[GUIDE] Do's and Dont's

This is a quick post, will add more if needed. If you have ANY advice for new players Post here!

1. DONT build houses and barracks(the buildings that DOESNT produces anything) close to your storehouse/Mayor's house. NOT building them close to Storehouse will free up space near your storehouse, thus allowing you to build production facilities next to your storehouse causing your economy to speed up!

2. DONT let your buildings run if they don't have enough resources to process. Just prioritize which building you need the most and stop the other buildings production until you can fix the problem by building more buildings.

3. DONT EVER let your storehouse overflow. If you suspect it will going to overflow with for ex copper bar in a few minutes. Stop the copper bar production(probably leaving one or two open so that your other buildings that need copper bar won't have to run out of materials) this will balance your copper bar production thus increasing copper ore production, so that you can make use of both latter.

4. DONT buff your fishers. Depending on where you place it, it does seem like your going to run with x2 production. However, mathematically you won't. You will end up, pretty much, having the same amount of fish with or w/o buffing Fishers!

5. DONT forget to use your provisions house often. From here you can even convert upgrade resources, fishers, etc. Valuable stuff when you have lots of woods and stones so that you can convert them to upgrade resources. Also a good way to prevent your woods and stones(in my case I have tons of wood and stones) from overflowing.

6. DONT Waste your quest rewards. What I meant by that is, when you are like level 15 or 16(dont remember when) you will get settlers as quest rewards. If you don't have enough accommodation for them, DONT accept the quest rewards, which will waste the settlers(since you only get ONE settlers every 15 mins) try to build a Residence building then accept the reward. This way you will have full settlers so that you can use them on your army. No need to wait for like hours trying to increase settlers.

7. DONT bring less soldiers to battle than your enemies'. See #6 Below!

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1. DO, make sure your overall production time is less. For example, you woodcutter doesn't necessarily has to be next to a tree. If his overall production time is less you will have a good economy.

2. DO make sure you have a good balance in economy. Before mass placing buildings take a look at your economy and see what resource you have the least. Let's say your copper bar production is going low because your producing tools but your copper ore production is going up. This is a bad economy. Building one more or two(depending on how fast each is changing) copper smelter will fix the problem.

3. One thing I found useful when your stone mine/copper mine is depleted or about to be depleted, don't try to use chisel from the store which costs 35 diamonds or the one that produced from your provisions house. Unless your just staring up and have alot of empty mines across your territory. Just raze the old mine, tell your geologist to look for the mine deposit you want, he will find the particular deposit wherever your last mine was. Only useful if your lands are filled with "pre-found mines".

4. DO, Buff all your buildings. Doubles your production, Quadruples, if you already upgraded your facility. The Best thing about buffing is, you get x2 output within the same amount of production time and uses the SAME amount of resources(not double resource).

5. Its good to upgrade a building(if you have enough resource) than building the same building twice of the type. This will save you one Building license.

6. Always bring more than the enemies' army size. Scavenger and Recruits share pretty much same stats, same goes to bow men, the only difference is they have a weaker accuracy + you get your general(who DOESNT do tons of damage as you would expect). To prevent too much casualties always bring more troops than your enemies. This will shorten the wait time on settlers, if you loose like 2-5 soldiers in battle.

7. When you have reached level 16, its always a good idea to build lots of farm/mill/bakery so that you can create 25 settler stacks or create the 2hr duration buff; because you will have to spend hours waiting for settlers to build up after a heavy fight(which you faced severe casualty). This speeds up your next attack thus allowing you to level up faster(since the only way to level after 16 is to attack camps and gain XP(only available option as of right now)).

TIP: Your Archers WONT be attacked EVER if you have Recruits alive! So, DONT just go to a battle with JUST archers. YOU WILL LOOSE! unless u bring them in hundreds, still more casualties. Always your malee classes will be attacked 1st, the ranged gets attacked ONLY if you loose all of your malee.

