Hey all,
I know this thread has been dormant for a while now, but I wanted to add my experience to this hybrid technique that meshes Cosmic Raven’s strategy and guild hopping together.
I recently started a new city on 2/18/19 in Brisgard (Lando6 is my name). Tomorrow I plan to jump to the Iron Age after 2.5 weeks in BA. Here are a couple of my findings about this hybrid strategy. It really works! Here is what I’ve accomplished in 18 days.
1250 BA goods, 500k Coins, 175k Supplies, 61 FP Packs (305 FPs inventory), 60 Diamonds, Oracle lvl 5, Zeus lvl 4.
BP’s: I lost count, but I have 8 unique BP’s for CDM, COA, Col (useless), HS, and St. Basil’s.
More than half for SMB, Dresden, Space Needle, Capitol, ND (useless), LOA, and RAH.
4 for Traz, CF, Cape, Arc. And a couple others for various BP’s.
With BA expansions and 3 medal expansions, I was able to hit 41 blacksmiths. I had 42 for a bit, but I scored a SoK in the carnival, so that FP production took precedence. I utilized my Oracle at lvl 5 to give me enough happiness that I did not need any decorations or cultural buildings while maintaining 120% (I leveled Oracle first since I didn’t have a military for most of the 18 days). Also, a lvl 5 Oracle will satisfy the 2k supplies RC. Good stuff.
My main strategy was to guild hop most every day. I didn’t realize this till about one week in, but if you camp in a guild over the time that you collect your Town Hall coins, you will also reap the guild’s FP production. That was a tasty bonus when I discovered that. That’s an extra 2, 3, 4, or even 5 FP’s more a day! I would also utilize this time with the 2-3 hrs I spent in those guilds to post my GB’s that were close to leveling, so I could get free FP’s from higher players who could reap the benefits from their Arc levels. I probably gained an extra 150 FP’s this way.
While I guild hopped, I would also friend a few of the higher ups in each guild so I would have higher level friends to get FP’s from in their tavern and score higher level BP’s. After I received all my BP’s needed for Zeus and ToB (more on this GB later), I started to aid only those players higher than me in each guild I hopped to. This would almost assure me higher level BP’s without entering each player’s city and manually Mo/Po’ing.
As for ToB, I did not build this GB since LOA is a lot better, and I did not need the population boost or the extra goods due to me being able to complete a ton of RC’s a day.
As some parting thoughts, if you plan to use this strategy, make sure you think through things very carefully. I utilized the FOE wiki a lot during this time and even started to use a FOE city planner to start war-gaming for the Iron Age. I can’t wait to start the IA and see how much my hard work as paid off. I hope to give an update in 2 or so months when I ready to jump into EMA. FYI, I attached my city layout just as a reference. Have fun everyone!