TERMS AND DEFINITIONS
- This section contains commonly used terms and acronyms used not only in this guide, but in the forums (anyone feel free to PM me or add more if I miss any)
AP: attribute point
AM: archmage
BA: battle acuity research area
buff: to increase power. For example, "Loki needs a buff" would mean that the speaker thinks that Loki is too weak an needs to be improved.
CG: Jotun "cave giant".
DL: Divine learning spell
DP: Defensive power.
DPA: Defense Per Acre. Literally, total defense divided by acreage. 100,000 defense with 1000 acres would be 100 DPA.
GB: Gefjun's Blessing spell.
GoL: Tyr's "Guardian of Light".
GP: God Power. Every god has a god power, and it will start at 0 but increase during the age. If the players playing a god do well, you can expect about 5000 GP by the end of the age. Some gods will go a little higher and some a little lower.
HW: Hel's Wealth spell
Jorm: Jormungandr
levi: Jorm's "leviathan".
LM: lumber mill
LR: Thor's "lightning rider".
mod: modifier or modificator. Refers to watch towers (WTs) and academies collectively. It is easier to say "this city has 40% mods" then "this city has 30% watch towers and 10% academies". When a city only has WTs, you would generally only talk about his WT %.
MW: Mimir's Well spell
nerf: to decrease power. For example, "Thor needs a nerf" would mean that the speaker thinks that Thor is too powerful and needs to be weakened.
newb: newbie. Means new player, someone who has yet to learn the game, and has not yet revealed his/her potential.
noob: a more insulting version of "newb". Refers to a player who not only has not yet learned the game, but shows little promise of ever doing so.
OP: Offensive power.
OPA: Offense Per Acre. Literally, total offense divided by acreage. 100,000 offense with 1000 acres would be 100 OPA.
PM: private message. Message sent ingame to a city or account.
RP: research point.
TH: treasure hunting spell
strat: strategy, as in a type of strategy.
valks: Odin's "valkyrie".
vitaladin: paladin specializing in the vitality attribute.
WoL: Aesir "Warriors of Light".
WTs: watch towers.
STARTING ADVICE
- What should I do first?
Read the official guide for Norron (not this guide, the one you can access from almost anywhere in the Norron website). This guide assumes you are familiar with god, hero, and troop types at least to some extent.
- Who should I tell if there's a mistake or omission in this guide?
PM Logailan, or just post it on the forum (not kingdom assembly). I or someone else can correct it, though I would prefer if nobody makes any major revisions without asking permission first.
- Should I join a guild?
As of Age 10, there are no more open guilds. Joining a guild can be a good idea, because it allows you to play with the same group of players age after age. Finding active players who regularly communicate can make the game far more enjoyable. You should join a guild if you are going to be active and communicate with your guildmates, but not of you are going to be silent. Most guilds do not appreciate silent members.
Rather then joining a guild, you can create one of your own.
Finding a guild or members of a guild can be done both in the main forum, and in the assembly of your kingdom. If you are in a kingdom with players you want to play with next age, you should make or join a guild with them.
- Should I post on the Assembly, even if I'm new?
Yes. You should feel free to chat, ask questions, make fun of other kingdoms, or whatever. Don't feel like you shouldn't talk just because you're new to the game; in fact, you should talk more because you are sure to have lots of questions. The more questions you ask, the more you will learn, because they will be answered. If you ask a stupid question, it only means you need to ask even more questions, and we won't make fun of you. Believe me, I asked a few stupid questions my first age, and I'm glad I did. I'm a much better player for it.
We also want you to post any spy reports you get while looking at other cities, even if they are no use to you because someone else might be able to attack. You will see several threads appear for that purpose, you can simply follow the same format with a copy/paste. This is one of the most useful functions of a kingdom. Don't worry if you forget to post one and close the window, either. We've all done that before.
- What is the easiest god/hero combinations to learn the game with?
Exploration is easier to get the hang of then attacking, and might make a better choice for your first age.
Kvasir, Frey, and Frigg are all very easy to do well with as an explorer. Merchant is probably easiest, though archmage can do better if played right. Paladin explorers are generally a bad idea, though there are a few gods that can pull such a feat off (Gullveig, Mimir, Kvasir; still not recommended).
For an attacker, Thor strength-based paladin is probably the easiest combo to play. Tyr, Kvasir, Frigg, Freya, or Frey merchant or paladin, Gullveig, Jorm, or Thor vitality based paladin, or several other combos might also be okay even for your first age.
Avoid thief and most Jotun gods for your first age. Really, that is for the best, especially the thief part.
If you want something challenging with powerful potential, but still good to learn on, try a Njord or Baldur archmage explorer, or any of the attacker combinations listed above.
