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[Guide] Hands Off Diamond Farm: GE 64 weekly

DeletedUser32824

I wanted to create a diamond farm city where I could spend as little time as possible and still net a decent amount of diamonds. It is this hands off approach that will be the main focus of this guide. There are several ways to go about farming diamonds, and this is mine.

How I acquire diamonds in my city:
  1. Guild Expedition
  2. Wishing Wells
Guild Expedition
One can complete GE each week in 2 ways: fighting or negotiation. Fighting requires 1 or more leveled attack GBs, possibly military buildings, and a lot more time than negotiating. For this strategy we will be negotiating. If this is not your main city then you should already be familiar with how to negotiate, so I wont get into that here.

The only difficult thing about negotiating GE is building up your friends tavern in order to make enough tavern silver each week for 3-4 15 minute boosts.​


Wishing Wells
Acquiring WWs can be tricky. It's easiest to get them in events. This is a totally optional part of this guide, but it is an alternative strategy I use since I am able to successfully negotiate GE 64 each week with the amount of goods buildings I have. I have 9 WWs and they provide me with extra supplies and coins that aren't affected by happiness, not to mention goods (10 per) and FPs (2 per). 10 goods from a 3x3 for no supply and coin investment isn't bad, especially since you can get all 5 goods, alleviating some of your need for trading.

