You don't seem to want to take some of the very good advice from later era players that has been given to you so maybe you will listen to someone in a low era.
I have been playing for 10 months and I am in LMA. I am not saying to take it as slow as I have. I have gone through every era slowly and have stayed in LMA for the past 4 months and will continue to do so for some time to come to level and build GBs. I have read the wiki and this forum extensively and have had numerous conversations with advanced era players to get a heads up/what would you have done differently? advice and almost every player will tell you: PLAN AHEAD AND TAKE YOUR TIME.
I have 8 GBS. I have not, as of yet spent a cent on this game. I have not lost the top spot in my PVP tower for 3 months and I have not placed lower than 3 since I started paying attention to it. I haven't been plundered since the start.
You seem to be looking at this game as Eras=Levels and while I could understand that, that is not how this game is played. Your 'job' is to create the best city for your era and then move on to the next challenge while always keeping the far away future eras, and your game goals in mind. While it is certainly possible to breeze through an era or two so long as you make enough preparation and forethought, you cannot do it on the cuff and through every one and expect to be successful at it or not have regrets.
I enjoy the fighting aspects of the game, my goal is to be a good GvG fighter for my guild. In order to do that I will need to be supported by farmers who donate goods to the treasury so I can fight and earn us points. I have focused much of my attention on obtaining and leveling attack and defense great buildings. The higher I get them now, the less catch up I have to do later with the added perk of being able to take on almost anyone in my hood now. There are people in my hood in the era above me and I get a lot of PvP points when I beat them so I target them. The only people I will plunder are those who have zero defense, they should know better by now, or those who are an era above me yet have bronze age buildings and EMA defenses showing me they didn't plan at all. I shouldn't be able to beat them, they should be beating me.
Every advanced aged player I speak to tells me goods become a huge hassel for them later on. If you're not getting plundered now, wait until you get to the eras where your neighbors desperately need your goods and you are so far behind them in points and defense that they are taking everything as fast as you can produce it. This is also where your early and mid level good producing GBs come into play. If you level them now they will be your bread and butter later. Also later on you must refine your older goods into new ones, amassing a large stockpile before you level is a great idea. So is looking ahead on the tech tree to make sure you have ample amounts for any further progression and GB good requirements. As space becomes more and more of an issue, you will not be able to keep multiple era's goods buildings in your city. 2 lane roads and 3x3 houses are in your future. You can also use these early goods when/if you decide to trade FP's on peoples buildings for higher aged goods or even if you have an awesome guildie giving them to you for free. The system makes you trade them something back at at least 2:1, 50 lumber for 100 Superconducters? yes please, did that trade yesterday. But you won't be able to do that unless you have a stockpile. Also, for Gbs close to your era you can simply trade up in the market. This is a fair trade calculator
http://foe.dppro.nl/?l=tools&s=fairtrade I have been taking my LMA goods and simply trading up 2x for Progressive Era goods in order to build a Traz later. No FPs required and my guildies can save their goods for someone less prepared. And because I am producing and not using at the moment all of my production goes into trades/stockpiling. I have enough that if the market is slow I don't care at all to make a trade that by the calculations are unfair to me a bit in order to move things along. I'll keep sitting pretty in my hood where no one tries to mess with me and baring any crazy neighborhood shake up, no one would.
http://forgeofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Great_Buildings This is a guide of all the gbs currently in the game with the exception of the new Seed Vault in arctic future. I recommend reading all of them throughly and deciding which ones to shoot for, you can begin hunting the bps now and even making some deals for goods. Getting a good GB early on is better from a point standpoint and also for the player than getting it later. For instance I am currently making trades for the Dynamic Tower. This GB has a benefit of giving you goods of an era you aid a building from (up to X amount a day as it levels) Now for a Tomorrow Age player, it doesn't do all that much good. They are two away from the top, it's easy for them to trade up or down. For me it is, and for someone who plans to go slow, a game changer. The amount of supplies it produces alone will allow me to delete half of my supply producing buildings, saving me a ton of room. You'll want to look for GBs that grow with you as you age. For instance Notre Dame, which I made the mistake of building early on because I needed supplies, will only give you X number of supplies. Lighthouse will give you x% boost of supplies. This means that while Notre Dame is getting less and less usefull every era, LoA never loses it's value. Visit future era player's cities and see which ones they kept. People actually do delete great buildings, most commonly Notre Dame and the Coliseum because they just dont make sense for them anymore and people need the space. Don't waste all those goods and FP's leveling a building you will probably need to get rid of later on. Also join FP swap groups for GBs, this way you can try to get some FP packs stockpiled which allows you to get more FPs (the most important resource in the game) by donating to buildings which have a slot open for profit. To do this check your guild, friends, and hood often for anyone leveling their own.
