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Rill 
Postmaster General 
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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 Topic: Newb DiariesPosted: 06 Jun 2014 at 07:29 |
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Ellery has moved to Broken Lands. Read her continuing adventures in Broken Lands Diaries.
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 02 Jun 2014 at 04:19 |
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Day 22, 8 p.m.
My city is building along at a good pace. Most build times are 4-10 hours now, so I only get to upgrade 4-5 buildings a day. I now have a level 10 marketplace, level 13 storehouse, level 11 library, level 9 consulate, and level 8 mage tower (upgrading to level 9 now). I produce more than 900 of each resource per hour, except food. I've been looking around for something that I can attack with my tiny army. I've decided rather than focus on winning, I am going to try to get experience for my commanders. I will use that to upgrade their heroism values, and hopefully eventually the combination of heroism and army size will be big enough to allow me to win. For right now, suicide missions it is. So I found these nice wolves on the plains very close to my city. Troop levels present, foreign reinforcements:
I sent my army out; it was utterly destroyed and of course I did not get a report other than this sad note: Two opposing forces clash against each other. Cavalry comes into its own when able to strike hostile forces at will, and from unexpected directions - and nowhere is this more feasible than on open plains. Lightly armoured spear units, however, prefer terrain where there's some cover available. Fighting defensively on open plains, cavalry draws strength from the ability to form and reform their lines of engagement depending on the direction of battle, and it is here where cavalry excels.
Your troops were crushed so comprehensively that there was no one left alive to bring back a combat report. Each commander gained 10 exp -- so I will be able to give each of them one level of heroism in an hour, after they have resurrected. And it is much cheaper to resurrect a level 0 commander than to buy another chariot. I am building 6 more chariots for my next attack, to equal the heroism value of one chariot commander with level 1 heroism. The units will finish in about 1 hour 25 minutes, shortly after my commanders finish resurrecting. I scout the wolves and find the following numbers remain 4 5 remain. Troop levels present, foreign reinforcements:
So it looks like I killed 14 wolfpups, 7 grey wolves, 4 white wolves and 1 alpha wolf. Sure, just enough to make them angry. That should be 14 + 7 + 2*4 + 3 exp, or 32 total. I guess it rounds down -- I barely missed getting 11 experience per commander, but I'm not complaining. I hope the wolves don't breed too fast! I'd like it to stay at about that number when I hit them next time -- I might be able to kill them in about 3 attacks. My next commander resurrection will take 2 hours though, if I level each commander to 1 in heroism. Note that this would be more efficient if I were doing it with knight commanders, but I don't have the patience to wait to make knights (it requires a level 15 barracks). When I get some, I'll repeat the experiment to see how much better it goes under that condition. Update: I think I should mention that the poor dead chariot's name is Ron. RIP Ron. Not to worry, I already have a husband lined up for his widow. Some farmer named Alf Shea. Can't imagine anything going wrong there ... 10:20 p.m. I've found an alternative target -- a gathering of wild dogs. It seems they might offer slightly more experience and a lower total defense against cavalry than the remaining wolves. They are a bit further away, but only a matter of a few squares. According to my calculations, my newly buffed army with 7 chariots and 3 chariot commanders with level 1 heroism SHOULD beat the dogs IF the plains bonus is 30% as described. So I decide to give it a try. And ... VICTORY!!! Two opposing forces clash against each other. Cavalry comes into its own when able to strike hostile forces at will, and from unexpected directions - and nowhere is this more feasible than on open plains. Lightly armoured spear units, however, prefer terrain where there's some cover available. Fighting defensively on open plains, cavalry draws strength from the ability to form and reform their lines of engagement depending on the direction of battle, and it is here where cavalry excels.
Your victorious troops retrieved: Not too bad for a loss of only 5 chariots. Each of my commanders gained 101 experience, enough to level them up to 3 heroism each -- and close to level 4. Counting the earlier loss of one chariot, that's 3-plus levels on each of 3 commanders for a loss of only 6 chariots. Pretty efficient. I am sending out a scout to count the number of hides they dropped. I will send a cotter as soon as one returns. (Now I'm actually glad someone bumped me off the grapes I was harvesting earlier.) I need to rebuild my army and give my commanders some time to recover health -- at 2 per hour, recovering 76 health will take a day and a half. However, I don't think I need 100 health to beat those wolves; probably more like 50 health -- if they are still there tomorrow, then I should be able to beat them handily. In order to maximize the heroism bonus, I need to have 19 chariots in my army. For that, I need some more gold to pay them. I raise my taxes from 1% to 5%. I am going to need to upgrade another farm and do some more resource upgrades, but I am still positive on food for now, and have close to or greater than 900 per hour production of each resource. Plus I have a surplus of 68 gold per hour, enough to pay for 22 chariots. Using armies is fun! Edited by Rill - 02 Jun 2014 at 06:42 |
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 01 Jun 2014 at 04:11 |
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Day 21, 8:02 p.m.