If you absolutely want to try a more difficult combo, such as a thief or a Jotun (or Jotun thief), be sure to ask for lots of advice.
Some combinations just plain suck. Any Jotun other than a Mimir makes a poor choice for archmage, though it can still be done if you run strength or knowledge.
See the next section for more on god and hero combinations.
- Daily bonuses: silver or attribute points?
Attribute points in the early and mid game. Period. Later in the game, silver might be worth having, but the advantage of one attribute point projected out for the rest of the game is far greater then the advantage of a little more silver. You will have to consider the worth of an attribute point vs. the silver later in the game, but until the late game there really isn't any question.
- What is the most common mistake people make?
Attacking or exploring for land you cannot defend. Unless you are running an uphit strategy, you should always focus on defense. If you can attack someone and get more land, it might seem like you should. You must first ask if you can hold the land, though. Getting more land will push you into range of more powerful cities, so if you can't hold it, you WILL get hit. Then you will have to build the new buildings, rebuild any casualties you took taking the land or getting hit, and then build more defense as it is obvious that your current level of defense is not adequate for your land size.
This is even more critical for explorers. Explorers have more income (due to better land efficiency), but if they lose land they must pay full price twice when they re-explore for land that they lost. Attackers only need to replace casualties, as their attacking power is still there. Explorers who regularly take hits always do poorly. Always.
Attackers can recover better then explorers, but for the most part it is better to not attack just because you have a target. Only attack because you have a target and you want more land, which you can defend both while your troops are away on the attack, and also after you get the extra land.
If you can learn when NOT to attack or explore, you will find your game improve greatly. This is the single most important skill you can possibly learn in Norron.
- Anything else?
Ask for advice if you are having trouble deciding on any aspect of strategy or if you need help weighing two or more possible choices. In the end, you are responsible for your own decisions, but we will do our best to help you make those decisions. Also ask if you do not understand any element of or any reason for any advice given.
Basically, ask a lot of questions.
ATTACKING BECAUSE YOU CAN
I made this an entire topic because it is an important topic. This is the single most common and most severe mistake new players make.
DO NOT ATTACK JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN
Uphit strategies are the ONLY exception to this. If you aren't running an uphit strategy, do not attack just because you can.
If you have good offense and you see good targets, don't attack them unless you can hold the land you gain. If you can't hold the land you gain, you will lose it, along with the resources you spent replacing buildings and troops.
If you wait and build more defense, then attack for extra land, you will have more defense and be closer to the time you are able to hold even more land. Evaluate not just your offense, but your defense.
This is even more important if you are exploring. If you explore for land you cannot hold, you have paid a very high price for someone else's land, and you will now need to build the defense you should have had in the first place, and you will have to build that defense without the money you just wasted.
DO NOT TAKE LAND YOU CANNOT HOLD
(unless you are running an uphit strategy as previously mentioned. See the section on uphit strategies for more details)
STARTING LATE
Signing up for a new age before it starts is a HUGE advantage. Every hour that passes will give late-starters more and more of a disadvantage.
If you start a few hours late, you can recover.
If you start a few days late, you can still do okay.
If you start more then a few days late late, expect to do poorly.
So what if the age has already started? You can still play…just keep in mind that if you started more then a few days into the age, you will be playing with a major handicap. The best advice is to play to learn the game, NOT to win. You will need higher defense per acre when leaving guard then you would have if you started on time, so do not explore while in guard. You should ask your kingdom-mates how much defense per acre is needed, and do not explore until you reach that level. If you are attacking, you can simply keep your defense about 50% higher then your offense. If you cannot find targets, well, you probably need more defense yourself as well.
Feel free to experiment, especially if you are signing up very late in the age. You can try restarting and getting a feel for different god or hero types, because you won't do well in this age anyway.
When the age ends, be prepared to sign up for the next age before it begins, and use everything you learned during your partial age as best you can.
RECOMMENDED GOD-HERO COMBOS
- A complete run-down of all god/hero combinations I would recommend, including attribute specialization and strategy type
This section is important as before playing, you need some sort of plan as to what you will be doing for the rest of the age.
Be sure to look at the hero section and the sections for traditional, uphit, and fast strategies.
If anyone thinks there should be additions or retractions from this list, please feel free to PM me.
Note that these are entirely my own opinions; not everyone will agree with them. There are also plenty of combos not listed, which I felt might still be good but simply not nearly so good as those listed. You are of course free to accept or ignore my advice however you please. Do not be afraid to experiment with other combinations if you think you can do well. Even if you find out you were wrong, you will learn something. And if you find out you were right, PM me about it so I can add it to the list.
- Baldur_:
hero types:
- AM (wisdom)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
**strategy **:
- traditional explorer
Baldur is all about land efficiency. AM is best by far because of incredible base silver, modified by powerful spells. There are other combos that will work, but the Baldur knowledge/wisdom AM outshines them all by enough that I didn't even bother listing anymore.
