bonus, usually from racial bonus, you should run homes and pump your imps so that you have +20% because at +20% total bonus, homes house more peasants than barracks and they're less complicated
It is recommended that all races with 10% or higher population bonus use homes.
On a side note... If you are going to use barracks always remember that it is pointless to have more barracks than you have militray...
Formula for most efficient number of barracks:
Total military (troops, spies, mages, including those in training) / 36 = (rounded down) number of barracks
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IMPROVEMENTS:
A very important part of your dominion is your castle, also called improvements. To have good improvements, the best way is to have diamond mines, which produce gems, which can be invested.The most important part of your castle is your keep (which raises your max population). Keep is even more important if you use homes instead of barracks. But even if you use barracks, keep is still very important (for your barren land and your other buildings). ~33% of your gems should be invested in keep (for an explorer, it is more like 40%)
Second to keep is science. Science raises your income (and hourly income is a very important part of dominion, since everything is done with platinum). ~25% of your gems should be invested in science. (more like 30% for an explorer)
After that comes walls and forges, which boost your offensive and defensive power. ~30% of your gems should be invested in walls/forges (as you want it). (Explorers should invest about 20% of their gems, in walls only).
*** Depending on the race, one of those 2 improvements is always less useful. Races like humans and icekin need the forges more as their defensive elite is very cheap and efficient opposite to their offensive elite. Other races, like goblins, need the walls more, as their dp unit is very inefficient. Most other races need both of them almost equally if I remember the races correctly. ***
And finally is irrigation. I don't recommend races like icekin, spirits and undead use irrigation, as they have a food consumption bonus. Spirits can grow to 3000 acres on 50 farms if I remember correctly, so boosting the production of those 50 farms is far less efficient than building a few more (as those gems can be invested in other parts of your castle that would be way more beneficial, or even turned into plat to be used for something else.). ~10% of your gems should be invested in that.
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SPIES AND WIZARDS:
Attackers should try to keep a wizard/acre ratio of 0.5 to 1Attackers should try to keep a spy/acre ratio of 0.5 to 1
Explorers should try to keep a wizard/acre ratio of 0.5 to 2 (If they wanna have fun fireballing other people, or lightning bolt, or whatever, 2 is recommended )
Explorers should try to keep a spy/acre ratio of 1 to 2 (explorers usually have higher income than attackers, so a high spy ratio is important to not get stolen from. And, to steal platinum from other people too )
Archmages: They are highly trained wizards. They are twice as good as the other ones. They only take the space of one troop. I recommend training them from your wizards from week 2 to 5 into the round. The rest of the time, it's either slowing you down (at the beginning of the round) or not efficient enough to be worth the cost (last 10 days or so...).
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GUARDS:
Attakers should join the elite guard, and attack in their 75% range to get reduced construction costs. Attacking bigger than you are is not usually recommended, but it can be done sometimes (Gnomes in particular are good for this). Most people try to attack in their 75-105% range. (Spirits and undeads sometimes hit in their 70-75% range, but never under, or at least shouldn't.)Top
INCOME:
A VERY important part, as pointed out earlier, is the income of your dominion.The building that gives you the most platinum is NOT alchemies, but homes (or barracks, as I explained).
Homes house 30 peasants that, if employed (in any non-home buildings) give you 2.7 platinum/hour. With the income bonuses, that can go close to 4 plat/hour/peasant. So, alchemies give you 45 plat, and homes (with no racial bonuses, 75% of keep and science, and midas touch casted) give you 125 plat. Not bad eh?
People who play races like kobolds, goblins, lycs, undead and some others I am probably forgetting get even more than that because of racial bonuses. People with masonries go even higher than that too
But, remember that that's only possible if you have over 100% employment. BUT, since homes are BY FAR the best building, you should try to have very close to 100% employment, because over that, you're wasting some land on buildings that are less good than homes are.
I personally always try to keep an employment of 99%, to be sure I dont go overboard. (Just think it's like in real life and unemployment is needed if you wanna make good money )
The way to do that is simple.
Here are stats that will help you in the calculations:
Homes: house 30 (bonuses apply) barracks: house 36 (bonuses do not apply) non-home/barracks buildings: house 15 (bonuses apply), employ 20.
So, basically, you take all your non-home buildings (total land-(homes+barracks)) = X
X * 20 = jobs (Y)
Y = the number of peasants you WANT.
Then you just calculate from there how many homes/rax you need to build
Remember troops need a place to stay too
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STRATEGIES:
I will help people with strategies for attacking
here, as I never really explored and would probably give bad advice.
There are 2 basic strategies that most people should know:
1 - Low income build:
People can go for a low income build by building 20% smithies, 20% factories,
and the required amount of other buildings (a few farms, a few lumber
yards, a few towers etc.)
This strategy is not the best in my opinion, but it allows for a quick
start. It is better for efficient races like trolls and humans (and dragons
and titans, but you wouldn't be reading this ), and really not recommended
for races like goblins, as those REALLY need the keep improvement (and
by having 75% of your land taken, you can't really have diamond mines,
and your improvements suck )
2 - High income build, or the famous diamond mines/masonries strat:
Take the first strategy and change the factories for a few more homes/rax
and take some smithies off that number. Run 99% employment and put the
rest of your land into diamond mines (or ore mines if you're a dwarf).
