• We are looking for you!
    Always wanted to join our Supporting Team? We are looking for enthusiastic moderators!
    Take a look at our recruitement page for more information and how you can apply:
    Apply

Best Age to Squat in...Worst Ages to Avoid

mamboking053

Well-Known Member
I know this depends on your particular build for the game and you're welcome to sound off, but what are the best ages to be in, what are the worst, and which ages are worth rushing to?
 

DeletedUser

To me it's a no-brainer. Contemporary Era.
1) It has the best military unit of any age in my opinion, the Anti-Aircraft Vehicle.
2) Tomorrow Era stinks, so most players will go on quickly to Future Era, which means you'll rarely have to worry about next-era neighbors. And when you do have next-era neighbors, your CE units are just as good as the TE units.
3) Your goods producing GBs will produce Progressive Era goods, which are needed for two of the most popular GBs: Alcatraz and Chateau Frontenac. This means you can sell those goods for FPs.
4) Your current era goods can also be sold if you have enough of them, as the Innovation Tower is also a much desired GB.
5) With an Alcatraz, a Rogue Hideout and decently leveled attack GBs, you can fight through most, if not all, of GE. Meaning any goods won there are pure profit.
I have one world that is in Contemporary Era, and it is my favorite to play. I also have one that is past CE, in Arctic Future, and I regret daily advancing past CE in that city.
 

mamboking053

Well-Known Member
Exactly what I wanted to hear :)

Has anyone been to the Virtual Future? Is it something that I should be really wanting to get to?
 

DeletedUser3882

Exactly what I wanted to hear :)

Has anyone been to the Virtual Future? Is it something that I should be really wanting to get to?
Give yourself at least 5 years... (Game has been going for 6+ and it just released).

You *really* don’t want to rush through tech just to get there with all the whales. The requirements are much higher and the rewards much smaller (relatively speaking) so best to take some time and boost up as much as you can just to stay afloat, let alone compete...
 

DeletedUser29726

I'll give a list of reasons to camp for a bunch of ages - not all will apply to you. I'm not going to give a list to explicitly avoid because that's really any age that reasons to stay don't apply to you :) I cannot claim this list is complete by any means - but it's what I can come up with off the top of my head.

You could camp in:
Iron Age
- for the most sustainable unbirthday quest - while infinite questing is quite a bit of work, just getting a chateau to 10 will already have you able to do close to as many quests as you can stand
- for the smallest spend FP quest
- for the lowest boost expedition - while this doesn't make it the easiest expedition it does put it up there for several ages
High Middle Ages
- for 24 hr alchemist loops - favored by many players starting out who want some of the benefits of recurring quests quickly and lazily
Late Middle Ages
- for the most sustainable unbirthday quest in an age with two recurring quest slots that allow your unbirthday quests to occasionally trigger bonus collection quests
Colonial Age
- for another age like alchemists but with two recurring quest slots
Industrial Age
- for running expedition with troops well ahead of your current age - the first truly easy age to complete GE4 purely by fighting (if you're ahead on story)
- the last era that does not involve 2 lane roads which stress some people out
Progressive Era
- to maximise the chance at getting additional chateau prints from random blueprints
- the last era that does not deal with refined goods
- to sell PE goods for FP
Contemporary Era
- the easiest era to fight GE4 with *current age* units
- to sell CE AND PE goods for FP
- able to get troops well ahead of your age again as the research block at the end of CE story is the last one for a while (may require having saved skippable techs earlier in the tech tree)
Tomorrow Era
- the most sustainable high age unbirthday quest
- smallest nonpremium production building for 24 hr quests since many ages prior (4x3 single lane)
- you have a reasonable chance to complete the AF and some of the OF story to get troops way ahead of your age as you don't have the same tech tree pressures you would in CE
Future Era
- the last era where your treasury GBs can make meaningful GvG contributions
- to sell FE and PME goods for FP
- able to reasonably fight all GvG maps
Arctic Future
- an easy "infinite" quest, albeit with about 30 more clicks than a usual quest (build 8 decos once you have the flower near the end of the age)
- to sell AF and CE goods for FP
- double spend FP quests make it one of the best high ages to quest by sniping
Oceanic Future
- three copies of the complete 6 24 hr productions quest allow 6 blacksmiths to complete 3 quests daily
- to sell OF and TE goods for FP
- easy (albeit tedious) GE mainly using hover tanks against an age that does not have good counters for easy stealth
Virtual Future
- to sell VF and FE goods for FP
- ability to use any units you want for AA GvG
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser30312

The big three camping ages are HMA, CA, and CE.

