[Guide] Cosmic Raven's Version of Heavy Questing

[DeletedUser23444]

Not everyone does this because some of us like GvG, other GB's and different buildings while we advance. This is not for everyone

Contrary to your misconception, GvG and Heavy Questing are not mutually exclusive. The heavy questers in my guild right now are all reigning terror in HMA GvG maps; just like I did back when I was in HMA. Most of these players are also the alpha predators of their neighborhood as well, plundering at-will. Having a high combat bonus actually is not as important in an age like HMA as having one will become in Colonial Age. And I coach the players in my guild to learn to fight GvG, C map, and Plunder without a combat bonus first so that they learn to make better use of micro-ing units and taking advantage of terrain bonuses. By the time we get them half-way through Colonial Age they are going to have all their combat bonus GBs constructed. And by the time they leave Colonial Age, they are going to have all three combat bonus GBs level 10. But they will also have had the experience of learning to fight GvG without a bonus. This helps them later in the game when they have to fight C map provinces with insane bonuses and two waves of units; or, they have to fight an HQ sector in GvG with fighters from an enemy guild trying to break our siege.


A lower-age player only has so many FPs to spend each day, so we prioritize GBs differently, focusing first on constructing and leveling up GBs that help a player's city expand faster. On the list of "snowball GBs", we do prioritize constructing and leveling up Castel Del Monte, but we delay construction and leveling of CoA and SoZ. Since a player cannot afford to level up all three of these combat GBs at the same time anyway, then there is no reason to consume land with all three of them early in the game when land is much more scarce. By constructing and leveling up CdM, the player increases both his combat bonus and his daily FP production — two useful benefits from the same land consumption and FP expenditure. The 24 hour coins production from CoA is a crap GB benefit that does not justify that CoA consumes 400% of the same land that SoZ consumes. Even though leveling up SoZ is the cheapest of any GB in the game, it is still a single-benefit GB that will not help a player convert the FPs swapped to it into forward game progress. Plundering a hood that is comprised of players from: Bronze Aga, Iron Age, EMA, or HMA, is not going to produce more medals than heavy questing will, nor will it help produce more FPs-per-day or more goods-per-day than leveling up the 5 GBs I recommend on the HMA and below list will. Players in lower ages do not own as many interesting buildings to plunder (Bazaars, Mad Scientist Labs, and so on) so Heavy Questing is actually a more lucrative and more reliable source of enhanced revenue than combat is.

But the fact of the matter is that all of my guild mates that I have put through heavy questing, now kick major GvG ass in middle ages and later eras. And overall they have nearly double the GB levels of other players who prioritized combat GBs first and who designed their cities full of mainly barracks and/or goods production buildings in the early game. And most of my questers complete GE level 4 each week; they fight what they can and negotiate what they cannot, because they can afford to do so. That is why we put them into this strategy; it gives them so many more resources and more forward momentum in the game. It allows a complete noob to catch up to established players at the top of our guild much quicker.

 

[DeletedUser28446]

Another question that comes to mind CR, I have 3 SoKs and 3 SoA and 2 SoIs in my inventory at the moment from this carnival event. Should I hold on to them and keep in my inventory for a later time and if so when should implement them in my city?

 

[Algona]

Another question that comes to mind CR, I have 3 SoKs and 3 SoA and 2 SoIs in my inventory at the moment from this carnival event. Should I hold on to them and keep in my inventory for a later time and if so when should implement them in my city?

Dunno how Cosmic Raven will answer, but SoKs should be deployed immediately. Coins and FPs? There is a reason they are so expensive in this Event, they are the bet Event Building in the game. By far.

The other two? I'm curious to see what CR has to say thereof.

 

[DeletedUser28446]

CR I have to give you props on this strategy. It's making me realize there are other ways to play these type of games,basically thinking "outside the box." At this point in the EMA I have 34 tanners and 28 multistory homes producing so much more efficiently than I ever thought. Following your guide, I eliminated as many structures as possible and so that when my guild mates and friends aid my buildings, it's basically aiding my tanners. I'm accumulating forge point packages in my inventory at a fascinating rate, have 70 ft saved. I can't wait to read the upcoming additions to this guide.

 

[DeletedUser28645]

CR, thank you for this guide/info as well. It is invaluable! I am one week into heavy questing w/ a CF just built and quickly moving it to L3. I have 38 clockmakers and can see doubling this number with my current city set-up, by getting more space via diamonds and medals (from the HQ!). So I'm in CA, having completed the tech tree there and I have just taken the boat to the NA Continent map, and have not attempted anything on this new map for fear of starting a side quest. Got to keep the two recurring quests at the same time, this is SWEET!