Baldurs should focus on getting LOTS of boats…and only exploring for land that can be safely held. No uphits, no crazy risks, just good, solid play from day 1 till the age ends. Keep your DPA high, as it does not hurt your economy to build more boats, and a lot of attackers like to slow Baldurs down in the early/mid game since it's pretty much impossible to hit them in the late game.
__- Frigg __
hero types:
- AM (wisdom)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional explorer
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Frigg is similar to Baldur, with less land efficiency, but lower costs and casualty reduction. Play like a Baldur (but with more early game growth and slower late-game growth), or as an uphitter using WoLs and handmaidens to reduce casualties.
Like Baldur, it is not necessary to play an AM when playing Frigg, but I recommend it as the best combo.
- Odin
hero types:
- AM (wisdom)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional explorer
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Odin is very powerful, but slow to get going. Any class can be played successfully, and any slow strategy can be used. Uphits are also possible in the early game thanks to immortal offense.
- Thor
hero types:
- AM (strength)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
strategies:
- fast strategy attacker
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Thor is probably best played as a strength-based fast strategy attacker or strength-based traditional strategy attacker, but there are other options if you want to experiment. I've known several players who have tried other strategies and done okay with them, though so far the best Thors have always been the strength-based fast strategies.
I once played a decent age as a knowledge/wisdom Thor traditional attacker, but not a great age. This was before annexation, though; the cost of replacing offensive casualties was my main problem. Since annexation was added, I consider the strategy much more viable now.
Thor's faster attacks makes uphit strategies quite attractive, though only when very, very small (otherwise troop and land buidling costs will destroy your ability to attack quickly anyway).
- Tyr
hero types:
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional explorer
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Tyr has one of the best defensive troops in the game. Tyr has both offensive and defensive casualty reduced troops (WoL and GoL), so would make a good uphitter. Tyr also has pretty decent land efficiency, making him a good choice for an AM attacker.
Tyr's GP increases his efficiency, both in military power per acre and in military power per silver or ore.
- Aegir_
hero types:
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Since Aegir now has casualty reduction on attacks, he has become less dependent upon retaliations.
Aegirs need wood and osebergs, as much as they can get, during the midgame. Refineries boost wood as well as ore. Refineries and lumber mills are critically important to success as an Aegir, and carpentry is probably their most important research area.
- Fenrir_
hero types:
- merchant (strength)
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (strength)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- fast explorer
- fast attacker
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
Fenrir fast explorer can make a very powerful strategy. The bonus that Thors have against Fenrirs is something to watch out for. Fenrir's have good potential, and I like Fenrir merchant explorer as the best combo for Fenrir.
Other combos are certainly possible. Fenrir is very powerful in the early game, and works well with several hero types and strategies, though the lack of mages means that you MUST have a great early game or you will not have enough momentum to carry you in the late game.
Fenrir has awesome combat bonuses, and wolves should not be underestimated, but the lack of mages makes the early game critically important. Early growth is very important to a Fenrir.
- Jormungandr_
hero types:
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- fast attacker
- traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Jorm has great combat bonuses, and powerful attacking troops. Defense is more of a problem then offense, despite great defense bonuses, which is why vitality is listed but strength is not.
Jorm's Levis start powerful, and get more powerful. They are probably the best troop in the game for the price you pay, and they allow Jorm to have massive offensive power per acre.
Jorm does not have mages, so a good early game is absolutely critical to success.
- Loki_
hero types:
- merchant (economics)
- merchant (economics/knowledge)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- fast attacker
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
Loki has the unique ability to steal resources from his target when he successfully conquers them. The percentage he takes depends on his GP, with a maximum which is dependant upon the size of his attacking army. This plundering ability allows Loki to be used as a fast attacker if the player wishes, but requires finding good targets.
Loki is also one of the best thieves in the game. He now takes 50% more resources (all resources) from his targets, and like all Jotuns he starts with 12 spies.
Loki's main weakness is that he has no access to good troops. He can use cave giants, but it is difficult to steal ore even with a bonus, and shapeshifters are mediocre at best (though I would still build them for defense). This leaves Loki the unenviable choice of either exploring or using horsemen as his main offense.
- Mimir
hero types:
- AM (strength)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
Mimir is a very, very difficult god to play. It is also the most powerful god in the late age, IF you can get enough wizards. The problem is that the early/mid game Mimir kinda sucks, so getting a good enough powerbase to grow in the lategame is tricky. Also watch out for Thors…Mimir does not have defense bonuses like some of the other Jotun gods, and so Thor's bonus against Jotuns is problematic.