HMA and CA are popular because they have the best recurring supply production quests. HMA also has the advantage of being an early age, so the noobs haven't been weeded out yet, and you're not running into really threatening players too often. CA is similar to HMA with supply production, but you can have two slots open for recurring quests and that's a big advantage. It's the last age where you can really spam supply production for quests. I've also found CA to be great for trading upward in ages for goods, because at that point of the game, people will start trading goods that are further apart than 2 adjacent ages. For me, getting anything from BA to TE goods wasn't too difficult in CA with clever trading. CA is also the last age where significant close range combat occurs, from Indy onward just about everything is ranged. A lot of people seem to hate fighting in CA, but I enjoyed it a great deal myself.

CE is also a very popular age, but I haven't played there yet, and I'll defer to Stephen Longshanks and xivarmy on that age.

LMA isn't a bad age to camp, it's a little harder to do the supply recurring quests, but it's also the first place where you can get an extra quest slot. Combat is still pretty simple, and it's one of the better eras for fighting. You can also start pushing ahead into the bonus quests for CA units you can use on defense.

Bronze Age has somewhat easy recurring quests, but a good chunk of the game is locked out -- no GE, no GvG, no DCs. The main reason to camp here is to get the prints for the Zeus easily, and maybe the Tower of Babel, if you want it.

IA is terrible for recurring supply quests since the supply buildings are so big for such an early age. Combat is average. Since PvP is locked until you reach a certain point on the IA tree, it's possible to camp behind that point for a bit and use the GE to start familiarizing yourself with combat tactics safely. You can also take the time here to start acquiring the early GBs too.

EMA isn't a great age for camping. Recurring supply quests aren't too bad, but combat isn't great. Doesn't really offer anything over HMA.

Indy starts to change up the combat aspect of the game since most fights are now at range. Not as good for recurring quests though. Housing starts to get bigger unless you were clever enough to put the Inno in your city.

PE seems like a bad age for camping (only been here about a month now). The dreaded 2 lane roads start here and they make city design more challenging. Unfortunately, the PE buildings get rectangular, big and awkward which makes the road problem worse. Housing bloats up to 3x3, and the normal supply buildings just outright suck. Combat gets some radical changes, the map scale increases, there's new terrain feature which mostly slow your units down, and the relationship among units change a lot, so you have to adapt to a different kind of warfare. I think this age probably weeds out a lot of the worst noobs.

I haven't been higher than this, so mostly what I know is hearsay. Don't know much about ME or PME, but they don't seem to be popular; most people seem to want to push ahead to CE at this point of the game. TE is really unpopular too. FE gets people camping because of GvG issues. AF and OF have the promethium and orichalcum extraction bit that a lot of people also seem to dislike. VF is still new and incomplete, and I haven't heard many opinions on it yet.
 

DeletedUser

Don't know much about ME or PME,
Modern Era is okay, I have a city there now. Not as good to me as Colonial/Industrial. The bad part of ME is adjusting to your goods GBs producing unrefined goods (3 ages previous) instead of current era goods. PME is better than ME in my opinion because you get the MG Team, which has the 'Contact!' ability. That means that if it gets hit and the enemy unit is within range, the MG Team hits back immediately as well as in its regular turn. This is the same ability that the AAV in CE has that makes it so good.
 

