Diamond farm strategy

[Jern2017]

Hi,

I've recently started a new world that I'm using as a diamond farm. I've already earned some diamonds through recurring quests and the Guild Expedition. My idea is to stay in the Iron Age, build and level attack Great Buildings to a point where I can auto battle through all 4 levels of the GE and farm diamonds from it, especially the 4th difficulty, which has proven to be a valuable and steady income of diamonds in my main world.

I currently have a level 8 Statue of Zeus which I'm going to level to 10. After that, I'm planning on building the Cathedral of Aachen and doing the same thing. I also have a Contestant's Estate (3% attack boost) and Pirate Ship (8% attack boost). With SoZ and CoA both at level 10, that would give me a 71 attack/60 defense boost for my attacking army.

Would that be enough to auto battle through GE 4 with minimal losses? If anyone can speak from experience, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for any answers, advice, suggestions and input.

 

[DeletedUser31440]

You won't be able to auto battle through, but you can fight through. You'll have issues with rogues if you don't have a Traz, you'll need to prioritize them over everything else in DC's. For a little less than half of GE 44-64, an 8 catapult army is the easiest to win the encounters. Some of those you can auto battle through, but for most the AI doesn't make good choices.

 

[DeletedUser29726]

Hi,

I've recently started a new world that I'm using as a diamond farm. I've already earned some diamonds through recurring quests and the Guild Expedition. My idea is to stay in the Iron Age, build and level attack Great Buildings to a point where I can auto battle through all 4 levels of the GE and farm diamonds from it, especially the 4th difficulty, which has proven to be a valuable and steady income of diamonds in my main world.

I currently have a level 8 Statue of Zeus which I'm going to level to 10. After that, I'm planning on building the Cathedral of Aachen and doing the same thing. I also have a Contestant's Estate (3% attack boost) and Pirate Ship (8% attack boost). With SoZ and CoA both at level 10, that would give me a 71 attack/60 defense boost for my attacking army.

Would that be enough to auto battle through GE 4 with minimal losses? If anyone can speak from experience, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks in advance for any answers, advice, suggestions and input.

No. It might be enough to autobattle through 4 but losses will never be minimal. I have 122/90 boost in iron age - i can certainly autobattle 4 - but I am reliant on alcatraz to provide sufficient troops to do so, difficulty 4 is very high in losses - some encounters get wiped the first attempt to auto and i have to come back with a fresh 8 and hope for better RNG.

I run:
L10 Zeus, Aachen, CdM
L7 Alcatraz w/ Rogue Hideout, Ballista Camp, and Drummer School - not quite enough yet, i suspect level 10 will be - ballista camp may be avoidable but some of my auto experiments wiped out my stockpile of them so i decided i'd better add one to recover at least
2 level 2 sakura rocks
1 pirate ship
1 checkmate square

I don't believe the non-GB attack boost is crucial as even difficulty 4 doesn't have that much boost in iron age and you should be 2 shotting things regardless. Rather the defense of your troops so that enough survive to win the second wave is what I feel matters.

 

[Jern2017]

I am trying to put as little time in my other city as possible, that's why I mentioned auto battle.

I guess I'll get an a Alcatraz as well (I already have one Rogue Hideout) and fight manually then.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

I’m trying the alternate approach. I’m going for mostly goods production so I can just negotiate through. I’ve gotten pretty good at it in my main account. My only issues will be not having enough tavern silver income for the +1 boost and an unreliable way to get Bronze Age goods without many people trading down for them.

I might forego all military buildings in my city for goods production, including losing my happiness bonuses. Still mulling this one over though

 

[Jern2017]

I've always been more of a fighter, I mainly fight in the GE in my main world.

I'm thinking level 10 Zeus and CoA, plus the Alcatraz and Rogue Hideout will do for manually fighting.

 

[DeletedUser30900]

No. It might be enough to autobattle through 4 but losses will never be minimal. I have 122/90 boost in iron age - i can certainly autobattle 4 - but I am reliant on alcatraz to provide sufficient troops to do so, difficulty 4 is very high in losses - some encounters get wiped the first attempt to auto and i have to come back with a fresh 8 and hope for better RNG.

I don't believe the non-GB attack boost is crucial as even difficulty 4 doesn't have that much boost in iron age and you should be 2 shotting things regardless. Rather the defense of your troops so that enough survive to win the second wave is what I feel matters.

it might sound crazy, but are you trying to get TA to see if its gonna make a difference?

 

[DeletedUser29726]

it might sound crazy, but are you trying to get TA to see if its gonna make a difference?

Not anytime soon - maybe some day. I'm almost to the easy levels on the Arc there, and Chateau is my actual priority on the world. One I get Arc to a decent level though I might consider running CdM or hunting down a goods set for TA. It's a low stress no rush world for me so it won't be a quick transition at any rate.