Mimir explorer is very straightforward. Conversion to attacker is done by converting a lot of buildings to ore mines when you start casting Hel's Wealth. If you get enough wizards, you can have a huge ore bonus, which means tons of cave giants. The downside is that space efficiency is at a premium, making it harder to grow then it would be as an explorer, because you will have little room left for WTs.
Traditional attacker from the early age on should really only be done if you are running a strength-based archmage. Otherwise, exploration is probably a better bet, at least until you are casting Hel's Wealth.
In the early game, you won't be casting, so you don't need wizards. Spearmen are more space efficient, so only build spearmen for the first 20 days or so. This will save you a great deal of space (so you have more income and universities). After that, build up your wizard population, and try to only build wizards (and cave giants in the late game if you plan on being an attacker)
Mimir AMs have a great self-spell bonus even without wisdom (if you are doing well, anyway), which makes wisdom less powerful as you are stacking a moderate bonus onto a higher bonus additively. However, the 2 extra mages and extra experience for mages are very nice for a Mimir, because the mages' base power will multiply by this self spell bonus. This makes AM a decent choice despite wisdom being watered down quite a lot; be sure to rely heavily on strength or knowledge if you wish to play a Mimir AM, as wisdom will be less useful for a Mimir then it is for other god choices.
Of the above combinations, I like thief the least. Mimirs who do well will have massive income, so thievery won't be a major factor. If you do so-so, it might be very helpful, but maybe you would have been doing a lot better (having a lot more land and wizards) if you had a more useful hero type for your early game? I personally do not like Mimir thieves, but listed them simply because they are viable thanks to starting with 12 spies.
- Frey_
hero types:
- AM (strength)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
Frey is very easy to play, especially as an explorer. Hunters are very useful, and can make farms all but unneeded. Frey is a good choice for a first time player.
Late game Freys might find farms to be a good source of income, either as a merchant (good exchange rates) or as an AM (good bonus to production), though this would probably only be worth doing with a very high GP and full employment/no unemployment.
- Freya_
hero types:
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
strategies:
- fast attacker
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
I finally have experience with an uphit strategy! Much of what I learned is discussed in the uphit strategy section, and applies especially to Freya.
Freyas need to attack constantly to convert swordsmen to draugar. This means a fast strategy or an uphit strategy. I don't think any other strategy would work (in the early game). Late game requires a traditional strategy because of the cost of rebuilding increases with acreage, as does the amount of land taken with each attack, so get as many draugar as you can before then.
- Gullveig_
hero types:
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (knowledge/thievery)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
- uphit converting to traditional explorer
- uphit converting to traditional attacker
Gullveig seems to be super-powerful. If you think that, you don't know how important space efficiency is. The -10% population penalty is much more significant then most people might assume.
If you want to do well as a Gullveig, you need to have good architecture by sometime in the midgame. Preferrably 50 levels worth. This is required.
Other then the penalty, Gullveig has everything needed to succeed with a variety of strategies, but Gullveig is not as easy to do well with as most people would think.
- Kvasir_
hero types:
- AM (strength)
- AM (wisdom)
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (strength)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
- thief (thievery)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
Kvasir is a very easy and forgiving god to use. You can even run without knowledge or universities if you can get enough scholars quickly enough (this would only be truly feasible running a lot of refineries and either economics or strength, as otherwise you won't be able to get enough scholars quickly enough).
With a mix of universities and scholars, you can easily run pure wisdom or thievery, saving all your APs to focus on those areas (which I would usually not recommend) because you will not need to rely on knowledge. Of course, Kvasirs get two bonus skill points in knowledge everytime they level, which make knowledge that much more useful for them as well.
Kvasir is a great choice for god if you are a newbie.
- Njord_
hero types:
- AM (knowledge/wisdom)
- merchant (economics)
- paladin (vitality)
- paladin (knowledge/wielding)
strategies:
- traditional explorer
- traditional attacker
- traditional explorer converting to traditional attacker
Knowledge/wisdom AM operating as a traditional explorer is probably the best combination for Njord, and has a long history of very good performance. Merchant (econ) is easier to succeed with, though will not give the same level of success if you do manage to play very well. These are the two combos I would suggest if you run a Njord, but I did list a couple of paladin combos which might work as an attacker as well.
While Njord has spaceless offense, hjortsprings are not only expensive to build, but expensive to replace. They are expensive enough that I would not recommend running as an attacker, though it is theoretically possible to do okay running a Njord attacker combo.
In addition, Njords have traditionally worked towards getting equipment for their kingdom. Since one explore run can give many items, but one attack can only get one item, players have preferred to explore with Njord. If Njord is a good god to attack with, we probably wouldn't know since few have ever even tried.
