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[Guide] Cosmic Raven's Version of Heavy Questing

DeletedUser23444

EDIT BY MODERATOR:
DISCLAIMER: This Guide was never finished to 100%, and the Creator has since stopped playing for undisclosed reasons. The content you will be presented with is very thorough, but take heed parts are missing. Reading through the remaining pages will assist with filling some gaps left by CR. Use caution when implementing this strategy to your own city as this Guide makes use of a particular strategy. Any questions regarding this can be asked in the thread, and will have every attempt be made to assist with advice where information is missing, or pertaining to aspects of the game that you may not wish to utilize.

Alert: Work STILL in Progress as of 04-22-2017

Please pardon my dust, while I: copy, paste, edit, and reformat, pages and pages of disorganized questing documentation for public consumption.

NOTE: Be sure you read down through the discussion in the Topic as well, where I have posted many detailed answers. Eventually, I will try to move all the detailed answers into the formal guide and I edit my posts in the conversations to link back to the guide sections.

Welcome to the Heavy Questing Strategy (HQS)
This is my strategy—my guild mates on Noarsil and I own it. Yes, there are many other FoE players who employ, and maybe even coach, similar FoE strategies where they leverage recurring quests in order to produce more resources. Most other players refer to what they do as: "questing", "quest looping", or even "the quest strat". I don't use these terms to describe the specific strategy contained in this guide, which is much more comprehensive.

As you the read through this HQS guide, keep in mind that the Heavy Questing Strategy is like an interwoven tapestry — it isn't a bunch of individual strands of gaming advice. Each strand of advice in this guide supports, and is supported by, some other strand of advice in this guide. This strategy might include strands of advice that advocate gaming choices that might not make sense to you at first, especially when you read that strand in isolation, without understanding the context of how it ties to other strands of advice that you haven't read yet. Similarly, you cannot pull one strand of advice out of the tapestry of this strategy that some players might not agree with, without starting to unravel the tapestry contained within the strategy itself. Trust me when I say this: within the context of this Heavy Questing Strategy, every individual strand of advice usually has more than one justified reason behind it, even if you cannot recognize it right away, and even if you might be inclined to disagree with the advice. The inverse is also true, where we have discarded certain gaming choices that might have been an integral part of a past questing strategy, but in today's version of FoE, it no longer provides as much value in the Heavy Questing Strategy.

Table of Contents (TOC)
The HQS is actually quite complex with many of moving parts. Consequently, this guide is quite long and detailed. No one should expect to be able to read this entire guide in one sitting and understand it all the first time. It took my guild mates and I nearly two years of game play, across dozens of players who all made mistakes, to fine-tune this HQS into what it is today.

Below, you will find links to each major section of the HQS guide. Keep in mind that I have subdivided the main sections into subsections that I cannot post direct links to. I will try to keep this TOC post updated with the outline of link-able main sections and the un-linkable subsections under them so that readers can find specific content much easier and better remember where they left-off reading.

Heavy Questing Overview
  • Heavy Questing Strategic Objectives
  • Understanding the Relative Significance of Each FoE Resource
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
Questing Explained In-Depth
  • Always Do Everything For Quest Credit!
  • The Different Types of Quests
  • Complete List of Recurring Quests
  • Random Quest Rewards

Specific list of when to construct which GBs

Recommended Great Buildings

City Design, Planning, and Remodeling

Considerations About Special Events and Special Prizes
  • Special Buildings Are Not Always Valuable Buildings!
  • Special Buildings For ME And Earlier
  • Special Buildings For PME And Later
Detailed Walk-Through of Designing an HQS City for HMA or CA
 
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DeletedUser23444

Heavy Questing Overview
I've read or watched most of the online content involving "questing" or "quest looping" back when I was a noob; and I even followed most of that advice myself. But then I started to notice some aspects to the game that other players didn't mention much, if at all. I spent considerable time theory crafting and having debates with my guild mates on this subject, and even on more than one FoE world. Ultimately, we improved upon the prevailing conventional wisdom that was available and I started coming up with a comprehensive FoE strategy that goes well beyond just working a few extra recurring quests to score some extra loot in the game. I named this new, advanced strategy: “Heavy Questing”, which can be summarized as an extremely resource-centric strategy that can profoundly improve a city's expansion rate and overall production efficiency. This is not some half-assed approached, where we park in some age and loop a few quests—we go all-in on maximizing our city's total production per tile of available land, and we try to strike an optimal balance between: rapid city growth, early game success, while also setting our city up for much greater success in the later eras.

The "Heavy Questing" strategy significantly differs from other "questing" strategies, in that:
  1. "Heavy Questing" is much more comprehensive than most other quest looping strategies. If our city was a metaphorical Hot Rod, then "quest looping" would be its metaphorical engine. While we certainly work quest looping as our main economic engine, there is much more that goes into our "Heavy Questing" strategy, where we add: a Turbo Charger, a much better Transmission, a much better Gear Ratio, and better Suspension to our Hot Rod. So "Heavy Questing" is not just about completing as many recurring quests per day as we can cram under the hood of our city — we must also translate all of this horse power generated by our economic engine into maximum forward momentum in the game. So considerable theory crafting has gone into how to optimize the outputs of each quest and how to spend resources such that our city sustains continued momentum late into the game.

  2. "Heavy Questing" advocates for players to make very different game decisions and prioritize different game objectives than other FoE strategies employ. Some changes are supported by comprehensive mathematical analysis which completely debunks a few myths that a majority of players hold as truisms. Other changes are made to better balance short-term and long-term gaming objectives. Many changes have an overall focus on reducing lost or wasted resources. Several changes are in preparation for an end-game strategy to level up certain great buildings to stratosphere levels, while skipping construction of other GBs entirely. A few changes are to help ensure that guild mates who employ heaving questing can still add reliable value to a GvG or GE guild, and players employing the strategy are not just parked in the Bronze Age contributing nothing back to their guild.

  3. The "Heavy Questing" strategy is much better: tested, tweaked, improved, and documented. It has undergone continuous process improvement as more of my guild mates and friends have: progressed through it, challenged some of the conventional wisdom employed in earlier versions of it, and have had to adapt it to the most recent game changes. As we have sent each new player through the process, we take notes and improve the process. When some players compare many of the early game mistakes they made to some of the highly-optimized Heavy Questing cities many of my guild mates have now, it often makes them want to start the game over. I know I personally made dozens of mistakes back when I first started following the traditional "quest looping" game advice.
So while you might know of some players who work "questing", they may not necessarily be working "heavy questing" like my guild mates and I practice it. We've taken players into our guild back when they were as low as in Iron Age or EMA, with 0 great buildings in their city, and when they were ranked in the bottom 1% of all players in our world. But by leveraging heavy questing, along with several months of active game play, some of these players have: already passed me by in rank points, are now in AFE, are in the top 10 players of my guild, and are also in the top 100 players of our world. And we have more guild mates coming up behind them that might even accomplish more, over the same amount of time, because our strategy is constantly evolving.

Heavy Questing Strategic Objectives
The heavy questing strategy is about ignoring, at least in-part, most of the conventional FoE gaming advice that over 95% of all FoE players somewhat rely on.

Q: Why the Hell do you tell me to do things in the Heavy Questing Strategy that are so radically different compared to the gaming advice I get from most other FoE players?

A: We are willing to set aside some short-term progress in many areas of FoE, in order to rapidly accelerate our total FoE progress, which will eventually allow us to bypass other players who play the game the same amount of time as us, but they continue to follow the more conventional gaming wisdom.

The primary gaming objectives of the heavy questing strategy are:
  1. Maximize and optimize our city's overall production efficiency—we want to produce the most resources possible (total value of all resources: goods, units, coins, supplies, FPs, medals, and diamonds) from the same, finite amount of land in our city. Heavy Questing adds another layer of producing valuable resources, from the same amount of land and population, from enhanced questing rewards. Having more resources at our disposal, increases the range of gaming choices we can make, and risks we can take. We never want to play FoE from a position of not having enough resources; rather we want to play FoE from a position of having an abundance of resources, that is much more than we immediately require.

  2. Expedite our city's expansion rate—we want to increase how much land we have to produce on now, and we also want to increase how much faster we can expand even more land in the future. Heavy Questing focuses heavily on increasing medals production, which allows our city to expand much faster.

  3. Expedite our city’s total progress advancement—"progress" isn't limited to what technology we've unlocked in the tech tree; it also includes how many total GB levels that we have unlocked, and reached, on highly useful great buildings that we've constructed in our city. Heavy Questing focuses heavily on increasing our forge point production, which allows us to progress much faster.

    Notably missing from the above list of objectives is this gaming objective:

  4. Increase our combat effectiveness—How do we kick everyone’s ass immediately? This is not a primary concern of a heavy quester (at least not until we are about halfway through the Colonial Age). There are other ways we can and will help our guild, the most notable of which is to evolve our city such that we can be a great asset to our guild.
The reason that our combat effectiveness is not initially a primary concern in the heavy questing strategy is very simple: Combat is always a massive expenditure of resources, which will greatly slow a city’s overall progress. We want to focus first on helping our city "snowball". Think of our original Bronze Age city as a tiny snowball rolling down a steep hill—it starts off with very little mass and with a very slow velocity as it rolls down the hill. We are going to use Heavy Questing to increase the starting mass of our city snowball, which will allow it to pick up even more mass as it rolls. With more mass and constant gravity pulling it, our city will also start to pick up more velocity as it rolls down the hill. In this "snowball" metaphor, combat is analogous to our city hitting a rock or a hard place which will knock some of the mass off our snowball as well as slow its velocity as it rolls down the hill. At the bottom of the metaphorical hill is the later eras of FoE. In order to make the biggest impact later in the game, we want to hit those later eras with a city/snowball that has much more mass and much more velocity than those of our enemies.

Understanding the Relative Significance of Each FoE Resource
Doing anything in FoE consumes at least one or more of the resources below, which I have listed in their general order of scarcity.
  1. Time — Time is always our most valuable resource (in real life as well as in game life), since time limits all human endeavors. In FoE game terms, forge points are equal to time, one hour of time to be precise. Whenever we spend a forge point anywhere in the game, we essentially just spent 1 hour of game time. This makes forge point packs an incredibly valuable resource, which are analogous to “bottled time” that a player can store up in his Inventory for use later in the game (which is something that is impossible to do with time in real life). This means the faster we can acquire forge points, the faster our city progresses through game time (either by technology advancement or by leveling up GBs).

  2. Land — Land is always our second most scarce resource in the game, which is required to construct: barracks for unit production; buildings to produce goods, supplies, or coins; cultural buildings to keep our citizens enthused; various great buildings to give our city different game advantages; and roads to connect everything together. Our land is a very limited and finite resource. In FoE game terms, both medals and diamonds equal the ability to expand our city more; the faster we can acquire these resources, the faster our city expands. Any time we spend diamonds or medals on anything except for land, we have usually (but not always) wasted these resources.

  3. Happiness — Most players might not think of happiness as an in-game resource, but it certainly is. The psychological state of our citizens greatly impacts their production efficiency, which in turn affects our city's production of: coins , supplies, battle points, and rank points. Citizens produce at: 50% capacity when they are angry, 100% capacity when they are happy, and 120% capacity when they are enthused. Of all game mechanics within FoE, happiness has the most dramatic impact on the total value a city can produce per tile of land. We always want an enthused city, which requires happiness equal to, or greater than, 140% of our city's total population. Our demand for happiness is always 40% above our demand for population, which makes happiness a much more valuable resource than population. This mathematical relationship greatly influences many decisions in the heavy questing strategy. The more efficiently we can engineer more happiness into our city plan, the more land we have to produce more tangible resources on. It is imperative that we constantly plan how our city will provide more and more happiness, before we plan how we will add more population.

  4. Population — Most players might not think of population as an in-game resource, but it certainly is. Our city requires citizens to produce any resource listed later in this list. The more efficiently we can cram more population into our city, the more land we have to produce more tangible resources on. It is imperative that we constantly plan how our city will provide more and more population, before we plan how we will add more production.

  5. Goods — Make no mistake about this fact — the game of FoE has much more to do with the effective supply chain management of goods than nearly any other aspect of the game, even combat strategy and tactics. Individual players, and in-fact entire guilds, often get bogged down in the game when there aren’t enough goods to go around for all of the things that we can spend goods on, which include: unlocking technology, constructing new GBs, negotiating a sector on the Continental Map or a GE encounter, unlocking a new GE level, laying sieges or placing defensive armies in GvG, or paying goods to complete some quests. Goods are usually the first thing another player will look to plunder from our cities; and goods production buildings cannot be protected from plunder through motivation. The later we advance in the game, the more prominently goods factor into how fast we can continue to advance; meanwhile the total cost of conventional goods production goes up exponentially. Goods production always consumes a lot of: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, supplies, and in Modern Era and later it also consumes unrefined goods as well. It is imperative that we constantly plan our city to provide as much goods production as possible, but in ways that reduce the total production cost of the goods.

  6. Military Units — There is always someone to fight in FoE: NPCs on the Continental Map or GE, players in our neighborhood, or GvG enemies of our guild. Unit production consumes a lot of: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, and supplies. The Heavy Questing Strategy intentionally goes as light on unit production as we can, while still allowing us to reliably complete GE, and help our guild at least a little bit in the lower ages of GvG. However, we do ramp up our military capability more in the Colonial Age and beyond.

  7. Coins and Supplies — In FoE, coins and supplies are more akin to "money that jingles" (dimes and quarters), rather than to "money that folds" (five, ten, and 20 dollar bills). We will actually spend endless boatloads of coins and supplies while we work to acquire or produce every other resource listed above. In fact, the Heavy Questing strategy actually has a limitless demand for both coins and supplies, because we will actually leverage these very cheap-to-produce resources quite effectively in order to increase our production capacity and production efficiency of: goods, medals, and FPs.
If we attempted to follow a gaming strategy and engineer a city plan to conventionally produce a balanced mix of every type of resource above, then we would actually end up producing none of these resources very efficiently or effectively. For this reason, heavy questing isn't about trying to do everything in balanced proportions all the time—instead, we first prioritize production of the resources that help our city "snowball" faster and longer into the game, namely: forge points, medals, and goods. This is the overarching ethos that influences most of our decision making as to: which regular, special, and great buildings we construct (or don't construct), when and how we fight (or when we negotiate instead), when we advance our technology rapidly (or when we halt it completely for long periods of time). Maximizing our production of: forge points, medals, and goods, are always the driving forces behind the heavy questing strategy as a whole, since these are the resources that best help us achieve our three main gaming objectives we listed earlier.

In the HQS,we don't actually produce any goods conventionally, until we advance up to about PME. Conventional goods production consumes a lot of: land, population, and offsetting happiness. And on top of the production costs, our conventionally produced goods could easily be plundered by a determined neighbor. Instead, we are able to produce more goods-per-day, from the same amount of land through recurring quest rewards, that come by way of our supply production buildings and coins production buildings, all of which can be motivated and thus protected from plunder. A city designed for the HQS does not require a city defense at all, since there will be nothing to plunder in it. And the real bonus to designing a city thusly, is that the quest rewards can also produce for us more: diamonds, medals, and FPs.
 
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DeletedUser23444

Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

Abort-Cycle, Abort-Cycling, also called "Quest Looping" by some players
Many players refer to general process of completing the same recurring quests over-and-over as "quest looping"; however, the term Quest Looping could also mean the FoE game strategy of working recurring quests, so I do not use that term here. In the context of my guide, I use the term "abort-cycle" as a verb to describe the specific action of aborting each Side Quest or Recurring Quest the game offers us that we are not interested in completing, in order to accept a specific recurring quest that we want to complete. So I might say: "Complete 1 UBQ each and every time you abort-cycle your next 'Produce Supplies' quest." or I might say: "Abort-cycle past all Side Quests and complete a "Spend FPs" quest." When I use it as a noun, the "Abort-Cycle" refers to a specific list of recurring quests that is available to us at a specific point of game progress. The abort cycle always changes as all recurring quests are adapted to each higher age or era; however, the abort cycle can also be shortened to contain fewer recurring quests, since some recurring quests drop out of the abort cycle when their trigger conditions cannot be met (such as "Research 2" and "Produce Units").