Once you start clearing GE you will acquire a decent amount of fountains of youth, and these can be incorporated into your city along with your WWs!
Starting Your New City
  1. Pick a world with a friend or 2 from your original world, or maybe someone on the forums so you can at least shoot messages to them. Maybe down the road they can help you level some GBs or trade you some goods! My IA city is on W, US. Come and join me if you'd like!
  2. Guild hop and aid like mad while in Bronze Age to attempt to get blueprints for Tower of Babel. More on this later
  3. Build your city up to Iron Age. You can choose to research to participate in PVP or not. Doing so allows you to more easily complete daily quests and event quests. Not doing so prevents you from ever being plundered. I opted to research for PVP and with a full 8 person defense most people wont breach your defenses in Iron Age.
  4. You may choose to go past Iron Age, but if you want to have your GE machine running quickly and efficiently, IA is the age we are going to park in for this guide. You may, however, take the spirit of this guide and apply it to any age. (If you do let me know how it works out)
  5. Join an active guild with many members.
  6. Add only active people to your friends list (even if they are from your guild). You can look at the Great Building leaderboards and find people who have an arc--most that do are leveling it and active. Having a friends list full of active players is absolutely essential to the GE strategy for diamond farming.
  7. Build your city in a square. A 6x6 is a great shape for this strategy as it allows you to fit in houses and goods buildings very well.
  8. Clear your continent map to expose at least both of your goods deposits.
Turning Your City Into a Goods Factory
  1. Negotiating GE is all about goods production. I like to have at least 300 of each good (from both ages) for a full GE clear. More is always better. That means you need to collect 1500 Iron age goods and 750ish Iron age goods to trade down to bronze age for a total of 2250 per week. That's a lot! The reason for the 300 is sometimes negotiating will pick on one BA good for several encounters in a row, causing you to go low on that one good. If you run out of dye, you are toast for the rest of GE, so you want reserves.
  2. Since you probably wont use all 300 of each good every week, you don't need to produce that many each week. I produce about 220 each day, and that has been sufficient. So how do I produce that many goods?
  3. Get rid of all decorations, cultural buildings, and production buildings except for 2 butchers. If you are lucky enough to score a tailor, as I was, you can get away with just using a tailor. The goal here is to produce just enough supplies and coins each day to fund your goods production, then have a little extra for using supplies and coins in GE (but you earn supplies and coins in GE, so they kind of pay for themselves)
  4. This is where it gets tricky. Depending on your goods deposits on the continent map you may get lucky like me and get iron (3x3). There is also jewelry (3x4), cloth (4x3) and Ebony and Limestone (both 4x4). If you get Ebony and Limestone you have it rough, but it is still doable. You just might not be able to fit many Wishing Wells if you choose to do that as well.
  5. Choose the smallest good you have a bonus for and start building goods buildings. They require 230 population, or 3.15 cottages. Build up your population and your goods buildings. Your population should be less than 73 (1 cottage worth) if you built your city correctly.
  6. You can build your houses and then place them unconnected to fit more houses/goods buildings. They still provide population, but not coins. Since you will have a lot of cottages already, coins shouldn't be an issue and you should never be low. This can be a great way to build an efficient city.
  7. You may choose to put your goods buildings on a 24hr timer (20 goods/day), an 8/8/4 cycle (25 goods/day) or 3 8hr cycles (30 goods per day). Doing 3 8 hour cycles is difficult to do and can mess with your other collection times and make this city less hands off! I choose the 24 timers and collect everything at once.
  8. Collecting Supplies: Put your supply buildings on a 24hr timer so they get motivated. Fill any extra space with a couple blacksmiths if you have room/population. Don't put another cottage if you don't need the population. You might have to get a feel with how many butchers you will need for your city. If you don't have wishing wells putting out supplies (about 1k a couple times a day for me) you might need 3 or 4.
Which Great Buildings Should You Build?
  • Tower of Babel: This is the best GB you can build (unless you can score an inno tower) for this strategy. Not only does it provide goods, but it adds population in a 4x4 block that you can shove into a corner of your city. It's important to note that you can fit 4x cottages where a ToB will go, so your ToB needs to provide more than 292 population to match the houses it replaced. Once it starts providing more than 292, you can start deleting some houses and adding more goods buildings. Keep this GB at max unlockable level.
  • Statue of Zeus: This is such a small GB that there isn't really a reason to not build it. I've found that in most designs I came up with for my city I was left with a perfect size slot for a 2x3 building, and plopped my Zeus in it. I wouldn't prioritize leveling it until ToB is max.
  • Lighthouse of Alexandria: I pushed to build my LoA before I came up with this strategy. I think building it is personal preference. Once leveled to 100%, it acts as a full happiness boost. Once it's at 140% it will act as enthusiastic. You can look at that the same as having a GB that provides enough happiness for enthusiastic--and it also provides goods! You could, however, not build it and just put another production building down and probably cover your goods production easily.
  • Colosseum: Just don't. It's huge and useless. You don't need happiness, remember?
  • Oracle of Delphi: You might think this is a good idea, it creates supplies after all. Well the happiness is useless for this strategy and you really don't need any more supplies.
  • Temple of Relics: I'm still not sure about this one. I really want to build it because I think more FPs, more units, more goods will help in the long run, but it's fairly large. If I did build it I would level it to 10 before LoA or Zeus. What do you guys think about building ToR for this strategy?
Trading for Other Goods
  • This can be a difficult task, especially when trading down for Bronze Age goods. Not a lot of BA players will be able to drop 200 dye for 100 Iron. So you have to put out a lot of smaller trades, and sometimes take unfair trades (in their favor) in order to get someone to take your trade. If 50 dye for 25 Iron doesn't work, try 50 for 30. Keep bumping it up a little bit until people consistently take your trades.
  • Getting 1:1 for Iron Age goods shouldn't be an issue, really, especially if you are in an active guild where some people (for some reason) have thousands of IA goods. They will take your trades immediately, alleviating the need for unfair trades.
Leveling the Friends Tavern
  • It's important to keep pumping your tavern silver back into your tavern upgrades. Only upgrade your chairs and tables as this is the most cost effective way to increase your silver income. Some people might not like that you don't have a tablecloth, so you can appease them by buying the first one (1000 TS) once you get your table to 8 or 10 people.
  • Do not use any Tavern Silver on GE until you have your table built up to the point where you are making around 1k TS per day. If you start negotiating GE too soon with TS you will slow down your tavern upgrade process significantly, leading to less ability to use TS to purchase boosts.
  • For this reason you might need to just negotiate GE without the boost each week and get as far as you can without blowing through too many goods or getting too frustrated. I think the farthest I got was the beginning of GE3. At that point it's futile to try it without the boost. But, that's okay. It's worth a couple weeks of crappy GE for subsequent endless weeks of GE64'
  • Once you get a table maxed with size and chairs, try and keep a supply of 6k TS (4 boosts) at all times. Any extra can be reinvested into other table components of you choosing until your table is maxed.