It's been a quiet day around Villa Rilla. (That's not the name of my alt's city, but wouldn't it be cool if it were?) Finished level 13 storehouse and level 10 architects office. Built consulate to level 7. I'm researching Butchery, in case I want to make some skinners, and Spymaster so I can make advanced spies. I'm upgrading a farmyard to level 11, which is taking FOREVER, and a lumberyard to level 10. Thinking of raising my taxes a smidgen once I'll have a bit more food production. I plan to build the mage tower to level 8 tonight, so I will have a decent resource base. Finally I have enough population to start a second city, although I think I will hold off until Broken Lands opens. Or for another week or two at least! I started to build an army today -- all t1 cavalry. I am building 4 units; I have enough research to make 3 of them into commanders, then they will lead an army of 1. Since commanders have no gold upkeep cost, this makes it cheaper to maintain them. Still, there's not much I can kill with just 4 t1 cavalry. I scouted some wild dogs near me, but there are around 100 of them, too much for my tiny force. I'm checking out some wolves and salamanders that are a bit further away but on plains terrain. In order to afford my new army, I also sell some of the basic herbs I've been collecting. I make 30k gold from 200 herbs; that should support my tiny army for a while. Maybe I'll go all out and make six cavalry! Good thing I've been stockpiling beer, horses and saddles.
Edited by Rill - 01 Jun 2014 at 04:12 |
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 31 May 2014 at 05:06 |
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Day 20, 8:48 p.m.
Build times are getting to be significantly longer than they were. On average my builds last around 3 hours now. I was able to build a level 12 storehouse and a level 11 library, so my storage and research point production have improved substantially. I also built a level 1 stonemason so I could complete the Defensive Structures research and build a wall. I upgraded some more resource plots to level 10 and my architects office to level 9; I now save almost an hour off some of the longer builds. I have 3 herbalists harvesting ancient oak now, although they spend a lot more time walking than they do harvesting. The grape patch is a little closer, and I send 3 cotters at a time to that; I have accumulated 903 grapes and 1257 herbs, along with 506 hides. I think I will try to sell most of my herbs and hides before I move to Broken Lands (when they release it). That way I will have gold to support an army when I get there. I still haven't built any cavalry yet, although I now have that option. I'm going to wait until I've upgraded resources and food a bit more, and gained more population, so I have a higher tax base to support the army. My goal for longer overnight builds is to upgrade storehouse to level 13 and architects office to level 10, if I can eke out the resources -- I'm a bit short on wood. I researched Spirit of Nourishment and cast the spell on my city; it's giving me about an extra 10 food per hour. Tomorrow is the first day of "summer" in Illy, so I will lose some clay and a little wood production, but gain a bit of food production. Other than continuing to upgrade resource production, my goals in the next few days are to upgrade consulate and mage tower as well as architects office. I also need to build the foundry and carpentry to level 5 in order to unlock the research for blacksmith and fletcher. I am pretty close to the population required to start a second city, but I'm going to hold off on that until they open Broken Lands. (Unless they announce a significant deferral, in which case ... perhaps I will terraform somewhere in Elgea.) I started building my third settler, so when I reach 2k population total, I will also be ready to start a third city. My hourly resource production is 0 gold, 861 wood, 797 clay, 842 iron, 869 stone, 34 food, 40 mana and 116 research points per hour. |
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 30 May 2014 at 00:08 |
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Day 19, 3:53 p.m. I look for a research that takes relatively few research points related to research time and settle on geomancy, a 2-hour research for 150 research points. I have 1460 research points now and need 2000 for the cavalry research; since I accumulate 87 research points an hour, it will take 6.5 hours to accumulate enough additional research points if I don't spend any more. I think some of the geomancy researches are relatively low in research points compared to the time they take; I might fill in with those for the rest of the day and hope that I will manage to eke out enough research points by the end of the day to research cavalry overnight; if not, I should be able to do it tomorrow. I was thieved yesterday; fortunately my vault protected everything by a little bit of basic resources and gold. My rune killed 12 advanced thieves, so they did not get nearly enough resources from me to justify the loss of books and saddles. Hopefully they will decide that it was a money-losing proposition and not try it again. If they do, my seeking rune research has completed, and next time I will be able to fry 40 of them at a time. Although I was able to identify the culprit, I don't plan to name and shame them unless they do it again. So if you're reading this and are thieving from new players with only one city ... think twice about that.  