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[Guide] Higher Age Units Guide v2.20

xivarmy

Well-Known Member
Yeah... :(
Only 3 tech not completed in all the previous eras. 1st in PE only needs to be unlocked already.
This means I won't be able to get much higher era troops isn't it?
Not much in indy. But you should be able to get almost everything in PE if you only use the techs when story demands it. You may need to be somewhat careful about how you do PE story (as it requires different types of techs depending on choices - and if you need to research multiple techs to get one of a type you need, that'll hurt)
 
Dear Uber,
Thanks for the amazing guide, which I am using again on my next world.
For that newer world, my approach has changed a bit. I do play FoE dally but have very limited time, so my main goals are to help my guild in GE/GBG. Advancing ages is something I do very slowly.

Getting units in my new world:
• Follow your guide scrupulously!
• Get attack GBs (Zeus, CdM, CoA, Traz) as high as possible (10+ each, then 30+ each)
• Have the 80+ Arc early.
• CF to 10, then 30+
• Truce tower to 10. My guild is great. Between CF and TT, I can always trade the goods they provide for what I need to negotiate cMap sectors).
• TA to 10

Using higher-age units well
• I always fight GE levels 1-3, and most of 4, with current age units,
• For GBG, I mostly auto battle with regular age units until attrition hits 20-30
• Doing that for GE/GBG saves hoovers for when they are really needed, with very little extra time needed to fight.
• To make that more effective, I got an AO in Indy, which is now in the 90s.
• I moved from Indy to PE. I think the hovers are just as effective, as PE units seem less hard on hoovers. And those 2 expansions were useful for placing more high attack event buildings
 

Orius Maximus

Well-Known Member
Yeah it's a good guide. Unfortunately Uber started it about a month after I took a year and a half break, and I pushed too far into the CE map to get the TE units later. Trying to figure out the right path by following the questlines on the Fandom wiki was a real pain, and there were places where I missed units. But I did manage to get all the FE and AF units, and I'm working my way through the OF map now. Inno really dragged out the AF and OF maps IMO. It's a slog. But I remember how they released both ages slowly and in several parts too. Having the units several ages early is definitely worth it though.

I think Inno screwed up by leaving things open like this. Given the convoluted nature of some of the parts of this guide, I don't think it was intentional. But I think the story questline really should have had tech blockers in every age so that people couldn't push ahead like this, that is to advance a player would need to research a tech from the current story age. A player using very advanced units to attack neighbors in Indy is the sort of thing that might make players get frustrated and quit. I'm not sure how much people are bothering with PvP anymore though, my cities on both J and P haven't been attacked in months. I might have been attacked on A and/or G but they're semi-abandoned WW farms, so who cares?
 

UBERhelp1

Well-Known Member
Yeah I don't think they really expected this to be possible, but if they were to patch it now, everyone would get mad.
 

xivarmy

Well-Known Member
Yeah it's a good guide. Unfortunately Uber started it about a month after I took a year and a half break, and I pushed too far into the CE map to get the TE units later. Trying to figure out the right path by following the questlines on the Fandom wiki was a real pain, and there were places where I missed units. But I did manage to get all the FE and AF units, and I'm working my way through the OF map now. Inno really dragged out the AF and OF maps IMO. It's a slog. But I remember how they released both ages slowly and in several parts too. Having the units several ages early is definitely worth it though.

I think Inno screwed up by leaving things open like this. Given the convoluted nature of some of the parts of this guide, I don't think it was intentional. But I think the story questline really should have had tech blockers in every age so that people couldn't push ahead like this, that is to advance a player would need to research a tech from the current story age. A player using very advanced units to attack neighbors in Indy is the sort of thing that might make players get frustrated and quit. I'm not sure how much people are bothering with PvP anymore though, my cities on both J and P haven't been attacked in months. I might have been attacked on A and/or G but they're semi-abandoned WW farms, so who cares?
They've had evolving philosophy over time. I think some of it was intentional, but with poor foresight. Which it's far from the only feature that the reason it exists as it does currently had to do with that! (looking at you Arc, siege camps, etc).

In the first ages there was tech blockers in almost every age - not even necessarily to be a tech blocker, but to encourage you to maintain a pace through tech that map wouldn't be too frustrating.

Indy and PE story were pretty much intentionally designed to be possible in the age prior to them - quest conditions have explicit options to avoid being in the current age.

ME & PME they similarly made quite flexible to get ahead, removing references to specific ages, and replacing them with "current age" until the blocker at the end of PME story. So I think that far was quite intentional.

Bear in mind at the time the uses for advanced units were also much fewer. You could use them to keep fighting more on continent (fair enough), or to do some amount of fighting in GvG in ages you hadn't yet reached - but since ages were agelocked in terms of troops used, you weren't getting any unfair advantage. And then there was the neighborhood, but hoods also routinely spanned 3+ ages of players, it wasn't unheard of to have your spears getting stomped by tanks anyways. So fairness was not a concern there either at the time.

The PME "Truth or Dare" oddity would've also been of no consequence at the time they added it as there was no story to skip *to*, and the model they'd been using to that point didn't skip as far as i'm aware (every story quest having a prerequisite of other story quests).

CE is probably where they lost control, but noone noticed for a long time. They started having quests that had prerequisites other than "did the previous story quest". And they missed some of the linkups such that it was possible for story to disappear. This required that there be a way to get story *back* so that your game isn't bricked, without having done some of the story before it and enabled the leap from pre-PME as well as those are the points we skip *to*.

For a while the consequences were relatively low still and they made no effort to stop people from fighting ahead of them in TE/FE/AF at all. And it wasn't until OF part 4 that someone decided things had gone too far, and they needed to put a stop to this. At the time the tech blockers were still mostly considered unavoidable. So you had CE players with what this guide shows you how to get in Industrial - and I think that was intentionally possible as well.

