Congrats, Dulahan. I admit I was surprised to see a beginner figuring all this stuff out. This guide can definitely work. What I want to do in this post is to try to put it into a big picture perspective. Just like my post in CR's thread, everything I say here will be based on the fact that our city is in a decently populated world older than 12-18 months.
1. Why build the Arc?
(Dulahan basically covered this, but I want it to be clear)
- It allows you to snipe other peoples gbs for a profit of hundreds of fps per week.
- You can donate with the max 1.9 bonus to people who want it. This allows you to:
- make a tiny profit (optional).
- farm medals. In the first month or so of having an 80 arc you should unlock all the medal expansions.
- farm blueprints for buildings that you will want to take beyond lvl 10.
- do donate fp quests. If you have a large stockpile of fps and activly seek out people to donate to their buildings, you can do 100-300 quests per day.
- You can attract swap partners with lvl 80 arc to level your other buildings.
Never raise any other building past lvl 10 if you do not have the max arc. You will be hemorrhaging forge points.
Without a lvl 80 arc you're playing 50% of this game.
2. When should you start leveling the arc?
Taking your arc to lvl 80 is a long, grueling grind, but one that you must go though to fully enjoy this game. It usually takes between 3 and 6 months.
Things that you need before you start:
- at least 80-100 fps production per day. This is the bare minimum. I would recommend over 150 pf/day, but you can start with 80 and it will naturaly grow when you add new buildings and start to snipe with your leveling arc.
- 3 reliable long term partners with similar level arcs (more on this in chaper 3)
- a city ready to start a long farming period. If you're following CR's heavy questing, this means you must have your snowball great buildings raised to the desired levels. See my post in his thread.
- a good guild with several 80 arcs willing to help (you can supplement with people in the friends list)
- a few levels already unlocked past level 10; the more the better
Based on individual playstyle, city status and game world status, there are several ages you can park in to level your arc:
- High medieval age (see chapter 4).
- Colonial age (see chapter 4).
- Modern age - considerably less fps from questing, but more space for special buildings and goods you can actually sell.
- Contemporary age - even less questing, bigger danger of you getting sniped, but more valuable goods (which you can trade down and sell), easy neighbours to snipe and insanely easy GE (you have two overpowered units to battle your way to 64/48 with negligible casualties).
- Future age - most sought after goods in most servers (they're needed for the arc), more questing, but less sniping opportunities and even bigger danger of you getting sniped.
Chosing the age is really up to the player.
3. How do you level the arc?
We will assume we already have a lvl 10 arc and the reader is familiar with basic swaps.
The most efficient way is with a 4 man partnership. You each donate x, x-10 and x-20 to one another (plus the contribution rewards).
Levels 11-22: You take 1st, 2nd and 3rd place from one another (~ 1-2 months).
Levels 23-36: You take 3rd, 4th and 5th place from one another. 1st and 2nd place are given to people with max bonus (1.9) who are willing to help (~ 1 month).
Levels 37-73: The partnership is split and you'll have 2 partners. You take 4th and 5th place from one another. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place are given to people with max bonus (1.9) who are willing to help (~ 1 month)
Levels 74-80: The partnership is rejoined. You take 3rd, 4th and 5th place from one another. 1st and 2nd place are given to people with max bonus (1.9) who are willing to help (~ 1-2 months).
You will never lack blueprints.
Tips:
- Along with your daily swap of fps, you should donate all the fps you get from eachother's buildings. If you all decide you want to increase your fps inventory to start donating to people as soon as you get close to lvl 80, then you can ignore the bonus your arcs give and just give back the basic contribution reward.
- There are some levels (arround 40-50 and 60-70) where it's more efficient to give all 5 positions to lvl 80 arcs and complete the level yourself. It's up to you if it's worth it to temporary remove yourself from this arrangement or not.
- Levels 30-60 are very easy. Try to do more than one a day. Levels 44-51 can be done in a single day with few fps spent.
- The hardest levels are 11-25 and 71-80. Try to sell everything you have in stock to speed things up.
- Guard your arc like a hawk. From lvl 30 onward the arc is a prime target for snipers. Suggestions:
- Arrange your town so that the arc can be easily removed from the road system whenever you want without influecing any other buildings.
- Never unlock a new level unless you need to; some levels can be sniped from the very start.
- All 4 partners should collect at the same time, so they can donate at the same time.
- For levels that can be done in 1 day: unlock the level, ask for help from lvl80 arcs, ask your partners to donate everything, then close the level; do the same thing the next day.
- For levels that can be done in 2 days: unlock the level, ask for help from lvl80 arcs, ask your partners to donate 2 days worth of fps + the rewards and then close it; take a 1 day break and do the same thing the next day (since there are 4 of you with similar levels, you can close 2 arcs one day and 2 arcs the next).
- Keep your arc disconnected from the road system when - for whatever reason - it is in danger of being sniped for a large profit.
- Buy FE goods with fps. Trade them down and sell progressive, modern or postmodern goods for a profit. You need guildmates and friends from these ages. AF and OF goods are often hard to trade down. It varies from world to world.
- Once you start leveling the arc,
DO NOT STOP. Make this your
only priority. Use
all your forge points and
all your goods. This is an enormous investment and if you get sidetracked, you'll lose heavily.
- Mistakes will happen. You and your partners will fuck up severel times in several ways. Don't get mad and try to keep others from getting mad. Just move on, take the loss and continue.
4. High Medieval Age vs Colonial Age debate
I will assume the reader is doing some form of CR's heavy questing, since these threads are intertwined.
HMA:
- To reach CA you have to spend arround 1400 fps that can be used on the arc.
- Dulahan's calculations say you can do more quests in this age, but he did not take into consideration a few factors, which can influence the results. Plus, the difference is small. But the fair thing to do is to leave his point here until someone proves him wrong.
- Weaker neighbours
CA:
- More space for a more efficient city. You can still maintain a decent production of goods from quests if you plant fps production buildings. The more space you have, the more efficient this balance becomes. Thus, more forge points / day.
- Far more medals from quests. Until your arc has a decent level, a lot of your medals will come from quests.
- More gold and supplies in total. You will need to spend a lot of time in the age you park to level the arc, so it's a good idea to use that time to stockpile supplies for future eras. CA is more efficient in this regard.
- You have space to place the Alcatraz and not effect the overall city production that much. Again, you will spend a lot of time in the age you choose, so using that time to produce rogues with the alc is a good idea. You will need thousands of rogues later on.
- The goods you produce are a bit less worthless. You can trade them up for industrial, then progressive goods (which you can keep or sell). Maybe you can even sell them for 4-6 fps / 100 goods.
- Easier to find a top guild. Some top guilds may not accept a player who parks in HMA, but may accept one in CA.
- More snipping oportunities (players in colonial generaly have more GBs)
Conclusion: CA is more efficient overall. Even if you can finish lvl 80 a few weeks earlier in HMA (I doubt it), it's not worth it.
This is all for now. I will update this post when time permits.
I won't talk about the details of Dulahan's guide because, like I said at the beginning, it can work as is. I won't nitpick.
One little thing bugs me though:
This is not true. From industrial age onward, standard goods producion becomes more and more efficient compared to "produce 2 x" quests and UBQs. Dulahan's statement is only valid for ages up to and including colonial.