COMBAT INFORMATION AND TIPS

Selak has created this thread about what each combat stats does, he did an amazing job pointing stuff out, here's the link...
http://forum.castleempireonline.com/...em-information

Also, in addition to what Selak said. The Aggro radius(the red box) that's around the bandit camp when you select it, will FORCE your general to attack it if you ever get into it, even if it's overlapping with another camp(this is an interesting case), only happens when two camp's aggro radius overlaps(complete overlap); your general will attack whichever one's aggro radius he enters 1st. However, he won't attack the 2nd camp automatically even if he's in the 2nd camp's aggro radius(only one camp at a time) - See my last update post below for changes!!!(it is not working properly would be my guess)

your general WONT attack a camp if its in another sector EVEN if its aggro radius is overlapping another building in the next sector which your about to attack. Only the sector your in counts.

Also, The Bandit Leader DOESNT have an Aggro radius.

NEVER underestimate your enemies power, DON'T go with less force than your enemies thinking that you can get away with that. This is BAD! Not only you will face severe casualties(which most people faced) you will most likely loose your entire troop + If you face a defeat you have to wait 4hrs for your General to recover. Rule of thumb, Always bring more forces than your enemy's. The less force you bring the more casualties you'll have to face(also the more rounds you have to face; the more force you bring the less rounds you'll face. especially if you cannot defeat the enemy malee class within few rounds the ranged class will eat your malee class in no time).

** DOGS AND ARCHERS **

First of all, I'll make it clear; No matter what fight it is, dogs(or cavalry) will be the first units to attack. So, if there are any slow units(archers, cannoners, etc) in your army they will be attacked 1st by the Fast strike(dogs or cavalry) units. This will pretty much wipe out your ranged classes if the enemy has lots of fast strike units(the 1st medium camp you will face). My advise to you is to NOT bring any ranged if there are lots of fast strike units. Also, I forgot to mention the ranged(slow) units are the only units who can strike back at fast strike units(malee CANT).

So, I'd advice not to bring any ranged class(because they have low health pool and will die really fast) if there are too many fast strike units in the enemy side.

Post if u got anything!!
Thank you!


Edit: Added #8 on DONT, #5,#6 on DO + TIP - July 22
Edit 2: Added Combat Information - July 23
Edit 3: Influence Area Bug? - July 24
Edit 4: Dogs vs. Slow Units - Aug 11

Thanks! This guide reminded me to check my economy instead of mass building.

TIP to increase Building licenses: This one is only useful when your higher level. Try to upgrade your existing building rather than building a new one, this will save you one building license. If you already got many buildings of the same type, upgrade one(the one that has less production time) and delete the one with HIGHEST production time, this will in fact increase your economy.

Also, DONT build multiple copper mine OR wells, instead upgrade them, since they ONLY cost tools. which isn't hard to get if you gave enough time and toolmakers. This will save you some licenses and settlers(if its a well).

Also I posted this on the tips forums. Only useful at higher levels probably over level 16(unless you got materials to upgrade)

Wish I had read this before I started -- Please please allow building to be moved. Thanks Stridervan, very very helpful (a little late for me - but still good info)

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Originally Posted by stridervan

TIP to increase Building licenses: This one is only useful when your higher level. Try to upgrade your existing building rather than building a new one, this will save you one building license. If you already got many buildings of the same type, upgrade one(the one that has less production time) and delete the one with HIGHEST production time, this will in fact increase your economy.

Also, DONT build multiple copper mine OR wells, instead upgrade them, since they ONLY cost tools. which isn't hard to get if you gave enough time and toolmakers. This will save you some licenses and settlers(if its a well).

Also I posted this on the tips forums. Only useful at higher levels probably over level 16(unless you got materials to upgrade)

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Wells (and Wheatfields) don't use licenses to begin with, also, upgrading a Copper mine means a bigger loss if it goes dry.