It seems I am once again low on resources to build with, probably because I just started on level 10 resource upgrades. So I think I'm going to focus on resources again today; I can still build continuously, but I need to plan carefully. With luck, I will be able to upgrade another one of each resource to level 10 today and MAYBE eke out an overnight upgrade to storehouse or library. I might choose to do mage tower instead, since it has such a long build time relative to the amount of resources required to upgrade. My second settler is just about finished, and I have the gold and other resources ready to start on my third when it does. That will pretty much wipe out my gold supply though. I have a caravan out harvesting gold, so maybe I will have a little cushion. I built one spy and sent it out to find a Heroic Human statue. I'm only planning to do the very nearby locations for these right now, since there is some speculation that Broken Lands might start soon; I don't want to be trapped by units out traveling and be unable to Tenaril. Still, it will be nice to have a little extra spy protection once I get to the Broken Lands, and Allembine Scribes are the best value for spy defense compared to gold upkeep cost. Plus, that's one less trip I'll have to make with a spy all the way to Elgea once I get to Broken Lands. I wonder if Broken lands will have its own statue mystery or something similar. Maybe with units for thief defense? That would be an awesome way to balance the changes they made to diplomatic failure rates earlier, since as it is now there's no effective way to defend against thieves. The horse nomad wants to sell me 10 horses for 2000 gold again. I send him and his horses away, explaining the realities of supply and demand. I do get 2 cows in exchange for fencing supplies, and return Sylwyss to her father in exchange for more books. I really have to let the village children know I appreciate what a good job they are doing. I sent my scouts out on another fool's errand for the king to search the marshes today. Personally, I think my scouts are falling in love with some Marren Marsh witches and staying out there camping. If you've read Angie Sage, you know what I'm talking about. |
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 29 May 2014 at 00:08 |
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Day 18, 4:05 p.m.
I'm a little under the weather today, so this will be a shorter post. I upgraded my barracks to level 10 yesterday. Was hoping to hit level 11 today so I could research t1 cavalry, but the iron and stone requirements are quite high. So I'm doing another round of resource upgrades today -- this time one of each to level 10. I completed research of Interrogation and Messengers as well as Call to Arms (to be able to hire a third commander). Today I started research of Espionage to be able to build spies and Ranged Weapons Mastery to recruit t2 bows. Harvesting has been frustrating with lots of interruptions to my caravans and cotters. Hopefully this means that there are more people active in the game. My hourly resource production is 6 gold, 677 wood, 690 clay, 687 iron, 698 stone, 72 food, 42 man and 87 research points per hour.
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 27 May 2014 at 18:18 |
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Day 17, 9:53 a.m.
I had another productive day in Illy yesterday. The longer build times are starting to slow down my progress a little bit though. For the first time, I am not very much limited by resources but instead by the length of builds. So time to upgrade the architects office, right? I managed to upgrade it to level 8 yesterday. I didn't get as many of my other builds completed as I would have liked. Did some resource upgrades and upgraded my consulate to level 3. No progress on my barracks or mage tower though. I will try to get one more level on each of those today. I did do one fairly long build yesterday, a level 10 farmyard. That is giving me some extra food production to build higher population buildings like architects office, consulate and mage tower. I also upgraded my storehouse to level 11; I can now store a little more than 10,000 of each resource. I need to keep making progress on consulate, mage tower and barracks in order to continue to unlock researches. I've done most of the ones available in those areas without an upgrade, and the remaining researches I have available are not as important as unlocking new military and diplomatic units and new spell types. I did complete the faction markets research yesterday as well as master scouting to make advanced scouts if I want. I also researched Sally Forth, which is comforting to have if someone sieges you. Sure, mostly you just attack the siege camp from another city, but it's nice to have the sally option -- especially if I move to the Broken Lands where it might make more sense for people to reinforce the city directly from far away. I never have as many cotters as I'd like, so first thing this morning I built 3 more cottages, to make a total of 6. There is an unguarded grape patch near me, so in addition to setting at least one cotter to harvest herbs every day and sending others to hides when I can find them, I can send one or more cotters to harvest grapes. I checked my inventory and I've managed to accumulate 306 hides, 1060 herbs and 70 grapes so far. Not too bad! I also made an herbalist unit and sent it forth yesterday to collect one whole unit of ancient oak. Upgrading the herbalists guild to be able to make more herbalists is on the list -- maybe after I've unlocked a bunch of research opportunities by upgrading consulate, mage tower and barracks. For now, I start the Finesse research and the Interrogation research. That will last 14 hours, time enough to upgrade my mage tower to level 5 and research Principia Magica, unlocking the ability to study a second school of magic. I think I will choose Geomancy. That could be handy if I am pioneering down in the Broken Lands. If I upgrade my mage tower to level 6, I can also do the Seeking Rune research. My hourly resource production is 4 gold, 622 wood, 650 clay, 632 iron, 642 stone, 36 food, 19 mana and 85 research points. I have 10,204 gold and 564 research points.