Two questions:
1) on the NA Continent map, where do side quests probably kick-in that I want to put off as long as possible?
2) Can you please consider adding sections to the guide (over time of course!) that provide details on tech sprint requirements and strategies for key ages. Obviously, I am interested in planning down the road for a tech sprint through Industrial Age, once I have maxed out my key GBs to L10 in CA. I can look up the goods required for industrial age, but I'm sure you have it figured out exactly where to start/stop and how to manage the NA continent map at the same time.

Thanks in advance,

 

[DeletedUser23444]

Another question that comes to mind CR, I have 3 SoKs and 3 SoA and 2 SoIs in my inventory at the moment from this carnival event. Should I hold on to them and keep in my inventory for a later time and if so when should implement them in my city?

1. The Shrine of Idiocy (oops I mean of Inspiration, yeah that's the one). This SoI is just as useful as tits on a bull, due to its far less efficient coins production than either the SoK or SoA — it produces few coins per-tile in 48 hours than either SoK or SoA produce per tile in 24 hours. The only players who will ever get any real value from this special building are those who did everything possible to race up the tech tree to get to HMA Alchemy ASAP and didn't take time to work quests in EMA or lower, AND the same player owns an SoI that is age-locked to HMA. In this one specfic case, the HMA SoI can help that player score missing BPs for any GB from HMA and below. But guess what? So does Heavy Questing! So no, we never need this building, nor do we ever want to score it, in any age or era. Just keep it in Inventory until a quest makes you construct a house, then construct SoI, then sell it immediately.
   
   
2. The Shrine of Awe. If you work Heavy Questing for more than a week or two, you will quickly start to realize what a huge waste of land that any building that produces medals is, especially Colosseum and Deal Castle. On average, Heavy questing can produce more medals per-day, than winning all of your PvP towers can per-week, especially once you own a Chateau Frontenac with some levels in it. So basically, we treat the SoA as convenient 2x2 place holder for our next SoK, since both produce the same coins and population. By the way, we can also treat The King and The Queen as convenient convenient 2x2 place holders for our next SoK. However see notes on SoKs below.
   
   
3. The Shrine of Knowledge. In Heavy Questing, we design our city to complete as many quests per 24-hours as possible. This means we always want the highest population density possible, and highest happiness-per-tile possible (coming from leveled GBs that offer us two good benefits). In this way, we use only enough regular houses to cover the population for our quest buildings and some unit barracks to complete GE. We also prefer houses with longer collection cycles — preferring to use 8-hour and 24-hour houses until we get all the way up to PME, which has the Prefabricated High-Rises that are very high population density but 4-hour collections (and it won't matter up there becuase all building are huge and we can only build so many of each building). Now why am I saying all this and what does it have to do with SoKs? Of course we want to add SoKs to bump up FPs production. However, each SoK we add will cost us population density. So adding a few SoKs is okay. However, once we start to get to the point where we own 5 to 10 SoKs, it is time to start planning to construct Innovation Tower (no Tower of Babel, Not Capitol, and Not Habitat — we construct population GBs in the reverse order the game presents them to us, entirely skipping the Tower of Bungle.) Usually, players will not be in HMA long enough to reach 5 to 10 SoKs. We only park in HMA until we have the resources to leap frog up to Colonial, where we park a long time (and have a lot more land and still 3x2 supply buildings to work with).

And before anyone asks, the Sacred Sky Satch (SSW) from GE has about the same coins production efficiency as either the SoK or SoA; however the SSW is less efficient for producing FPs since it is a larger building at 3x2, which happens to be the same size as our supply buildings in HMA or Colonial Age. So you need to clearly understand that adding any of the ultra-highly-efficient coins production buildings to a questing city has the consequence of lowering our population density, and we want to coordinate adding such buildings with the construction of the Innovation Tower.

NOTE: Do not add Wishing Wells or Fountains of Youth to your city until PME or later,; just save such buildings in inventory. In Modern Era and below, Heavy Questing rewards will actually pay either more value or better value than either of these buildings do. Constructing 4 Wells/Fountains = the exact same land as constructing 6 CA Clockmakers or 6 HMA Alchemists, which is 3 quest rewards per day. If your 4 Wells/Fountains all produced 2 FPs each, you end up scoring 8 FPs; however, if all 3 quests produce FPs, you end up scoring 15 FPs. The same kind of mathematical comparison works for just about every resource that both heavy questing and Wells/Fountains can produce. The % chance to score each of the different resources is close between the two options. However, all of this being said you still want to score as many Wells/Fountains as you can any time you can score them. You can make very efficient use of them in PME and later. I don't recommend Wells/Fountains in Modern Era, because it has a 3x3 Hatter that is a 1-lane road building to quest with (same size as Wells/Fountains). And even though ME is produce 5 x <24-hour supply production>, the value of the quest rewards, which will be buffed by our Chateau Frontenac, is much greater than what Wells/Fountains can produce in ME.