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4. DONT let your geologist go crazy and keep him busy by ordering him to find mine spots over and over. Don't do it, this will expose all empty minefields and fill it with let's say, Stone mines. Bad IDEA!!

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I'm 99% certain that mine positions are predetermined, and i know for certain that after all the positions have been found your geologist becomes useless until you free more sectors. They wouldn't want someone to have a string of bad luck and never find a copper mine 0.-


Otherwise I agree with most else, though some of it is preference more than necessity, good work.

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Originally Posted by Thunder

Wells (and Wheatfields) don't use licenses to begin with, also, upgrading a Copper mine means a bigger loss if it goes dry.



I'm 99% certain that mine positions are predetermined, and i know for certain that after all the positions have been found your geologist becomes useless until you free more sectors. They wouldn't want someone to have a string of bad luck and never find a copper mine 0.-


Otherwise I agree with most else, though some of it is preference more than necessity, good work.

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you heard me wrong. "This will save you some licenses and settlers(if its a well)" I did say it doesn't count well :P its just to free a settler.

After a while when you reach 17 you and you used up all your building license your tools amount will just increase, it may even overflow(it was in my case) so its better to upgrade it. and it's not a waste. since the upgrade only costs to 50tools, its less than(much less) than the amount of copper you need to make the 50 tools. building less amount of it will save you some licenses, also when your lvl 21 you can make a buff which will increase your ore size by a 100(if i remember correctly).

For the geologist, when your mines are depleted you have no option but to use your geologist. What I meant is, using up all the "pre-determined" places. You will end up filling the "pre-determined" places with just one particular mine or two :)

Thanks to stridervan for this info, it would have been hugely useful if I read this before I started playing. I would like to throw in my couple of ideas to help new people as well.

1) to get from level 16 to 17, you need to kill all but the strongest 4 bandit camps in the middle area (I think everyone has the same general map layout...) This requires a rather huge amount of bronze swords (since your poor recruits will die no matter what). plan ahead for the huge amount of bronze swords you will need. I think it makes sense to use up almost all of your building licenses to get a good bronze sword productions going. Also you will need several wheat fields and then 2X as many farms to get enough beer for your guys (liquid courage!!).

2) There aren't any quests at 17, so once again you need to kill lots of bandits to level up. make sure you keep a good production of bronze swords and beer for your poor recruits. This requires lots of coal and bronze, which in turn requires lots of wood.

3) I think it makes sense to make too many of a building that you need right now, and then destroy it later. yes you are wasting resources, but you can't be afraid to waste resources otherwise you will wait longer then necessary. in my experience in these types of games, maximizing what you need right now always leads to doing better in the long run (i could totally be wrong).

here is some info that people keep asking about in general chat, hopefully this helps them.

you only get 1 marble mine when you hit 17. no idea if that changes once you take the middle sector.
you can't rotate buildings
you might have your building licenses go crazy, log in and out and it should be correct
roads don't do anything
buffing friends gives them a slightly larger boost then buffing yourself (i don't have friends, but i heard that you get 30 minutes while a friend gets 45 mins). find some nice friends and tell them to buff your sword maker (provided you have enough coal and bronze).
everything you need to know is already in the game. everytime someone asks how to make a bronze bar i get the sadness.
if you lose bowman while in combat you need to think about how the combat works a little more. never loose bowman (unless fighting other range fighters), combat is straight math to a certain extent.

and finally for anyone out there who has way too much time on their hands, here is the math on how to make an excel spreadsheet (or libreoffice) to determine how much of any particular resources you get per minute. I looked for an elegant solution to this and i can't find it. instead, basically click on details and add the time in seconds (so x minutes * 60 + Y seconds), this will allow you to do the following equation. wood produced per minute = (1/x-seconds + 1/y-seconds + 1/z seconds)* 60 (assuming you have 3 wood cutters with total production time x,y,z) (will need to change formula if you have upgrades or whatnot). it should be noted that the production time does fluctuate if your people randomly have to change where they get resources . I was doing this, but i think it makes more sense to just wait and see what you run out of and then build more of that.

that is all i can think of. good luck everyone. thanks again to everyone for being patient and helpful (for the most part).

edited because i fail at math. but succeed in drinking margaritas.