There is no real exact formula to know when to stop building your diamond
mines, but a basic (just to give an idea) would be to take the acreage
you plan to have when the round ends (let's say 3,000) and divide it by
8, then add 300.(*) That way, someone planning to finish 3k acres, would
have 675 diamond mines, and after those diamond mines have been built,
he would have started building masonries on his free land, to boost his
imps even more
*: if you play undead, spirit or icekin and do not wish to invest in irrigation,
take 10% off that number, and start building masonries sooner.
Same thing applies for people that do not wish to invest in some other
improvement (before trying that you should ask about it on the council,
and if someone sees a flaw in your strategy, it could help you make your
decision )
All races should start with some smithies though, as troops cost is really
slowing everyone down early round.
Depending on your race, you should stop building smithies at different
land sizes. Goblins with their cheap defender and plat-efficient attacker
can stop sooner than trolls who have very expensive troops
***insert by inshaala:
Those who choose to use the DMs strat could also opt for Raze/Rezoning your diamond mines into GN and GT about 7-10 days before the end of the round, especially if you are using factories and/or were teching earlier and have Conqueror's Craft.
(3) - Teching:
With some races you can use schools to give yourself a bonus late round without much trouble. The general idea is to explore with about 25-30% schools and only go for a couple of key technologies. I would recommend going for the production bonus, the build bonus and the military bonus tech trees and then the relevant 3rd tier technologies which they unlock (11 techs in total). Try to have some DMs as well whilst you are getting your techs, it helps in the long run. Then when you have them all (about 2.5k-3k land) raze and rebuild them into DM and/or homes for a conversion into an attacker. See exploring for some tips on how to explore.
(4) Exploring:
Ok, first off exploring is rather boring, but if you are doing well then you at least can say you have some ability, but dont just explore for the hell of it. Rankwhore as an explorer of go have fun as an attacker. There is nothing more pointless then an explorer who just plays every 12 hours and ends up at below 3k land. Go have fun attacking if you havent got the time. That said, if you do have the time here are some general pointers.
ALWAYS KEEP TRACK OF THE TOP OFFENSE IN YOUR RANGE. I just had to stress that point, and as a counterpoint, DO NOT GO OVERDEFENDED - because it slows you down, as if the higher costs of exploring arent designed to slow you down enough.
Also it is generally a good idea (if you arent an insomniac and can log in every hour) to do one bulk explore and then up to 11 hours later keep exploring / build defense). What i tend to do is build up enough defense at the start of the day and then wait until i can maybe explore 40-50 acres, explore, then explore every hour until i think it might be safe to be the size my incoming land puts me on. Sometimes alternating between defense and land.
As a general guide, a good explore rate is about 110 - 120 acres per day. Considering that you should be on about 9-10 acres an hour on pure income and that you get 20 acres free per day thats 10 hours of your day taken exploring. the rest of that income should go into military and building on your land.
The key to exploring is your income and thus your economy. I would recommend using DM's and homes strat outlined above. Get your employment as close to 100% as you can and invest in keep science and walls, in that order or preference. Only consider Guard Towers (GT) later on in the round, in some cases you can just explore GT for your defense. Remember that some land dependent races are more efficient using a mix of GT and land bonuses. For instance as a Dark Elf (DE) you should NOT use more than 20% Wizard Guilds (WG). The reason? Your Adept at 20% WG is on 6 defense. Now think of using an extra 10% on WG; your adept is now on 7 defense. Put that 10% into GT and your Adept is now 6 *1.2 = 7.2 which is a more efficient use of space.
Here is an example of what you can achieve if you log in at least every 12 hours. Say you come oop on 550 acres (not hard btw), there are then 47 days where you get 20 acres each day: There are also 47 days where 50 acres a day explored SHOULD NOT be a problem:
940 land free + 550 land from protection = 1490 (so there is absolutely NO excuse for not getting larger than this size as an explorer if you started at the beginning of the round)
50 acres * 47 days = 2350 acres explored:
1490 acres free and from protection + 2350 acres explored = 3840 acres
Now if you cannot get more than this on an explore strat then you are either very unlucky, dont log in very often or you are using the wrong race/strategy as this is a very low end estimate of what you should get. If this is the case ask around for advice or just attack and have some fun.
end of insert***
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HELP FOR LAZY BUMS
If you wonder what % of each building you should have, you can always calculate it or you can use basic guidelines.Most races use ~6% towers. If you dont use your racial spell (which is the most expensive of them), you need less. If you don't need ore, you need less. If you don't need gaia's watch (ie: you're a woodelf or a spirit/undead) you need less.
Lumber yards: Most races need 3-5% of them. If you plan on growing fast, be prepared to need more lumber (like 5%). If you use factories, you need less.
Ore mines: I usually have about 2-5% of them. If you run high smithies, you need less than if you have a lot of them. Some races need more (gnomes).
Docks: ALWAYS be prepared for the worst: a realm that wants to sink you. You can probably get by with 1% docks, but I suggest you keep 2-4% depending on your op. If you have a huge op, and little docks, people will defend themselves not by training dp, but by sinking you
Farms: Most races need ~8% (that's for races without bonuses). Do quick calculations, but mostly judge by looking at your advisor's page.
