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Cosmic Raven's HQS - Condensed

DeletedUser35195

I'm in contemporary era before discovering this guide.
Is it too late to use the guide? I have the necessary GB's, but I can only do a few quests a day with my current production. That is a few coins/supplies and a fp one. I'm producing a lot of goods in normal production buildings.
Any hints for optimizing CE will be appreciated

PME, CE, and TE are bad levels to work this strategy. The supply buildings are too big to be able to work the "produce supplies" RQ. Cosmic Raven's advice was for a player to stop in ME and store up the goods and FPs needed to get to Levitation Outlets in FE. The only reason according to his HQS to stay in PME, CE, or TE was to work the quests and get diamonds from them.

You can still do UBQs and "spend FP" quests, but unfortunately CE is a bad era to work this strategy.

What I also find when looking at cities as far along as yours is that they often have GBs or other special buildings that are not recommended to work this strategy. I look at them and think it would be a royal pain to convert a city like that to an HQS city because they have an AO down, or something else that kills the space they have available to put down supply buildings.

The best advice I could give, not seeing your city, is to share a basic principle I follow: is a building more efficient at producing goods or FPs than the supply buildings I need in my era to do one quest? I'm in CA, so that means it has to do better .03 FPs per tile per day PLUS .4 goods per day per tile. That's not a tough standard to beat, especially when an SOK is .25 FP/tile or a Terrace Farm is .17 FP/tile. The massive increase in efficiency for these is worth losing the goods--to an extent. I still need the goods to negotiate through GE4!

Edited to strikethrough text I wrote about things I have not experienced firsthand
 
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DeletedUser29726

PME, CE, and TE are bad levels to work this strategy. The supply buildings are too big to be able to work the "produce supplies" RQ. Cosmic Raven's advice was for a player to stop in ME and store up the goods and FPs needed to get to Levitation Outlets in FE. The only reason according to his HQS to stay in PME, CE, or TE was to work the quests and get diamonds from them.

Private security are smaller than lev outlets as they only require single lane road, and the UBQ in TE is almost half the cost of FE. The only good part about being in FE in terms of questing is making FE goods for arcs and that's not so special now that VF players are getting a flood of them.

CE's a fine age to quest in amongst upper ages - TE's a little better in terms of throughput but the goods tend to be less in demand. ME is quite lousy despite its "small" production building - i would not recommend anyone to camp that age (and i did camp it my first play through the game).

In the upper ages as far as questing goes just focus on making lots of coins and supplies and feeding the unbirthdays in addition to doing spend FP quests. Premium supply buildings on shorter cycles will usually be better than 5x nonpremium 24 hr supply.
 

DeletedUser35195

CE's a fine age to quest in amongst upper ages - TE's a little better in terms of throughput but the goods tend to be less in demand. ME is quite lousy despite its "small" production building - i would not recommend anyone to camp that age (and i did camp it my first play through the game).


Thanks for your corrections to what I wrote. When reading your post, I realized that since I have not played in those ages, I am writing beyond my experiential knowledge and assumed CR's advice to be sound. I edited the post you replied to and struck out the places you have experience and I don't.

Could you say more about why ME is a bad age to camp in? I've been working under the impression that it's better than PME through TE, but you seem to disagree.
 
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DeletedUser29726

Thanks for your corrections to what I wrote. When reading your post, I realized that since I have not played in those ages, I am writing beyond my experiential knowledge and assumed CR's advice to be sound. I edited the post you replied to and struck out the places you have experience and I don't.

Could you say more about why ME is a bad age to camp in? I've been working under the impression that it's better than PME through TE, but you seem to disagree.

While it has a smaller footprint for production quests, production quests aren't a very good quest engine to begin with from PE onwards. You will get more quests from collection of raw coins and supplies and unbirthday. You may also consider military quests. As such while it's possible to have 100+ hatters in a barebones city devoid of interesting GBs for 20 quests a day, this isn't that great. Hatters are also pretty bad in terms of supplies/square/cost of collection or unbirthday. And the ratio of random reward supplies / cost of collection or unbirthday is lower in ME than the 3 ages that follow it so chateau fueled bonus quests are more strained.