Discounted Goods Production, Discounted Unrefined Goods, Discounted Refined Goods
Conventional goods production in the Progressive Era and earlier, will cost: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, and supplies. Conventional goods production in the Modern Era and later has the same types of production costs, with the addition of a new type of production cost—unrefined goods, which are goods from three ages below that of the refined goods being produced. For example, to produce 10 Tomorrow Era goods will consume 10 Modern Era goods as unrefined goods; and to produce 10 Modern Era goods will consume 10 Colonial Age goods as unrefined goods.

The true cost to produce 10 TE goods conventionally is actually the sum of everything listed below:
  1. These costs to produce 10 TE goods: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, and supplies, plus...

  2. These costs to produce 10 ME goods: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, and supplies, plus...

  3. These costs to produce 10 CA goods: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, coins, and supplies.
"Discounted Goods Production" is being able to produce significant amount of goods with a dramatic reduction in one or more of the underlying production costs.

In the HQS, we replace conventional goods production (goods production buildings) by producing our goods through quest rewards. We then buff the size of the goods packages we score from quest rewards by constructing and leveling up a CF. Most of the recurring quests that we heavily rely on are in some way completed with regular supply production buildings or with regular and special coins production buildings. All of the coins and supplies buildings we utilize for questing can be motivated, whereas conventional goods production buildings can never be motivated. Thus a happy side effect of Heavy Questing is that we can completely eliminate the chance that any of our goods production will get plundered by our neighbors, since motivated coins and supplies production buildings cannot be plundered, and neither can quest rewards be plundered. In many time periods, not only will Heavy Questing completely eliminate the need to construct any conventional goods production buildings at all, it will actually produce far more goods per day than conventional goods production could from the same amount of: time, land, population, and offsetting happiness. However, in some time periods, Heavy Questing can only reduce the number of conventional goods production buildings we will require, not completely eliminate them altogether.

In addition to producing goods though questing, there are many buildings in FoE that can produce a fixed number of goods for the player every 24-hours; many of these buildings will also produce x2 unrefined goods when the player's Town Hall is in Modern Era or later. The list of great buildings that pay the player x2 unrefined goods includes: ToB, LoA, StM, FoD, RAH, and RFP. There are also two special buildings, which both auto-advance to the same age as our Town Hall, that can randomly produce x2 unrefined goods: The Wishing Well, and The Fountain of Youth. Any of these above-mentioned buildings will have tremendous value to our city in the Post-Modern Era or later as a source of Discounted Unrefined Goods; however none of these buildings can produce Discounted Refined Goods.

There are also some special buildings that can produce a small, fixed amount, of refined goods where the only production costs are: time, land, population, offsetting happiness, and in some cases motivation; these special buildings never include the production costs of: coins, supplies, or unrefined goods. The list of such special buildings includes: Kiosk, Oasis, Tribal Square, Caravansary, Mad Scientist Lab, Bazaar, Soccer Field, Luau, and most of the multi-production buildings similar to the ones explicitly listed here. Any of these buildings will have value to our city either as a source of Discounted Unrefined Goods or Discounted Refined Goods; however, these types of buildings must always be age-locked to the era for which the player wants the discounted goods production. So it is a good idea to keep some renovation kits in inventory to lock such buildings to an era where they offer us good value.

Racing Across the C Map
“Racing across the Continental Map” is a lemmings-like approach to FoE where players succumb to their compulsion to conquer the entire Continental Map as fast as possible, especially in rapid pursuit of: goods deposits, land expansions, PvP Tower points, or Rank Points. Some FoE players just race across the C Map because to them the whole objective to the game is to get to the "end of content" as fast as possible; this is one of THE WORST THINGS a heavy quester can do. Many different types of quests (Side, Story, Event, Bonus) will require a player to: scout, infiltrate, negotiate, or conquer a sector (or even an entire province) on the Continental Map ("C Map" for short). This means the further a player has raced across the C Map, relative to his current age or era, the more likely that his military technology, combat bonus, or available goods, might not be enough to complete such a quest. When faced with such a circumstance, a player will often be forced to forego scoring a highly valuable quest reward, such as a valuable special prize from an Event Quest. A player who has "Raced across the C Map" might even be forced to forego being able to work the recurring quests specific to his current age or era; because in order to complete the quest, he must advance his technology to the next age or era and forever lose the opportunity to work the recurring quests from his previous time period.

Racing Through Tech
“Racing through tech” is a lemmings-like approach to FoE where players succumb to their compulsion to unlock the entire Technology Tree as fast as possible, especially in rapid pursuit of: newer buildings, goods technology, land expansions, or Rank Points. Some FoE players just race through technology because to them the whole objective to the game is to get to the "end of content" as fast as possible; this is one of THE WORST THINGS a heavy quester can do. Many different types of quests (Side, Story, Event, Bonus) will require a player to unlock a technology, sometimes for a specific type of building. This means the further a player has raced through tech, relative to his current age or era, the more likely that he will no longer have a technology available to unlock in order to complete such a quest. When faced with such a circumstance, a player will often be forced to forego scoring a highly valuable quest reward, such as a valuable special prize from an Event Quest. A player who has "Raced Through Tech" might even be forced to forego being able to continue working the recurring quests specific to his current age or era; because in order to complete the quest, the player must advance his technology to the next age or era and forever lose the opportunity to work the recurring quests from the previous time period.

Racing through tech is actually the most inefficient and ineffective way to play FoE. Consider the cost of constantly changing a city over to new: houses, supply buildings, goods production buildings, and cultural buildings. Racing through tech means a player will be constantly rebuilding his or her city every few weeks, never really receiving any real return on investment from any of the newly constructed buildings. Constantly constructing new buildings, only to sell them later, over-and-over needlessly drains a lot of resources.

Racing through tech neglects constructing or leveling up great buildings in our city fast enough. Any under-leveled great building is little more than a large waste of: land, construction goods, and forge points, that offers no real return-on-investment. Advancing our technology (which costs forge points) must always be balanced against leveling up great buildings (which also costs forge points) so that each of our GBs can actually become a viable asset to our city, when compared to regular buildings that might offer a cheaper alternative to provide the same benefit.

Racing through tech also leads to never producing enough goods of a specific age, where players will often find themselves short on goods from a lower age after they have progressed past that age. In FoE, goods from each age or era are required to unlock technology from that same period, as well for three additional time periods. For example, HMA goods are required to unlock technologies in: HMA, LMA, CA, and Indy. The game has a similar goods requirement for negotiating sectors on the C Map, where the goods from one age are used to negotiate sectors in a C Map area that belongs to much higher age or era. And in the later eras of the game, there is unrefined goods production to think about. Slowing or even halting technology progress, allows a player to work heavy questing much more efficiently and stockpile enough goods to easily and quickly make more progress later.

Technology Sprint ("Tech Sprint" for short)
Do not confuse a “tech sprint” with “racing through tech”, which is described separately above. A "tech sprint" is a carefully planned strategical advancement of our technology, with a specific game objective in mind. A tech sprint always has a stated objective that provides some tangible advantage in the game. Advancing technology, in and of itself, is not a sufficient reason to rapidly advance through the technology tree. Some worthwhile objectives of tech sprints include (but are not limited to):
  • A fighter wants to quickly advance to the technology point that allows him to produce units in support his guild’s GvG campaign.

  • A goods producer wants to quickly advance to the technology point that allows him to produce goods in support of his guild’s GvG campaign.

  • A quester wants to quickly advance to the technology point that allows him to quickly change over his city to all of the quest-efficient buildings for the next age.

  • A player wants to quickly advance his Town Hall before collecting prizes from a special event, which include special buildings that get age-locked to his Town Hall’s current age upon receipt of the special building.
IMPORTANT: A heavy quester always plans ahead, and prepares ahead, before executing a tech sprint; our preparation sometimes takes weeks, maybe even months. We always amass all the resources required to unlock all the technology in the higher time period that is critical to our heavy questing strategy, as well as to have enough resources on-hand to completely demolish and re-build our entire city. We usually execute our technology sprints in 24-48 hours, which includes time to complete dozens of side quests, as well as completely remodel our city. We advance our technology in this way, because when our Town Hall advances to a new time period, all recurring quests from the previous period are lost to us. We must then unlock the new recurring quests for the new period, which will all be scaled up to greater difficulty. Furthermore, our supply production buildings from the previous time period will no longer satisfy the new period's “Produce Supplies" quest. So there is no point for heavy questers to advancing technology to a new age, until we have amassed enough resources to both: unlock the specific technology required for effective heavy questing in the new time period, and change over our entire city to that newly unlocked building technology. We never want to be production-locked.

UBQ, "Pay the Jester", or "Pay Rinbin"
Rinbin the Jester is the specific quest giver who always gives us the recurring quest named: "Unbirthday Party"; the quest asks us to: "Pay M Coins + Pay N Supplies". I use “UBQ” as shorthand for "UnBirthday Party Quest", instead of "UBP", because pronouncing "you-bee-cue" aloud in English sounds much better and rolls off the tongue easier. I often use "UBQ" both as a noun (to mean the quest itself) or as a verb (to mean complete this specific quest). It just cuts down on a lot of typing in Guild Chat.
 
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DeletedUser23444

Questing Explained In-Depth
Quests are simply where the game offers us an opportunity to score some reward, by accomplishing one or more given tasks. In many cases, a quest will ask us to complete something we might have done anyway as a result of regular game play. However many quests challenge us to complete much more complex tasks that would be quite different, or more difficult than what our regular game play choices would accomplish. FoE quests usually involve (but are not limited to) game activities such as those listed below.
  • Astutely solve a problem or riddle.
  • Produce, collect, gather, or plunder a number of various resources.
  • Spend (we get some game progress) or pay (we get no game progress) a number of various resources.
  • Have, produce, or delete a fixed number of military units.
  • Make significant changes to our city, including constructing or selling specific buildings.
  • Scout, infiltrate, negotiate, or conquer areas on the Continental Map.
  • Perform different socially-interactive game activities.
  • Research 1 or more technologies.
Always Do Everything For Quest Credit!
Many quests require us to: "collect", "gather", "produce", or "spend" a certain number of a named resource—the required resources to complete these quests are inputs. Completing quests, as well as many other game activities, can also generate resources—the resources generated are outputs. As much as possible, we always want to leverage the output of all other game activity to use as the input (that is, the progress toward completion) of an accepted quest. In fact, it is ideal to have several different quests open (of any type) at the same time that all require the same type of input, so that the output of our other game activity will simultaneously count as progress toward multiple quests where we get to leverage 1 unit of activity output as: 2, 3, or even 4 units of quest input. The different game activities whose output will qualify as input progress toward quest completion includes (but might not be limited to):
  • Collecting completed productions from our own buildings (any type of building).

  • Plundering completed productions from our neighbor's buildings (any type of building).

  • Aiding other players, which pay us a fixed amount of coins for each AID click that scales by the age of our Town Hall. These coins can quickly add up to the final few 100 or even the final few 1,000 coins required to complete a "Collect Coins" quest.

  • Conquering a sector or a province on the C map that pays: coins, supplies, or goods as a bounty.

  • Completing another quest that pays a reward of: coins, supplies, goods, or units.

  • Completing a GE encounter that pays a reward of: coins, supplies, goods, or units.

  • Opening a Treasure Hunt chest that pays a reward of: coins, supplies, goods, or units.

  • Accepting a goods trade. (However, when we post our own trade and another player accepts it, the goods we receive from the trade will not count as quest progress to "gather" or "produce" goods.)

  • Selling a building in our city which pays back a fraction of the coins and supplies required to construct the building.
The Different Types of Quests
There are many different types of quests in FoE. The type of each specific quest we have accepted is usually noted in the title bar of the quest dialog. The different types of FoE quests include:

Story Quests — This is the 1st quest giver slot given to us in the game (do not confuse the order quests are given to us with the order they are listed along the left side of the screen). Story quests lead us through the technology tree and the continental map. Story quests can never be aborted.

Side Quests — This is the 2nd quest giver slot given to us in the game (again, do not confuse the order quests are given to us with the order they are listed along the left side of the screen). Somewhat similar to story quests, side quests sometimes lead us through the tech tree and the continental map. However, many side quests make us do things like: construct new buildings, sell old buildings, gather or produce different resources, produce or delete units, and many other time-consuming game activities. What, if any, side quests are available to us is a function of where we are in the tech tree. Many side quests re-appear in later time periods throughout the game, only they get scaled both in difficulty and in the rewards they payout according to each time period they reappear in. Most (but not all) side quests can be aborted. If we abort a side quest in one time period, then we will never see that same side quest again in that same time period; however, we could still see an adapted version of the same side quest in a later time period, once we get there.

NOTE: Many side quests are HUGE time wasters; therefore, we should never feel obligated to complete every side quest in our current time period. Instead, we can look at the time and other resources required to complete the side quest, and compare those costs with the total value of the rewards we could score upon quest completion. It is best to apply this general litmus test when deciding to abort or complete a side quest: “Can we complete the quest in 4 hours or less, and are the rewards we might score greater than the total resources cost to complete the quest?” If the answer to this litmus question is “yes”, then we should complete the side quest; however, if the answer to the question is “no”, then we should abort the side quest. There is no sense in completing any quest that results in a net loss of total resources, with no chance at a resource profit. Also, time is always our most precious resource; therefore there is no point in wasting time on completing any side quest (that doesn’t pay incredibly good rewards) when doing so only delays us from (re)unlocking the recurring quests (see later) for our age, which will generally pay us much better rewards.

Bonus (Story) Quests — These quests are triggered when we are able to scout certain bonus provinces on the various Continental maps. Bonus quests are like story quests in that they cannot be aborted. This is the 3rd quest giver slot in the game. The first time we receive bonus quests is just past the first two provinces of EMA, when we get a new, 3rd quest giver slot for the Barbarian Quest Line; this quest giver slot goes away after we complete the entire Barbarian Quest Line. The next bonus quest line comes between the LMA and Colonial Age on the Continental Map. However this time, after we complete this bonus quest line (given to us by Princess Mycenia), we actually get to keep the 3rd quest giver slot until the end of the game. This 3rd quest giver slot works just like the 2nd quest giver slot—it can either offer us: side quests (see above), bonus quests, or recurring quests (see below).

Recurring Quests — Recurring quests do not get their own quest slot along the left side of our screen—they always share the same slot(s) as side quests. At any point along the tech tree for our current time period, it is possible that we run out of available side quests (which are always tied to our overall technology progress); in such cases the game will offer us a recurring quest in place of a side quest. Every time we advance our technology (that is our Town Hall) to a higher time period, the recurring quests will get scaled so as to be much harder to complete, and the new period's recurring quests must be unlocked by completing or aborting all currently available side quests for the new time period. Recurring quests can always be aborted; however unlike side quests, recurring quests will reappear to us again, during the same time period, over-and-over an infinite number of times. Whenever we complete or abort a recurring quest, that same quest will be offered to us again, after we have either completed or aborted all other recurring quests one time, as well as any new side quests that may have been recently made available to us.

NOTE: Contrary to popular belief, recurring quests do NOT appear at the end of a time period—we can unlock them immediately upon entering a new time period by simply completing or aborting all currently available side quests. The transition between side and recurring quests goes both ways and it all depends on our tech advancement within the same time period. If we subsequently unlock another technology any time after we have already unlocked the recurring quests for our current time period (and after we either complete or abort our currently accepted recurring quest), then a previously unavailable side quest might become available. In such cases, we need to complete or abort any new side quests in order to once again unlock the recurring quests for our current time period.

Event Quests — We see event quests only in: Historical Events, Special Events, and Seasonal Events. An event will give us either one or two additional quest giver slots. The first event quest giver slot usually offers us a daily quest; often, these daily quests will still be available if we do not complete them on the day they are given — the daily quests stack up behind the quest we currently have open. The second event quest giver slot, if there is one, will offer us an overall event quest and a special prize that is usually event-specific; we must always complete all of the event's daily quests in order to complete the overall event quest. Sometimes the two different event quest slots will use the same quest giver, but sometimes they have different characters that give us the two different quests.

Complete List of Recurring Quests
Below is a complete list of all recurring quests in the game. More-less, the same recurring quests exist in every time period throughout the game; however they each get scaled in difficulty for each higher age.