HEROES AND ATTRIBUTES
- Archmage (AM)_
Archmages have the best spells of any hero type. Not only do they have exclusive access to the wisdom attribute, but their mages train 40% faster then other heroes' mages train (7 exp per hour instead of 5 exp per hour while training).
Archmages can be used for pure strength, knowledge/wisdom, or pure wisdom.
- Merchant_
Merchants are probably the easiest hero type to use. Just put all points into economics, and money will never be a problem. Merchant is a great choice for hero type for new players, but can also be effectively used with certain god combinations even by the best of players. Merchants are easy to use, but not weak, so unless the god has a much better hero type (such as AM for Baldur), merchant is never a bad choice.
Merchants are usually used for economics, though in some cases they might be better for economics/knowledge. They can also be used for strength, as they get cheaper spy/mage training, better exchange rates on the market, and refineries are more effective anytime the hero is at home.
- Paladin_
Paladins tend to have great early games, but so-so late games. Paladins start strong and fizzle out. However, using the strong start to get large enough and powerful enough to suppress your enemies from above, or certain long-term strategies have worked before and will continue to work, and so a well-played paladin can do as well as any other hero type.
Paladins are the only class that keep their defense while away from home. This makes paladins the only good choice for a vitality strategy.
Paladins are also commonly used for strength, and sometimes for knowledge/wielding.
- Thief_
Thief is the hardest class to use. It is also the most random…your success increases the closer you are to successful explorers who have poor spy defense. More thieves are also a bad thing for thieves, as they must compete for resources. You can't very well steal someone blind if some other thief already did, so the fewer thieves there are the more powerful they are.
I do NOT recommend playing thief until you have learned the game. Thieves also take more work then other hero types. You need to be able to log on regularly to make stealing runs, and also need to log how you did. If you can find out when someone goes to work or what his sleep schedule is, you will do much, much better then if you just blindly send your spies out.
Thieves are usually chosen for thievery or knowledge/thievery, though I have seen some people play strength-based thieves (mainly Jotuns).
- Attributes:_
Strength adds offensive power to your hero if you use him on attacks. Strength allows you to attack with fewer troops, or even without using troops at all. This will save you resources you would otherwise spend buying or replacing troops, as well as land you would otherwise need to fill with troops, which means more useful buildings such as more refineries, universities, or mods. Thor is the best god for strength, and if you want to make a strength-based hero, Thor is highly recommended. Strength should be focused on in the early game, and most likely in the late game as well because it is exponential in it's usefulness. The more strength you have, the more offense each additional point of strength will add. However, you should always consider switching to wielding if you have a high base offense and defense provided by your troops.
Vitality is identical to strength, except that it adds to your defense rather then offense. Vitality does not save you quite as much money because you still have a lot of offensive casualties, but in some cases it is more powerful then strength. If you have immortal or casualty reduced troops, for example, vitality tends to more useful then strength. However, vitality only works when your hero is at home, unless you are a paladin. Therefore, you should only focus on vitality if you are playing a paladin. Like strength, you should always consider switching to wielding in the late game if you have a high base offense and defense provided by your troops.
Knowledge gives research points. Using knowledge, you may replace or augment your universities with your hero.
Knowledge provides very little benefit until it gets very high, so you should use universities in the early game. As you get more and more knowledge, universities become less and less useful by comparison, so eventually you can stop building them or even destroy them all, allowing you to rebuild with more useful buildings instead.
Knowledge works very well with wisdom, thievery, or wielding, as these attributes can be useful in lower amounts. Knowledge can be combined with any attribute, though.
If you are running a knowledge combined with wisdom, wielding, or thievery strategy, you should probably put about 200 points into knowledge as soon as possible, ignoring your 4th stat until that is done. You don't have to, and in some cases you might be better off focusing entirely on your fourth stat, but for the most part knowledge is well worth having, despite the high cost of the investment.
Knowledge does not stack with Mimir's Well anymore, so there are two strategies to consider when using knowledge:
1) use universities combined with knowledge during the entire research phase. This will allow you to very quickly get your important research completed. You can cast Mimir's Well a little bit later then you would without knowledge (training mages a bit longer), or finish your research phase very, very quickly and start casting Hel's Wealth earlier then other cities can.
2) use universities only in the early game. Once you reach about 120 knowledge, stop building universities. Once you reach at least 200 knowledge, tear down all your universities and build other buildings with them. Train your mages till day 40-45, and start casting Hel's Wealth as soon as you take them out of training, NEVER casting Mimir's Well at all. Personally, I prefer this option and it has worked very well for me when I run knowledge strategies.
Economics is only available to merchants. Economics gives a silver bonus, which stacks additively with base silver income, and multiplies very nicely with alchemy, Hel's Wealth, or other silver bonuses. Economics is very powerful in the early game, and should be focused on entirely for most merchant strategies. In generaly, economics is stronger then wisdom for small cities, and weaker for large, so economics is a good choice for newer players. It will help you get a good rank, but will probably not give you a great rank. Consider economics a very easy attribute to use, but with less potential then other attributes for most strategies.