 

[DeletedUser23444]

CR I have to give you props on this strategy. It's making me realize there are other ways to play these type of games,basically thinking "outside the box." At this point in the EMA I have 34 tanners and 28 multistory homes producing so much more efficiently than I ever thought. Following your guide, I eliminated as many structures as possible and so that when my guild mates and friends aid my buildings, it's basically aiding my tanners. I'm accumulating forge point packages in my inventory at a fascinating rate, have 70 ft saved. I can't wait to read the upcoming additions to this guide.

A Heavy Questing city is essentially plunder-proof. you need no city defense at all, since everything is motivated.

 

[DeletedUser23444]

Two questions:
1) on the NA Continent map, where do side quests probably kick-in that I want to put off as long as possible?
2) Can you please consider adding sections to the guide (over time of course!) that provide details on tech sprint requirements and strategies for key ages. Obviously, I am interested in planning down the road for a tech sprint through Industrial Age, once I have maxed out my key GBs to L10 in CA. I can look up the goods required for industrial age, but I'm sure you have it figured out exactly where to start/stop and how to manage the NA continent map at the same time.

Thanks in advance,

Q1: Click here to jump to a question someone else posted where where I typed this answer already.

Q2: Yes, my time permitting, more content is coming. The issue is I have guild mates to help on top of this guide and only so much time for FoE. But in the long stay over in Colonial Age, be sure you are constantly trading CA goods up for Indy and down for LMA (more trades up than down). And also trade up for PE goods. If you leave CA behind with a city fill of level 10 GBs then you are only going to stay in Indy for a month or two while you top off some Indy goods and finish that tech tree. Then stay in PE for a month or two, then stay in PME for 1 month, then stay CE for 1 month. I stayed in TE for only like 1 week because Heavy Questing in FE is very lucrative. But the key to to the rapid later era progression is constructing and leveling up the GB list to level 10 down in CA.

 

[DeletedUser28015]

"You shouldn't have any decorations" ," Of course, you have to lay out your city such that you can make use of all the space without holes."

I didn't write those statements together, and it's misleading to present it as if I did. The point about holes was in regard to balancing supply buildings with residences. Decorations should be avoided because they consume polivation that serves better when applied to buildings. If you're low on happiness, be sure that you have laid down good roadways.

 

[DeletedUser28102]

Sorry about that , I misunderstood. On another note what , in your opinion ,is the best use of the Masquerade Ball?

 

[DeletedUser23444]

Sorry about that , I misunderstood. On another note what , in your opinion ,is the best use of the Masquerade Ball?

As a paperweight.

Do not use any of these multi-production option buildings in a Heavy Questing city, until you have advanced to PME or a later era, even for the purposes of producing: forge points, medals, or goods. They all consume way too much land and way too much population.

These kinds of buildings are best used in PME or later, to produce Discounted Refined Goods (see Glossary of Terms for discussion on this).

 

[DeletedUser28102]

Thanks CR , really appreciate you sharing all your hard work and great advice !

 

[DeletedUser23444]

Just a note to anyone following this thread. Be sure you scroll through the conversation and read any of the Q & A. I will often answer question quickly when I see them, then come back later and expound on my answer, adding more details and rationale to to it. Eventually, I'll move all my answers into the guide somewhere and edit my replies to link to the specific guide sections.

I started this guide to I can type answer one time only and link people to them later, including my own guild mates.

 

[DeletedUser28446]

Another question for you CR and I believe you are going to explain it when you continue your guide. I'm in the EMA and have all my techs finished. I did get all the diamond payouts from quests already but still continue to heavy quest this era for the goods and the forge point packages to lvl my LoA. It's at lvl 6 now and my question to you is, when will I know when I can advance to the next age? I'm guessing it is when I amassed enough goods and cash to rebuild my city to the new age which will be alchemy in place of tannersand enough supplies to carry me through the next 2 ages? .