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 26 May 2014 at 16:42 |
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Day 16, 8:30 a.m.
I'm pleased with my progress thus far. Yesterday in addition to upgrading one of each resource to level 9, I upgraded the consulate to level 2 and mage tower to level 4. Mage tower upgrades take FOREVER. I'm sure the mages are deliberately spooking the construction workers. They are reporting levitating ladders and hammers that work by themselves. You'd think with all that "assistance" things would get done faster instead of slower, but my overseer reports he's having difficulty retaining skilled laborers. I had such a surfeit of resources that I set an upgrade to level 10 of storehouse and library overnight -- and still was maxed on many resources when I got up this morning, in spite of having more than 7,000 storage space. Things are definitely coming along nicely I got some of my favorite quests yesterday, those involving cows and books. Getting books, not selling them to unappreciative elves who have no concept of fair market value. Little Sylwyss has gone missing again today, bless her heart. I used to worry about whether she had problems at home, but honestly I can use the books her father provides every time my scouts locate her. So I MAY have started encouraging the village children to play hide and seek with her in the deep woods. Sylwyss has no sense of direction and tends to get left behind, poor little dear. I started another settler cooking yesterday -- I did not have enough gold to make 2 more. I could have sold some cows, but I'd rather wait to see if I can harvest enough from the map in the 4 days it takes this settler to finish. I finally have enough research points to begin the Merchants Guild research. I'm glad it only takes 2 hours now instead of 2 days. I may need that safe hub storage in the Broken Lands. My goal for today is to upgrade another of each resource to level 9 and cut down on build times by upgrading the architects office twice. I also want to add another level to mage tower, consulate and barracks. My hourly research production is 1 gold, 622 wood, 593 clay, 577 iron, 586 stone, 35 food, 19 mana and 85 research points. I have 10,180 gold and 390 research points. I need a bit more than 150 more population to be able to settle a second city, but now I think I will wait on that until Broken Lands opens. GM Stormcrow said it would be very (tm) soon (tm), so I sort of took that to mean within the next month or so. Usually he only says that sort of thing about something that is a week or less away. But of course, timelines have changed before. |
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Rill
Postmaster General
Player Council - Geographer Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 6903 |
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Posted: 25 May 2014 at 19:33 |
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Day 15, 11:17 a.m.
My goodness, Illyriad is abuzz with news of the new map to the south. Perhaps instead of terraforming, my alt will explore this new land -- I'm glad I haven't yet sent out settlers! Perhaps I should set some new ones cooking, with a goal of being able to Tenaril and settle two cities when Broken Lands opens. That way I can continue this diary as a record of the opening of new lands. Sounds like fun, no? I am just sad that so many of my friends won't be able to participate because of the account limitations. It seems I will need more beer in order to make 2 more settlers for my third city. I start some cooking, as well as horses and cows. Now, on to making my current city the best it can be. I upgraded one of each resource to level 9 yesterday and upgraded the barracks to level 7. I completed commander researches for heroism, forced march and accelerated healing, as well as ranged weapons. Today I will complete more military researches. I will upgrade one more of each resource to level 9 today and work on some mage tower upgrades -- I have a sense that runes will be VERY useful in Broken Lands. Perhaps I should also prioritize my faction markets and trader resources. Wouldn't want to be all alone in the wilderness without even a trader! My hourly resource production is 0 gold, 583 wood, 536 clay, 522 iron, 530 stone, 48 food, 7 mana and 62 research points. I have 22,012 gold and 1,273 research points.
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Chris G
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Joined: 12 Dec 2012 Location: Glendale AZ Status: Offline Points: 20 |
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Posted: 25 May 2014 at 04:25 |
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Wow Rill,,this is great,,, Could almost be a template for new players coming in,,good stuff,,
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