Economics can be split with knowledge, but should be done in reverse of most knowledge combos. Instead of raising knowledge first, raise economics first. Once you get about 150 points in economics, put all APs into knowledge.
Economics/knowledge is probably best used for Jotuns, who have no mages.
Thievery is only available to thieves. Thievery gives a powerful bonus to stealing, and half of the extra money that is stolen will also be created rather then taken from the target. This allows a thief to steal far more money then other classes.
Thievery can be combined well with knowledge, since it is useless in the early game and gives a flat bonus. Still, high thievery is a lot more powerful then medium thievery, so there is an argument to ignoring knowledge and focusing entirely on thievery as well.
The fewer thieves in play, the less competition between them. If there are too many thieves, they will all be looking for good targets, and there will be fewer targets between them. So thievery can give very good results, or very poor results. It is the most difficult skill to get the hang of, and will have the most inconsistent performance. If you want to play a thief, I would recommend Gullveig or any Jotun god except for Mimir. However, I would not recommend playing a thief until you have played a few ages.
Wisdom is only available to archmages. Wisdom gives a powerful bonus to spells. Wisdom is most useful for a city that is large and wealthy, so it is best to avoid archmages until you have played a few ages and feel comfortable with the game.
Wisdom CAN be combined with knowledge. If you want to do this, focus on knowledge first, then on wisdom, since wisdom is useless in the early game. Despite the fact that knowledge no longer combines with Mimir's Well, you can still use knowledge if you want to replace your universities and train your mages longer, or if you want to start casting Hel's Wealth earlier.
Wielding is only available to paladins. Wielding gives a bonus to offense and defense. This bonus adds with other offense and defense bonuses, rather then multiplying with those bonuses. The more base offense and defense your city has, the more powerful wielding will be for it. Wielding is very, very weak in the early game, and very strong in the late game, but only for a powerful city. Most people use wielding as a late-game supplement to strength or vitality rather then as a pure strategy, because it can be difficult to have enough early and mid-game success to use wielding without having a more useful early or mid-game attribute.
Wielding is actually very weak when used completely by itself. The early game bonuses it provides are insignificant compared to strength or knowledge, and with such a weak bonus from your hero, growing will not be easy. Wielding is only powerful if you have a high base offense and base defense, and you will have trouble growing fast enough to make wielding more useful then strength or vitality when you have so little help from your hero.
Wielding can also be used with knowledge, as it is additive. This is probably a better strategy in most cases then attempting a pure wielding build, as you can use fewer universities or even get rid of them all once you have enough knowledge. The extra land provided by not having universities can be used for refineries or a mixture of refineries and mods, which will give you the extra growth you need to make wielding worth investing in.
When running strength or vitality, you should always consider switching to wielding based on your base offense and defense.
BUILDINGS
Throughout the game, these buildings are usually REQUIRED:
- Homes (you'll need some homes once you get some troops)
- Farms (as needed. Ideally, you produce exactly as much food as you need)
- Ore mines (depending on how many troops you will be producing…and the cost in ore. Some gods require more ore mines then others)
- Lumber mills (needed to produce lumber).
Required buildings should be built as needed, and the rest of your land should be built with optional buildings.
All buildings which are not in those 4 types are optional. Those buildings are:
- Refineries (great for extra income. Very important in the early game).
- Universities (produce research points. Important in the early game, and critical in the midgame unless you are relying on knowledge and/or scholars (Kvasir only).
- Academies (provides a bonus to offense)
- Watch Towers (provides a bonus to defense)
Optional buildings are generally more useful then having extra required buildings, though not worth building if you do not have enough of any required building type.
- Housing and employment
One of the most important functions of buildings is to provide housing and employment.
You can only have as many villagers (maximum) as you have housing for. You can only employ as many villagers as you have available jobs for.
All buildings provide at least 10 housing (before any modifications), and all buidings except for homes provide 15 employment (also before any modifications).
Academies provide a total of 15 housing.
Homes provide a total of 35 housing.
For most strategies, it is ideal to have close to 0 unemployment and 0 unfilled jobs. There are exceptions to this, but for the most part this will be the case.
Achieving this level of housing and employment is based on having the right number of homes to house all your troops and employed villagers. Essentially, if you have unfilled jobs, you need more homes, and if you have unemployment, you have too many homes. However, you will be adding troops constantly, so some unemployment is not bad because for every troop you add you will reduce your unemployment (unless you are building a troop type that does not cost villagers, such as Baldur or Njord's boats).