Acquiring Medals for GE

  • When purchasing a 15 minute negotiation boost in your tavern, if you run out of attempts while there is still time on the clock is it important to maximize your TS while it is still scarce. So it's okay to buy attempts to last you through the 15 minutes or until the medal cost gets too high. The medal cost in IA is super low, so you should be able to buy quite a few.
  • Since FPs aren't the most useful currency in this city, it can be wise to find a guildmate or 2 who will let you pay over the reward amount on a GB to get a 4th or 5th place spot. Getting 5th on a mid level arc will net you around 1k+ medals, which is enough to get you through probably months of buying attempts in GE. Try to keep 1k medals on hand for this purpose. The rest can be spent on expansions.
Land Expansions
  • Spending diamonds on land expansions is counter productive in a diamond farm city, so don't do it!
  • Travel as far as you wish on the continent map. You may be able to go a couple ages past IA and negotiate if you have access to those goods. That could be a good way to nab land expansions
  • Acquire medals from investing in GBs.
  • I am able to clear GE64 and have only purchased up to the 3k medal expansion.
Event Buildings
  • Build these at your own discernment. If they produce goods, that's good for you! I would stray away from filling your city with too many FP only buildings though.

Quest Cycling and CF

  • This is a totally valid strategy for generating goods for a GE focused city, but it also takes a lot of time and effort to acquire a CF in IA and to level it high enough to really work for you. That's not what this guide is about!


That covers it, I think I'll add anything I missed. Please feel free to ask questions! Here is a picture of my city. I have 10 blacksmiths in it for doing event quests, but will replace them with cottages, foundries, and WWs as the event unfolds.
Ver. 1
IA Diamond Farm.gif
Ver. 2
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Ver. 3
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Ver. 4
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Snarko

Active Member
This can be a difficult task, especially when trading down for Bronze Age goods. Not a lot of BA players will be able to drop 200 dye for 100 Iron. So you have to put out a lot of smaller trades, and sometimes take unfair trades (in their favor) in order to get someone to take your trade. If 50 dye for 25 Iron doesn't work, try 50 for 30. Keep bumping it up a little bit until people consistently take your trades.
Have you thought about asking a goods seller to make regular offers for you? They get enormous amounts of BA goods and may be happy to trade some for your IA goods. You might be able to find one willing to do a weekly deal for any amount you want.
 

DeletedUser33179

Thanks for taking the time to write up some of your suggestions/thoughts.

Just some things to ponder...

1- "Lighthouse of Alexandria: I pushed to build my LoA before I came up with this strategy. I think building it is personal preference. Once leveled to 100%, it acts as a full happiness boost. Once it's at 140% it will act as enthusiastic. You can look at that the same as having a GB that provides enough happiness for enthusiastic--and it also provides goods! You could, however, not build it and just put another production building down and probably cover your goods production easily
."

This makes no sense to me. LOA is a boost for supply buildings (+ gives some goods), not happiness.

2- Why have a LOA at all. Makes no sense to waste that space for a GB only boosting 2+ butchers (& maybe a couple blacksmiths), especially with goods able to be obtained in greater amounts in goods buildings anyhow. I too had it built/leveled in a couple of my alternate cities before learning about GE64 diamond mine concept. Having spent so much time/fp on it, kinda hurt to delete it. Afterwards I was very glad I did, & never built it in my others.