The PME Junkyard is a goldmine in terms of raw supplies - for having a small drawback in happiness it has production per tile that won't be outdated until TE amongst non-premiums.

Unbirthday/Collect costs relative to reward ratio improve every age after ME until you hit TE.

Summary for questing high ages:

Starting in PE you should abandon for the most part 24 hr productions being the core of your quest engine - You should be using chateau-fueled unbirthdays, collect coins, collect supplies, and spend FP as most of your daily quests. Consider premium or event supply buildings as your supply providers when they're more efficient.
PME has the best nonpremium supply building for its age (Junkyard) in terms of supplies/space.
TE has the best unbirthday amongst high ages. After you leave it you should be prepared for another transition.
AF once you make the end of the tech tree for the age has an easily infinitely sustainable quest (build 8 decos of current age using the crystal flower deco near the end of AF). It also has double spend-FP quests making it the best high age to increase quest completions by arc cycling. And earlier in the age you can use the 'gain X happiness' quests to complete 2 quests every 5 to 10 minutes or so if you have the patience and space by building an appropriate amount of bronze age cultural buildings and selling them off (use the tavern 75% construction boost).
OF allows you to use 6 blacksmiths on 24 hr production to complete a quest - there's 3 copies of this quest so if you manage to get a break from story this can turn into 2 blacksmiths per quest if you want a return to the glory days of 24 hr productions making lots of quests. 3 blacksmiths per quest is a given.
VF allows you to run 6 1 hr productions for a quest or continue with 6 blacksmiths for a quest (but only 1 per 6 blacksmiths).
 

DeletedUser35195

OK, that makes sense of why others in the past have been so big on premium supply buildings, and also confirmed my suspicions that the "Produce X 24-hour productions" drops off to almost pointless levels after the lower ages. I'm in CA where it's 2 clockmakers/quest, but even Indy becomes half as productive due to the number of supply buildings doubled per quest.

I've deviated from CR's strategy by rushing my Arc to 80 in CA, and I still haven't built some of the GBs he recommended. Some I will after my Arc is done like Traz and the military GBs. Others I never will, like the Atomium. But, I also figured that because of having a big Arc and a guild with 1.9x boost threads, I'll be able to spam the "Spend X FP" quests and not need the "Produce X 24-hour productions" like I do now.

Thanks for the feedback, that helps me to plan for future ages and hopefully give better responses to people who ask.
 

DeletedUser35195

Uh, you get to use any production building in OF. So it is actually even easier. Fill the city with blacksmiths.

The entire HQS strategy is focused on the 24-hour productions.

Having now been doing HQS in my CA city for a while, learning more about the game along the way, I’ve come to see how true that statement is. Without a big Arc to work the “Spend X FPs” quest, you’re stuck with UBQs and “Produce X <24-Hour Production>” as the only viable quests to do regularly and repeatedly, which also fuel the “collect supplies” and “collect coins” which are done much less frequently than you can UBQs and supply building productions.

This becomes immensely limiting after CA and until OF when supply buildings get bigger, roads start to double up, and you have to complete more productions. It makes me wonder how viable this strategy is for a player in eras after CA, and how well it will work for someone following CR’s strategy rigidly, without deviating from his model? My experience may show otherwise, but I am left wondering if HQS is good for getting a city snowballing, but may want to be abandoned after CA, or at least to shift away from it as an exclusive strategy.
 