- Academies
Provide a bonus to attack equal to 2.5% per 1% of land occupied by academies, and also an extra 5 housing for villagers per academy (15 total villagers instead of the usual 10).
Academies are generally not very important buildings. In the early game, refineries are usually better. However, there are times when you might want to build them.
Advantages and uses of academies include:
- Academies provide a bonus to all offense, so they stack with hero offense. Refineries will do nothing for hero offense, so if you need more offense and you are running a strength strategy, academies are one option to consider.
- Academies provide their bonus the instant they are built. Sometimes, you might quickly need just a little bit more offense…building academies may allow you to conquer a city you are targetting without giving him time to react and increase his defense.
- Academies are independent of silver and ore bonuses. If you are casting Hel's Wealth or have a very high alchemy, you will find the usefulness of refineries has decreased considerably. Academies will not decrease in value based on these factors.
- Casualties are calculated based on total OP. The more OP each troop is worth, the fewer you will lose in battle. For example, if you only send troops and you have 40% academies (+100% OP bonus), you will lose half as many troops as you would have with no academies.
- Academies provide a bonus to current base offense. This is great in the late-game, because extra income provided by refineries will increase the rate at which you buy base OP, but the advantage of this decreases more and more the closer to the end of the age you get. The advantage of an instant increase increases more and more as you approach the endgame.
For the most part, academies should not be built until needed. Refineries are a much better choice in the early game. The more troops you have when you finally do build academies, the more dramatic your rise in power will be.
Imagine you are an attacker (no exploration), and you build and maintain 20% academies from day 1. You get a 50% bonus to offense. Now another attacker builds and maintains 20% refineries instead. He gets 50% more troops (both offensive and defensive; it actually might be higher because he has an even greater ore bonus).
Just from that, he should be able to grow faster then you, but let's assume that both cities gain exactly the same amount of land everyday. Your offense is exactly the same as his day after day. However, his defense grows faster then yours (unless you both completely rely on vitality). Also, if he was to tear down his refineries and build academies with them, he would gain an instant +50% bonus to offense. Now his offense is 50% higher then yours.
In the early game, refineries are almost always a better choice then academies. However, they have their uses as listed above.
- Farms
You need farms, but they don't really do anything for you other then provide food. Since you need farms, you must build some.
Ideally, you build the exact minimum number of farms you need to keep all your troops and villagers fed. A spreadsheet can help in determining this number, or you can wing it. If you do not build enough farms, you will have to trade for food, or steal it from someone else. If you build too many farms, you will have excess food to trade for other resources, but even as a merchant the traded food will not be worth as much as you could have gotten from refineries or other building types instead of farms.
A merchant with at least 30% refineries can forego farms completely and build ore mines instead, trading ore for food. However, this can be dangerous as you will have to be very careful to insure you always keep enough food on hand and that you always have at least 30% refineries. If thieves steal your food while you are offline, you will pay dearly for this decision. On the upside, your economy will be much more efficient. The more extra refineries you have, the more extra efficiency you will gain. This efficiency will increase even more when your hero is home, because he gets a refinery bonus.
A Fenrir merchant with at least 50 to 60,000 wolves will find farms to be a good source of income, and might find that trading food for other commodities is worth more then other building types. Non-merchant Fenrirs will need more wolves before considering this as merchants have better exchange rates.
A Frey merchant or AM with high GP might have a similar situation, and might find farms to be a good source of income.
In both of the above cases, farms would not require villagers to provide full income, so they would provide their full income even right after exploring, and even if you explore with 100% of your villagers.
- Homes
Required to house your troops and villagers. Ideally, you should have close to 0 unemployment and 0 unfilled jobs. If you have unfilled jobs, you need more homes, and if you have unemployment, you have too many homes. However, you will be adding troops constantly, so some unemployment is not bad because for every troop you add you will reduce your unemployment (unless you are building a troop type that does not cost villagers, such as Baldur or Njord's boats).
A few extra homes to house troops you will purchase might be okay, but for the most part extra homes will do nothing for you except reduce the number of optional buildings you can build.
- Lumber Mills
Required to get lumber. Lumber is needed to build buildings. The exact optimum number of lumber mills required is pretty difficult to figure out. Even with a spreadsheet, you can only guess as to the amount of lumber you will need.
It is usually not worthwhile having extra lumber. Aegir is the exception. An Aegir merchant with at least 30% refineries can treat lumber mills in the same way any other merchant can treat ore mines.
- Ore Mines
Required to get ore. Ore is usually needed to build troops, though some strategies might not need ore at all. The exact optimum number of ore mines required is pretty difficult to figure out. Since some of your money will be going towards buildings, you will find it difficult to reliably know exactly how many troops you will build every day.
Merchants with at least 30% refineries can trade ore for food, lumber, and even silver very efficiently. In this case, fewer or no farms and lumber mills, but extra ore mines, might be a good configuration.