3- Agree that an active friends list is essential. You suggest looking at GB leaderboards for Arc players to invite as friends, surmising that they must be active. And you suggest putting down, at most, only the 1st level tablecloth in tavern (to save on Silver expenditure). Majority of higher level players - & even many low/mid level players, including me - will not be friends with someone without a red tablecloth or almost there (& will drop you if don't eventually get it). The friends list is a two-way relationship. So, what are you giving them? They all want that best potential for fp when visiting a tavern, which only comes with red tablecloth.

Additionally, you can find very active players simply by visiting the taverns of your friends or anyone else you come across (a friend invite can be sent to them from there also). Click on them to visit their city. Does it look decent or a mess? doesn't need to be perfect, just a feeling that they're trying to play & grow. Then, check out their tavern. Majority upgrades done suggests they're likely active, & red tablecloth is preferable. As you get more solid friend list over time, look only for those with red tablecloth & get rid of current friends without one (unless very good other reason to keep).

I especially like those meeting above criteria who also have an Event-completion avatar. Only way to go through that many event quests to win it is to be an active player.

4- You suggest upgrading table size & chairs in your tavern, ignoring the table plate & flooring completely. However, you're not thinking long term strategy regarding maximizing daily Silver intake. The floor allows increased chance of winning increased silver when you visit other players' taverns. And the plate allows increased silver amounts you collect from all visitors in your tavern. Those things are very significant over time. Consider putting up with the initial Silver cost to upgrade your entire tavern early on. It'll pay for itself rapidly.

5- Building predominantly boosted goods building of smallest size does allow for more of them, & thus more total goods per day. But most folks will be doing the same just for general gameplay, conserving city space. With an overabundance of those goods available & much less from the larger goods buildings, many will likely find it hard to consistently trade to get enough of the other 4 goods. Even a very active guild can only do so much. So, those large goods buildings may be required to some extent for many players. May also find that with those less available goods, you can trade down for BA goods without having to lose extra IA goods to entice them to trade.

6- Having a population GB - such as Capital or Inno - may be more efficient than tons of cottages for meeting the high population requirement supporting goods buildings while taking up the smallest space to do so.
 

DeletedUser31592

As someone with an Inno in a few EMA diamond farms, it is actually a bad idea. Happiness is a real problem. Especially because people want BPs and decide to start leveling it for you. My Inno is only at level 2 in a couple of my cities and I have far more population than I need and not enough happiness. (These were not started with the intent to be WW diamond farms, but have been relegated to that status recently.)

A Capital or a Babel with some cottages is the better choice, IMO.
 

DeletedUser32824

This makes no sense to me. LOA is a boost for supply buildings (+ gives some goods), not happiness.
Here is the math behind LOA as a happiness building (kind of). The only purpose of happiness is a boost to supply and coin production to the tune of 100% or 120% if enthusiastic. My needed happiness for enthusiastic is 3400. I have 790 in roads so I need about 2600 more reliable happiness for enthusastic. That would take at least 2 baths plus some smaller happiness buildings, costing you 2 4x4 slots and probably some 2x2 slots.

Now, I could also just level my LOA to 140% boost and I would be recieving the same amount of supplies in my 50% town as I would in my 120% town without LOA, and I can do it all in 1 4x4 spot.

If you have a building that makes 100 supplies you will make 120 in an enthusiastic city. In a 50% city you will be making 50 supplies. If you have a 100% LOA you will be making 100 supplies. With a 140% LOA you will be making 120--or the same as enthusiastic.

Since you will have a decent amount of cottages you really shouldn't be short on coins at all, so you don't need the boost to run your city.
you suggest putting down, at most, only the 1st level tablecloth in tavern (to save on Silver expenditure). Majority of higher level players - & even many low/mid level players, including me - will not be friends with someone without a red tablecloth or almost there

There are plenty who will accept you. This is a slightly selfish venture, but once you max your table and chairs you will be able to drop a red cloth probably quicker than if you build every level boost as soon as you can.