DeletedUser31735

Im in ME at the moment, and personally I work my GBs up a lot so I go into each age and completely dominate my hood. Currently Im pushing to Tomorrow and Im camping there for a few months :/

I want to state that I absolutely DO NOT want to do this!!! I have a lvl 100 Arc and as I am getting my guild into GvG, all fighters know that Tomorrow and Future goods are the toughest to get for treasury! Personally I would like to go to AF and camp there for a year or so, but as it sits Im going to be Future within a few weeks and Im camping there 3-4 months.
 

DeletedUser31592

EMA isn't a great age for camping. Recurring supply quests aren't too bad, but combat isn't great. Doesn't really offer anything over HMA.

I am probably the only person 'camping' in EMA, lol. First of all, I detest Iron Age for many, many reasons. More so now due to the PvP changes. EMA is incredibly easy for me. I can run a city on autopilot in EMA. Sure, troops in HMA and IA may be better, but EMA aren't completely awful. I can manage to get by with them.

OP- First of all, I would not recommend permanently camping in any age in your first/main account until CE. You are going to miss out on a lot of the game by not progressing. Extended stays are OK, and actually recommended. I feel each age deserves at least 3-6 months. This builds a goods reserve, allows you to learn the age, allows you to progress at tech without stopping your game, etc... After listening to all of the end-gamers complain about being trapped waiting for a new age to be released, I slowed down even more. I spent a full year in PME. I'm in CE now and I plan to stay as long as I can before tech forces me to move on. I'd rather take these eras slow, eras I find enjoyable, than be stuck at the end waiting with everyone else.
Now, secondary cities- camping can be great. Pick an age! As I mentioned, I hate IA. EMA, while not where most people camp, is where I like to sit for a while. It is easy, I can run the city with minimal effort. The Spend FP quest is easier in EMA than HMA (25 versus 38). I like to stop in EMA and get both an Arc and Chateau before thinking about moving on. I was actively playing in 7 cities, but am now converting some into Wishing Well diamond farms. I plan on leaving all of those in EMA (except the one that is already in HMA).
 

DeletedUser29726

I am probably the only person 'camping' in EMA, lol. First of all, I detest Iron Age for many, many reasons. More so now due to the PvP changes. EMA is incredibly easy for me. I can run a city on autopilot in EMA. Sure, troops in HMA and IA may be better, but EMA aren't completely awful. I can manage to get by with them.

OP- First of all, I would not recommend permanently camping in any age in your first/main account until CE. You are going to miss out on a lot of the game by not progressing. Extended stays are OK, and actually recommended. I feel each age deserves at least 3-6 months. This builds a goods reserve, allows you to learn the age, allows you to progress at tech without stopping your game, etc... After listening to all of the end-gamers complain about being trapped waiting for a new age to be released, I slowed down even more. I spent a full year in PME. I'm in CE now and I plan to stay as long as I can before tech forces me to move on. I'd rather take these eras slow, eras I find enjoyable, than be stuck at the end waiting with everyone else.
Now, secondary cities- camping can be great. Pick an age! As I mentioned, I hate IA. EMA, while not where most people camp, is where I like to sit for a while. It is easy, I can run the city with minimal effort. The Spend FP quest is easier in EMA than HMA (25 versus 38). I like to stop in EMA and get both an Arc and Chateau before thinking about moving on. I was actively playing in 7 cities, but am now converting some into Wishing Well diamond farms. I plan on leaving all of those in EMA (except the one that is already in HMA).

I actually do have 1 EMA camp city - it's scheduled to leave as soon as i find the time to spend some effort on it, but at one point I had a reason for it...

There's a strange anomaly in EMA combat caused by mounted archers - mostly I consider this anomaly annoying (they're killing my catapults before they can move!), but one good side is their attack stat is abysmal - this means heavies have the main counter they'd usually worry about not be so big of a counter once boost is in the picture. The old encounters from when there was only GE3 were such that I could do the entirety of it with 8xArmored Infantry on Auto once I had about 50% boost. The new encounters though, 47 is problematic along with several in GE4. In general any encounter with 4 or more catapults in a single wave is questionable. More boost and using heavy cavs for the catapult encounters would probably work out just fine but I cut back on the number of cities I was playing and that was one of the ones that I stopped for a while.
 

