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Here are my first dozen questions:
1. Best tax rate after Newbie Peas Mode but not having
a bit standing army?
2) Change your tax rate to 0%. You need taxes
to generate gold. You need gold to make units and support those units. As a
newbie, you will NOT be making units for a while yet. Taxes to generate gold
reduce your production of basic resources (wood, clay, iron, stone, and food).
Early on, these basic resources are much more important to you than gold is. As
you grow and start building units, you will need to raise your tax rate.
2. Is there a way to defend vs Thieves? (instead
of reacting after I've been burgled)
10) Most likely, a new player will suffer
attacks from Diplomatic units before armies. Diplos are anonymous, armies
identify the attacker. You will defend against enemy Diplos with first, your
Killing Rune. Second, by building your own force of Diplos. Your Diplos can
stop enemy Diplos. But your defending force needs to be about 50% the size of
the attacking force to be effective. Also, only Diplos of the same type stop
enemy Diplos (ie, only thieves stop thieves, only scouts stop scouts, etc). You
will build Diplos in your Consulate. Also, a low level vault is helpful to
preserve a small amount of books and other advanced goods from thieves. If
thieves strike, they will deplete your rune, and you will need books to cast a
fresh rune. So, the vault could save a few books so that you can re-cast your
rune without having to wait for new books to be made.
This is an excellent guide on self-defense for
newbs:
http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/basic-self-defense-for-new-players_topic2368.html
3. Value of the Vault...does it defend enough
resources to be worth the effort?
See response to #2
4. When should I start
researching Sovereignty stuff?
The absence of providing guidance to newbies in my guide is
a clear indication that Sovereignty is not a game element relevant to a newbie.
5. If a tree falls in the forest and my wife is
nowhere around, am I still wrong?
6. Best quantity of scouts and diplomats at the one
week mark?
7. Is harvesting resources near another person's city
cause for an offense in this community?
9) Marketplace. You need a Marketplace to
make caravans. You need caravans to ship goods to friendly cities, make trades
in the Global Market, and Harvest Resources that spawn on the Map. See the
separate topic here on Harvesting.
From the separate topic: When your van is
interrupted this is called "bumping." This is annoying to many
players but it is a common occurrence. I recommend not letting this irritate
you. It is a widely-held view that van bumping is a-ok and some players even
find it fun to bump each other. I do.
Killing vans, however, is widely considered an act
of war. So I recommend that you
not do this.
Some players think they should send an army to
guard a resource site and prevent other players from harvesting it. I consider
this being selfish. Some players will try to destroy armies guarding resources.
8. Does bumping occur most often when two people just
try for the same resource at the same time?
See above.
9. Why does my wife say "dammit Mike" when i
dance like MC Hammer in mah big pants?
10. From your experience, is the Architect Office even
worth being built at all?
5) ***The new building Architect's Office is
best deferred by new players. You might want this building later, but it will
not make a significant benefit early on. It's probably best to wait until your
pop is around 400-500 to start this building. A level 10 will earn you a 15%
decrease in build times for buildings. But it has an hourly food maintenance
cost of 113/hr. Also, it requires almost 17K each basic resource to build this
to level 10. However, if you are a player that has an empty building queue
frequently OR if you use Prestige to speed build, then I recommend NOT building
this improvement.
11. Have any of you conquered an NPC city and was it
worth the effort?
12. Can you level up your commanders against NPC armies/cities?