You suggest upgrading table size & chairs in your tavern, ignoring the table plate & flooring completely....It'll pay for itself rapidly

Tavern Tray lvl 1: 1000 silver for 2%. You will have to collect 50k tavern silver total to pay this back. That will take some time!
Table Cloth: 0 return on investment for silver generation
Floor lvl 1: 1000 silver for 5 more silver per aid (at 20% chance). Assuming you get 1 in 5 proc you will have to aid 1000 people to pay this back. If you have 100 friends you can do this in 10 days, but even if you do the likelihood of being able to hit all 100 taverns every day is extremely low (maybe like 75% based on activity).

So I will have to disagree with you on these investments. With the table you gain 2 silver per slot for a gain of 2s per person that compounds over each upgrade. Likewise a chair allows you to gain 2x the number of chairs as silver each collection (and let you spread out your collections).
Having a population GB - such as Capital or Inno - may be more efficient than tons of cottages for meeting the high population requirement supporting goods buildings while taking up the smallest space to do so.
I did mention this in the guide. But as this is hands off, many people might not be able to aid enough of have friends from whom they can gain BPs. Inno is a definite long term goal, but then coin generation could become a problem without cottages. Since happiness is not required for this setup, I'll have to disagree with Jcera. If you want to play with happiness, though, I'd avoid it like she said.

I like your tips about the event avatars! I think that's a great way to see who is playing enough to complete events. Clever! And I agree about only 1 good building. It's a good thing we get 2 boosts, so if one good doesn't work for some reason you can try your other as a backup.

Any thoughts on Temple of Relics?
 
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DeletedUser33179

I did consider the indirect happiness effect of the LOA due to its supply building boost. But you're literally using that 4x4 GB (& the many hundreds of fps you spent to level it to 9-10 to give the happiness-equivalent) for only 1 building in your city - your tailor. The vast majority of your supplies is covered by GE winnings, Ship event building & winnings from any recurring quests completed. Your may want to reconsider what event buldings can do for you short & long term. Past couple Event grand buildings can be obtained without spending diamonds (and obviously no fps spent to upgrade them to a useful level). Such buildings provide quite a large output of 4-6 different things - coins, supplies, happiness, population, goods, medals, fps, attack/defensive boosts, etc - and within a fairly efficient size as well. Obviously, the city should keep them at a minimum needed. Just my preference, but I prefer to get as much as I can from each building

Ah yes, upgrading the tavern... I can only speak to my own experience in prioritizing a fully upgraded tavern from the start. First I do 1 expansion of table size, to open 2 potential chair slots. I would then add 1 chair. Then I'd upgrade tablecloth. Next I do 1 floor upgrade. 2nd chair slot next. Then Back to next table size & repeat as noted. I only upgrade the plate 2 times during all that time, leaving the remainder til after all else done. Takes me about 1 month to get fully upgraded (while still doing fairly well in GE). The result? For reference, 1 occupied table of 16 visitors in a fully upgraded tavern = 1356 Silver. My average gain of Silver per day is 3000-3500 with 70-78 friends. More silver per visitor. More visitors per day (as my tavern is appealling to very active players). More taverns to visit (& thus more opportunity for winning highest Silver) as I had higher standards for finding those very active players - their taverns tend to be cleared more frequently so I can get a seat (typically there's seats available for 70% of my friends with me only checking 2x per day).

I do like the TOR. I get more than enough from the GE relics (goods, fps, troops, etc) to feel it's very worthwile despite its size. Can you still complete GE64 with the space you created for blacksmiths/etc for this event? If so, what you had to temporarily delete opened more space than the TOR requires. Folks can certainly wait til Babel is leveled & producing enough goods, if want to. I found having it leveled to 3 wasn't much different than at 7, though.
 

