Wow, got lots of great comments and insights!
I have zero interest in GvG and only slightly more interest in attack my neighbors, so things that appeal to players who do enjoy those facets- and, in their eyes, make them "competitive"- do not appeal to me- thus, I suppose, in their eyes making me "noncompetitive".
I wouldn't really consider your playstyle competitive because you aren't trying to be an adversity to other guilds or purposely trying to outdo others. But even in games where there is a clear objective of winning, people still have lots of fun exploring other facets of the game, and since there is no "winning objective" in this game, there are loads of other opportunities to have fun. My post wasn't trying to say that competitive play was the only way to have fun, or even that competitive play would be fun for everyone. I find it fascinating that there are so many ways to play this game and enjoy it, and it's one of the reasons why I picked up this game.
It happens that I engage in a very, very light version of his "Heavy Questing" in that I generally complete somewhere around a dozen or so RQs each day (more depending on the rewards or other factors) on each server. I find that to be at or about my limit for such things before crossing into rote gameplay.
Yeah, I would agree that doing tons of RQs on multiple worlds is extraordinarily tedious and could lead to burnout quite easily (if I recall correctly, you have 6 worlds?). I used to have 3 worlds, and now I stick to only one because I wanted to focus on one world for the RQs and snipes. Sniping would be super tedious on more than one world.
But for the era (pre-tavern, pre-GE, less events, less SoKs won per event), questing was the main thing you could do to increase your FP throughput and thus getting your core setup in lower ages did make some sense.
That was what I was thinking mostly with CR's strategy, that recurring quests are the best way to make FP outside of the event buildings, GE, GE buildings, but then CR got dogmatically attached to the supply RQs that he was spouting out mathematically incorrect information like the Cherry Garden set (even at level 1) being outclassed by supply RQs, Terrace farms being outclassed by 2-supply-building RQs. I was incredibly shocked when CR says this because with expected values of FP and whatnot, these FP buildings always beat the 2-supply building RQs. For such a guy who looks over spreadsheets and numbers very carefully, his overlooking of event buildings was very surprising.
What he was selling wasn't anything new - people had developed and run similar strategies for years prior - but rather his guide was mostly written to appeal to the idiot incapable of their own analysis. And any semi-coherent strategy is well ahead of an average* player's progress.
Yeah, I've heard clockmaker questing was being used by Colonial players before even Indy was in the game on the Danish servers.
CR's guide helped me a lot so i built a good enough city for the first year of my game.
CR's guide does go into how recurring quests work, which was valuable to me, and his advice on city design was good enough (although I still had lots of learn about city design and still continue to learn today after reading the guide).
Still, seeing people who has less than 70 fp per day working on their Arcs makes me laugh all the time.
Was this a dig at me? I mean, my FP production is at 28 on collection, which less than half of that 70 fp figure, but I do the 25-FP strat with the Vikings which gets me around 20 FP a day on average, which still is just over halfway of the 70 FP figure, and yet I'm satisfied with my progress on my Arc. I've talked with others, and getting a pre-30 level every 3-5 days I've heard is good progress. I wish I could bump that fp figure up some more, but I started that town just near the end of Carnival, so it's been rough. Combine that with the horrendous luck with the cherry garden selection kits, and that's why my FP production is peanuts.
I read the guide and it helped me understand the game better. I stuck to it during the earlier ages and then drifted from it gradually as I understood more about what it could and couldn't do as well as the things that I wanted to do. It's not perfect, but I still respect it.
I would agree that CR's guide brings a fresh, new perspective of the game if one were coming into FoE with no existing prior knowledge. There are a couple of good takeaways from it, but I wouldn't give it enough respect to recommend it to newer players, as some of the advice given in CR's comments are things that I disagree with heavily. I would just explain how RQs work to players who want to learn more about them.
If you 'sell your soul' to the Heavy Questing strategy it will work very well for you. You will be swimming in goods, FP, medals, etc. Just like the Arc. Which is why I dislike both. Any single strategy that occupies 99% of your game focus and enables you to ignore large sections of game play doesn't appeal to me in the least.
And I totally get that. With either strategy, there is not much emphasis on fighting manually, which I think is part of the fun in this game.
CM played in my world as one of the highest ranked players, a leader in one of the highest ranked guilds. For his time yes it was a good strategy and it did well for many people. Dozens of his guild mates, friends and people outside followed his directions and for a time they were very formidable.
That's quite interesting! So around what time did the level 80 Arc supersede HQS as the dominant strategy for competitive, maybe for me to better understand the perspective of time, in relations to Dulahan's guide?
If you were to look at his stats and his GBs now they wouldn't seem impressive but for the time he was. GBs were not always able to be leveled above 10, there was a hard cap, power leveling was not a thing. I do not know when the change was made it was either before my time playing or before I played in any way where GB caps would have affected me.
I didn't play the game back then, so I wouldn't know how impressive it was to get all of your GBs to level 10. Did people complain about getting excess useless blueprints once they got the full set in the pre-hard cap times?
I'm kind of surprised to hear this. His strategy would still work now, exactly as it did then. I didn't like it because it was boring, but it did, and still does, work.
I think Manda was trying to say that HQS, while it works now, is outmatched by the Level 80+ Arcs' grasp on the game on generating nearly every single resource in the game. While we can debate over whether the tedium for a high-level Arc was greater, or the HQS strategy was greater, both had some form of tedium and work that would appeal to only a certain niche of players who wouldn't mind it at all, and will continue to strive towards progressing their town. And then based on that, that certain niche of players who don't mind the tedium would choose the Arc if they wish to progress faster in the game.