Spend N Forge Points (“Spend FPs” for short)
This quest simply requires us to spend a fixed number of FPs, which could be accomplished by: donating FPs to a great building, filling a technology with FPs, accepting trades from friends or neighbors that each cost 1 FP to accept. The quest scales in difficulty by increasing the total number of FPs to spend in each age; for example, it is "Spend 8 FPs" in the Bronze Age and "Spend 99 FPs" in the Future Era.

NOTE: We should always dial up this recurring quest any time we swoop in to secure a donation reward slot on a great building, and we then donate FPs the target GB one-quest-at-a-time. Likewise, any time we complete a “tech sprint”, we should alternate between the "Spend FPs" quest and the "Research 2" quest.

Research 2 Technologies (“Research 2” for short)
This quest always requires us to simply unlock 2 technologies in the tech tree. The quest scales in difficulty since unlocking technology in later time periods will always cost us far more resources, including: FPs to fill the technology, as well as coins, supplies, and goods to unlock the technology.

NOTE: Any time we completely fill up a technology with forge points, which we should be doing during a "Spend FPs" quest, we should always click the “Unlock Later” button and wait until we have two technologies ready to unlock at the same time. Then, we should dial up the "Research 2" quest and unlock 2 technologies at the same time to complete that quest. Any time we “tech sprint” up to higher time period, we should always try to alternate between the "Spend FPs" quest and the "Research 2" quest.

Collect N,000 Coins (“Collect Coins” for short)
This quest simply requires us to collect a fixed number of coins. The quest scales in difficulty by increasing the total number of coins to collect in each age; for example, it is "Collect 1,800 Coins" in the Bronze Age and "Collect 800,000 Coins" in the Future Era.

Collect N,000 Supplies (“Collect Supplies” for short)
This quest simply requires us to collect a fixed number of supplies. The quest scales in difficulty by increasing the total number of supplies to collect in each age; for example, it is "Collect 1,500 Supplies" in the Bronze Age and "Collect 1,000,000 Supplies" in the Future Era.

Produce N <name of 24-hour supply production> (“Produce Supplies” for short)
This quest simply requires us to produce a fixed number of 24-hour supplies productions for a specific, regular, supply production building, or for a combination of 2 different supply production buildings. This quest scales in difficulty three ways:
  1. The named 24-hour supply production, corresponds to a specific regular supply production building, which we cannot build until we unlock that technology.

  2. Regular supply production buildings generally get larger, compared to available land, in each later time period. Additionally, most supply production buildings in Progressive Era and later require 2-lane roads, which makes constructing several of them less practical.

  3. The total number of required productions changes as we advance to later time periods.
    • Produce 2 x 24-hour supply productions in Bronze Age through Colonial Age.
    • Produce 4 x 24-hour supply productions in Industrial Age.
    • Produce 5 x 24-hour supply productions in PE through AFE.
NOTE: There will always be one produce supplies quest corresponding to every regular supply building in each time period. While most time periods have three different regular supply production buildings, some periods only have two; in such periods, there will be a third quest to: "Produce M x <name of 24-hour production from building A> and Produce N x <name of 24-hour production from building B>". This third "produce supplies" quest actually doubles the total number of required 24-hour productions to complete it, so it is a complete waste of time to work this quest—just abort-cycle past it.

The Produce Supplies quest is actually the easiest of all recurring quests to complete—we only need to build a large number of regular supply buildings that is evenly divisible by N, and set them to 24-hour productions each day. Then when our city is ready to collect, we dial up the correct recurring quest before we collect N of our supply buildings, collect only N of those buildings, then abort-cycle around to the same "Produce Supplies" quest and keep going until our city is collected.

In the Heavy Questing Strategy, we engineer our city and plan its road layout so as to fit as many regular supply production buildings as possible into our available land. The smaller a regular supply production building is, the less land and population it requires for construction, the more such buildings we can construct in our city, and the more such "Produce Supplies" quests we can complete each day. In later eras, we must consider if a supply production building requires 2-lane roads or 1-lane roads, and also if it grants our city a positive or negative happiness side effect. With all factors considered, here are the best building recommendations for each period:
  • Produce 2 x Helmets (Blacksmiths, 2x2) in the Bronze Age
  • Produce 2 x Meat Skewers (Butchers, 4x3) in the Iron Age
  • Produce 2 x Bear Hides (Tanneries, 3x3) in EMA
  • Produce 2 x Saltpeter (Alchemists, 3x2) in HMA
  • Produce 2 x Many Barrels of Beer (Brewery, 3x3) in LMA
  • Produce 2 x Turret Clocks (Clockmakers, 3x2) in Colonial Age
  • Produce 4 x Gatling Guns (Gunsmiths, 2x3) in Industrial Age
  • Produce 5 x Industrial Lighting (Lamp Factories, 6x3, 1-lane) in PE
  • Produce 5 x Church Hats (Hatters, 3x3, 1-lane) in ME.
  • Working "Produce Supplies" quest is unfeasible (with any building) in PME.
  • Working "Produce Supplies" quest is unfeasible (with any building) in CE.
  • Working "Produce Supplies" quest is unfeasible (with any building) in TE.
  • Produce 5 x Anti-grav Carriers (Levitation Outlets, 3x4, 2-lane, +120 Hap) in FE
IMPORTANT: There is no "Produce Supplies" quest for any premium or special supplies production building—the "Produce Supplies" quest always requires a regular supply building. Therefore, in all Heavy Questing time periods (ME and below), it is far better to store any premium or special supply production buildings we have scored in our Inventory for possible renovation or use later in the game. Some special supply production buildings have many solid advantages over regular supply production buildings, which can include: a much smaller land requirement, a much smaller population requirement compared to the supplies produced per-tile of land, or 1-lane roads to connect it to Town Hall (most late-era supply buildings require 2-lane roads). The following supply buildings are incredibly efficient compared to regular, or even premium, options: (Large/Huge) Confectionary, Foeberge, and the Reindeer Paddock—all of these buildings are incredibly valuable when they are age-locked to late-game eras (above ME), especially since working the "Produce Supplies" quest becomes much less efficient, or even altogether unfeasible. However, constructing special or premium supply buildings in ME or earlier is a complete waste of land, since the value of quest rewards will greatly augment the efficiency of regular supply production buildings in those periods.

Have 4 Military units of Type A + 4 Military units of Type B ("Produce Units" for short)
There will always be three different variations of the Produce Units quest in every time period. All 5 types of regular military units from each time period will be used in at least one variation of this quest; one unit type will be used in two variations. These quests are actually quite easy to complete over and over in the same day, since most units take 4 hours or less to produce; we just need 2 barracks of each type of unit for the specific variation we wish to work. Each variation of this quest can be hidden from the recurring quest cycle by simply owning 3 or more of either type of unit that variation of the quest calls for. The inverse of this is also true—we can trigger the different variations of this recurring quest to appear in the recurring quest abort-cycle, by deleting enough of both unit types the variation of the quest calls for, until we own 2 units each of both types.

NOTE: This quest counts both attached and unattached units to determine if the quest should be: shown, hidden, or completed. So not only does producing attached units affect this quest, but this quest is also affected by acquiring unattached units from: Treasure Hunt, Guild Expeditions, collecting an Alcatraz, or even by completing some Story or Side quests that pay units as a quest reward. It is usually impractical to work this quest once we own an Alcatraz, since we want to stockpile more and more unattached units for use in: GE, GvG, Plundering our Hood, or conquering the C Map. For this reason, as well as to have more land available, it is advised to delay construction of Alcatraz until mid-Colonial Age. After Colonial Age, the sheer size and population cost of most unit production buildings make working the "Produce Units" quest impractical anyway.

"Pay X Coins + Pay Y Supplies", which is named "Unbirthday Party" (“UBQ” for short)
This quest simply requires us to pay Ribin the Jester a fixed number of coins plus a fixed number of supplies. The quest scales in difficulty by increasing the total number of coins and supplies to pay in each age; for example, it is "Pay 500 Coins and 600 supplies" in the Bronze Age and "Pay 250,000 Coins and 250,000 supplies" in the Future Era.

This is the hidden gem of all recurring quests; any player who tells you differently, is NOT a "heavy quester" and was never coached by me. This quest is excellent for converting coins and supplies into: refined goods, blueprints, medals, and forge points. Many of the different tweaks I've made to this strategy are centered around being able to easily afford to spam UBQs in any age or era. This quest is unique in that it does not require any specific buildings for completion—any source of coins and supplies production will work as an input. However, what we truly need is a city that can produce both coins and supplies in a highly efficient manner; as such, this quest will heavily influence our GB construction and leveling priorities.

NOTE: Since the output of UBQ could be any random reward, and since we can complete as many instances of UBQ as our available stockpiles of coins and supplies will allow, we can somewhat reliably utilize the output of UBQ as the input to complete other quests such as: "Collect Coins", "Collect Supplies", as well as any Story/Side/Event quest to: "gather goods" or "produce goods".

Random Quest Rewards
Many different types of quests pay a "random reward"; this includes all recurring quests. The pool of possible random rewards, and the percentage to pay each reward, is exactly the same for any quest from the same time period that pay random rewards.

Based on my own numerical analysis, which involved recording 1000s of random quest rewards over a period of months, below are my estimated percentage chances to score each possible random quest reward. I have taken some liberty in rounding my empirical data to the nearest whole percentage point and I estimate my margin of error to be +/- 1% for any specific reward.
  • 30% = 5 random goods from our current age (Château Frontenac bonus applies)

  • 15% = Small Coins Package (scales by age, Château Frontenac bonus applies)

  • 15% = Small Supplies Package (scales by age, Château Frontenac bonus applies)

  • 10% = Large Coins Package (scales by age, Château Frontenac bonus applies)

  • 10% = Large Supplies Package (scales by age, Château Frontenac bonus applies)

  • 8% = 1 random blueprint from 1 random GB, our current age or lower (no Château Frontenac bonus)

  • 6% = 5 Forge points (inventory pack, no Château Frontenac bonus)

  • 6% = 20 Diamonds (1st time only each quest and each age, Château Frontenac bonus applies) - OR –
    Medals Package (any time after 1st time each quest and each age, scales by age, Château Frontenac bonus applies)
NOTE: The last random reward "prize slot" pays out one of two possible rewards, depending on if the given quest has already paid us 20 diamonds or not during our current age. Stated another way: a specific quest, such as the "Collect N Coins" quest, will only pay us 20 diamonds 1 time in each age—the first time that specific quest lands on the diamonds/medals prize slot. Any subsequent instance when the same quest lands on the diamonds/medals prize slot, that specific quest will pay us a medals package, which is scaled to our current age. So any quest, that advertises a random quest reward, that is currently paying us a medals package, has already paid us diamonds 1 time in our current age. This is not a case of: "I think this is what happens", this is a case of : "I know this is what happens, because I've done it 100s of times myself and I have also sent many other players through this process 100s of times and I have documented what we learned each time."
 
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DeletedUser23444

What to accomplish in each Time Period

For ages other than HMA, CA, and LMA what triggers moving to the next age? And how much should one build while in them?

All of these questions pertain to a guide section that I haven't completing writing and editing yet, but that I actually I do have a place holder for. I have lots of notes to compile into more coherent conversation. But I'll jott some quick guidance here to take you as far as getting to CA in this post.

et's start with BA, IA, and EMA? You've mentioned just staying long enough to score diamonds from all feasible loop quests.

Yup, it is almost that simple! But we must temper that with our tech tree progress. There is 0 point to staying in the ages below HMA one second longer than it takes for us to score diamonds from each recurring quest. If we fill up the Bronze Age tech tree, with only hourly FPs, before the quests pay us diamonds, then move up. We don't just sit in the Bronze Age and waste our hourly FPs because we cannot yet swap FPs with anyone. The diamonds we haven't scored yet from BA are not worth losing our FPs. And no do not self-donate to score more diamonds; just move to Iron Age, where you can swap FPs.

In Iron Age or later we can swap FPs if we have a GB. LoA should be our first GB, but most players will drop down SoZ because they get the set first, which is okay. Once we own a GB and have the right Iron Age tech unlocked (is it named Architecture?) then we can sit in Iron age and work each quest until they pay us our diamonds. Then move up to EMA and rinse-and repeat until we unlock HMA Alchemy.

While it will vary player-to-player, it generall takes Bronze Age 20-25 days to pay diamonds from every recurring quest. (I have tested this several times myself; however, RNG is the same for one player but varies for other players). It's close to the same for IA and EMA. But again, if you work quest for diamonds, then move up when you have exhausted all possible diamonds to score.


HMA one hangs out in until one has several specifc GBs at level 10, and all the stored goods and FPs to reach clockmakers in CA

Actually the part about GB levels is incorrect as far as HMA goes. HMA is about constructing 5 GBs that are essential to HQS ASAP: CF, HS, CdM, StM, and LoA; and skipping all other GBs not explicitly listed until CA (SoZ is okay, but skip it if you can construct LoA). HMA is also about stockpiling enough of all resources to be able to sprint from HMA up to CA Clockmaking (meaning leap frogging past LMA), which includes: FP packs; coins; supplies; and also enough goods from all of these ages: BA, IA, EMA, HMA, LMA, and even some CA goods to unlock a few of the CA techs along the way.

Before leaving HMA, we ideally want to have scored 2 Champions' Retreats that are age locked to HMA or earlier. One of them will remain forever locked to HMA and the other forever locked to LMA. We must score these retreats in the correct age or lower, after which we can use 1-up kits scored from GE to age-lock them to the correct age, after we advance past HMA.

In HMA we swap 100% of the 5 packs of FPs we score from quest rewards, along with all hourly and daily FPs produced from our city. However, we stockpile all 10 packs of FPs we score from FP Swaps to GBs. If we are not scoring FPs in each FP swap we do, then we are swapping inefficiently. The point of swapping FPs is to score donation rewards AND level up our GBs (and to also have our swap partners do the same two things). So find Swap partners who "get it". Also be flexible with each other, so as to let each other secure a reward slot as needed. In other words, we don't lock ourselves into swapping precisely N FPs-per-day, each and every day. Those numbers should be a guide line and not an inflexible rule. When a GB gets close to leveling let our partner secure his reward slot and then take time off while we catch up to him and he should do the same for us when his GB gets close. I'll have more detail on swapping as a complete section.

By the time we have stockpiled enough of every resource (think about 1,400 FPs alone) to sprint all the way up to CA Clockmaking technology (skipping all techs that can be skipped, even land expansions), our 5 recommended HQS GBs for HMA should all be in the level 5 to level 7 range, with our CF and HS being the highest priorities of the entire group. We want HS about level 7 before leaving HMA because we will require much more happiness in LMA or CA than was required in HMA. And our CF makes our quests pay much more goods and medals.

LMA questing is about one thing and one thing only: diamonds. That's it! Don't stay in LMA any longer than it takes to score 20 diamonds (before CF bonus buffs it) from every quest. And if we work off-worlds for diamonds, then we can skip right over LMA and jump all the way up to CA Clockmaking. Since we never park in LMA very long, if at all, this is why we spend considerable time in HMA, which has smaller a supply production building than LMA which permits us to produce more FPs per day from questing than LMA questing can produce.


CA is where we park for the longest of any time period (except the Future Era or maybe ME) because CA is the most lucrative HQS period for producing FPs. We don't leave CA until all of the recommended GBs are level 10. CA is the age that our city will produce the most daily FPs, outside of scoring an entire field of SoKs from special events and also having all of our FP-producing GBs at or above level 10. We stay in CA the longest to get all of our GBs to level 10 so that as our FP production from quest rewards tapers off in later time periods, our level 10 GBs can help replace that lost FPs production from GBs such as: Arc, CF, HS, CdM, IT, and ToR. So our later-era city will still produce a good amount of FPs, only they will come by way of our level 10 GBs. The CF is on this list because it helps us spam UBQs in any later era where we might not be able to spam the "Produce supplies" supplies quest. Arc is about more lucrative FP Swaps. StM and LoA are about being able to afford to spam UBQs in later eras. CdM, HS, IT outright produce 24-hour FPs, and ToR is about scoring more 20 FP and 100 FP relics (which are not reliable at all and why ToR is the last GB we level up in CA).

The later Eras are trickier.

Ind I would say stay 1-2 months mainly to build up large stockpiles of Ind goods to help produce PME goods conventionally, which is going to happen at some point of the game. Think like 2K of each Ind good before advancing. Again if you added more GBs to your city stay in Ind until those new GBs are level 10.