 

[DeletedUser23444]

This stuff is actually in my head and not typed up anywhere, so now is as good a time as any to start typing it. In each age we do this:

1. Work each recurring quest in our current age until they each pay us 20 diamonds. Do not forget to work the "Produce Units" quests (see the Different Recurring Quests in the guide for details); but we only work these quests until we own an Alactraz. The first couple of diamond expansions in the game are 200 diamonds each each. The next 2 are 400 diamonds each, then the next 12 are all 600. Each age can pay us about 200 diamonds total. Scoring these quest diamonds are actually the only reason we ever sit still and park in the these 3 lowest ages, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and EMA.
   
   
2. We only need to produce (in the case of goods, through questing and also trading goods up or down) enough total resources to cover our next "tech sprint" (see "tech sprint" in the Glossary). We need to acquire these resources:
   
   • We need enough FP Packs, goods, coins, and supplies to unlock all the technologies that lie along the critical path between where our tech currently all the way up to specific technology (always the most population-efficient supply production building, and sometimes also the regular houses with the highest population density) that we need to Heavy Quest with in the next age.
     
     
   • We also need enough coins and supplies to completely remodel our city, constructing at least 100% all brand new supply production buildings. We possibly, although not always, will need to construct 100% new new housing.
     
     
   • We also need some some extra goods on-hand for our current age, and also any age we plan to leap-frog past, to use for completing some side quests along that way, some of which ask us to pay goods in order to score better goods, and sometimes even diamonds. We need to plan to have 50 of each good just for such quests. A quest might ask for more, but we can usually trade the goods we have and don't need for the goods we do need fast enough so that such Side Quests can be completed in short order.
   
   
   IMPORTANT: In a Tech Sprint, we always skip any and all technologies that can be skipped in order to reduce the total cost of sprinting from heavy questing in our current age to heavy questing in the next age we advance to. We also try to leave all skipped technologies behind, having never unlocked them — we just pass them completely by. We need to save as many skipped techs as possible, so that we always have one we can unlock during a special event to complete an event quest to "Research a technology". This includes skipping technologies that unlock land expansions! Why would we skip land expansions, when they are the second most valuable resource? Because once we get to the most effective, efficient, and lucrative Heavy Questing age, which is the Colonial Age, then we are going to park there for several months while we construct and level up all of our GBs to level 10. This means we need as many techs left in our Tech Tree that are not unlocked in case a special event forces us to complete an event quest to "Research a technology". If we did not skip any techs along the way, and we unlocked every tech, then we might be forced out of our current heavy questing age sooner than we want to. It is much more valuable to have techs left in our tech tree that we skipped earlier, than it is to unlock those tech land expansions sooner. In the end, our city will expand faster as another player's city does, because we unlock Victory Expansions, which cost medals, at a ridiculously faster rate than other players do.
   
   
3. While planning our next tech sprint, we must look in the tech tree and find the most population-efficent supply production building of the age we plan to sprint to. If we hover our mouse over that tech, the dependency arrows that point to it will glow green. These glowing arrows show us the critical path of prerequisite technologies that must first be unlocked, in order to unlock the specific technology we want. We work our way backwards through the tech tree noting which techs we can skip and which we must unlock and we not the total cost of all goods, coins, and supplies that we require to execute our next Tech Sprint.
   
   
4. As we tech sprint, we also complete any side quests we can along the way that are not a time waster. If we can complete the quest in 4 hours or less, and we might be able to profit in terms of resources spent compared to resources scored, then we complete the quest. The "Gain N Happiness" or "Have N (Extra) Population" quests are perfect examples of side quests we can complete, in every age we progress through, in just a mater of minutes. Just build and sell umpteen decorations, or Bronze Age Stilt houses, which pop up in seconds, to complete such quests.

We park the longest in the following time periods:

• HMA — Alchemy is the 1st tech inside of HMA We can quest well-enough with EMA Clapboard Houses and HMA Alchemists. However, unlock Town Houses ASAP. I generally do not coach moving up to LMA and working quests there at all. However, stopping off in LMA to work each recurring quest until they pay 20 diamonds is not a bad move. But in any case, we park in HMA until we have amassed enough resources to can complete a tech sprint all the way up through Colonial Age Clockmaking, which also unlocks the Country Houses technology.
  
  
• CA — Clockmaking + Country Houses (which lie along the critical path to Clockmaking anyway) are the essential technologies here. Yes Gambrel Roof Houses have much higher population density; however, they are also at the very end of the CA tech tree and we want to stay in CA a very long time. So we aren't going to rush to GRHs. Instead, we will construct an Innovation Tower to replace our Country Houses and increase our daily FP production. Even a mid-level Innovation Tower can replace all regular housing in Colonial Age, allowing for more Clockmakers in our city; however, we need to construct the IT when after we have acquired a few SoKs, SoAs, Kings, or Queens, so that we still have decent coins production. The medals package is 186 medals with a level 10 CF bonus.
  