The consequences to this point were still relatively low. You could have easy GE and a strong city defense but is that so bad for the work involved? Regardless internally they obviously decided they didn't want that happening any further, because it was never again a possibility - not even 1 age ahead. And they probably hoped that'd be enough, because a core assumption of their game design is people will advance and move past the deficiencies of previous eras - that they usually will not have to go back and "fix" old content.

Then came GBG and impossibly crazy amounts of boost on defending armies to overcome that "normal" methods would struggle to counter. Shortly after its release they bumped the attrition cap even higher, and I assumed it was because Hover Tanks in CE might've been "too strong". I even made the suggestion at the time that if that was the problem they should just age-lock GBG like they do GvG instead to keep attrition cap more approachable by normal means. Their response though was that they didn't want GBG to be something where you fight all day and it was important that the cap not be approachable. Basically they were building in room for power creep as well so that thinkable amounts of attack boost now would still be challenged down the road.

Sometime after that the discovery of how to pass the PME and CE blockers became public and brought us towards the current situation where OF units in industrial and FE units in progressive have so much of an advantage that they can cope with that ridiculous attrition cap. However since the "meta" in GBG involves free fights and swaps instead of competition between guilds, it's hardly its biggest problem (the world where I'm focused on GBG with advanced units I use it to bring battle *back* to GBG - and its not without costs, but it lets me find some fun in a currently very broken feature).

I still would not be surprised if when they get off their yellow bottoms and make more comprehensive changes to GBG than just the siege nerf they have on beta, that advanced troops may also become ineligible for GBG. And that's fair. If they fix GBG properly, taking away my ability to use turturrets in industrial there should probably be part of it (or if not taking it away, dissuading in some manner).
 

Orius Maximus

Well-Known Member
Yeah the tl;dr part here is that it's long term powercreep. It's just the nature of online games, people will look to find every possible advantage even if it was unintentional. And Uber's right about being too late to fix things.

It is kind of like the old days where the hood matchups were pretty whacked, though I never got hit pretty hard there. I remember having neighbors that were only two ages ahead with crappy defenses who were easy and profitable prey. Some of those high age players might not have been very good, and it didn't matter too much when the overall numbers were lower. It's okay when players have an advantage of using units that are an age ahead if they play smart. But it's frustrating to run into a camper who just parks in one age, levels up the GBs to at least 80, has ridiculously advanced units and preys on the hood with impunity. But like I said, I'm not sure how many people do that anymore, since there's not much reward in hood pvp.

I've gotten at two of each OF units by this point, but I usually just stick with my CE units in GbG. I don't have the patience do more than 50-60 fights at once, so that's usually sufficient. Plus, since I'm running the GbG strategy for my guild I like to leave fights for the other guild members to do and not make them wait around for provinces to open, SCs to build and so on.
 
Thanks for this thread. I'm very happy to have followed through. I'm sure this will help GE 5 quite a lot.
Have anyone tested GE 5 with higher age units in InA or PE? How much City Defense att/def do we need to get through all the fights?
 

ErDrRon

New Member
Once I've gotten past the blocker that requires 3 Police Stations, do I need them anymore for future advanced troops or can I sell them? They take up a lot of squares.

Thanks!
 
I am a little confused. I am already in Postmodern Era and already completed PE map; in fact my carrier (with F-117's on deck?) is scouting the next map as I type. I am at "End of This Chapter" story quest -- research Squad Tactics and Special Operations. Which will take a while because I am several technologies behind those. Does it mean I should hold off conquering Contemporary Era map until I complete the story quest?
 

UBERhelp1

Well-Known Member
I am a little confused. I am already in Postmodern Era and already completed PE map; in fact my carrier (with F-117's on deck?) is scouting the next map as I type. I am at "End of This Chapter" story quest -- research Squad Tactics and Special Operations. Which will take a while because I am several technologies behind those. Does it mean I should hold off conquering Contemporary Era map until I complete the story quest?
I would, Unless you have techs saved though, you won't get that far through the CE or higher stories. You should be able to get some CE troops though!
 
Hi, I'm a bit unsure of what to do next. Going for Hovers while in InA or PE.

On the PE map I negotiated the first 4 of Kreigreich, then fought Uxrow and Gaelford. I'm at the quest Defeat General Feldmarschall Schledorf

Do I fight or negotiate the remaining sectors of Kreigreich? Only interested in getting Hovers.
thank you.
 
I was able to fight all the way through GE 5 with my Hover Tanks in the Progressive Era and 136/100 city stats, HT's didn't take any damage at all until the third from last post, auto battled all except for the last that was an easy manual battle win.

Getting advanced age units is all the more important now if you are still in a low enough age to do so.
 

.Kamil

New Member
Hi UBERhelp
I am a little confused., I am arleady in InA and finished the CE map . I got the "Dictator's Death" quest. Can I complete them immediately, or is it better to wait until the first cMAP FE sector is taken?
 

UBERhelp1

Well-Known Member
Hi UBERhelp
I am a little confused., I am arleady in InA and finished the CE map . I got the "Dictator's Death" quest. Can I complete them immediately, or is it better to wait until the first cMAP FE sector is taken?
Wait. If you complete it, you'll be left with no story quest until you reach FE, which can be pretty confusing.
 
I'm currently on the progressive quest trench fever, according to the quest list on the wiki I should have gotten a quest to build a decoration 2 quests ago yet still have not received it.

Are the wiki quests possibly out of order?

After the progressive story has ended, are there any other specific tech's needed for research thru OF or are they all any tech?

Also does anyone know if the wildlife event may have police stations available?
 
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