PE is a bit weird. Use PE High-Rises + Innovation Tower for population; also consider adding Habitat. Use 6x3 Lamp Factories in a 1-lane district for questing. Quest PE until we scoring diamonds and enough resources to unlock all techs up through to unlock ME Hatters. In PE our GBs will also produce 24-hour PE Goods (as will Wells and Fountains). So because we leveled up our GBs earlier that produce 24-hour player goods (StM, LoA, FoD), it doesn't hurt us as much that our PE supply buildings are massive.

ME Use PE High-Rises for population.

is the first refined goods age. But it has a 3x3 Hatter that is a 1-lane road building. Park in ME as long as you want and work quests. You iwll be rolling in ME goods that you can trade up for PME and down for PE.
 
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DeletedUser23444

NOTE: I'm currently working on this guide section right now, so it is going to have mistakes on GBs I have not completed yet, and things of that nature. I will post in the topic conversation when I feel that this section is suitable for public consumption.

That being said, the Tower of Babel Analysis below is 100% complete, and also peer-reviewed by my guild. So I have no plans to update that one GB.

At a minimum, I will break down each of the most controversial GBs in the same manner as I have broken down the ToB. However for less controversial advice that I give about GBs, I might just resort to discussing GBs that provide the same benefit as-a-group, where I rank each GB that provides the same benefits, rather than breaking down each GB in such great detail. In other words, I should not have to spend too much time selling players on why we construct GBs like Alcatraz or The Arc, so taking significant time to write a detailed breakdown about such GBs has much less value, especially since this guide isn't even 50% complete. In contrast, a GB like the ToB is one that many players do construct and I'm advising players to skip it; so for such GBs, I really do need to provide a more detailed breakdown in order to prove my case, thus you see what I have I provided for the ToB below. Just don't expect that same level of detail for all GBs.


Great Buildings to Avoid

Levels.png
Forge.png
¹
JKvfGOB.png
JKvfGOB.png
/
8cQJgUG.png
Compare PPT² To:
cQPHqht.png
cQPHqht.png
/
8cQJgUG.png
Compare GPT² To:
140905.635.50 BA Stilt House6 (12)0.38 (0.75)0.42 (NA) Oasis
0.32 (0.64) Wishing Well
0.28 (0.56) FoD Lvl 01
0.28 (0.56) StM Lvl 01
0.50 (1.00) LoA Lvl 01
556036022.5023.50 HMA Brownstone10 (20)0.63 (1.25)0.42 (NA) Oasis
0.32 (0.64) Wishing Well
0.44 (0.88) FoD Lvl 05
0.47 (0.94) StM Lvl 05
0.81 (1.63) LoA Lvl 05
102,5001,14071.2564.75 CA Gambrel Roof House
70.00 Level 01 Capitol
79.00 Ind Victorian House
222.22 FE Arcology
15 (30)0.94 (1.88)0.42 (NA) Oasis
0.32 (0.64) Wishing Well
0.68 (1.36) FoD Lvl 10
0.69 (1.39) StM Lvl 10
1.19 (2.38) LoA Lvl 10
Tower Of Babel (ToB) Bronze Age
Construction.png
150 Goods:
BA_Marble.png
20
BA_Lumber.png
10
BA_Dye.png
20
Ba_Stone.png
50
BA_Wine.png
50

X_BronzeAge_Landmark1-150x150.png
When to Construct:Never, just skip this GB!
Better Population Options:IT, Hab, Cap, Land-locked regular houses
Better 24-hour Goods Options:LoA, StM, FoD, RAH, RFP,
CF-enhanced quest rewards,
Oasis, Tribal Square, Wishing Well, Fountain of Youth
¹ = Cumulative FPs required to reach the GB level listed.
² = coins-per-tile (CPT), goods-per-tile (GPT), FPs-per-tile (FPT), hap-per-tile (HPT), medals-per-tile (MPT), pop-per-tile (PPT), supplies-per-tile (SPT).

The ToB is for “The Quest Looping Strategy” not "The Heavy Questing Strategy" — Players who work the much older "quest looping" strategy (which is not to be confused with this Heavy Questing Strategy) tend to park in the Bronze Age, construct the ToB and level it up quickly (through self-donation), sell all of their Bronze Age housing, and then cram as many Blacksmiths into the limited land a Bronze Aged city has as they can. And then they remain in the Bronze age forever, until all their GBs are high level.

In the HQS, we don't stay in the Bronze Age any longer than it takes to score diamonds from each recurring quest; and that is if we even stay there at all. The Bronze Age is the cheap seats of questing—the medals package is a tiny 5 medals per quest, Bronze Age goods are the most worthless in trade value, we can only score blueprints from quest rewards for two GBs, we cannot complete GE at all, we cannot help a guild GvG, and we cannot swap FPs with another player which we would permit us to score GB donation rewards. Additionally, a Bronze Age city just doesn't have much land on which we can seriously work the HQS. So we score what diamonds we can from the Bronze Age and then leave it behind as soon as we have all the techs filled up.

Since we don’t park in the Bronze Age, the total value of all benefits the ToB provides would need to remain competitive, compared to other options that become readily available as we progress through the game; these other options include: other GBs, regular buildings, and special buildings. And here is the glaring problem with the ToB—in terms of total value-per-tile of land, the ToB fails miserably compared to other options that are readily available.

The ToB’s Population Cannot Compete by the Industrial Age — In the table above we see that the population-per-tile (PPT) provided by a level 10 ToB can easily be replaced by constructing a level 1 Capitol. Here's the real kicker — a level 10 ToB will cost us a cumulative total of 2,500 FPs; however, a level 1 Capitol will only cost us 60 FPs. It really doesn't matter that the Capitol is a much larger GB than the ToB, since the fair comparison between the two GBs is total value provided per tile of land consumed. By the time we advance to the Industrial Age, even regular Victorian Houses are more efficient in terms of population-per-tile than a level 10 ToB. By the time we reach the Future Era, the pop-per-tile comparisons to regular houses get really dismal, where it isn’t even a contest between a Level 10 ToB and an Arcology. So based on the population benefit, the ToB is not a very good GB at all, since we have much cheaper options for high population density.

The ToB’s Only Real Benefit is Goods Production — To be fair, the ToB also produces 24-hour goods, which will become considerably more valuable to us in the Modern Era and beyond when all goods-producing GBs start paying x2 unrefined goods every 24-hours (in the above table these are the numbers in parentheses). Certainly, the x2 unrefined goods that ToB will eventually produce in the Modern Era and beyond will become much more valuable than the 24-hour supplies that a Capitol will produce in the period. And this is precisely why many players champion construction of the ToB. However, since Heavy Questing can produce goods so lucratively, without spending FPs to level up a GB, then we don't really need any GBs to produce 24-hour goods for us in the lower ages. So in the case of any GB that produces 24-hour goods, it is really the second (non-goods production) benefit provided by such a GB that really decides which GBs are the most valuable for us to construct in the lower ages.

Better Options Exist — There are 5 other GBs that we can construct that all produce x2 unrefined goods every 24-hours in ME and beyond, which include: LoA, StM, FoD, RAH, and RFP. We will already construct both the LoA and StM; and if a player ever debates the value of these two GBs, then they don’t know how to play FoE. Additionally there are 3 other GBs that we can construct that can produce 24-hour refined goods for our guild treasury, which include: Obs, Atm, and Arc. All 8 of these goods-producing GBs offer our city a second benefit that is vastly superior (in terms of efficiency per tile of land) and also much more valuable to us than the paltry amount of population that the ToB provides. For the purpose of producing x2 unrefined goods in ME and beyond, the Wishing Well or Fountain of Youth beat any GB in the game; both special buildings cost 0 FPs to construct or level up and both have a 29% chance to produce 20 unrefined goods every 24 hours, while only consuming a 3 x 3 plot of land. When these two special buildings don't produce goods, they might instead produce: medals, FPs, or even diamonds. But over time, they actually produce goods more often than any of the other resources.

Think FoD not ToB — In the HQS, I actually recommend constructing the FoD instead of the ToB for 24-hour goods production. A level 10 ToB produces 15 (30) goods and a level 10 FoD produces 17 (34). Players often debate this by pointing out that FoD is 5x5 while ToB is only 4x4, which is a valid point. However, the fair measure of any GB is its total value provided per tile of land it consumes. So with this in mind, let’s compare ToB to FoD. The Level 10 goods-per-tile (GPT) of FoD is 0.68 (1.36) GPT and that of a level 10 ToB is 0.94 (1.88) GPT. This means that the ToB is 38% more efficient in terms of Goods-per-Tile than the FoD is. But these GBs also have a second benefit that we must also compare in terms of total value produced per tile of land consumed. The level 10 happiness-per-tile of FoD is 196.00 HPT while the level 10 population-per-tile of the ToB is 71.25 PPT. This means that the FoD is 175% more efficient in happiness-per-tile than the ToB is in population-per-tile. Now we must ask the question: “which is worth more to our city, happiness or population?” Remember our relative valuation of each FoE resource earlier in this guide? Our city will always require 40% more happiness than it has population, in order to keep our citizens enthused. This means the value of the FoD’s happiness-per-tile is actually worth 40% more to our city than the value of ToB’s population–per-tile, because our city will have more demand for happiness than it will have for population. The FoD's happiness is already 175% more efficient than the ToB's population, and on top of this it is 40% more valuable. The FoD beats the ToB hands-down.

Conclusion — Since the ToB loses so badly in its pop-per-tile metric, its goods production would need to be efficient enough, and unique enough, to make the ToB worthwhile enough to spend any land or FPs on its construction. But since we have so many other viable options that can produce 24-hour goods in the lower ages and x2 24-hour unrefined goods in the later eras, using the goods production of ToB as the only real rationale to construct it doesn't hold up to analytical scrutiny.

GEnySrW.png
Happiness:
Permanent happiness bonus

Levels.png
Forge.png
¹
Icon_happiness.png
Icon_happiness.png
/
8cQJgUG.png
Compare HPT² To:
Icon_medal.png
Icon_medal.png
/
8cQJgUG.png
Compare MPT² To:
1401,10026.195.50 BA Stilt House100.24
IA Quest Reward (Base)
IA Wishing Well
IA Victory Tower
IA Shrine of Awe
56101,90045.24
HMA Church
HMA Tigers' Den
HMA Graveyard
HS Lvl 05
Trz Lvl 05
Atm Lvl 05
150.36
HMA Quest Reward (Base)
HMA Wishing Well
HMA Victory Tower
HMA Shrine of Awe
102,7204,00095.24
CA Trading Company
CA Tigers' Den
CA Graveyard
HS Lvl 10
Trz Lvl 10
Atm Lvl 10
350.833
CA Quest Reward (Base)
CA Wishing Well
CA Victory Tower
CA Shrine of Awe
Colossuem (Col) Iron Age
Construction.png
150 Goods:
IA_Cloth.png
50
IA_Ebony.png
60
IA_Jewelry.png
40
IA_Iron.png
70
IA_Limestone.png
80

X_IronAge_Landmark1-150x150.png
When to Construct:Never, just skip this GB!
Better Happiness Options:HS, FoD, Trz, Atm,
Regular Cultural Buildings,
Premium Cultural Buildings,
Tigers' Den, Graveyard (any size)
Better Medals Production Options:
CF-enhanced quest rewards,
Arc-Enhanced FP Swaps,
Shrine of Awe, Victory Tower
Wishing Well, Fountain of Youth,
 
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DeletedUser23444

NOTE: This work is in progress as well. I started on this but players kept peppering me with GB questions, So I iwll complete GBs first.

City Design, Planning, and Remodeling
We start the game off with a small 16 x 16 section of wilderness that has been cleared of obstacles, on which we must build our civilization. Quite naturally, most players quickly become obsessed with how to acquire more land as quickly as possible. But the real key to success in this game, is that we must always find ways to produce the most total value (of all the various resources I listed earlier in this guide) as we can from each tile of land that we already own. We cannot afford to waste a single tile of land. If we can produce more total-value-per-tile from our land, compared to the total-value-per-tile that our enemy's city can produce, in the same time period, in the same amount of land that we both own, then we have gained an advantage over our enemy. Multiply that efficiency advantage across every day that both we and our enemy play this game, and the impact of our efficiency advantage compounds very quickly. This makes the art and science of designing and planning an efficient city an invaluable exercise. Never view planning a city as a chore; rather, it is one of the most important elements of playing the game. Planning our city is actually playing the game — this is actually where we win or lose more than in any other aspect of this game. With that in mind, let me give you the "keys to your own city".

Prioritize Gaming Objectives, Then Design the City to Help Meet Them
The Chinese have this ancient proverb: "If you don't know where you are going, then any path will take you there." In the Heavy Questing Overview, we set these specific strategic objectives:
  • Maximize and optimize our city's overall production efficiency.
  • Expedite our city's expansion rate.
  • Expedite our city’s total progress advancement.
In whatever time period we are in, our overall city design must strike a delicate balance between these long-term strategic objectives of the Heavy Questing Strategy and supporting whatever our specific, short-term gaming objectives are at the time. So before putting in a lot of frustrating work into developing a new city plan, we must always think about where we want to go and what we want to accomplish with our city. In the earlier ages of the game, I coach players to limit their list of objectives to those that allow them to increase their city's expansion rate.

Let's Start By Breaking Down a Bad City Design — One of My Own
I've attached a city plan from back when I was just inside HMA, which was around the 2015 Easter Event. In fact, you see one Shrine of Awe in my city plan; I was one of the first players on the live servers to score an SoA, and this was the event the SoA was first added to FOE. (Of course, what I really wanted was actually an SoK.) At the time of this city plan, I was fumbling through learning how to implement "quest looping" myself, while my guild was in the middle of a very intense GvG war that spanned several ages. I had a lot going on in my city and I kept switching my buildings around between more goods production then more units production. In general, I was trying to accomplish too much for how little expanded land I had, which included:
  • Produce produce goods to donate goods to my guild for GvG.
  • Produce units to fight GvG with and to place defensive armies with.
  • Construct lots of land-gobbling GBs, which included a Colosseum of all things!
  • And I managed to shoehorn in a total of 6 HMA Alchemists with which I could work quests.
Needless to say, I didn't accomplish very much questing. I hadn't yet connected all the dots in my own head to tell myself that maybe it would just be better if I focused on getting my city more capable. Here is a glimpse into my city, just as I entered HMA.

Ravenloft-05HMA-Early.png

Here are a list of Things I did well in this city plan:

  1. I knew that producing goods conventionally and producing units at all will usually consume more population than questing with supply production buildings will. With that in mind, I actually made two different city plans. The version you see here is the one that requires the most population, and by extension the most happiness. But I knew that, after the GvG fighting died back down, that I could easily down-size my total military production in order to construct more Alchemists along any of the horizontal roads in my city. So in this plan I could easily sell: 2 Armored Infantry, 2 Catapults, and 2 Mounted Archers, and replace them buildings with 10 more Alchemists for 5 more "Produce Supplies" quests every 24 hours.


Here are a list of things that are complete mistakes in this city plan:

  1. Constructing Coa Before SoZ was even level 5. There is no benefit to wasting land and construction goods on two GBs that provide exactly the same benefit, when the first GB (SoZ in this case) is not leveled up significantly.

  2. Using Wishing Wells in a Heavy Questing City, below PME. I can mathematically prove this to be ineffective, which I might go into detail elsewhere.