GE is also where you can earn a lot of points not just for yourself but for your guild. GE battles count towards PVP towers. If you are racing through tec you are never going to be able to amass your army to dent it or gather enough goods to negotiate it. Most good guilds require GE participation. If you have your eyes set on a good guild chances are when you apply your fight count is going to matter to them unless they see a whole lot of good producing buildings in your city and are farming stuff they need. Even then they will expect you to negotiate GE. But even a farmer should have enough defense to defend their city. Also, the temple of relics blueprints can only be gained by donating to an existing building or winning them in GE as it doesn't have an associated era so no mo/po drops. Having this building creates nifty and useful rewards just for playing GE which you should be doing already. Yesterday my ToR gave me 100fps at only level 2. If you race through tec and enter the next era that correlates to the era of opponents you will be forced to face in GE. The longer you stay in an era the better army you can build-the more fights you can win in GE-the more tower points you get-The more points your guild gets-The more rewards you earn for yourself, even if you don't have a ToR. Level 1-2 of GE uses the era below you mixed in with your own with no mind to how far along in tec tree you are. If you've planned ahead, stockpiled goods and FPs you can quickly advance your tech to unlock either the military buildings, or the good buildings you're going to need in order to fight or negotiate. A good guild is only going to let you slide for so long without participating in GE. By you not doing it, you become dead weight and you cost the guild goods to fight it simply for being a member. If you are in a non GE non GvG guild, that guild isn't going to advance. No advance=no extra FPs in your townhall and no reduction in army training/healing time.
From everything I've heard, and certainly from my current standing in the game, coins/supply do become less and less important as time goes by. However, with you only being in Colonial, you will have some HUGE coin cost coming up later on that if you did not save for could really bite you.
This is a list of all the currently available expansions and their correlating cost.
http://forgeofempires.wikia.com/wiki/Expansion no money for expansion means a greater delay in your great buildings which means more and more time being behind and your hoods punching bag. As you can see on that chart currently the last expansion you will use coins to unlock is 3.6 million coins, the grand total in coins for all the reward expansions is 44,404,900. People here are telling you they are saving because those are the numbers they are looking at and saving for. Not to mention all of their related tec costs and if they infiltrate a hard sector, those go up too. You can also use coin for repeatable quests, some will say gather X coin, Spend X coin, from what I have seen those provide random rewards, some as bad as 10K less coin than you just gave, others as good as diamonds. But imagine you had enough coin you could repeat the quest over and over until you got the diamonds and then unlocked your next diamond expansion? Or bought a wishing well from an event? Goods, which again are harder to come by as you era up, are also frequent prizes in those. If you have enough coin you can gather a lot of goods from repeatable quests. If you have a St Marks-which is HMA and gives coin boost and a Chateau-Which is progressive and gives quest boosts both with decent levels you could sit there and just click abort-accept-collect and essentially print the goods you will need so very much of later on. Or, if you pause in an era that has a coveted building, PE for Traz or Future for Arc-you could be the person selling the goods and getting all your GB's leveled by others which correlates to your in game points. This post here will show you the points gained from every level 1-10 of a specific GB
https://forum.en.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/great-buildings-encyclopedia.9119/ mind you many people are able to level their GBs much much higher than 10. Or as my 14.5 million point guild leader said to me the other day, "The real money (IE points) to be made in this game is for farmers.'
As much as you may not understand why you would purchase a FP with coin there are times you will. For instance, if I put 4 fps on this building in the next 10 minutes I'll be able to double dip and I don't want to use a pack. This hoodies GB is about to level with a big payoff and I don't want to or don't have a pack. This person has offered me an amazing rate of goods if I get their GB leveled in the next 20 mins so they can DD and I don't have a pack. (Also more advertising for saving your packs)
I'm not trying to say I am awesome and you should do what I am doing. What I am saying is while you may get to Arctic months ahead of me, when I get there I will be #25 you will be #80 and I will be taking all of your goods if you keep going the way you're going. This game is a massive combination of Chess and Go Fish. You need to plan ahead and think, just because you get a few pawns early on doesn't mean you're winning. You also need to work with others and come up with deals and combinations you can't make on your own. No matter how low of an era you are in you have something an AF wants (forge points, bps) no matter how high of an era they are they have what you want (goods, BPs)