 

[DeletedUser29726]

I’m trying the alternate approach. I’m going for mostly goods production so I can just negotiate through. I’ve gotten pretty good at it in my main account. My only issues will be not having enough tavern silver income for the +1 boost and an unreliable way to get Bronze Age goods without many people trading down for them.

I might forego all military buildings in my city for goods production, including losing my happiness bonuses. Still mulling this one over though

Goods all the way through is easy - once you have a chateau you're pretty much done. You just need to post trades for previous age goods regularly (at favorable rates as volume that moves is more important than getting a good deal - you'll have current age goods coming out your ears). But autobattle is faster.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

Goods all the way through is easy - once you have a chateau you're pretty much done. You just need to post trades for previous age goods regularly (at favorable rates as volume that moves is more important than getting a good deal - you'll have current age goods coming out your ears). But autobattle is faster.

Autobattle is faster, but I think in order to do it I'd need an alcatraz (have to pay someone for those goods), a rogue hidout (don't have one and it never showed up on the wheel as the yellow prize), a CoA (barely have any BPs for that, a CDM, don't have BPs or goods, and a zeus (I have one.

I'm going to level my LOA first then Zeus and see where I'm at. If I get a rogue hideout I might think about placing al alcatraz if I can get the goods for cheap (but getting the BPs will be a pain). Autobattle is faster, but I have to look into prep time to make it fast, and I think getting the right combo of buildings setup will take a lot longer than fanagling my current setup to pump out like 100-200 goods per day.

 

[ODragon]

I'm splitting the difference and battling through most of 3, then negotiating through the rest. I agree that getting bronze age goods is surprisingly difficult. I've thought of moving to ema, not updating any special building I have and getting all my goods via non plunderable buildings.

Unless you start the game during a decent event, it is hard to have any special ba buildings which is what I would need.

 

[DeletedUser29726]

Autobattle is faster, but I think in order to do it I'd need an alcatraz (have to pay someone for those goods), a rogue hidout (don't have one and it never showed up on the wheel as the yellow prize), a CoA (barely have any BPs for that, a CDM, don't have BPs or goods, and a zeus (I have one.

I'm going to level my LOA first then Zeus and see where I'm at. If I get a rogue hideout I might think about placing al alcatraz if I can get the goods for cheap (but getting the BPs will be a pain). Autobattle is faster, but I have to look into prep time to make it fast, and I think getting the right combo of buildings setup will take a lot longer than fanagling my current setup to pump out like 100-200 goods per day.

Oh I agree, in terms of setup, negotiate is less effort - you can still battle at least 2 difficulties without any boost or barracks. But most of the goods cost is in difficulty 4 anyways. I negotiated 4 for a year or so on that world while slowly working things up.

I'm splitting the difference and battling through most of 3, then negotiating through the rest. I agree that getting bronze age goods is surprisingly difficult. I've thought of moving to ema, not updating any special building I have and getting all my goods via non plunderable buildings.

Unless you start the game during a decent event, it is hard to have any special ba buildings which is what I would need.

I usually offer every iron age good to every bronze age good in quantities of around 50-100 at a 1:1 ratio during periods when i'm trying to stock up and enough move as long as I'm not posting at the last minute - I feel it's important to give a good incentive to regular folks to continue running bronze age goods buildings for me and it's not like i'm short on iron age goods to care about the ratio. Since I started battling 4 I haven't been posting the downtrades very often anymore.

If you're going to negotiate 4 anyways by plan, there's really no reason not to move to EMA instead once you have enough iron age event buildings or stockpiled iron age goods to cover your previous age goods in EMA. Negotiations don't get any 'harder' until modern era (when a few of your goods sources switch to unrefined goods that are of no use to you - including the wells and fountains you'd want to spam on a diamond farm and most great buildings) - but you get more space to work with.

The world I'm doing this on isn't really a diamond mine so much as a chateau perpetual motion machine project for fun - and hence I have a stronger reason to camp iron age. I do have a PE world that I've converted to a diamond mine and doing difficulty 4 every week there is only as hard as finding enough industrial age goods trades - just like iron age.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

A little update: My 9 WWs have generated 100 diamonds so far and I've gotten about 65 from GE 1-2. I'm waiting a while to try and do 3 and 4 until my tavern income can support a couple extra turn boosts per week.

I redesigned my city to produce the bare minimum amount of supplies and have 12 Iron foundries that make 240 iron per day, which I am using to amass a fortune of bronze and IA goods for current and future negotiations. (I recieved a premium supply building from a daily challenge that makes me 4.6k supplies per day with a 50% happiness boost + the supplies from the WWs).

It's working out okay so far

 

[DeletedUser26965]

I am trying to put as little time in my other city as possible, that's why I mentioned auto battle.