DeletedUser31859

I am also camping in EMA.

The main reason I camped in EMA was that I needed to take plenty of time to learn the game. I'm sure I'm slower then most but it took me 6 months just to figure out how to fight using each of the EMA troops based on the opponent terrain ect. I joined a high level guild and got plenty of good advice from the experienced players. After a long period of time I was able to take my Arc to level 80 and begin raising my other GB's to higher levels. The spend 25 forge point reoccurring quest has been huge for me to build up goods. Even though I am able to fight through GE, my guild is always in need of additional goods for GvG. Even with all of my GB's I still have enough space in EMA for 15 TF's, 20+Sok's/Sky Watches, and special event buildings that provide over 115 forge points a day along with several military barracks.

I am friends with other players in H world EMA with over 5 million points & level 80 Arcs, that plan on camping at least another year to power level multiple GB;s to level 70/80.
 

Czari

Active Member
To me it's a no-brainer. Contemporary Era.
1) It has the best military unit of any age in my opinion, the Anti-Aircraft Vehicle.

I've been playing almost four years and have two worlds in CE, 1 in ME (basically a diamond farm), and one in HMA where I'm using the Heavy Questing strategy. (Ducks...lol) Thus far my MOST favorite age is what Stephen said - CE and now I'm hesitant to go beyond that! I don't have any experiential info beyond CE but it is a great camping age (and fun!) HMA and Colonial are also good for camping if one is going the questing route. I've heard FE is good for camping but...haven't been there.
 
Last edited:

DeletedUser

I've been playing almost four years and have two worlds in CE, 1 in ME (basically a diamond farm), and one in HMA that where I'm using the Heavy Questing strategy. (Ducks...lol) Thus far my MOST favorite age is what Stephen said - CE and now I'm hesitant to go beyond that! I don't have any experiential info beyond CE but it is a great camping age (and fun!) HMA and Colonial are also good for camping if one is going the questing route. I've heard FE is good for camping but...haven't been there.
Of the three ages above CE that I have experienced (TE, FE, AF), Future Era is my favorite, but nowhere near as fun as CE.
 

DeletedUser

Stephen...could you please elaborate?
Tomorrow Era is just a real letdown after CE. After having the AAV in CE, none of the TE troops seem very good. There is nothing in TE to excite you about the game. It's just really, really blah in my opinion.
Future Era at least has the Hover Tank and Rail Gun, which are both fun to fight with in my opinion. Learning how to use them effectively was the best thing about FE. If I had stayed there longer, I could have built up my FE goods to sell.
Arctic Future introduces Promethium, a 'special' good that requires using your regular AF goods to produce, and can only be produced through the Arctic Harbor on an approximately 24 hour cycle, more or less. Promethium also cannot be traded and I don't believe it is included in the goods rewards from quests/GE. You can get some by conquering certain sectors of the Continent Map. And Promethium is required to advance in the tech tree...and a lot of it. AF troops are a real mishmash. It really shows that AF was put together in pieces, being the first age/era that was released in parts. That doesn't bode well for OF, if and when I get there. AF goods would be good to sell, but given that you have to use up a bunch to produce Promethium, that's not the easiest thing to do.
 

DeletedUser3882

doesn't bode well for OF
Need much more Promethium in OF than you did in AF, plus the second special good, OrinthalJameseum (or whatever it’s called). Still use Hovers throughout... Get rivers for two lanes though!

Make the jump to VF, and you guessed it! More Prometheum!!! Enough to want to throw something... like your mobile device right through your pc monitor, thereby killing both experiences simultaneously! Still using hovers throughout even with the *nerf*! Oh, get giant Catfish swimming through your roads! (Because that makes absolute sense! )

And don’t forget, treasury goods are useless... Yep. Think that about covers it for everything available above FE other than Bunch o’ Ice, Water, and imaginary neon glowy things.
 
Top