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[DeletedUser1767]

I know there's a number of us who have started new cities recently in order to see what it's like to play the current version of the game from the beginning, and I was curious about how these experiments have been going so far.

My (elven) Beta city is now well into chapter three. I was going for a sort of Minimal City Experiment with it, where I'm not allowing myself to complete more than the minimum number of provinces per chapter, and I'm not allowed to spend any more diamonds on it (apart from the buy-one-get-one-free builder deal at the start). My city has:

- Six workshops
- Six boosted Tier I factories
- Four boosted Tier II factories
- Three boosted Tier III factories (brand new!)

So far things are going... really well, actually. There are definitely some bottlenecks in my future, and I might not be able to rearrange substantially without deleting some buildings and then rebuilding them ( ), and having only six workshops makes me nervous. And I wish the Magic Academy weren't so blasted big. But I'm actually really happy with how my little Beta city is coming along. Space is tight, but I've got enough room for everything I wanted to build, I'm making enough goods, I'm not hurting for coins or supplies... honestly, things are going a lot better than I'd thought they would be. (It definitely helps that I've got a great fellowship and a good neighbourhood.)

BUT.

I'm a pacifist, for philosophical/ideological reasons, and I have never fought a battle on Elvenar in any of my cities. My Beta city has a level one Barracks because it has to, and exactly one level one Armory (mostly to remind me that eventually I'll need to house Orcs), and... that's it. I don't need a Training Grounds, I don't need more armories, I don't want any of the martial Wonders. Even controlling for the fact that fighters probably require fewer goods than I do, it's hard for me to look at my city and come to any other conclusion but that fighters must nevertheless need more space than I do.

So... that's really why I'm posting this: I'm curious about the experiences of other people with strategies different from mine. Who else has been experimenting with minimal cities under the new regime? If you're fighting, how are you using the space? Are you having to make tougher choices about how to do it? Is it possible to stay within the minimum if you're a fighter? Are you building fewer factories than you did in your original cities?

My conclusion so far is that there should be at least two more expansions on the tech tree in each of the first two or three chapters.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I too am running a test city on Beta, less than half way through Ch 3. I am going a slightly different route though-- Auto-fight only! I've stated many times that I think you should be able to win all battles on auto-fight if you are in the GZ, and I'm testing that. (so far so good)
You might need to up your barracks and at least some temporary armories for the inevitable "train 300 troops" quest for the Christmas event.

 

[DeletedUser1767]

You might need to up your barracks and at least some temporary armories for the inevitable "train 300 troops" quest for the Christmas event.

Maybe -- depends on how much time we have. I managed it with this setup for Halloween in both my baby cities, so it's definitely possible, if remarkably tedious.

 

[DeletedUser1681]

@Midnightsidhe : not actually what you were asking for, but my buddy has pretty much similar setup as you (barracks higher, a cpl of armories) and after battle update he's been negotiating only.
He doesn't bother to log-in much anymore because his point is now: it can be done, but how should a total newcomer know it, all the zones and such - most people try what a game feels like, they don't rush to forum in search of wisdom... and after log-out will they ever come back ? If they do, the research is actually moving at a pace which gives all kinds of update options but that elusive extra space to the city comes so slowly. And then ofc that academy thingy which a newcomer might build at early stage (oops, there went a whole expansion) .... how long can you keep the spirit up ?

.. Auto-fight only! I've stated many times that I think you should be able to win all battles on auto-fight if you are in the GZ, and I'm testing that. (so far so good)...

@SoggyShorts : What is GZ ?
Anyway I like that point of view and most depressing thing with the battle update for me has been that I feel that I've lost an option (to auto-fight). I'm quite active, but still a casual player - autofight only. In order to have that space I've been neglecting the fight related buildings as much as possible now. And that ofc hinders my attempts to get the fighting option back cause a cpl of wrong choices leave my barracks quite empty for a long time. I mean, auto-fight might not sound like much of a challenge to most players but if you compare it to scout & negotiate click click click untill the warehouse is empty it starts to sound better.

 

[DeletedUser1721]

My determination to play my beta city with an emphasis on combat disappeared when I got the non declinable quest to acquire 5 steel relics, long before I had access to tournaments, and when, due to my city's location on the map, I wouldn't get any additional steel provinces to try to fight until ring four. This, at the very very beginning of Act 2! It's now still in Act 2, and I have a quest to acquire five scrolls relics. Hello scrolls relics in... this is either ring 5, or still ring 4, unsure which that is. Still no tournament access, and the non declinable quests are pushing me to take provinces waaaaaaaay out from the goldilocks zone where the fighting should be easy (GZ). This game's quests are not balanced around staying in the GZ, and this is a brand new account just doing the quests as they appear! Since I figure any genuine new player would also be doing quests as they appear, I see no way that new players would stick with fighting if they don't just quit the game. And all the recent fighting fighting fighting updates would probably drive most new players who would otherwise stick with the game away. You've got the obvious quests driving them to not fight which are obvious, as well as constant updates to the system the quests are pushing them to not use. Pretty incompatible combination.