I can't really speak to the GE method as I've never used it myself in such a way. I've gone the Wishing Well route and currently have 612 and 21 Hedge Mazes, so 600 placed and spread across 25 alt cities and currently 33 in the inventory on my alts. I don't have any put down on my main city but have 6 WW's and 10 FoY's in inventory there.

I don't know if one way or the other is quicker, better or more lucrative than the other, assuming no diamonds being spent. Obviously either way requires starting a city, takes less than 10 minutes, and building up a basic city so clearly they're the same in that regard.

If you're fighting GE then the time sink becomes getting the military GB's, SoZ, CoA, CdM, maybe TA, Traz up and leveled enough to comfortably fight GE every week. Guess you can also consider Arctic Orangery and The Kraken.

If you're negotiating GE then the time sink is getting ahead of the goods game enough to negotiate GE every week, of course even with the extra turn you'll be spending diamonds too so you'd have to take that into account when figuring the gains each week. Of course you can split some between fighting and negotiating.

The time sink for the WW route is about setting your city up to be able to complete events that have WW's as a reward so you have to build up your friends and tavern, goods, supplies, coins, fp's etc. enough to complete the quests.

I would think with the GE route once you get to a high enough level on the GB's it's fairly quick to just sign in and do the encounters you're able each day until it's done.

With the WW route when it gets to the point you have enough goods, supplies, coins, fp's and WW's running it's really just a matter of signing into each city, collect and go each day, takes less than 15 minutes for me to do on 25 cities. It gets a bit time consuming though preparing for an event and doing the first portion of quests that don't have the daily time limit but once those are out of the way then it's quick and easy to do the daily quests. But once the event is over it's just a matter of collect and go waiting for the next event that has WW's so you get plenty of down time.

As far as how many diamonds either will bring the obvious is GE has a limit whereas WW's are only limited by how many you can fit in your city. I'd say it's taken me maybe about a year and a half to get 600 WW's(including the HM's) placed. At this point, assuming 1% overall, the long term average converges on 300 diamonds a day so about 109,500 a year. I think I came up with something like a figure of 625 diamonds per week from GE calculating from looking at the chest rewards here http://forgeofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Guild_Expeditions which comes out to something around 32,500 a year per city, x 25, assuming one could do 25 cities, is like 812,500 a year I think, think you'd need something like 4,000 WW's to about match that lol. 625 is the total diamond amounts from GE, then you have to figure the %'s, like mentioned below.

 

[DeletedUser31470]

As far as how many diamonds either will bring the obvious is GE has a limit whereas WW's are only limited by how many you can fit in your city. I'd say it's taken me maybe about a year and a half to get 600 WW's(including the HM's) placed. At this point, assuming 1% overall, the long term average converges on 300 diamonds a day so about 109,500 a year. I think I came up with something like a figure of 625 diamonds per week from GE calculating from looking at the chest rewards here http://forgeofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Guild_Expeditions which comes out to something around 32,500 a year per city, x 25, assuming one could do 25 cities, is like 812,500 a year I think, think you'd need something like 4,000 WW's to about match that lol.

Your math seems terribly wrong there. I did some calculation and ended with around 160 diamonds per city doing GE a week. That would make around 200k diamonds a year with your 25 cities, which makes way more sense.

Also, you don't have to use diamonds to negotiate, I don't. I have so many goods that I just give up if I don't get it in 4 attempts and retry again. I usually get it by second or third attempt, with no diamonds spent.

Edit: of course if you set it up right and level your GBs a lot, you can also combine the approaches, so you could have over half of the city filled with WWs and the rest dedicated to doing GE and get even more. Setting that up takes requires way more time and effort though.

 

[DeletedUser26965]

Your math seems terribly wrong there. I did some calculation and ended with around 160 diamonds per city doing GE a week. That would make around 200k diamonds a year with your 25 cities, which makes way more sense.

Ah, yes, the 625 was the maximum amount of diamonds as rewards, I didn't do the % calculations here so yes, much lower than I had mentioned, good catch.

 

[DeletedUser32824]

If you're negotiating GE then the time sink is getting ahead of the goods game enough to negotiate GE every week, of course even with the extra turn you'll be spending diamonds too so you'd have to take that into account when figuring the gains each week. Of course you can split some between fighting and negotiating.

I can negotiate GE each week without diamonds. It takes a lot more goods, and sometimes medals (this is in my main city), but it's worth it. I think the hardest thing about the negotiating route on an alt city is building up the friends tavern and getting a decent amount of medals in an early age (I've been stagnant at around 1500 after building my 1st expansion). Medals are important when tavern silver is sparse in order to let you maximize that 15 minutes of extra turn.

I've almost completed lvl 2 without an extra turn, but it's been mostly luck. Stuck on the last encounter with like 12 failed attempts!

As far as goods, I have 12 Iron foundries pumping out a lot of goods each day, so I think once I get my silver income up I should be good.