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Originally Posted by stridervan

4. DONT let your geologist go crazy and keep him busy by ordering him to find mine spots over and over. Don't do it, this will expose all empty minefields and fill it with let's say, Stone mines. Bad IDEA!!

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This info is incorrect If this game is the same as the German version then the mine spots are predetermine so letting your geologist run wild and searching for mines is a good thing. As a stone mine will only be built on a stone spot and the same with marble, bronze, iron and gold. You will never see a stone mine appear on a place where a marble mine was located.

For example in the first location there are 4 stone spots, 2 Marble (only 1 can be active at a time), 3 bronze spots and 3 Iron spots. And your geologist will expose them all if you let him run wild. So keep him working until you expose all the spots. No worry about a marble or iron spot being taken over by a stone.

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Originally Posted by CC-Slider

This info is incorrect If this game is the same as the German version then the mine spots are predetermine so letting your geologist run wild and searching for mines is a good thing. As a stone mine will only be built on a stone spot and the same with marble, bronze, iron and gold. You will never see a stone mine appear on a place where a marble mine was located.

For example in the first location there are 4 stone spots, 2 Marble (only 1 can be active at a time), 3 bronze spots and 3 Iron spots. And your geologist will expose them all if you let him run wild. So keep him working until you expose all the spots. No worry about a marble or iron spot being taken over by a stone.

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Well, from what I've heard the German version has slightly more features than the American version. To answer you, I had 2 copper deposits in sector 2, when both of them got depleted, I ordered my geologist to search for some more deposits hoping that I would get them in the same place. Instead, he found those in sector 3. I think they haven't added this feature in American version. Try it yourself!

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Originally Posted by stridervan

Well, from what I've heard the German version has slightly more features than the American version. To answer you, I had 2 copper deposits in sector 2, when both of them got depleted, I ordered my geologist to search for some more deposits hoping that I would get them in the same place. Instead, he found those in sector 3. I think they haven't added this feature in American version. Try it yourself!

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If you continued searching with your geologist he'd have found the original two. I currently have 6 copper nodes exposed, 3 in sector 3 and 3 in sector 2.

UPDATE ON COMBAT STATS: Today I tried to attack a bandit camp that was overlapped by another bandit camp(not the leader/he doesnt have an aggro radius). Against the usual law, my general only attacked one bandit camp. Can a GM confirm this or is it a bug? I will let you guys know after my next attack.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by stridervan

UPDATE ON COMBAT STATS: Today I tried to attack a bandit camp that was overlapped by another bandit camp(not the leader/he doesnt have an aggro radius). Against the usual law, my general only attacked one bandit camp. Can a GM confirm this or is it a bug? I will let you guys know after my next attack.

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The general will attack whichever of the two camps is closer if he enters both aggro ranges.

the island is broken up in to 9 areas

7|8|9
4|5|6
1|2|3
1 is the start position;

Okay here is a list of known mine locations
area 1: 4 Stone, 2 Marble (only 1 can be active at a time)
area 2: 3 Bronze, 3 Gold
area 3: 2 marble, 3 Iron
area 4: 1 Stone, 3 bronze, 2 Iron
area 5: 4 stone (only 3 active at a time), 2 Marble, 3 Iron (only 2 active at a time)
area 6: 4 Iron, 3 Coal
area 7: 3 Coal
area 8: 5 Marble, 4 Iron
area 9: 5 Gold

The locations are preset, So far this follows the German version no reason to change it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CC-Slider

the island is broken up in to 9 areas

7|8|9
4|5|6
1|2|3
1 is the start position;

Okay here is a list of known mine locations
area 1: 4 Stone, 2 Marble (only 1 can be active at a time)
area 2: 3 Bronze, 3 Gold
area 3: 2 marble, 3 Iron
area 4: 1 Stone, 3 bronze, 2 Iron
area 5: 4 stone (only 3 active at a time), 2 Marble, 3 Iron (only 2 active at a time)
area 6: 4 Iron, 3 Coal
area 7: 3 Coal
area 8: 5 Marble, 4 Iron
area 9: 5 Gold

The locations are preset, So far this follows the German version no reason to change it.