  3. Sacrificing too much of my own city's development in favor if wanting to fight everyone, everywhere, all the time. Yes we want to fight glorious battles. However, in the very early game we are trying to: expand a city, construct a bunch of GBs we never owned before, tech up, produce goods, and fight. Each new GB we construct takes away production efficiency from our city, until each of those GBs reaches a level where it finally becomes a better alternative to just using regular buildings. In this city you see I was fighting in EMA. We really don't require a combat bonus to fight in EMA, much less two of them that are both below level 5 like I had back in this city.
Before anyone starts cracking jokes about me once owning a Colosseum, let me explain what I was up to way back in the day. First, we need to understand that FoE was quite different back when I first constructed my Colosseum. IIRC, the "End of Content" stopped at either the Progressive Era or the Modern Era. The game certainly didn't have an event almost every month, nor did it have GE, which is much like a weekly event. Most of the special buildings that produce medals hadn't even been invented yet, such as: Shrine of Awe, Caravansary, and all of the multi-production buildings. Back then, "Quest Looping" wasn't a widely known or practiced strategy; and since not many players looped quests, it was much harder to learn about such a strategy. So for most players, producing extra medals was limited to constructing GBs like Colosseum and Deal Castle; or, we had to get very lucky and score Wishing Wells or Victory Towers in special events (both of which were very rarely offered in events and there were far fewer events) . So before I really knew anything about this game, I constructed the Colosseum in Iron Age/EMA. My plan was to push my Col up to Level 4 quickly, where it could help my happiness and produce some daily medals. I wanted to combine winning weekly PvP Towers and my daily medals production to acquire the first few Victory Expansions ASAP. But even back then, I knew that Colosseum wasn't a very good GB to keep around long-term; and I always planned to sell my Colosseum once I could construct Hagia Sophia, by which time the medals cost of my next Victory Expansion would make my Colosseum seem like the really bad joke that we all know that GB to be.

What actually happened was that about half of my neighborhood absolutely fell in in-love with donating FPs to my Colosseum (perhaps to avoid getting plundered by me); my hoodies quickly pushed my Colosseum up to level 8 while I was still in EMA/HMA. Even after I was able to construct Hagia Sophia, and after I had guild mates actively swapping FPs to my HS, my Colosseum was actually leveling up faster than my HS! Some levels on my Col had as many as 10 different hoodies fighting to secure reward slots. My Col leveled up so fast, that it quickly became an indispensable source of happiness in my EMA/HMA city. My Colosseum + Hagia Sophia actually kept my city enthused half-way through the Colonial Age. In fact, it wasn't until I could construct my Alcatraz and push it up past level 3 or 4, before I could afford to sell off my Colosseum. So that is why we see a Colosseum in my early city plans, but not in my later ones.

Keep in mind that I have never coached a player to construct a Colosseum. My experience with Col was pure dumb luck and basically amounted to me constructing a largely-free level 8 GB. Even counting the compulsory Stix-to-Brix FP donations from my guild, along with the short-term FP Swap I used to help it reach level 4, my guild donated a total of 215 FPs to my level 8 Colosseum; the other 1,548 FPs donated were 100% Free FP donations from players in my neighborhood that I never had to pay back.

This misadventure I had with my Colosseum taught me just how valuable and effective it can be to park in an age and push a GB up to higher levels as quickly as we can. I also learned that constructing a GB before the rest of our neighborhood, especially in the lower ages, is very valuable for attracting Free FP donations from other players who might want to construct the same GB.


Start Planning the Next Major City Remodel Now, Long Before it is Required

Always Plan Happiness First

At Least as Much Unpolished Happiness as Total Population

Always Plan To Have as Close to 0 Surplus Population as Possible

Expand the City's Land to Keep it Square For as Long as Possible

Always Plan a Major City Remodel Starting With a Completely Empty Land Map

Organize a Palette of Buildings That Must Go into the City, Arranged by Similar Dimensions, Before Actually Designing The City

Divide the City into Different Districts; Always Design the 2-Lane Road District First

The 2-Lane Road District:
The 1-Lane Road District:
The Flexible Buildings District:


"Nice and Neat" Grid-Style Road Layouts Almost Never Equal Efficient Road Layouts

Minimize the Total Tiles of Land Consumed By Roads and Decorations

Let the Road Layout of the Various Districts Dictate Where to Place the Town Hall

Try to Arrange Similarly Size Buildings By: Age, Building Type, or Collection Cycle

Great Buildings
Road Layout and Utilization




Sub-Topic header
Q: Question here
A: Answer here

NOTE: Note goes here. An important emphasis within a note looks like this. And we go back to the note like this.

SIDEBAR: Tangential discussion goes here. An important emphasis within a tangential discussion looks like this. And we go back to the tangential discussion like this.
 
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DeletedUser23444

Recommended Great Buildings

Just about every gaming activity we can do in the game of FoE has something to do with one or more Great Buildings in some way — we are either in the constant pursuit of acquiring the blueprints and goods required to construct a certain GB, or we are leveraging the boosts given to us by GBs we have already constructed in our city as we complete our other gaming activities. Great Buildings impact the development and production efficiency of our city just as equally, if not more so, as our current technology level does. In the Heavy Questing Strategy, we emphasize the construction and leveling of certain GBs ahead of other GBs and also ahead of our technology advancement. This core principle of consistently prioritizing constructing and leveling Great Buildings that can help our city snowball faster is absolutely critical to both our short-term and long-term gaming success in FoE.

The Great Buildings Of Our Empire
Let us start discussing Great Buildings by first reflecting on: "the grandeur that was Greece and the Glory that was Rome". If you ever get a chance to visit either place in real life, do it — they are both truly awe-inspiring in: scope, scale, architecture, and attention to detail. Ancient Rome was not built in a day; there is no possible way it could have been, even if they had millions of slaves and modern construction technology. Neither will our FoE city be built in a day. When asked how he would expand the Roman Empire, the Roman Emperor Hadrian responded thusly to his fellow Romans: "Brick by Brick, my citizens—brick by brick." Hadrian had a long-term vision for Rome. However, to implement that vision he wanted his citizens to decompose the much larger and more complex problem of expanding their empire into a series of much smaller and simpler tasks of laying one brick at-a-time. This is exactly how we are going to approach GBs in the game of FoE — we will have an end vision of what we want our Rome to look like, which we will then construct brick-by-brick. Only, we are going to add something to this process — we are going to first priortize GBs that help our city snowball faster, and we will skip construction (at least temporarily) of any GB that does not help our city immediately snowball faster. We will also apply a similar logic to leveling our GBs. With all of this in mind, let's take a look at the vision of Rome and determine which GBs are part of that vision or not.

Most GBs experience a dramatic drop in the efficiency they gain for each level above level 10—in other words we get more value to raise any GB from level 9 to level 10 than we do to raise the same GB from level 10 to level 11 (or any other single level above level 10). Meanwhile, the cost for each higher level goes up. So when I look at GBs that are winner and losers, I'm looking at their value in 4 phases: Level 1, Level 5, Level 10, and if the GB offers us any value for taking it to stratosphere levels (well above level 10).

We will Always Construct All of These GBs Eventually:
  1. Lighthouse of Alexandria
  2. St. Mark's Basillica

We May or May Not Construct Some of These GBs:

We will Never Construct Any of These GBs:



[*]Let's talk about unrefined goods production
[/LIST]
  1. Colosseum

  2. Notre Dame

  3. St. Basil's Cathedral

  4. Deal Castle

  5. Space Needle

  6. Lotus Temple

  7. Voyager V1

  8. Gaea Statue
Sub-Topic header

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

, GB Leveling Strategy, and FP Swapping Strategy.


Great Building Construction Priorities
I'm going to describe the ideal progression that we should attempt to construct GBs in, broken down by the age we are in.



I just saw this old conversation and I want to add a completely different perspective from some of the other lists I have seen posted here. First off, I am approaching my list from the Heavy Questing play style perspective. Heavy Questing is where player focuses first on maximizing the total resource production of his city first, before focusing on being a combat bad@$$. In my guild, we put our noobs into a heavy questing play style and keep them locked up in HMA and Colonial Age where they do not emerge until their city is full of level 10 GBs. And it goes much faster than you might think. With that strategy in mind, here is the list of GBs in terms of how they effect the overall growth rate of a player's city in terms of both resource production and expansion.

  1. The Arc — The Arc is the single most over-powered GB in the entire game. A heavy quester will swap 100% of his hourly and daily FPs to a guild mate's GB, so the Arc maximizes his return in investment from the donation rewards. The Arc gives the largest increase to the rate at which a player can score: BPs, FP packs, and medals of any GB in the game. Also, the guild goods produced are quite high even at lower levels, which means the heavy quester can donate less goods produced by other means and still help his guild quite effectively. The way we work our overall heavy questing strategy, we usually try to get our noobs The Arc when they make it to Colonial Age questing. By then they are swimming in Colonial Age goods which the higher era guild mates are glad to to accept in trade since the burn through them as unrefined goods.

  2. Chateau Frontenac — The Chateau Frontenac is the holy freaking grail of GBs to a player who truly understand the heavy questing strategy. In our guild we try to get a player a CF immediately in HMA. Build a field of Alchemists and working the HMA recurring quest to: "Produce 2 x Saltpeter" over-and-over and the player never needs to build any goods production buildings at all. Then instead of scoring 5 current-age goods per random quest reward, they are scoring 10 goods due to the quest reward bonus of a level 6 CF. Instead of 30 medals per quest in HMA, they are scoring 60. In Colonial Age, we build a field of Clockmakers and work the recurring quest to" "Produce 2 x Turret Clocks". The base medals package is 70 which becomes 140 medals. (I sat in Colonial age and scored about 1,000 medals per day and my city expanded like wild fire.)

  3. St. Mark's Basillica — A heavy quester mainly works recurring quest to produce supplies. However, there is also recurring quest to "collect coins" and another quest to "pay coins + pay supplies", which is named Unbirthday Party Quest (we call it UBQ for short). A heavy quester who has a high enough StM coins production bonus can easily afford to complete 1 UBQ for each produce 2 x <insert name of 24-hour supply production> quest. Thus a player who produces enough coins and supplies can double the number of recurring quests completed per 24 hours without any additional: land, population, or happiness. And the StM is the key to unlocking this questing potential since even at level 1 it double the coins production output of a city. A heavy questing city full of supply buildings is always going to have more supplies than coins, so StM rank ahead of LoA for this reason.

  4. Lighthouse Of Alexandria — A heavy quester mainly works recurring quest to produce supplies, so it only stand to reason that a GB that increases the production efficiency of supply buildings is must have. I would have put the RAH here instead of LoA, since RAH has more bonuses and higher bonuses. If you have a good team-play guild that can really help noobs build RAH instead of LoA first, I would say do it. However, in practical game play terms, LoA is just so much easier to build sooner for players and takes up so much less land.

  5. Hagia Sophia — I can actually hear the majority of FoE players scoffing at their computer screens through the dead silence of cyberspace. But let me tell you this , I was a Mathematics and Computer Science major. I have analyzed all the buildings in the game in spreadsheets that would make your head swim. And I can tell you that the HS is the most misunderstood GB in the entire game of FoE. A heavy questing city is the largest field of supply buildings a player can cram into his available land, and enough unit barracks to complete GE and help his guild with a couple defensive armies per day. That city will only have enough population to cover the production of the supplies and units (there are 0 good production buildings in a heavy questing city—we get 100% of our goods from quest rewards that can never be plundered). But city always needs happiness that is >=140% of its total population. And we want that happiness provided by the fewest number of buildings possible, because any structure that requires polishing consumes 2 aid clicks every 24 hours. And it is nothing for a Colonial Age heavy quester to have a field of 90+ Clockmakers in their city, plus the houses to support the population. building and leveling an HS early in HMA is very plausible, and very cheap in terms of goods. And a level 5 HS can 100% enthuse an HMA heavy questing city. By the time our heavy questers get to Colonial Age their HS is level 7 and the build an Alcatraz to go with it, so their city still requires 0 cultural buildings and 0 decorations. All aid clicks go to the massive field of supply productions, which are the heavy quester's bread-and-butter. The HS makes a questing city plunder-proof—there are no goods productions buildings to plunder, the supplies are all 24-hour productions, and we use 24-hour or 8-hour houses; but it is all 100% motivated before collections come in. A heavy quester produces about 2-3 times the number of FPs per day as a non heavy quester, through 5 packs scored as random quest rewards. Those FPs are swapped to another heavy quester's HS to level it up quickly. The then the HS starts to increase the number of FPs the city produces daily and the city starts to snowball.

  6. Castel Del Monte — This is first combat bonus GB I like to have heavy questers build, because it pays more daily FPs, which means their city will snowball faster. Yes, the SoZ is smaller and cheaper. But more FPs/24-hours = a faster growth rate for the heavy quester's city.

  7. Alcatraz — This is one massive pile-o-happy and getting free unattached units means a heavy quester can build far fewer barracks in their city and still complete GE and help defend sectors in GvG. A player who doesn't have a high combat bonus can still fight on defense to help break a siege, since 99% of the time a siege army never has support bonus (unless it was placed before, and not killed until after, the daily calculation). Traz doesn't really help a city grow, except for the same happiness benefits I described above under HS. But this GB is one of the toys everyone likes to have in their city and it does save land, and more importantly population and happiness, despite its massive size.

  8. Innovation Tower — I gave a noob in our guild the Heavy Questing Strategy and he ran with it, then he added a new page to our already well-refined playbook by rushing to build Innovation Tower down in Colonial Age and replaced 100% of his Gambrel Roof Houses with a leveled Innovation Tower that spits out even more daily FPs. That allowed my "Noob" (who obviously is no longer a noob but our newest heavy questing black belt) to add even more Clockmakers to a city that already had over 90. Remember that every 2 Clockmakers = 1 completed quest every 24 hours, which could mean: a 5 pack of FPs, 30/70 medals (HMA/CA before CF bonus), 5 goods (again before CF bonus), 1 blueprint, or a large or small pile of coins or supplies (which again get buffed by a CF bonus). And my "noob" left Colonial Age with nearly every one of his GBs level 11 or higher. and 1000s of each goods form Colonial age on up to Modern Era.
So there you have it the list of must-have, heavy-questing, snowball, great buildings, listed in the order a true heavy quester should build them if it is possible. Of course, when a player can realistically score the complete set of blueprints and required goods for construction changes the order we actually build the GBs in. But this is the order we would also level up each of these GB, sort of round-robin style, taking each new GB quickly to level 4 before building another GB, and then leveling all existing GBs on the list more-less evenly until they are all level 10.

We have our heavy questers skip the land-wasting GBs like:
  • All defense GBs. We have 0 goods buildings to plunder and all our supplies and coins buildings are motivate. So who needs to waste land on a defense?

  • Cathedral of Aachen, that is until about half-way through the long stay-over in Colonial Age. The coins production of CoA actually suck, and our heavy questers play on GvG defense not GvG offense. Also a heavy quester can easily produce 100-300 goods per 24 hours so GE they can negotiate all levels of GE if that want to. This means they afford to forego high combat bonus until about halfway through the Colonial Age. We usually have them build SoZ because it is so tiny, but that can be skipped unitl late Colonial Age as well.

  • Tower Of Babel, Notre Dame, and Colosseum — These GBs are all losers. Some players work reucrring quests in Bronze age and build and level ToB. We don't do that. Bronze Age is the cheap seats of heavy questing—the medals packages are tiny (5 medals per quest reward), the goods are more-less useless, and a city does not have much land. And if an HMA or Colonial Age questoer needs more pop in the land in their city a better play is to land-lock 4 houses with no road connections, which povide much more pop-per-tile than a ToB does. A heavy quester does not need the goods from ToB, and in later eras there are GBs that offer much better total value per tile than ToB that produce x2 unrefined goods, such as: LoA, StM, RAH, FoD, and RFP. All of these GBs give much better 24-hour goods. Sure some of them cost more land and FPs/level. But the second benefit of each of these GBs is much more land-efficient than the paltry population provided by ToB.

Before they leave Colonial Age Heavy questing behind, I try to get our heavy questors to build these GBs as well and level them to at least 7:

  • Frauenkirche of Dresden - The FoD is not the largest pile-o-happiness, but a later Era city should get as much total happiness from useful GBs as possible. And FoD pays excellent x2 unrefined goods in later eras.

  • Atomium — A sufficently-leveled Atomium is a large pile-o-happiness. Yes, a premium cultural building provides more happiness. But how many REFINED goods does your premium cultural building donate to your GvG or GE guild each day? Oh that's right, it doesn't make goods. Any time you can get refined goods for 0 population cost, 0 offsetting happiness cost, and 0 unrefined goods cost, and the building fits in the 1-lane road district of your city, then you just got a lot of total value out of one building.

  • Observatory — Not so much for guild goods, as for the support pool bonus. (Remember, we don't advocate for defense GBs at all, which also provide support pool bonus.)
Below are GBs that I put into more of a "luxury class", which means they make more sense to construct after the entire list of GBs recommended above is well underway—like between level 7 and level 10. The GBs below are not listed in any particular order, they all provide about the same ratio of total value compared to total cost to construct them.

