The Magical 7 Food Mountain

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The Magical 7 Food Mountain
(Or A Guide on Exodus-Tenaril)

What is so magical about a 7 food mountain?

Mountains usually offer the best defenses for a town. Why isn’t everyone living on one then? Well, it is hard to grow crops on the crags. Why should that matter? Because food is important. Like very important. Your population is based on your hourly food consumption. And when you start to have a lot of mouths to feed, food becomes a little more scarce. So by having a 7 food city, you will have more food = more population = more taxes = more fun! And it is possible to overcome the fact that all the good mountains only have 5 food with a little bit of magic.

Who here is ready to become a terraforming mage?

Magic wouldn’t be all that special if everyone could do it. Only the few are ready to perform this feat. The requirements are as follows:

- You have never used your Tenaril's Spell of Ultimate Teleportation
- You are ready to settle your 2nd town (This can work if you have more towns, but it isn’t nearly as nice. It will take a good bit more work, but I am sure you will be able to figure it out after reading this guide)
- Your capital has Exodus researched
- You have found a nice mountain location and 2 plains location (I will discuss these locations more in a bit)

So you meet the requirements? Awesome! Let’s press on.

The 3 locations

So the requirement list mentions 3 locations

The Mountain
The Temporary Home
The Permanent Location

The Mountain

Now, I should clarify something here. It doesn’t *need* to be a mountain. You can have be any square that the teleport spell allows. (Psst, here is a link that lists the requirements for the teleport: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/8-moving-your-capital-city_topic1306.html ) I am just using mountain because it is a common target location for this process. (Also it is easier to refer to “The Mountain” than “the target of your Tenaril teleportation spell.”)

You will want to consider all the normal real estate advice. (here is a great link for that: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/where-do-i-put-my-city-a-guide-to-real-estate_topic3623.html)

One other thing you will need to watch for is non-confed towns closer than 10 squares. As that link (You know what? I am going to post it again just in case you were lazy and didn’t click it: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/8-moving-your-capital-city_topic1306.html) describes, this square “Cannot be a square that is within 10 squares' radius of another player who is not in your alliance, nor in an alliance that is confederated with yours.”

The Temporary Home

This is the spot you will be settling your town at. The main thing to look for is the resource distribution you want. So that could be 7 food and 3 stone (One of my favorite distributions), 3 clay, or whatever you want. You will still need to be aware of towns closer than 10 squares. If there are any, you might want to tell them that you are thinking of settling there, but will be moving the town.

The Permanent Location

This spot will be where exodus lands. So you will want to look at the resource distribution, surrounding terrain, food dolmens, good neighbors (both player and faction), and all that other good stuff. And since you will be using exodus, this spot can not be within 10 squares a non-confed/ally player. Well actually, there is another way around this. If you can get Sov V on the square, you can exodus there (but not teleport) even if you are not allied with them. But most of the time it is easier (and less expensive) to just do a temporary confed. And just claiming Sov V and exodusing there without permission can get you into trouble.

Once you find these locations, you will probably want to mark them with an occupying army. This lets other people know that a city is on the way to that spot. It doesn’t take much to do, but can save you big headaches. And if you don’t have armies to spare, you can ask your alliance mates to hold the spot for you.

Time to Don Your Pointy Magical Hat

So you did all of your magic homework by meeting the requirements and finding (and maybe marking) the three locations? Great job! But the deed is not done yet.

The first step is to send settlers to the Temporary Home location. Once you click “Send” you will be twiddling your thumbs for a bit....

They landed? Excellent! Now exodus your capital to the Permanent Location location. Even more twiddling your thumbs... You can upgrade the town you settled some... And twiddle your thumbs some more... (Just in case you didn’t know, mages spend a lot of time twiddling their thumbs. You can always identify an undercover mage by looking for calluses on their thumbs)

You capital arrived! Super excellent! While your city was exodusing, the town you settled on the Temporary Home square became the new capital, with 7 food! And since exodus takes on the resource distribution of the square you are landing on, your formly 5-food capital is now a 7-food non-capital. (Note: there are other changes that happen when you exodus, like all buildings/plots delevel down to 12 (I don’t suggest upgrading much past level 12 if you are planning on exodusing), but you can read about the other changes here: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/29sept11-moving-cities_topic2495.html)

And here comes the real magic. The new capital now has Tenaril's Spell of Ultimate Teleportation! And that moving spell keeps the resource distribution of the square you are moving from! So go to your castle of your new capital and head to the Relocation tab. Very, very carefully enter the coordinates of the Mountain (or whatever) location. This can only be done once, so you really don’t want to leave out any minus signs or some other silly mistake. And then click the “I wish to move here” button. And.... Poof! Magic! You now have moved your new capital from the 7 food to a 5-food mountain (or whatever) and brought the 7 food with you! Congrats! You rock!

Thank you for sitting through Terraforming 101. If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please speak up!

Epilogue on Magical Mishaps

Being a terraformation mage isn’t easy. Even the Circle of Five has made a number of mistakes. (I hope my fingers don’t get broken for writing that..) Doing this feat will require a lot of patience as the whole process can take more than a month to do. And that is if everything goes smoothly. I am aware of some players that have tried this without realizing how much effort it would take and then got so frustrated they decided to quit the game. So if you are anxious to get out of the new player ring or are a little low on patience, this is not the best method for you. If you are willing to take the time to get a really good defensive town, then have at it and good luck!

Edited by Vanerin - 28 Aug 2012 at 02:38