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thnx for that info! will update mine soon :)

tip: upgrading a storehouse provides 300 additional spaces, NOT 100 more. most people asked me that question, just making sure new players know about this :)

another bit for the combat stuff.

Archers will be attacked first over melee units if the bandit camp has Guard Dogs present (they go after the units with lowest max hit points first which is the Cavalry at 5 HP and archers at 10HP).

Another thing that many have found useful (if they are on windows OS machines) is testing attacks with the combat simulator that i have translated, modified, and fixed/finished. I say fixed/finished because the more problems found the more sections of code that appear incomplete due to the lack of a single line. One of the best examples was the first guard dog related bug...they were attacking the recruits first like all normal troops which was caused by the failure to sort the units by lowest hit points before the attack (that function was written into the program but i found it had similar bugs of its own later).

Edit: dogs vs archers

All deposits are fixed locations on the map.
And from what I've read, all the deposits are
in the same location for everyone playing the game.

If your deposits move, as mine have sometimes, it's because you
can only use a certain number of each deposit at your current level.

I've had deposits move to another sector,
then move back to the old spot they used to be in.

I don't know how the game decides, if you're searching for
Marble for example, which marble deposit to open up.
But all Marble deposits are in permanent locations for everyone.

I've tried leaving the exhausted deposits,
and tearing down the exhausted deposits,
but I cannot figure out which deposit will be
uncovered whenever I do a search.

(sorry, reply to an earlier post.....)

Don't buff fishers?

HMM?

1 basket costs 120 fish and produces 540 extra fish on a 9 hr buff, and that's just lvl 3.

I need those 420 fish. I have lots of bread and sausage btw.

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Originally Posted by King_Graham

Don't buff fishers?

HMM?

1 basket costs 120 fish and produces 540 extra fish on a 9 hr buff, and that's just lvl 3.

I need those 420 fish. I have lots of bread and sausage btw.

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Except that you're paying 6g for that buff, or you're trading someone one of your own baskets that you could sell for 6g. So you're paying 6g for that 540 fish, which would be 4.4g a stack.

Well I prefer a self sustaining economy, trying to trade for 2000 fish a day can be easy or annoying as hell with trades tied up for 24 hrs.

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Originally Posted by King_Graham

Well I prefer a self sustaining economy, trying to trade for 2000 fish a day can be easy or annoying as hell with trades tied up for 24 hrs.

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That or babysitting the trade tab all day to make the trades yourself is equally annoying at times. Id rather drop a basket or so on there as well...not like I'm in short supply anyway.

thx for this :D

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Originally Posted by Lobengula

Wish I had read this before I started -- Please please allow building to be moved. Thanks Stridervan, very very helpful (a little late for me - but still good info)

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I had bad placement on storage, too close to my mayor so I just took them down and rebuilt, I got my building licenses back.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lobengula

Wish I had read this before I started -- Please please allow building to be moved. Thanks Stridervan, very very helpful (a little late for me - but still good info)

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I had bad placement on storage, too close to my mayor so I just took them down and rebuilt, I got my building licenses back.

I built my first store house far away from my town due to a quest that I swear told me to. So later I built one in town and I still see towns people going to the one far away. Should I destroy that one to let the towns people go to the one in town? I also started to build some wood gathering buildings (i.e. Wood cutters, foresters, and sawmills) around the store house out of town so if I do destroy it, will the wood buildings out there start to travel to the one in town even if I create it again?