  • Temple of Relics - this a gambler's GB. There is no consistent nor reliable benefit to the GB for how much land it consumes. Sure you might score 100 FPs. But I know players who have only gotten 1-2 common relics per week as well. It is 100% a craps-shoot. No one should ever pay diamonds or even FP donations to score ToR blueprints. Just complete all 3 levels of GE for about 3 weeks and you will get a complete set organically.

  • Cape Canaveral - This is a one-trick pony GB. It costs a lot of valuable goods to build it and while you are struggling to level it up so that it can pay you a return on your investment, it offers your city no other benefit. Now if you already own a field of SoKs and you build Cape, then you can swap to your CC and get it to the payback zone much quicker. But player in a lower age can produce so many more daily FPs by heavy questing, that a Cape is really a waste of land and goods to construct. Save this GB until after all the snowball GBs have reached the level 7→10 range.

  • Rain Forest Project — This is a damned powerful GB. But the cost of admission is the most valuable goods in the game and it doesn't pay you back the same total value as The Arc. Save this one for later, but consider it.

  • Arctic Orangery — This is a massive GB and it has the same FP production progression as the Cape does. It also offers a critical hit bonus that does not progress as quckly per GB level as the combat bonus does from other combat GBs (Soz, CoA, CdM). So hold off on constructing the AO, until your three combat bonus GBs are all level 10.

  • Dynamic Tower — Any building that can give you free goods has a lot of value. But that being said I have already listed other GBs that give free goods. This Gb comes after those other player goods or guild goods GBs, not before them.

  • Habitat — Do not build this GB (or Capitol) until you own more than 15 Shrines of Knowledge and you have already built Innovation Tower and you still find yourself needing more population in your city. Right now my next FP cost me 110K coins. So a level 1 Inno tower that pays only 1 FP per day provdes me a much larger total value than a level 1 Hab that pays a paltry 10K coins. In general, population GBs shold be built in the reverse order they appear in the game, and only as you acquire more and more SoKs, which provide a lot of coins but not much population.
And a final thought. Any GB has value, even the seemingly useless Colosseum, when it is built in the context of a gaming strategy that leverages the GB correctly. It's just that some GBs are next to impossible to leverage correctly before the game presents us with an even better GB option For example, why build the Colosseum in Iron Age/EMA, when we can build Hagia Sophia in EMA/HMA.
 
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DeletedUser23444

Considerations About Special Events and Special Prizes
Both events and GE give us many opportunities to score a multitude of different special buildings.

Special Buildings Are Not Always Valuable Buildings!
Always keep in mind that just because Inno Games refers to them as “special buildings”, doesn’t actually make them valuable buildings. We determine the value of all buildings objectively and analytically by comparing the efficiency of the total value provided by the building compared to the total land consumed by the building, as well as any other costs (such as perhaps population and offsetting happiness). And we always compare the total value of a building to the total value of other options that we have in the game. We must also understand how to best leverage each building in the context of our gaming strategy. All of this value assessment remains true for special buildings.

IMPORTANT: Gaming advice about what special buildings we should try to score is separate from gaming advice of when to construct special buildings! In general, it is best to just hold onto most special buildings in Inventory, until after reading all of the gaming advice in this guide that better explains when and where to make to the most effective use of each type of special building. This is especially true in the most lucrative Heavy Questing periods that we park-and-quest in (HMA, CA, Ind, ME, and FE) where our land can be used most efficiently by cramming as many quest-multiples of supply production buildings into our city as we can fit. There aren’t many “special buildings” whose total value produced per tile of land they consume can actually compete well with the CF-enhanced quest rewards that we can generate from Heavy Questing with regular supply production buildings. There are even some “special buildings” that aren't even competitive with regular buildings that provide similar benefits that we could just construct any time we wanted by simply spending some coins and supplies!

Many events have a gambling aspect to them, where we must try to accumulate special event currency that we must spend on gambles to have a percentage-based chance to score a special building. Some events have quests or even entire quest lines that we must complete in order to score a “special building”. Many such events will have specific quests that will require us to scout/infiltrate/negotiate/conquer a sector or province on the Continental Map, or a quest to research a technology. We should never waste a sector or province on our C Map or a technology in our Tech Tree to complete an event quest, or an entire event quest line, if the “special building” that we could score is not actually a valuable building. Likewise, we never want to waste too much of our land, which is a very finite resource, by filling our city up with buildings that Inno Games tries to tell us are “special buildings” when such buidlings are also not valuable to our gaming strategy. Whenever there is any doubt, we should just hang onto a special building in our Inventory, until we can do some research on it and figure out when to best make use of the building (if ever).

Try to Score These Special Prizes in ME and Earlier
Below, is a list of special prizes that we really want to try to score while we are in the Modern Era or earlier. Read carefully and pay close attention, as we must score some of these buildings in the very early ages of the game. The prizes are listed in their order of scarcity, compared to how much we will generally value them. There is also some guidance on how many instances of each special prize we should try to score; and yes, some of those numbers are quite high.

  1. Speaker’s Corner, Checkmate Square (or Similar Buildings With the Same Benefits) — These buildings provide the most total value per tile of land consumed of any special buildings in the game. They provide decently efficient population-per-tile and produce moderately efficient coins per tile. But on top of these benefits, they also provide an attack bonus that scales up +1% every three time periods (only renovate these buildings when doing so will actually raise the attack bonus). These special buildings are valuable enough, and scarce enough, that scoring one of them is even worth getting pushed out of a lucrative Heavy Questing time period, such as the Colonial Age. To date, there have only been 2 occasions total, where we had a chance to score such a building in FoE. So whenever we see buildings with similar statistics offered, we try to score them.

  2. Any Variation of the Graveyard — Every year during the annual Halloween Event, this special building will get: a free size upgrade, where it will get three tiles larger each year; a free efficiency upgrade, where it's happiness-per-tile will be increased slightly; and a free renovation, where the new variation will be locked to the same period as our Town Hall. The original Graveyard starts off as a 3 x 3 happiness structure that is slightly more efficient than regular cultural buildings from the period. But as it gets upgraded year-after-year, the larger variations of this building quickly become an excellent happiness structure that compares well to the premium cultural buildings of the same time period (only we can renovate this building as we progress through the game to keep it competitive and it only requires a 1-lane road connection). We always want to score the largest version of the Graveyard that we can, and then keep upgrading it from there. This building ranks this high on the list because we only get once chance per year to score it or upgrade it, which is the during the annual Halloween event.

  3. 2 x Champions Retreats (at least) — These are the most important buildings to score before we leave HMA; because we need to lock them to the correct age. Eventually, we want 1 Champions’ Retreat age-locked to HMA and 1 Champions’ Retreat age-locked to LMA. Therefore, we must score one of these buildings in HMA or lower and we must score the other one in LMA or lower. We can then use One-Up Kits later to lock them to the correct ages. We will forever keep these two buildings age-locked to HMA and LMA.

    Once we own an Alcatraz, a few Rogues Hideouts, have a decent combat bonus, and we own these two Champion’s Retreats, we will always be able to help our guild fight GvG in either HMA or LMA with 0 population cost. We won’t need any other unit types to fight effectively in those ages. Eventually, we will also want a PME Champion’s Retreat, which will be a 3rd copy of this special building that we will keep forever locked to PME. There are other time periods where Champions can be very good complementary units; however, they will not always be the main-stay unit of our attacking army in those periods (ME and TE, and to a lesser extent PE). In both ME and PME, champions complement tanks better than Rogues do, since the map scale changes and Rogues suffer from very slow movement speed, meanwhile many units from the period are vehicles. So Champions and can close the distance much faster on ranged and siege units, and our Rogues are often out of range of the AI's units, so the AI doesn't always attack our Rogues first. In PME and later, Champions become heavy units instead of fast units — they have close to the same stats of the fast unit from the same period, but they have the rock-paper-scissors aspects of the heavy unit. Since CE is all about Assault Tanks and AAVs, Champions aren’t really required there. In TE and FE Champions are not bad units at all; however the tanks in both of these periods have stealth (which Champions never have), and tanks move fast for a heavy unit, so the Tanks from these periods end up being the best all-around units. Even still it might be nice to have units that can close in on artillery units faster in these periods. FE really is all about Hover Tanks and Rail Guns, hardly anyone bothers with Champions in this era. I cannot speak to the effectiveness of either AFE or OFE Champions.

    In general, we don't need to keep any Champions’ Retreats that are age-locked to: BA, IA, EMA, CA, or Ind — fast units aren’t really worth using in those time periods at all, compared to regular units. However if we do happen to score a Champions' Retreats that is age locked to one of these periods when we score it, and we own an Alcatraz, then we could produce some unattached Champions and play around with them while we are still in that period. But just know that retreats locked to these periods are really not "keepers". So when we advance to a later period where Champions have proven to be more effective units, then we can renovate one of our retreats that was locked to one of these lower periods in order to ensure we have a Champions' Retreat locked to every time period where Champions have proven to be effective units.

  4. 100 x Renovation Kits — We always want to score renovation kits in every event that offers them — they are very difficult to score. Generally, we can never own too many Reno Kits. And since these are ageless, it doesn’t matter in which period we score them. Since we try to avoid scoring many other types of special prizes in ME and below, it is the perfect time to stock up on Reno Kits, because they are ageless.

  5. 90 x Shrines of Knowledge — We want to score SoKs as often as we can, even if we already own more than we have room for in our city right now. Eventually, our city will be field of SoKs producing both coins and FPs. SoKs are great for producing coins and FPs, but they also have a negative consequence of greatly reducing our population density. Therefore, we must always balance the number of SoKs in our city with the total GB levels we have reached in population GBs. And we always construct population GBs in this order: IT 1st, Hab 2nd, and Cap 3rd (we skip the ToB). We will need to score about 5-10 SoKS ASAP so that we can construct the Innovation Tower as early in the Colonial Age as possible. The SoKs will help increase our production of both coins and FPs. Leveling up an IT will also increase our production of FPs. But as we increase our coins production with SoKs, and as we increase our population density by leveling up our IT, we can then sell more and more of our regular houses, which in turn will free up more land on which we can construct more supply production buildings. This will allow us to complete more quests per day from the same amount of expanded land in our city.

  6. 3 x Rogue Hideouts — We design our city’s road layout more-less the same in either a CA or a HMA Heavy Questing city. And these are the two periods that we will park in and work Heavy Questing the longest. In such a city, we generally only want to construct 3 Rogue Hideouts. If we add more Hideouts than this, then we start wasting land that could have been put to better use with more supply production buildings (which are the same size). So don’t try to score more than 3 Rogue Hideouts in CA or below, since we will have many, many opportunities to score more of them them in each of the 4 seasonal events. Since Rogue Hideouts are ageless, scoring more than 3 of them in the lower ages is not a terrible thing; however, it usually means that we are not scoring as many SoKs or Renovation Kits as we could have.

  7. 20 x Wishing Wells / Fountain of Youth — These special buildings will become incredibly valuable to us in PME or later where we will utilize them for producing x2 unrefined goods. Both of these buildings auto-advance through the ages, which means we can score them in any time period, and use them later in the game without ever spending a Renovation Kit on them. It’s a good idea to score as many of these special buildings as we can, whenever we can, so that we have many available to use in the later eras of the game.

    Since we cannot store these special buildings back in our Inventory using a Storage Kit, owning more of these buildings than we can use, will give ourselves much more flexibility in our late game city designs — we can always sell one of these buildings off when we really need the 3 x 3 plot of land for some other purpose, such as constructing a new GB. Then we can always add another instance of these buildings back to our city later on after we have expanded more land.

    While we try to score Wishing Wells / Fountains of Youth in any age, we don’t actually construct any of them until PME or later. First, In the lower time periods, regular supply production buildings will out-produce these types of special buildings in terms of total value per tile of land consumed through the CF-enhanced quest rewards we will score from "Produce Supplies" quests. Second, in PE and lower, these buildings have a 29% chance to produce 10 current-age goods, that we could just as easily quest for. In ME or later these buildings have a 29% chance to score us 20 unrefined goods, which are goods from three time periods below our Town Hall. However, we won't need to worry about producing x2 unrefined goods in Modern Era, which would be CA goods, since we will park in the Colonial Age a very long time where we will easily produce 1,000s of surplus CA goods through CF-enhanced quest rewards. So we don't actually construct these buildings until PME or later, when we will be forced to produce goods conventionally, since working the "Produce Supplies" quest is unfeasible. Since we try to avoid scoring many other types of special prizes in ME and below,, it is the perfect time to stock up on Wishing Wells / Fountains of Youth, because they are ageless.

  8. 100 x One-Up Kits and 100 x Storage Kits — These kits are usually easier to score than Reno Kits are and they are not quite as powerful. However, we want to have as many of these kits as possible, which will provide us with a lot of flexibility in our later-era city designs. No player ever wants to sell an SoK; but storing one in Inventory to put it back down later is very valuable. Since we try to avoid scoring many other types of special prizes in ME and below, it is the perfect time to stock up on One-Up and Storage Kits, because they are ageless.

That’s pretty much the entire list of which special prizes we should spend any event gambling currency on, in order to actively try to score them in ME or below. Yes, there are other special buildings that can be good, and even great in certain applications; however, that doesn’t mean we should try to spend event gambling currency in order to actively try to score them in ME or below. Rather, the rest of the special prizes are more of the nature of what we might end up scoring when we were actively trying to score one of the special prizes explicitly listed above, and we just missed our intended prize. For example, we actively spend event currency and play the gambles trying to score an SoKs, and we will do this pretty much whenever SoKs are offered. But let's say that one day of an event that we scored an SoA when we were trying to score an SoK. The SoA wasn't actually what we were trying to score (or at least it shouldn't have been). However, we can still make use of the SoA that we didn't try to score in our city; at least until we score our next SoK, at which time we will sell our SoA and replace it with our new SoK.

Try to Score These Special Prizes in PME and Later

NOTE: In PME and later, we will still want to score the special prizes listed above for ME and earlier; however we add some other types of special prizes that start to become more valuable to us in the later eras of the game. So the list prizes below, is in addition to the ME and below list. The buildings below are not listed in any particular order.

  • Premium Cultural Buildings (Not Decorations) — Most premium cultural buildings can compete in terms of happiness-per-tile or just plain HUGE-pile-o-happiness with regular cultural buildings that are two-to-three ages or eras above them. As we progress through the later eras of the game (PE and beyond), premium cultural buildings become excellent prizes. (Below PE, our city's happiness should be 100% covered by GBs.) However, after our technology advances about 4 time periods ahead of the period a Premium Cultural Building is from, regular cultural buildings start to become more efficient again compared to the now outdated premium cultural building.

  • Multi-production Buildings — Technically, multi-production buildings are actually supply production buildings; however, they have unique characteristics that set them apart from regular, premium, or even other special supply buildings. Like all other supply production buildings, multi-production buildings cost land and population to construct and they offer 6 different production intervals of: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours, and 24 hours. But unlike other supply production buildings, multi-production buildings can produce anywhere from 3 to 5 additional types of resources, with supplies still being the most common resource such buildings can produce, and coins being the second most common resource. The other types of resources that different multi-production buildings might be able to produce could include: forge points (FPs), guild power (crowns), refined goods, and medals. Each different multi-production building has its own unique combination of production options and a few of them also provide a small amount of happiness which can help offset the population that building consumes. The upside to all multi-production buildings is their versatility; however in most cases, this versatility comes at a significant loss in overall production efficiency, when compared to other buildings. Not all multi-production buildings are as efficient as the others are.

    We must note that no multi-production building can be motivated, which means none of its productions can be doubled or protected from plunder. We can always produce coins much more efficiently just by using regular houses (even from a lower age than our Town Hall), since that would actually cost us less land while also producing both coins and population, rather than costing us population to produce coins. (We should never spend population in order to produce coins in FoE.) Additionally, we always want our coins and supply productions buffed by both a GB production bonus (from: StM, LoA, or RAH) and also doubled by motivation, which will compound the efficiency of the coins or supplies production. While a multi-production building can benefit from a GB production bonus, it cannot be motivated; this means that by using these buildings to produce coins or supplies we would be wasting a GB production bonus on a building that cannot be motivated (which would double the production bonus). So despite whatever production options a multi-production building offers us to produce coins or supplies, we should actually avoid using such buildings to produce either resource, except when doing so might help us complete a special event quest quicker.