DeletedUser33179

As someone with an Inno in a few EMA diamond farms, it is actually a bad idea. Happiness is a real problem. Especially because people want BPs and decide to start leveling it for you. My Inno is only at level 2 in a couple of my cities and I have far more population than I need and not enough happiness. (These were not started with the intent to be WW diamond farms, but have been relegated to that status recently.)

A Capital or a Babel with some cottages is the better choice, IMO.

Very interesting. Never would've occurred to me what could happen due to an Inno.
 

DeletedUser29726

Lighthouse is also a goods building that produces all types without taking pop so that covers some of its footprint too. It might not be part of the fastest path to getting setup, but it's not a waste at least.

Babel is probably better (also goods, provides pop - since he's doing this in iron age it's level 4-5 til it's better pop density than housing (plus free goods)) for your phase where you're just dumping FP and not hunting down your prints for other stuff yet.
 

DeletedUser32824

I do like the TOR. I get more than enough from the GE relics (goods, fps, troops, etc) to feel it's very worthwile despite its size. Can you still complete GE64 with the space you created for blacksmiths/etc for this event? If so, what you had to temporarily delete opened more space than the TOR requires. Folks can certainly wait til Babel is leveled & producing enough goods, if want to. I found having it leveled to 3 wasn't much different than at 7, though.
I ended up deleting like 6 foundries to make room for like 40 blacksmiths (probably wont do that again) to try and speed through the event, but I was held up by collect coin/supplies quests. In retrospect I'd probably try and have around 10 blacksmiths. In the future I'm not sure what I'll do when I have more wishing wells crammed into my city.

Lighthouse is also a goods building that produces all types without taking pop so that covers some of its footprint too. It might not be part of the fastest path to getting setup, but it's not a waste at least.

Babel is probably better (also goods, provides pop - since he's doing this in iron age it's level 4-5 til it's better pop density than housing (plus free goods)) for your phase where you're just dumping FP and not hunting down your prints for other stuff yet.
Yes! I had built my LOA before this strat and spent a bunch of FPs getting its BPs so I feel bad just deleting it. It does make 9 goods (I think), so it's not a terrible loss. It also boosts my trading ship and colorful mill supplies in addition to the tailor.

I am at a point now where I really don't have anywhere crucial to put my FPs. I'm working on lvl 10 of babel and I'll be there within a week easy. Then I'm left with either zeus or LoA unless I can find room for a ToR. After Babel I could shift to inno print hunting, but that takes a bit more time and is a bit more hands on! If I did get an inno I'd definitely age up since I would have so much more room for goods buildings and wouldn't have to build any houses.

Edit: I just realized babel adds ~340 pop frmo 9-10! That's like 5 houses I can delete!

I honestly might get to a point where I need to go up ages to lack of room, or stop building wishing wells and fountains :(.

I appreciate everyone's feedback!
 

DeletedUser30900

I honestly might get to a point where I need to go up ages to lack of room, or stop building wishing wells and fountains :(.
That's exactly the reason that I disagree with building tons of goods building at diamond cities, all the space beside necessary GBs should go to WWs. That being said, I think the easier way is building a city with zeus, babel, coa, and cdm with 3-4 archery ranges and 1-2 rogue hideouts. with a 90/90 offense, you should be able to fight through GE lv1-lv3 without manually fighting. All these buildings together are still taking less space than 10 iron foundries you have and you don't need the cottage to provide populations(Babel offers population for the ranges and CoA gives you enough coins to train archers). All the rest of the place belong to WWs! With all the goods you get from WWs every week, you can trade down and get enough BA goods for negotiating GE Lv4.
 

DeletedUser31498

Have an advanced diamond farm, and I went more of the military route strictly to save time. Have a traz, one rogue hideout, zues/CDM/COA to level 10. I deleted my ToR but highly recommend it early (also because it adds to the fun of doing GE).

