There are five aspects of the game that are the benchmark for a well developed city.
1)doing all DCs; 2) completing every Event, 3) farming Quests, 4) completing GE every week; 5) going deep in GBG on a daily basis.
These 5 aspects provide incredible treasures and underpin rapid city development. They will require designing your city to be able to acquire and level GBs and have good development of the fundamental Resources of the game, Coins, Supplies, Goods, and FPs.
This process does take time, but started as early as Bronze Age and conitnued through the Eras is an effective way to always have a city that can be used to acheive the goals you have for this game.
This is a bootstrap process, you have to develope tools (Coins and Supply production)to develope tools (Goods and FP production and Special Buildings and Great Buildings) to develope the tools (DC, Event, RQ, GE, GBG capability) needed to achieve this.
I have three GBs on both. Not sure why they wouldn't show up though.
Glad to hear you have GBs, sometimes they don't show up where I looked. You'll want to acquire and level GBs that support your play style. Yeah Colo, is not a GB you will want, I suspect some of the Culture Buildings in LMA are more efficient (Happiness / Tile).
I try to work on GE every week but I always end up resource poor. I have dabbled in GvG? (Guild Battlegrounds) and found it utterly confusing.
Speak to your Guild Leader about Guild Battlegrounds (GBG) and Guild Expeditions (GE). If your Guild Leader can't give you useful advice and help developing capability on any aspect of the game, you should consider looking for a Guild that is committed to working with new players.
I stress how important it is for rapid game development to be in a good Guild that supports your game play style and provides help and advice.
As for DC, I'm going show my ignorance and tell you I have no idea what that is.
Daily Challenges. Being able to complete Daily Challenges is a good test of city productivity and balance. It's also great practice for Events. It' also one of the aspects of FoE (GE and Events are two more, there are others) that get a bit more difficult as you advance in Era. DCs are the first 'test' of city development, if you can do DCs you'll garner some useful treasures, if you can't do DCs you're prolly not ready to move up in Era.
Also, your note about advancing too quickly is funny since I stayed in HMA long after I had completed every technology and supporting buildings. I'm glad to know that this is actually a good strategy, sadly I couldn't resist the opportunity to complete a tech on the next age...I need to have more patience apparently. Are there any indicators of when its a good idea to move to the next age?
As noted in my signature, Patience the primary virtue in this game. There;s other nuggets you might find useful in my sig,.
Algona's rule of thumb for advancing in Era:
Given the game gets more difficult as you advance in Era, and due to the ease of acquiring and leveling advanced Era GBs and the great SBs available from DCs, Events, RQs, GE, and GBG, the only reason to move up in Era is to acquire more Expansions to place more GBs and SBs.
This roughly translates as until your city is crammed full with top tier GBs and SBs (which will require mastering those five aspects noted earlier) why advance?
Instead of moving up in Era, you can devote your efforts into developing your city. That will make successive moves up in Era easier.
I know there's a lot to learn, but the depth of thus game is one of the defining features.
Any questions?