    Many players like to use multi-production buildings to produce forge points. If we don’t own any (or enough) SoKs or Sacred Sky Watches (SSWs), then using a multi-production building to produce FPs is okay, since we don’t have any other options. However, once we've acquired a few SoKs or SSWs (that both produce a little population, a lot of coins, and also FPs that cannot be plundered), then continuing to use multi-production buildings (that all cost significant population to produce FPs that can be plundered) no longer makes as much sense.

    Some players like to use multi-production buildings to produce medals. If we don’t own any (or enough) Wishing Wells, Victory Towers, or Shrines of Awe, then using multi-production buildings to produce medals is okay, but it's not really efficient. However, once we have acquired a few Wishing Wells, Victory Towers, or Shrines of Awe (that all produce medals that cannot be plundered), then continuing to use multi-production buildings (that all cost significant population to produce medals that can be plundered) no longer makes as much sense. And to be truthful, CF-enhanced quest rewards will produce medals so efficiently that any building in the game that produces medals is sort of a waste of land.

    Some players like to use the Bazaar to produce crowns, which is currently the only multi-production building that can produce guild power. If we don’t own any (or enough) Halls of Fame, then using a Bazaar to produce crowns is okay, since we don’t have any other option. However, once we have acquired a HoF or two (that can produce crowns in 0 population cost and can also be motivated to double its production and protect it from plunder), then using a Bazaar (that costs significant population and produces crowns that can always be plundered) no longer makes as much sense. I actually prefer to motivate all of the other HoFs in my guild by hand, which often get missed by the AID button, rather than produce crowns in my own city. By taking the time to open cities manually, and specifically motivating HoFs by hand, I'm actually adding as much guild power to my guild as the players who maintain the HoFs in their city and I'm also protecting the guild power they produce from plunder.

    The resource that actually makes the most sense to produce in a multi-production building are Discounted Refined Goods, which are goods from the Modern Era or higher that would normally cost us unrefined goods to produce. Most multi-production buildings produce fewer goods every 24 hours than a conventional goods production building could (except the Terrace Farm, which can produce the same). However, when we compare the total cost to produce refined goods in any multi-production building with the total cost of producing refined goods in a conventional goods production building, the multi-production building will win every time, since it will consume significantly less total resources to produce refined goods, dramatically reducing the specific production costs listed below:
    • land (most are much smaller buildings and all of them only require 1-lane roads)
    • population and offsetting happiness (all cost less pop and some provide happiness)
    • coins, supplies, and unrefined goods (all cost 0 of all of these resources)

    This means that once we start scoring multi-production buildings that are locked to Modern Era or later, we actually have an efficient building that can be used to produce discounted refined goods (see Glossary). Below, I've listed all of the multi-production buildings, in the order that they were added to FoE.
    1. The Bazaar was the first multi-production building ever created, thus it sets the standard to which all others are compared. The 5 x 4 Bazaar offers the most versatility of all multi-production buildings, being the only one that can produce 6 completely different resources, which include: FPs, goods, crowns, medals, coins, and supplies. The Bazaar costs a modest amount of population and offers no happiness to offset its population cost.

    2. The Mad Scientist Lab was the second multi-production building ever created. The MSL is actually the most efficient of all multi-production buildings, since it is the smallest at 4x4, and when locked to any age or era it will still only cost 2 population.

    3. The Soccer Field was the third multi-production building created. Similar to the Bazaar, the Soccer Field is also 5 x 4, costs a shade more population and provides no happiness to offset its population cost. The Soccer Field offers the same goods and FP productions as the Bazaar does; however it can produce more medals than the Bazaar can.

    4. The Luau was the fourth multi-production building created. Similar to the Bazaar, the Luau is also 4 x 5 (same size but transposed dimensions) and costs the same population. However the Luau does provide some happiness, which in lower ages is actually enough to offset its population cost but in the higher eras offers less relative happiness. The Luau can produce more FPs, but fewer goods, than the Bazaar can (using different production intervals for each resource); however, the Luau cannot produce medals at all.

    5. The Aviary was the fifth multi-production building created. Smaller than the Bazaar, the Aviary 3 x 4 and costs a commensurate amount of population. In many ages, this building provides enough happiness to enthuse the population it requires. The Aviary offers the same FP production as the Bazaar and a medals production commensurate with its smaller size. But since the Aviary cannot produce goods at all, it is actually the least versatile and efficient of all multi-production buildings.

    6. The Masquerade Ball was the sixth multi-production building created. Similar to the Bazaar, the Masquerade Ball is also 4 x 5 (same size but transposed dimensions) and costs the same population. However the Masquerade Ball does provide some happiness, which in lower ages is actually enough to offset its population cost but in the higher eras offers less relative happiness (same as the Luau). The Masquerade Ball can produce the same FPs and goods as the Bazaar can (using the same production intervals for each resource); however, the Masquerade Ball cannot produce medals at all.

    7. The Terrace Farm was the seventh multi-production building created. At 5 x 6, the Terrace Farm is the largest multi-production building, costing a commensurate amount of population; however, it does not provide any happiness to offset its population cost. Even still, the Terrace Farm is can produce significantly more: medals (varies by age but double-per-tile over what a Bazaar can produce), goods (30 every 24 hours), and forge points (5 every 24 hours), than any other multi-production building. The Terrace Farm is the only multi-production building that can produce the same total refined goods per 24 hours as a regular goods production building, but with a significant discount in the total production costs.

  • Hall of Fame — The HoF produces guild power (crowns). Guild power is what levels a guild up; and it is collected from all GvG sectors our guild owns (that are not under siege) once every 24 hours at the Daily Calculation. The guild power produced by a Hall of Fame can be plundered; it can also be doubled by motivation, which protects it from plunder. It is highly recommended to motivate any HoF we see within our guild. Scoring these buildings makes much more sense in PME and later, when the amount of crowns-per-tile is much higher. Players in lower ages are better served by using their land for more supply production buildings.

  • Tigers' Den — This is basically a free premium cultural building, as it crams just about as much happiness-per-tile as a premium cultural building of the same time period. However, this building only requires a 1-lane road connection and a 3 x 3 plot of land, where some later era premium cultural buildings require a 2-lane road connection. On top of the efficient happiness it provides, the Tiger’s Den also provides a stackable +5% defense bonus to our city’s defending army (fixed amount in any time period).

  • Ziggurat — This is an incredibly land-efficient special building that provides three different benefits: hourly coins production, population, and 100% offsetting happiness. The Ziggurat is 3x3 and requires only a 1-lane road connection. The 3x3 Ziggurat produces more coins-per-tile-per-hour than regular and premium buildings that are locked to the same time period, with the one exception that the Pod Home from the Tomorrow Era beats nearly every building in the game. The Ziggurat’s coins production efficiency in terms of coins-per-hour-per-tile is only surpassed by buildings like: the Haunted House, the Snow Globe, and the Pod Home from Tomorrow Era. The Ziggurat’s coins production efficiency is further helped by the fact that its population is already happy, since it provides exactly the same amount of happiness as it does population; we just need to provide enough additional happiness to make its population enthusiastic. The building produces bonus coins for enthusiastic happiness and from the bonuses of certain great buildings. The Ziggurat is best used in a city that requires a small amount of polish or motivation, as collecting it every hour will consume AID button clicks as well as St. Mark’s bonuses. But the real benefit of this building is its dense population and offsetting happiness in a single plot of 3x3 land that fits in our 1-lane road district. In fact, after the building is constructed, we can just land-lock the building with no roads connection, in order to avoid it consuming StM bonuses or AID clicks.

  • Sphinx / Decorated Baobob / Wisteria Topiary — When locked to the same time period, all three of these special decorations have the exact same happiness-per-tile efficiency and they are also ranked at the top of every time period in terms of happiness-per-tile efficiency. All three of these decorations cram more happiness-per-tile into a small space than a premium cultural building from the same time period crams into a large space. Since these are all decorations, they don't require road connections. The Decorated Baobab and Wisteria Topiary are both 1x1; however the Sphinx is double the size of the other two at 2 x 1 tiles and it offers the double the pile-o-happiness of the other two. The Sphinx is the only decoration in the entire game that might actually be worth spending a renovation kit on; however, the preferred strategy would be to score new copies of these decorations when we have reached a later era rather than spending renovation kits on ones we already own. These decorations are really great options for filling in the tiny, under-utilized, or land-locked tiles in our city (that we will have in any era that has 2-lane roads) to help increase our city's happiness.

  • Watchfire / Spiritual Flame — Both of these special buildings provide our city with +4% defense bonus per tile of land. The Watchfire provides +4% city defense bonus in a 1x1 plot of land and the Spiritual Flame provides +8% city defense bonus in a 2x1 plot of land. These decorations are really great options for filling in the tiny, under-utilized, or land-locked tiles in our city (that we will have in any era that has 2-lane roads) to help increase our city defense.

  • Oasis / Tribal Square — These buildings have the same stats when both are locked to the same time period, except that the Oasis is 3 x 4 and the Tribal Square is 4 x 3. These are classified as residential buildings that both require a 1-lane road connection, and provide a modest amount of population. Their coins production boosted both by enthusiastic happiness as well as by bonuses from great buildings. These buildings can also be motivated, which will protect them from plunder. In addition to doubling their 24-hour coins production when these buildings are motivated, they will also produce one refined good of each type from the time period they are locked to. The population provided and the amount of coins produced both scale by the time period the buildings are locked to; and the goods produced will always be from the age the buildings are locked to. Owning these buildings locked to PME or a later era will permit a player to produce all 5 refined goods from that time period evenly, without costing any additional population or offsetting happiness, without consuming any unrefined goods, while requiring only a 1-lane road connection, and the goods produced cannot be plundered.
 
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DeletedUser23444

Detailed Walk-Through of Designing an HQS City for HMA or CA
If we start off back in early HMA doing everything recommend in the HQS, and we plan and execute an efficient HQS city design in each period along the way, then by mid-to-Late CA we will have expanded our city to be incredibly large. Back when I was in CA, I was often accused in Global Chat of having spent an obscene amount of money on the game in order to have a CA city as large as mine was (I actually haven’t spent any money on the game at all.) Mid-to-late CA is when we start constructing pretty much the rest of the GBs that we will own and we push them all up to level 10 so that they can all provide us with maximum value-per-tile of the land they consume. (In the HQS, we don’t start Stratosphering GBs until after all of our existing GBs are already level 10, which will also maximize the total GB benefits we receive from all of our GBs when compared to the total FPs spent on all of our GBs.) By the time we progress past CA, we will have the entire list of GBs constructed and leveled up high enough that planning highly efficient and very lucrative cities will also be possible for us in the later eras. For example, I just quested over 20K medals yesterday alone in the Future Era. I should be able to purchase my 290K medals expansion in maybe a week or two. If I’m not mistaken, there is only one more medals expansion left, which will cost about 340K medals and will be added as part of Oceanic Future Part 2. But if I didn’t own a level 10 LoA + level 10 StM + Level 10 CF, then I would not have been able to spam as many UBQs up here in FE as I do now, while also allowing my stockpiles of both coins and supplies to increase a little each day, nor would I score 2,250 medals per single quest reward. The point here is that the city design and GB leveling priorities the HQS recommends for the lower ages have set up my city for continued questing success in the later eras, when we can no longer spam as many "Produce Supplies" quests per day.

Heavy Questing in HMA and CA is mainly about FP production, which helps level GBs much faster. Once we advance past these ages, the total FP packs we can score per day will generally go down, while the total goods and medals we score per day will generally go up (thanks to CF bonus). This is why it is critical to get maximum questing value out of HMA and CA.

Limit HMA and CA Cities to Only Recommended Special Buildings and Snowball GBs
In this post about GBs, I recommended the ideal order to construct and level up GBs. I also recommended that players skip constructing certain GBs, such as SoZ and CoA, until about mid Colonial Age, so that we have more land available for questing. I also recommend not wasting special event gambling currency trying to score most of the special buildings in the game, many of which would be a waste of land in an HQS city that is in HMA or CA. Instead, we should just prioritize trying to score the special prizes discussed in the sub-section named "Try to Score These Special Prizes in ME and Earlier", which can be found in the Considerations About Special Events and Special Prizes guide section. No player should always construct every special building scored. Likewise, no player should always construct and level up every GB in the game. There is never enough land in any city to build every possible building and allow the city to run efficiently, so we must always set priorities. In the HQS, we only add a few Great or Special buildings to an HMA or to an early CA city. Furthermore, all of the buildings we do add will in some way help us meet our Heavy Questing Strategic Objectives.

Don't Waste Land on Roads, Decorations or Special Buildings That are Less Efficient Than Quest Rewards
Efficient land use is critical in the HQS. Designing an efficient city layout from the moment we start the HQS going forward is one of the keys to our continued success. In order to increase the total number of quests we can complete per day, while also being able to complete GE, our city design must not waste any land on: unnecessary buildings, inefficient buildings (especially decorations), or an inefficient road layout. We basically design an HMA layout in much the same way as a CA layout; only a CA city will have: more expanded land, more GBs, and ideally more SoKs, and perhaps a few of the other select special buildings. However, our city designs will change greatly as we advance to the later eras of the game, where we must eventually design our city around the complete madness that is 2-lane roads, while also making use of massive buildings, where many buildings have very different dimensions than others from the same period. This means that the direction that we expand our city into the wilderness, while we are down in the lower ages, will become very important to our ability to plan efficient layouts later in the game and our continued success.

Take a Good Look at What a True HQS City Looks Like in The Colonial Age
I have a guild mate named Randy Focher who has been working the HQS in Colonial Age now for quite some time. Randy has followed the HQS since he was in HMA as well as, if not better than, any other player who has progressed through it before him. (I’ve had dozens of protégés, but only 2 or 3 players could actually give Randy a run for his money.) At the time of this writing, Randy’s current CA city is by far-and-away the one of the best examples I can show anyone of what a true HQS city should look like about mid-to-late Colonial Age. Currently, Randy holds the all time CA record with 114 Clockmakers in his CA city (the previous record was 96). Folks, this is what we mean by “Heavy Questing”. Randy’s entire city is designed around HQS; however, he fights in GvG as much as he wants in CA and lower ages and he also completes GE every week. Randy has had a very efficient city layout for a very long time, ever since I first helped him plan his first city. But Randy is the type of player I love to coach, because he actually became a student of the strategy, which means he not only adopted the HQS, but he challenged himself to really understand all of the ins and outs, and he even added a page to our playbook himself. Randy took all of our city design tips-and-tricks, which came from lessons learned by many players such as myself, and he added his own tricks into mix that are consistent with our objectives. Randy was able to connect 3 very large GBs that everyone should eventually construct in CA (Trz, HS, and StM) to his Town Hall in a single 1-lane road segment that actually lines up well with how we would layout horizontal streets of Clockmakers. I’ve personally designed well over 500 different city plans, spanning nearly every time period in the game. So I can tell first hand that Randy’s little GB layout is a marvelous feat. And now Randy’s Trick makes it into our HQS body of knowledge as part of a sample city layout.


I’ve shared three different sample city plans in foemanager.com City Planner for you all to study. But I want you to study these three sample city plans working your way backward from Randy’s current city, then to a downsized mid-to-late CA plan I adapted from it, and finally to a mid-to-late HMA plan I adapted from the mid-to-late CA plan. I think it might help for players to take a peek ahead into the future and work backwards, in order to better understand some of the gaming decisions the HQS advocates and how they build on top of each other. I’m going to discuss all three city plans here to some extent.

Randy_Current.png Randy_Current_BP.png
foemanager.com City Planner Tag: V2IBM2ZYW3

(Guild Access: HQS – RF Example – By CR)

Now of course we must point out that a city just entering CA is going to own much fewer of several things that we see in Randy’s current city; an early-to-mid CA city will include: less expanded land, fewer SoKs, and fewer GB levels. I’m just tossing Randy’s city up here as something for everyone to aspire to and to help you visualize what we are talking about it. However, I have created a more reasonable sample CA city by: taking Randy’s basic city design, chopping off numerous land expansions, and then planning the city myself while using the same basic road layout as Randy’s. I have tweaked Randy’s city design to show everyone what I believe to be the best shape to expand a city into for either HMA or CA questing.