As a contrast, I have all the rest WW/FoY, with no need for any goods buildings, and pop, etc. Just something to keep in mind for the long-term. Likely takes a couple good events and 6 months or so with a helpful friend/guild for goods. Getting the BPs for CoA/CDM is a good way to also pay for the goods though. It's just so much faster battling than negotiating in the long run I highly recommend this strategy.
 

DeletedUser30900

Have an advanced diamond farm, and I went more of the military route strictly to save time. Have a traz, one rogue hideout, zues/CDM/COA to level 10. I deleted my ToR but highly recommend it early (also because it adds to the fun of doing GE).

As a contrast, I have all the rest WW/FoY, with no need for any goods buildings, and pop, etc. Just something to keep in mind for the long-term. Likely takes a couple good events and 6 months or so with a helpful friend/guild for goods. Getting the BPs for CoA/CDM is a good way to also pay for the goods though. It's just so much faster battling than negotiating in the long run I highly recommend this strategy.
do you think 2 rogue hideouts +4 archery ranges can replace traz? I think traz are just too big for a diamond city.
 

DeletedUser31440

do you think 2 rogue hideouts +4 archery ranges can replace traz? I think traz are just too big for a diamond city.

I have 8 rogue hideouts on my diamond farm w/out a Traz and it seems to work fairly well. I use attached rogues if I think I might lose one in a battle, unattached rogues if I am not worried about losing any, and 8 ballista for about a third of the fourth level of GE. I'd recommend Traz over multiple hideouts though, it takes about 2 more days to fight through while waiting on rogues to retrain and heal.
 

DeletedUser30900

I have 8 rogue hideouts on my diamond farm w/out a Traz and it seems to work fairly well. I use attached rogues if I think I might lose one in a battle, unattached rogues if I am not worried about losing any, and 8 ballista for about a third of the fourth level of GE. I'd recommend Traz over multiple hideouts though, it takes about 2 more days to fight through while waiting on rogues to retrain and heal.
That’s the thing though, if you gonna do daily to get a shot for WWs, you might as well just use a few extra clicks to train units . Traz takes way too much space....
 

DeletedUser29726

I am at a point now where I really don't have anywhere crucial to put my FPs. I'm working on lvl 10 of babel and I'll be there within a week easy. Then I'm left with either zeus or LoA unless I can find room for a ToR. After Babel I could shift to inno print hunting, but that takes a bit more time and is a bit more hands on! If I did get an inno I'd definitely age up since I would have so much more room for goods buildings and wouldn't have to build any houses.

Then you go up. In general it will not get any harder to negotiate GE through PE for you (wishing wells will make up more and more of your goods, and your GBs all stay up to date til then too). Going up now and then might even make it easier - i.e. if you have a couple thousand of each iron age goods then you move to EMA you don't have to worry about trading down at all for a long while.

You do want to avoid modern era like the plague as suddenly your wishing wells and GBs will make goods noone wants :p I wouldn't leave progressive era on an expeditioning diamond mine without getting setup well enough to fight CE - and being prepared to sprint there.
 

DeletedUser31882

I like the guide.

My only complaint is the pseudo-oxymoron of 64GE & 'Hands-off'. Then again, I associate 'time' with 'hands off' and my free time allotments have been limited as of late.

Which Great Buildings Should you Build?
  • Temple of Relics: I'm still not sure about this one. I really want to build it because I think more FPs, more units, more goods will help in the long run, but it's fairly large. If I did build it I would level it to 10 before LoA or Zeus. What do you guys think about building ToR for this strategy?

If you can spare the room, I vote build it, but leave it at level 1 while you level other GBs of interest. ToR Starts at 12% chance for a relic & 1% for a rare relic. Leveling it only increases relic chance by .5% through level 6 (then it hiccups and such). Regardless, leaving it at level 1 while you level other GBs, I believe, will maximize FP allotment for the time period. If the player maxes out their other GBs of interest and needs an FP dump, they can make an educated decision by that point if they want to keep and pump up ToR, or if they dislike it and are thinking about selling it because they got lucky with a huge influx of WW/FoYs, the investment loss is minimal at 1 versus 10.