And anyone who says you can wait to do the quests, and you can decline the repeatable quests telling you to conquer provinces or solve x encounters or gain y relics... yes, you can.

But the point of a quest is something for a player to work towards, and given that this game only has two questlines, I am inclined to take the next step in the main questline to be something that I should be doing now. That's how most anyone who is familiar with games involving quests will take it.... generally games with quests that "should" take months to complete have a lot more than two quests for the player to be working on at a time, and the other quests are things that will help the player reach the point where they can complete that month long quest. But Elvenar doesn't have that, and so next main quest = player's next goal is the obvious assumption to take.

I also had to explain to several friends, not long ago, how to decline a repeatable quest. They had been operating under the assumption that both questlines were mandatory and had to be done. If several of my friends, who are people I asked to play the game after having been playing games with decline quest options before, had to have the decline quest button pointed out to them, how might people who haven't been playing games like this before treat the declinable quests? Probably not any differently than the main line quests.

 

[DeletedUser1767]

@Caanna : Gleep.

Yeah, I completely agree about the early questlines. They need to seriously overhaul those from the start. I've been playing this game for over a year, and even knowing that some of them become optional fast, I still never noticed when the early quests became declinable in either of my baby cities. It's just not intuitive. They also seem to have been designed with the idea that we're only ever going to touch the World Map if they force us to with questlines for provinces and relics, and that's... just not how anyone plays the game? There are a lot of things about this game that aren't obvious from the start, but the fact that you can get better boosts, more space, more trading partners, and more coins and supplies from the World Map isn't one of them.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that they should just scrap the repeating optional quests completely and do a major rewrite of the others, at least for the first few chapters. Also put more expansions into the tech tree. They should have added one each for the Magic Academy, each of the new Wonders, and the Training Grounds at the very least.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@Heffernan The GZ is the goldilocks zone where the fighting should be easy
For me, and my beta testing city, this means only scouting the exact minimum number of provinces to open the chest at the end of the chapter.
The GZ does actually extend a bit past that, but for testing purposes I'm staying low.
@Caanna Those "gain 5 steel relics" quests are brutal, I have 3 cities, and not once did I remember to hold back on clearing my boosted provinces to wait for that damn quest.
@Midnightsidhe I couldn't agree more, those quests need to go.
1. The warning that pops up when you try to decline a quest is scary and misleading for new players
2. The fact that 8 level 1 workshops can "produce" more supplies via quests than 8 level 17 workshops with 150% culture is ridiculous. And that's if I only cycled ONCE, if you are hardcore with the quests you get things like this:

Those declinable quests are great, especially the 200000 coins plus 2 advance tools. I do this 5 times every three hours and I get the equivalent of over 40 level 15 workshops

 

[DeletedUser1767]

1. The warning that pops up when you try to decline a quest is scary and misleading for new players
2. The fact that 8 level 1 workshops can "produce" more supplies via quests than 8 level 17 workshops with 150% culture is ridiculous. And that's if I only cycled ONCE, if you are hardcore with the quests you get things like this:

Those warnings aren't even accurate! Hit decline enough, and you'll come right back to it. But yeah, I remember when I was new, it took me forever to figure that out; I dutifully did all of the quests because the warnings scared me, until I noticed that the few I did decline -- the ones telling me to fight -- still came around. Now I only do them if they coincide with something I feel like doing anyway.

I think I said this already on another thread, but if the devs were serious when they said in the last video that there would be more events in the future, the repeating quests really are unnecessary. You can get much better rewards from event quests, rewards that are harder to come by, and they're not broken in the same way. They could also instigate a system where you got similarly good rewards from quests that operate on a timer, so you'd have one chance each X time period to get a rune shard or relics or something, and then when you're done, you have to wait for a while before another quest appears. That could be cool. They could even make it more interesting by offering you a choice of a few quests to complete for different rewards, but you could only choose one or two to do in each time period.

 

[DeletedUser1657]

I have been working on a project to similar to this as often people ask for "checkpoints" at each era.
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/mykans-guide-town-design-by-era.4546/

I have gotten busy of late otherwise I would have had era 2 done but other things have to take priority over games sometimes.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I have been working on a project to similar to this as often people ask for "checkpoints" at each era.
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/mykans-guide-town-design-by-era.4546/

I have gotten busy of late otherwise I would have had era 2 done but other things have to take priority over games sometimes.

I have architect plans for my chapter 6 start and finish as well as my plan for fairies if you want them.

Spoiler: Architect plans

Start of Chapter 6 (actual)
http://www.elvenarchitect.com/city/planner/b6cf4765886f44098dbff452987790d5/

End of chapter 6 (actual minus event items)
http://www.elvenarchitect.com/city/planner/e991ce878f7a4833b2af0e7521b62cc4/

Plan for chapter 7 (theoretical)
http://www.elvenarchitect.com/city/planner/712475be347e4240a0a2f80b93b8b14f/

Note: for the Chapter 7 plan I'm only using the expansions that you START the fairy chapter with +1, not sure what I'll do with the 7 other expansions that I will get during the chapter....