  NOTE: We park in Colonial Age the longest of any period because: we have a fairly large city, we a tiny 3x2 supply production building, and we also have a "Produce Supplies" quest to "produce x 2 <24-hour supply productions>". In the Industrial Age, the "Produce Supplies" quest changes to "produce x 4 <24-hour supply productions>"; and in any period named "an era" the quest changes to "produce x 5 <24-hour supply productions>". This means that once we advance past CA, the total number of quests-per-day we can complete goes down dramatically, which impacts our production rate of our three main-objective resources differently: FPs, medals, and goods. Since the total number of quests-per-day goes down as we advance past CA, we score fewer 5 packs of FPs from quest rewards — we always score a 5-pack of FPs in any period, which is never buffed by a CF bonus. This is the main reason why we park in CA the longest and construct most of the GBs we want and push them all up to level 10 before we leave — we have more FP production at our disposal in CA than in any other period. This is also why we first prioritize leveling up all the GBs that in someway help us produce more FPs-per-day: leveling up HS, CdM, and IT outright produce more FPs-per-day (in any period); leveling up CF, LoA, and StM help us to afford spamming more UBQs per day (in any period); leveling up CF enhances our quest rewards (in any period), and leveling up the Arc allows us to score us more FP packs, medals, and blueprints from our FP swaps (in any period). Since the total number of quests-per-day goes down as we advance past CA, we score fewer goods packages from quest rewards; however, since we are in a higher period and the number of goods we score is buffed by our CF bonus, the value of these goods packages will actually go up. This becomes a HUGE benefit to us in the later eras, where goods buildings are very massive and cost a lot of population, and where producing refined goods gets very costly since it consumes a like number of unrefined goods. Since the total number of quests-per-day goes down as we advance past CA, we score fewer medals packages from quest rewards; however, since we are in a higher period the base size of the medals package will go up and it will also be buffed by our CF bonus, which means the total medals we score will go up more-and-more the higher we advance.
  
  
• ME — Even though the "Produce Supplies" quest is "Produce 5 x <24-hour supply production>", we also have two recurring quest givers slots with which we can quest. This means we can simultaneously work the "Produce Supplies" quest and the "Collect Supplies" quest. There is a nice 3x3 Hatter supply production building we can use. And, since we should have a level 10 Chateau Frontenac, we will be scoring 13 ME goods, which are refined goods, per quest reward. The medals package is a noteworthy 688 medals with a level 10 CF bonus.
  
  
• FE — Even though the "Produce Supplies" quest is "Produce 5 x <24-hour supply production>", we also have two recurring quest givers slots with which we can quest. This means we can simultaneously work the "Produce Supplies" quest and the "Collect Supplies" quest. There is a nice 3x4 Levitation Outlet supply production building we can use. And, since we should have a level 10 Chateau Frontenac, we will be scoring 13 FE goods, which are refined goods, per quest reward. The medals package is a massive 2,250 with a level 10 CF bonus.

 

[DeletedUser28015]

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that you can do the quest grind considerably faster on the mobile app than in the browser. Those who only play in the browser should consider this ... it makes collecting and setting productions and running through the abort loop much less of a chore. It does take some skill, however, to avoid touching the wrong building, or touching a building when you're trying to resize or move the view.

 

[DeletedUser28446]

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that you can do the quest grind considerably faster on the mobile app than in the browser. Those who only play in the browser should consider this ... it makes collecting and setting productions and running through the abort loop much less of a chore. It does take some skill, however, to avoid touching the wrong building, or touching a building when you're trying to resize or move the view.

+1 absolutely is faster.

 

[DeletedUser13838]

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that you can do the quest grind considerably faster on the mobile app than in the browser. Those who only play in the browser should consider this ... it makes collecting and setting productions and running through the abort loop much less of a chore. It does take some skill, however, to avoid touching the wrong building, or touching a building when you're trying to resize or move the view.

The only thing that is better in the browser version is the fighting but even then there is substantially more lag.

 

[DeletedUser23444]

Something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is that you can do the quest grind considerably faster on the mobile app than in the browser. Those who only play in the browser should consider this ... it makes collecting and setting productions and running through the abort loop much less of a chore. It does take some skill, however, to avoid touching the wrong building, or touching a building when you're trying to resize or move the view.

I only play FoE in browser, so I couldn't possibly comment on that.

 

[DeletedUser28015]

I only play FoE in browser, so I couldn't possibly comment on that.

Well, you should try it ... it's a big difference.