That's my theoretical thoughts at least. My Diamond farms never got that far development wise, so I got no practical data.
 

RazorbackPirate

Well-Known Member
I am at a point now where I really don't have anywhere crucial to put my FPs. I'm working on lvl 10 of babel and I'll be there within a week easy. Then I'm left with either Zeus or LoA unless I can find room for a ToR. After Babel I could shift to inno print hunting, but that takes a bit more time and is a bit more hands on! If I did get an Inno I'd definitely age up since I would have so much more room for goods buildings and wouldn't have to build any houses.

Edit: I just realized babel adds ~340 pop frmo 9-10! That's like 5 houses I can delete!

I honestly might get to a point where I need to go up ages to lack of room, or stop building wishing wells and fountains :(.
If you're at the point where you have nothing to do with your FPs, why build ToR? It does nothing to increase diamonds. What are you going to do with 100 FPs put to the bar? Snipe the hood in hopes of storing some? Store them for what? I don't see how it benefits you in a diamond farm.

Instead of aging up, take some of those extra FPs and buy some upper age goods to negotiate the Expansion Provinces on the C-Map. The Wiki will show you exactly which provinces to take, and which to leave alone. I also think you should spend the 1,200 diamonds to get the 4 expansions you have available. Each expansion holds 1 1/3rd WWs, or 2 LWWs. That's room for 5 - 8 more WWs. That's a good amount of future diamonds. If this is a long term farm, it's a good long term investment. 3 - 5 diamond hits and they pay for their own land.
 
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DeletedUser32824

3 - 5 diamond hits and they pay for their own land.
That's quite a gamble. I've had 9 WWs for about a month now and only gotten 100 diamonds from them. It might take over a year to pay off 1200 with just the WWs. I don't think that is a good investment. I do like your advice about the C map. I could clear up to LMA and probably get like 8 more expansions.

Thanks for all the feedback. I think I could shift my city to a military route rather easily. I could start leveling my zeus after my babel and while that is getting to 10, try and get the BPs for CDM and COA so I can drop them once zeus is 10.

There is a real issue in IA with getting non-age specific BPs. It takes a lot of time to find people either leveling that GB or aiding everyone on friends/guild list (most of them aren't in EMA or LMA).

I'm definitely not tied to just 1 idea, but we will see how this city goes!
 

DeletedUser29726

If you're at the point where you have nothing to do with your FPs, why build ToR? It does nothing to increase diamonds. What are you going to do with 100 FPs put to the bar? Snipe the hood in hopes of storing some? Store them for what? I don't see how it benefits you in a diamond farm.

Instead of aging up, take some of those extra FPs and buy some upper age goods to negotiate the Expansion Provinces on the C-Map. The Wiki will show you exactly which provinces to take, and which to leave alone. I also think you should spend the 1,200 diamonds to get the 4 expansions you have available. Each expansion holds 1 1/3rd WWs, or 2 LWWs. That's room for 5 - 8 more WWs. That's a good amount of future diamonds. If this is a long term farm, it's a good long term investment. 3 - 5 diamond hits and they pay for their own land.

It increases rate of winning fountains of youth which increase diamonds. Temple is one of the 2 GBs i level as priority when i hit the 'finding places to dump FP' stage on a diamond mine - the other being Chateau Frontenac.
 

RazorbackPirate

Well-Known Member
It increases rate of winning fountains of youth which increase diamonds. Temple is one of the 2 GBs i level as priority when i hit the 'finding places to dump FP' stage on a diamond mine - the other being Chateau Frontenac.
Makes sense. I forgot about FoYs being in the Jade Relic. 12% chance of getting one in the most rare relic. That's a lot of FPs for a small chance. But I like your perspective that you level it when you have nowhere else to put your FPs. I've yet to build ToR myself for much the same reason.
 
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