DeletedUser29623

If you could use Sunken Treasures for those OF 24-hour productions, it would be amazing, since they're small and their 24-hour product is a forge point. But that's a LOT of Sunken Treasures. I'm still doing HQS in Industrial because I got bored and progressed too far on my map. You can still do it, but it's not nearly as productive once you need to do 4 24-hour productions to fulfill that quest. However, I'm nearly at Level 80 on my Arc and am already starting to do a bunch of FP quests on the guild's 190% thread. I also am still doing a lot of coin and plenty of supply quests, as well as unbirthday, since I have a lot of Sacred Sky Watches and event buildings that produce coins and supplies along with their FPs
 
and now the VF GB HC has changed the game again...ive changed from mainly alchemists deleting them in exchange for 3 SoKs or 2 SSWs instead, with a lvl 10 HC dont worry about loss of supplies from less to zero alchemists (or clockmakers when i hit CA) having a lvl 80 Arc makes for so many "spend x FP' that i only collect 1/2 of them if even that...HQS was a great foundation but adaptation is essential to enjoying and massive growth in game : )
 

DeletedUser29623

and now the VF GB HC has changed the game again...ive changed from mainly alchemists deleting them in exchange for 3 SoKs or 2 SSWs instead, with a lvl 10 HC dont worry about loss of supplies from less to zero alchemists (or clockmakers when i hit CA) having a lvl 80 Arc makes for so many "spend x FP' that i only collect 1/2 of them if even that...HQS was a great foundation but adaptation is essential to enjoying and massive growth in game : )

Once you get past Colonial, the 24-hour supply quests get to be impractical. I'm still running a few in Industrial because I want to level my Chateau up before I move on through the IA quests to get the diamonds. Plus, I replaced a bunch of them with Sunken Treasures and Sleigh Builders, which give me guaranteed goods and FPs and can also be enlisted for event quests calling for X 15-minute productions or whatever. Their one downside is that they can be plundered.

You get pretty tired of cycling through the 24-hour supply quests, and my schedule is not regular enough that I always feel like I have time for it when a field of clockmakers pops up needing to be collected. At least with Level 80 Arc donations, you can do them at your leisure.
 

DeletedUser34477

How is this still working? Do I rush for Iron Age and sit there for a while?
 

DeletedUser35195

How is this still working? Do I rush for Iron Age and sit there for a while?

I started a new city to try this out, and honestly I got bored by the time I hit iron age. It felt like questing was taking FOREVER to build up goods because of how much bigger the production buildings are in Iron Age than Bronze, and because I was spoiled witting in Colonial with a big Chateau raking in the goods.

Someone else who has more patience than me and more recent experience would be better able to answer this. I found myself being impatient to get to HMA and quickly gave up on building my city. Sorry I'm not more help!
 

DeletedUser35455

I started a new city to try this out, and honestly I got bored by the time I hit iron age. It felt like questing was taking FOREVER to build up goods because of how much bigger the production buildings are in Iron Age than Bronze, and because I was spoiled witting in Colonial with a big Chateau raking in the goods.

Someone else who has more patience than me and more recent experience would be better able to answer this. I found myself being impatient to get to HMA and quickly gave up on building my city. Sorry I'm not more help!

A few months ago, someone on Reddit tried to spam military quests in IA. He had 28 legionaries quarters (bad english, don't know the exact name) and 30 archers quarters. He'd get, on average, 73fps and 585 goods each day. The only con in here is the amount of time required to work this out.
 

Brunenjii

Member
How did he manage that? It's been my experience that recurring military quests are removed from the rotation as soon as you've researched the tech required to build units necessary to complete it.
 

DeletedUser35455

How did he manage that? It's been my experience that recurring military quests are removed from the rotation as soon as you've researched the tech required to build units necessary to complete it.

The quest requires 4 legionnaires and 4 archers in order to be completed. So, basically you get those 4+4, complete the quest, delete 2 of each one (so you have 2L+2A), scroll through all rec. quests until you find that quest again, get 2L+2A (now, you have 4L+4A again), complete the quest, and do this process all over again.

You need to have 2L+2A in order for that quest appears again.
 
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