HQS_CA_Example.jpg HQS_CA Example_BP.png
foemanager.com City Planner Tag: GBO70BHP96

(Guild Access: HQS – CA layout – By CR)

Here are some specific coaching points I want to touch on about this CA city plan.
  • This sample CA city plan is more in-line with a player who has reached mid Colonial Age, and has gotten lucky enough (or smart enough) to score enough SoKs in special events such that it’s now feasible to construct Innovation Tower. So not only is this sample CA city highly optimized, but it shows us an example of how to plan a CA city in the middle of the transitioning away from utilizing regular Country Houses for population and coins production to constructing and leveling up Innovation Tower while selling off Country Houses.

  • We must be mindful to offset any coins production capacity we would lose by selling off Country Houses with enough special buildings that have ultra-efficient coins production. This is why this sample CA city plan contains special buildings such as: SoK, SoA, The King, The Queen, and Ziggurat. Of course, all players would love more SoKs in their city for the +1 FP-per-day; however, these types of special buildings, when combined with this city’s +200% coins production bonus from the level 7 StM, will also help increase the city’s overall coins production capacity and efficiency. Our coins production capacity in CA (and in HMA) is absolutely essential so that our city can afford to spam UBQs as we abort-cycle around to each “Produce Supplies” quest, while still maintaining a healthy stockpile of coins on-hand. Note that every instance of an: SoA, The King, or The Queen, is not just a very efficient coins production for today, but these less valuable special buildings can also provide our city with a convenient 2 x 2 placeholder for the next SoK we score in the events to come. If we could add more SoKs to our city without selling any of these other coins production buildings, then we should save the other buildings. However, we are never going to cry over selling a King or Queen when we can replace it with either an SoA or SoK. Likewise, we aren’t going to cry over selling an SoA when we can replace it with another SoK.

  • I placed 3 Country Houses vertically on the end cap of each neighborhood of Clockmakers. As this city’s Innovation Tower gets leveled up sufficiently enough to exceed its current population, we could easily sell three of these end-cap Country Houses and replace them with two more Clockmakers, without a major city remodel.

  • This city has 1 barracks for 4 of the 5 possible CA units, with Dragoons being the only CA unit I left out. Dragoons are actually quite weak in CA, and we should easily be able to live without them. This city also has one LMA Champion’s Retreat, which when combined with the Rogue Hideouts and the Alcatraz to produce unattached units, will allow this city to fight GvG battles in LMA with 0 extra population cost. Also, there are only two Rogue Hideouts for now, not a field of them. This city still has lot more expanding to do before I recommend adding more Rogue Hideouts to it, especially since there aren’t more places to fit another 2x3 building without messing up the overall layout.

  • If you inspect the GB levels of this city inside of the city planner, you will see that the 6 most important GBs to the HQS strategy (Arc, CF, HS, CdM, StM, and LoA) are all level 7. Ideally, all 6 of these snowball GBs would be level 10 before any other GBs were constructed at all. However, this just a sample city plan, and I’m really trying to show players how to shoehorn in a number of buildings into an HQS city as much as anything else. While the total collection of GBs here, with all of their relative GB levels is reasonable enough, I still coach players to push all 6 of the snowball GBs up to level 10 ASAP and just skip construction of all other GBs in the game until that is accomplished. Since this city also has an Inno Tower, whose construction is contingent on how many SoKs we own, it should also be pushed up ASAP, but only as far as needed to cover 100% of the city's total population requirement. All 7 of these GBs that I have just specifically discussed here will help increase this city's capacity and efficiency to produce more: goods, medals, or forge points (some through quests and some directly). Any GB that I did not explicitly discuss here is actually diverting land from being able to complete more quests per day and diverting FPs that could be swapped to level up the 7 mentioned GBs even faster.

I have copied the sample CA city plan discussed above, and then planned an HMA variation of the same city.

HQS_HMA_Example.jpg HQS_HMA_Example_BP.jpg

foemanager.com City Planner Tag: 0Y0MC0ICY7

(Guild Access: HQS – HMA layout – By CR)

Here are some specific coaching points I want to touch on about this HMA city plan.

  • I started this plan by creating a copy of this sample CA city discussed above. The foemanager.com city planner does not permit us to delete land expansions, which is why we see land without buildings on it. But in this case, it can actually help us visualize where to expand this HMA city next. So just remember that the empty land that looks like it could be constructed on the HMA plan, is the actually additional land that won’t be added until later up in CA.

  • I planned this HMA city to mainly show only the GBs recommend for construction in HMA. However, I also did include the SoZ because by the time most players even find out about the HQS, they will have already rushed constructing SoZ. By inspecting the GB levels, you will notice that HS is the highest level at level 5, which combined with HMA road technology, will keep this city enthused without the need for any polish. This means that all aid clicks will hit the Alchemists and Clapboard houses. All of the other Snowball GBs in this plan are all level 4, and they should all be pushed up to level 5 next in this order: CF, CdM, StM, LoA. Having a bunch of high level combat bonus GBs in HMA isn’t as valuable in the context of the HQS as leveling up the snowball GBs as fast as possible. Leveling up the SoZ is not a priority at all, as any FPs we might swap to SoZ will not help our city snowball any faster, than if we swapped the same number of FPs to the 5 snowball GBs. Do yourself a favor, never waste land on constructing the CoA until your SoZ is at least level 7, which is not going to happen in the HQS until mid Colonial Age, when our city has much more land.

  • This HMA city has 5 military barracks, with Trebuchets being the odd units out, which is mostly due to the constraints of land and population. However, using Rogues offensively with Trebuchets isn’t always a good idea — we don’t want to march a Rogue closer to the enemy’s units only for it to get transformed into a very squishy Trebuchet that cannot counter attack. Trebuchets also cost a lot of population. The combination of the other 4 regular units types, plus Rogues, should be enough to win us some battles.

  • The sample HMA city has Clapboard Houses instead of Town Houses, yet it still has most of the military technology buildings which come after Town Houses in the Tech Tree. It is actually a much harder to plan an HMA questing city with Clapboard Houses, so I wanted my sample HMA city to show that, yes you can work HQS without HMA Town Houses. And if we can plan a good HQS questing city using Clapboard Houses, then we also know that we can plan an even better HQS city by replacing most of the Clapboard Houses with Town Houses, which have a much higher population density. In this sample plan, we can also replace the 6 “end cap” Clapboard Houses (in the middle of the bottom neighborhood on either side of the North↔South road) and replace them with 4 more Alchemists, after we upgrade all of our housing to Town Houses.

    NOTE: It is also possible in the Summer and Winter events to score unit production buildings for a military technology that we do not have unlocked yet. For example, right now in my FE city, I own 1 Rail Gun Range and 2 Arcologies; however, I don't have either technology unlocked yet. I scored my Rail Gun Range in the 2016 Winter Event and I’ve scored over 9 Arcologies in GE. At one point, my FE city had as many as 6 Arcologies in it. However, I also scored 3 premium residential buildings from GE, which in FE are the 3 x 4 Treehouse Hotels and I also continued to level up both my Innovation Tower and Habitat. All of this allowed me to cram a much higher population density into less land and it permitted me to sell off 4 of my massive 6x6 Arcologies. And all of this freed up more land where I added more high-value special buildings such as: SoKs, SSWs, and Tribal Squares. Tribal Squares are much better up where I am in the Future Era because that is 100% chance at +5 FE goods per day from each Tribal Square, which is only 3 x 4. In order for me to quest for a 30% chance at scoring 13 FE goods (after my CF bonus), I would need to construct 5 Levitation Outlets, which are each 3 x 4 and each require 2-lane roads. So this is why I tell you all why not to construct Tribal Squares (or Oasis) in CA/HMA, but that they become much more useful in PME and later.

  • This HMA city shows 3 Victory Towers. There were three unused tiles of land that I really could not find a better purpose for, without throwing the entire city out-of-balance between: production capacity, required population, and offsetting happiness. This is the perfect scenario to drop in a few 1x1 buildings such as Victory Towers. However, we should never plan our HQS city around special buildings like Victory Towers, Watchfires, or decorations of any kind, especially since the CF-enhanced quest rewards we score will always pay us more medals over the course of a week than an entire field of Victory Towers. So any time we create a new city plan, and we find that we can no longer fit in a building such as the Victory Tower, then we just sell the building without any remorse at all. These are more or less disposable buildings that we only use when we have a few spare tiles of land that we want to get some additional production value from. (In the early HQS ages, we have no buildings to plunder; therefore, we won't require any Watchfires or Ritual Flames; so just save those in Inventory for the later eras when we might actually need a good city defense.)

NOTE: If you open either the sample CA or HMA city plans in the foemanager.com city planner, you will see that I put land expansions marked with segments of Bronze Age Trail, either in patterns of Xs or spelling the word's: "DON'T USE". I strongly recommend that players never expand their cities into these wilderness areas, until these are the only remaining areas left to expand. I call these the "jut-out areas", because once our city is expanded into them, we will have all of these little sections of our city jutting out from what would otherwise be a flat edge. The reason we don't want to expand into jut-out areas is that they make planning an efficient 2-lane road layout an absolute PITA later on in the game. By far, the jut-out areas along the east and west sides of the city (with segments of Trail forming "Xs" on them) will cause the most headaches when we try to design a city with a 2-lane road layout when we get up in the later eras (at least the way I design cities with very few, if any, unproductive tiles). Trust me folks, we want to keep our city as square-ish (or as rectangle-ish) as possible for as long as possible, because this will give us the most city design flexibility. All of this being said, expanding the North Edge of our city into the northern jut-out areas can actually work quite well, and you can see in my current Future Era city how I’m able to make efficient use of these areas, as well as in some of my other earlier city plans that I have posted (or will eventually post) throughout this topic. But it is always best to try and keep the other three sides (East, South, and West) of our city squared off. Of course, the edge of our city where we are currently adding new land expansions will get ugly for awhile until we eventually lay down enough expansions to square the city back off again.
 
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DeletedUser23444

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

Another sub-topic I can't think of yet
 
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DeletedUser23444

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

Okay yeah, this is going to be a book, going to need many more sections.
 

DeletedUser23444

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

yeah, I might need even more posts
 

DeletedUser23444

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

yeah, I might need even more posts
 

DeletedUser23444

I will require several subsequent posts at the top of the topic for my guide content. I am posting this reply to edit this post later on and provide more content.

Template

Major Chapter Heading
Major Subject Heading
Minor Subject Heading
Sub-Topic Heading

Q: Question here

A: Answer here


NOTE: Note goes here. An important emphasis within a note looks like this. And we go back to the note like this.

SIDEBAR: Tangential discussion goes here. An important emphasis within a tangential discussion looks like this. And we go back to the tangential discussion like this.
 
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Algona

Well-Known Member
Good stuff so far Cosmic Raven, IO'm waiting eagerly for more on this. I've been fumbling my way through this for the last year or so after Hlarg first clued me in on the Recurring Quest bounty.
 

DeletedUser26579

Thank you. This really does resonate with my playstyle and the strategy I have been blundering towards on my own.
 

DeletedUser26965

Nice and well thought out but you could do without stuff like this:
Racing through tech” is the lemmings-like approach to FoE where a player feels a need to advance technology quickly, without any strategic objective for such a technology advance—as if the whole objective to playing FoE is simply to unlock all the technology and conquer the entire Continental Map as fast as possible. This is actually the most inefficient and ineffective way to play FoE. Consider the cost of changing over a city to new: houses, supply buildings, and cultural buildings. Racing through tech means a player will be constantly rebuilding his or her city every few weeks, never really receiving any real return on investment from any of the newly constructed buildings. Constantly constructing new buildings, only to sell them later, over-and-over needlessly drains a lot of resources. Additionally, such a play style also tends to neglect constructing or leveling up great buildings in our city fast enough. Any under-leveled great building is little more than a large waste of: land, construction goods, and forge points, that offers no real return-on-investment. Advancing our technology (which costs forge points) must always be balanced against leveling up great buildings (which also costs forge points) so that each of our GBs can actually become a viable asset to our city, when compared to regular buildings that might offer a cheaper alternative to provide the same benefit.

Why the unnecessary swipe at another play style? I mean one good thing about this game is it offers the opportunity to play on multiple worlds as you well know. Having such can afford a single person to employ multiple play styles. I don't see one as "better" or "worse" than the other, there's pro's and cons to different types.

Why do you think racing through the techs = without any strategic objective for such a technology advance? You can move quickly and be strategic at the same time.

"This is actually the most inefficient and ineffective way to play FoE."
Inefficient and ineffective at what? The whole thing you mention about having to reconstruct buildings and such while true in a sense is really just a matter of looking at it a different way. I mean if the goal is efficiency and effectiveness to progress then really you only want to get as much as you need to progress. I'm not really in this to gain some big coins and supplies profit in the long run like a real life investment, it's more about rate of income vs goods/fp income. I'm looking to gain as much c/s as I can as fast I can and the way to do that is to build the building that provides the most in the given time I play but really only as much as my goods/fp income affords and just enough to make a transition.

For instance right now I'm looking to go from Condominium to Capsule Hotel and Business Center to Drone Factory, let's say I get those. Now let's say it takes 24 days to get to Arcology and Helium-3 Extraction Facility. I'll lose some coins, gain supplies along the way but will have an overall gain but I'm not really interested in my overall gain over such a period of time. All I'm interested in is, is my rate of c/s income more than my goods/fp income? Going from Condominium to Capsule Hotel I get a 9% increase in coin production and a 45% increase in supplies production. Then the question becomes am I making enough c/s per day to cover the 1,887fp/fp average per day, for FE techs? If so then I'm right on track, efficient and effective.

And the part about GB's well, I disagree for the most part in the context here. Really the only GB's that matter in this context is RAH, SmB and LoA and you only need to level them to give relief to c/s rate of income, if you don't have to then you don't need to level them.

I know you're guide isn't really about all of this in a sense but I don't see the need to down one style over another and I think you're giving the wrong impression here about trying to get through the techs quickly, so my response was to that. good luck.
 

DeletedUser26579

Nice and well thought out but you could do without stuff like this:


Why the unnecessary swipe at another play style? I mean one good thing about this game is it offers the opportunity to play on multiple worlds as you well know. Having such can afford a single person to employ multiple play styles. I don't see one as "better" or "worse" than the other, there's pro's and cons to different types.

Why do you think racing through the techs = without any strategic objective for such a technology advance? You can move quickly and be strategic at the same time.

"This is actually the most inefficient and ineffective way to play FoE."
Inefficient and ineffective at what? The whole thing you mention about having to reconstruct buildings and such while true in a sense is really just a matter of looking at it a different way. I mean if the goal is efficiency and effectiveness to progress then really you only want to get as much as you need to progress. I'm not really in this to gain some big coins and supplies profit in the long run like a real life investment, it's more about rate of income vs goods/fp income. I'm looking to gain as much c/s as I can as fast I can and the way to do that is to build the building that provides the most in the given time I play but really only as much as my goods/fp income affords and just enough to make a transition.

For instance right now I'm looking to go from Condominium to Capsule Hotel and Business Center to Drone Factory, let's say I get those. Now let's say it takes 24 days to get to Arcology and Helium-3 Extraction Facility. I'll lose some coins, gain supplies along the way but will have an overall gain but I'm not really interested in my overall gain over such a period of time. All I'm interested in is, is my rate of c/s income more than my goods/fp income? Going from Condominium to Capsule Hotel I get a 9% increase in coin production and a 45% increase in supplies production. Then the question becomes am I making enough c/s per day to cover the 1,887fp/fp average per day, for FE techs? If so then I'm right on track, efficient and effective.

And the part about GB's well, I disagree for the most part in the context here. Really the only GB's that matter in this context is RAH, SmB and LoA and you only need to level them to give relief to c/s rate of income, if you don't have to then you don't need to level them.

I know you're guide isn't really about all of this in a sense but I don't see the need to down one style over another and I think you're giving the wrong impression here about trying to get through the techs quickly, so my response was to that. good luck.

While I agree with you, I'm not sure this is the right thread to discuss that at length. (Yes, it does take skill and planning to sprint and keep up with the goods requirements and c/s demands, but it gets difficult to keep up without any GBs at all, so you do need to develop them somewhat.)

I plan to alternately sprint and sit back and build up. I like this guide as a model for the times when I am sitting back and building up.
 
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