He said merchant pri
Nces so I assume farmer/goods merchant and such
Ugh, started out with recommending the CR guid mandana lol. It's militaristic as well but I guess one could ignore those aspects but then it wouldn't be "Heavy Questing"
Ahh I guess it would pay for me to read a little closer. Oh your hatred for the questers one day we will convince you to come over to the dark side ... Wait, how many blacksmiths are you running again? =) Though I did say I don't recommend it followed to the letter. I mean could you imagine what noon sounds like in HQ CA city with 4,000 clock makers?
Lauramiller- it really sounds like you're doing an excellent job getting to where you want to be. I'll answer your questions 1 by 1 but just keep in mind this is only my opinion.
Tribal Squares and other buildings that only produce goods daily worth it?
Tribal squares are great IF you are at or above ME and need to refine (I know you have questions about that I will answer below) based on the size and the amount of goods they make per day for a city which does not need to refine I would only build them as place holders if you have extra room. I would also build them if you don't have enough pop to run another goods building and room to build it, though there are many other things I would put down before one. Tribal Squares second benefit of coin helps with spamming the collect coin quest.
What are the GBs I need to get going forward?
Essentially Chateau if you're going to utilize the quests is huge. Having a lot of goods building may make you a prime target for plunderers. Since goods buildings can't be motivate they are always vulnerable. It may be a good idea to invest in a defense GB. A pop building would be good as well, clearing out a lot of room you can use for anything else and obviously goods GBs which cannot be plundered.
Is it better to wait until I've leveled the GBs as far as I can before advancing an age?
While it's certainly a matter of opinion I will say I completely think that you should level GBs before advancing. Of course this is my play style, other people may find it rather boring and the point of the game is to enjoy it. Leveling GBs (and acquiring higher age ones) puts you in a better position come the next levels neighborhood shuffle. You don't want to find yourself as #80 in a new hood, it makes you a target, consequently #1 comes with it's own set of unique quirks. Putting yourself in the best position possible before taking the leap to a new era, stock piling FP and trying to get some of that eras goods, will always pay off for you.
I also don't really understand about refined goods, which makes me wonder what I need to be prepared for going forward.
Starting in modern era you will need to refine older goods when making new goods. The era you will need to refine for modern is Colonial. This is a list of all the goods buildings in the game and what they require to run
https://en.wiki.forgeofempires.com/index.php?title=Goods_Buildings. Essentially you need to take goods that are in your inventory and feed them into the building to get ME goods. You would put yourself in a much better position if from CA on, you stockpiled as many as you possibly can, you will use them later.
Once you reach TE you will be double refining your goods, meaning you feed in your already refined ME goods to create the new.
Your GBs will produce the unrefined goods needed to create your current goods at a higher rate. Here's where tribal squares pay off, the goods from tribal squares are already refined. The only gbs that produce refined goods are Dynamic Tower and Seed Vault (to my knowledge someone please correct me if there's another) Dynamic Tower gives you goods from the age of a building you aid and Seed Vault works similarly to a Wishing Well.
Currently I have two of each boosted goods building from the current era and two from the previous era up, plus one from the age before that, but I'm not sure if this method scales up.
It depends on what era you are in and if you're currently negotiating GE. To my knowledge there's no real science behind it. I keep 2 from current 2 from old but I adjust if I see my stockpile is being depleted. If you negotiate GE than you've noticed previous era's goods are used throughout and you're going to need to continue producing them in order to play. Since your GBs are no longer making them and unless you have other buildings that are, keeping around a building or two is smart. You will also stop receiving previous era goods from quests. Depending on how much GE you do, you may need to have more of a previous era's goods buildings build than your current. Right now I could stand to drop my two current goods buildings but not my last eras.
Before you get to a new era you can pan through the requirements to unlock. Sometimes they have something funny thrown in, 120 of a good from 4 eras ago. This can give you some idea what you need to have in stock before it springs itself on you. There may still be some surprises in the C map if you plan on negotiating. If you'd like to acquire GBs higher than your current era whether by trading FP or an awesome guildmate giving them to you, you are going to need goods (typically BA/IA are used) to trade them back at at least .5 of what they're giving you. That's just the way the system works, no way around it. Keeping a good stockpile of lower aged goods for when you may want to make a trade is a good idea so you're not stuck either trying to make them ASAP or handing over higher valued goods.
I have zero military buildings. I put the Rogue's Hideout I won in storage because I have so many of them from the relic hunt and they seem to be poor at city defense, so I don't have much use for them.
Yes rogues are horrible as city defenders but great for GE/PVP/GVG offense. There will be times when due to a quest or an event you will need to fight. 1 of the unattached units you've gotten from GE + 7 rogues are usually all you will need.
I did read some of Cosmic Raven's post. I dunno. Heavy Questing seems kind of ... not fun. Just doing the same thing over and over again. I tried to do it a bit in HMA, but somehow quests started asking me to do things that only someone in LMA could do, so I figured I had no choice but to move on.
Yeah I pretty much agree with HQ=Not Fun. I prefer my own 'medium' quest style. I'm glad you read it though because it does get results and shows you just what is possible to achieve with the right GBs and the quests. The recurring quests are a huge wealth of potential that many players skip over entirely or miss out on. My advice for questing is to set your city up in a way where you place a higher value on things that help you achieve a quest because that quest gives you more than just the building. For instance some people really like the multiproduction buildings for FP and saying how close some of them are size wise to a sacred sky watch at measure it's worth in FP/square. However multiproduction buildings do not produce coins as SSW and SoKs do, these added benefits of the coins enables you to spam the gather coin quest over and over upon collection netting you goods, more FP, more coin and supply (which you can spam unbirthday quest with) medals and BPs.
I don't recommend building your entire game around it like the heavy questers but I do recommend always keeping quests in mind when deciding if something is worth while or not. Collecting my city can be tedious (though just made less so by the awesome new quest window) but every time I do it's also like picking up all the things I was going to anyway but also pulling the leaver at the casino and seeing what I won. Just with much better odds and casinos don't have levers anymore I don't think. =)
It's fitting to end on a note about Cosmic Raven based on the insane length of this post.
And I expect I think I'm more intermediate than beginning.
You seem to have a very good understanding of the game and exactly what you want to get out of it. There's a lot of intricate details to this game, which is one of the many reasons I like it so much. A lot of new comers don't seem to have the patience or desire to learn it and see how much fun the monotony can be. You're already leaps and bounds ahead.
