Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Other Millitary Cities

Landlocked Castles

If you haven't read my posts on Berseker Castle and Mage Castle, you may want to start there first.

Knights Castle
They travel 2x faster than infantry!  They have decent attack stats and provide a different type of attack than beserkers and mages.  But they eat a lot so make sure you have enough food for them.
Paladin City/Castle
Paladins are good because they are twice as fast with their horses.  They are a great defensive unit type against magic attacks (mages.)  They're great for raiding forest dungeons.  A really awesome bonus is that you can recruit a baron in less than 10 minutes.  I personally have at least 1 paladin castle on each continent for the purpose of recruiting barons.
 I don't castle defensive cities unless the city is landlocked and on a secure continent.  I.E. your alliance dominate that continent with little or no threat of attacks.
Ranger City/Castle
In addition to being great defensive units, rangers are also great for raiding.  I use rangers to raid mountain dungeon when they're not defending.  Wood is used to recruit rangers so it lightens the demand on iron.  Layout is very similar to Berserker Castle, I only change Foundry to Sawmill for wood storage instead of iron storage.
Catapult/Ram
 Good for castles on the same continent.  Useless otherwise.
Ballista City/Castle 
 Really awesome as a defensive unit.  But can't raid so they are useless when not defending.

Water Castles

War Galleon Castle 
If your alliance wants control of the water, you'll need WGs.  They are awesome at destroying water castles.  A full castle of WGs can destroy a 10k score castle in 4 hours.  You can also raid sea dungeons/bosses with them.  Their only downside is their food intake.  So make sure you have a  lot of food around.
Sloop City/Castle
Like WGs, sloop can travel to other continents to help protect your alliance castles.  If you have water castles, sloop cities/castles are a must!
Mage/Frigate Castle
 Mages are the best unit against ship.  So Mage/Frigate makes a great offensive water castle.
 Knights/Frigate Castle
They provide a different type of attack.  On ships, they loose their speed because they travel the same speed as frigate.  
Berserker/Frigate Castle
When not attacking, they are a great type of unit for raiding.
Knights
Knights castles are ideally built on landlocked spots.  But once you run out of spaces and your alliance control the navy, you can build other types of castle on water.
Zerks 

Mages

xbows

Palies

Templars
Very good at defending against magic (even better than paladins but not as good for raiding) 

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Level 10 Palace City Layout

Requirements:
- High construction speed
- Food storage, some wood and stone storage
- Castle (required for enlightenment)
- Moonglow Tower for purification of excess resources
- Basic defense
- External defense
- Nearby hub
- High score and short distance for increased chance of enlightenment


Building Strategies and Procedure
  1. Build around shrines and take up as many spots around them.  This ensures that you have control of the shrine and takes up spots so that other alliances cannot take them.  Take the closest landlocked spot to the shrine and designate it as your alliance's level 10 palace.  Unless your alliance has control of the water, it's usually not recommended to build your palace on water.
  2. Build a regular resource city with a Cityguard House.  Recruit your City Guards in that city.  Build walls and 2 Scout Towers and 22 Ballista Towers, or other defense towers of your choice.
  3. As soon as the shrine becomes activated, build a castle.  Make sure you have external defenses nearby.
  4. When your castle is enlightened and resources are shipped in with "Palace Delivery," build the palace. As you upgrade the palace, convert resource buildings to cottages for increased construction speed.  See chart below:
  5. You should also have hubs nearby (see System of Hubs for Palace Donation).  A lot of defenses should also be somewhat close.
  6. There should be plenty of other castles around the shrine to build up faith.  A level 9 palace only contributes 16% faith.  Your alliance needs a minimum of 96% faith to build a lvl 10 palace.  So 80% of faith must come from somewhere else.  Building a whole bunch of low level palaces is a lot easier than building a few higher level palaces.  Just make sure you "Lock The Palace" at a certain level to prevent it from getting enlightened again.  You want to focus on the lvl 10 palace and get it to enlighten as often as possible.
                       Palace Level   -  Recommended Min CS  -  Time
                       --------------------------------------------------
                       1                        400%                              2.5days
                       2                        2000%                            3 days
                       3                        2500%                            3 days 
                       4                        2500%                            4 days
                       5                        3700%                            4 days
                       6                        4400%                            5 days
                       7                        6000%                            5 days
                       8                        7500%                            6 days
                       9                        10000%                          6 days
                       10                      10000%                          9 days
Construction speed can be accomplished by cottages, shovels, research, or faith bonus.  Thus it is possible to get over 10k CS.  You may also use Medallions to fast forward construction.

Example of a level 10 Palace Layout



Monday, October 3, 2011

How to Lock Palaces from Being Enlightened

Update:  After the patch of March 13, 2012, you can no longer "lock" the palace.  When you build or upgrade a place, it automatically jumps to the top of the building queue.  If another building is being built, it's reset and pushed down the queue for the palace.


You can, however, reduce the enlightenment chance of that city by  reducing the city score.  This means demoing walls/towers and all other buildings inside the city except for the palace.  More information on forcing enlightenment is here

---------------------------------------------------

When the alliance has enough faith (or close to having enough faith i.e. 96%) to build a lvl 10 palace, you only want your level 10 palace to get enlightened.  To prevent surrounding lower level palaces from being enlightened, you'll want to "lock" the current enlightenment so it wont get enlightened again.

Since palaces that are being upgraded cannot get enlightened, you can accomplish this by putting the upgrade on the building queue but never let it upgrade.

  1. Set the Building Minister to "Keep the Building Queue Order"
  2. Make sure you already have 100 buildings.  Assign another new building to the Building Minister
  3. Upgrade the palace.

That's it!