- Refineries
Provide a bonus to silver equal to 2.5% per 1% of land occupied by refineries, and to ore equal to 4% per 1% of land occupied by refineries.
Refineries are one of the best early game buildings. The extra income they provide can allow the city to grow very quickly, and to build a large number of troops. Refineries and universities should be any city's early and midgame optional buildings of choice; try to avoid academies and WTs until needed.
Refineries are not nearly as useful once you get good silver and ore bonuses, such as from casting Hel's Wealth, because their bonuses stack additively. For the most part, you will want to replace any refineries you have with WTs or academies when you start casting Hel's Wealth, though if you have low spell power you might want to hang onto some or all of your refineries anyway.
- Universities
Universities are required for early game research. Later on, you can rely on knowledge, but for most strategies, you will want some universities in the early game. If you are not running a knowledge strategy, you will need a lot of universities in the midgame. Universities are not generally useful in the lategame because the benefits they give you are not worth the land usage. If you gain 1% silver on day 1, it is much more useful then 1% silver on day 85. This premise holds true for all research.
- Watch Towers
Provide a bonus to defense equal to 2.5% per 1% of land occupied by watch towers.
Watch towers are generally much more important then academies, but should still be avoided in the early game. In the early game, refineries are usually better. However, there are times when you might want to build them.
Advantages and uses of watch towers include:
- Watch towers provide a bonus to all defense, so they stack with hero defense. Refineries will do nothing for hero defense, so if you need more defense and you are running a vitality strategy, watch towers are one option to consider.
- Watch towers provide their bonus the instant they are built. Sometimes, you might quickly need just a little bit more defense very quickly. Watch towers will do just that.
- Watch towers are independent of silver and ore bonuses. If you are casting Hel's Wealth or have a very high alchemy, you will find the usefulness of refineries has decreased considerably. Watch towers will not decrease in value based on these factors.
- Defensive casualties are calculated based on total DP. The more DP each troop is worth, the fewer you will lose in battle. This works for watch towers the same way it works for academies, though this is generally not a very important factor as you should be building enough defense that you do not get invaded very often.
- Watch towers provide a bonus to current base defense. This is great in the late-game, because extra income provided by refineries will increase the rate at which you buy base DP, but the advantage of this decreases more and more the closer to the end of the age you get. The advantage of an instant increase increases more and more as you approach the endgame.
For the most part, watch towers should not be built until needed. Refineries are a much better choice in the early game. The more troops you have when you finally do build watch towers, the more dramatic your rise in power will be.
Imagine you build and maintain 20% watch towers from day 1. You get a 50% bonus to defense. Now another city builds and maintains 20% refineries instead. He gets 50% more troops (both offensive and defensive; it actually might be higher because he has an even greater ore bonus), and also 50% more money for exploration.
Just from that, he should be able to grow faster then you, but let's assume that both cities gain exactly the same amount of land everyday. Your defense is exactly the same as his day after day. However, his offense grows faster then yours (unless you are explorers, in which case he should have a lot more money for exploration). Also, if he was to tear down his refineries and build watch towers with them, he would gain an instant +50% bonus to defense. Now his defense is 50% higher then yours.
In the early game, refineries are almost always a better choice then watch towers. However, they have their uses as listed above, and they become more and more useful as the age progresses.
RESEARCH
Most research is equally helpful if researched on day 50 as it is if researched on day 5. 1 point of alchemy will always give you the same 1% increase in your silver production. However, there are three time-critical research areas:
Discipline
Mage education
Spy education
These three areas need to be increased as soon as possible.
Discipline increases the number of attribute points (APs) your hero will get when his level increases. If you have no discipline, you get 5 APs per level. If you have 5 levels of discipline, you get 10 APs per level.
This increase in APs is NOT retroactive; if you raise your discipline to level 1 when your hero is 10th level, he gets one additional AP only on levels he has not yet achieved. The extra AP is not given for his earlier levels.
For this reason, the sooner you get discipline, the better. Most heroes will end the game somewhere between level 30 and 50, depending on how well you did, so spending research points (RPs) for discipline when you are at a high level (say, over 20) is less useful then increasing your discipline when you are a low level. The higher level your hero is, the less discipline is worth.
Mage and spy education are also both critical in the early game.
If you have no mages (all Jotuns except for Mimir), you can ignore mage education.
If you are a paladin and you don't expect to have high income, you can skimp on spies OR train your spies well. Skimping on spies means faster early game growth, which might be helpful, but you won't have good spy defense in the late game, and you won't have many good spies to steal with. If you do choose to skimp on your spies, you will still need a few to gather information with or else you will be forced to rely on your mages, and two of them should be trained whenever possible to insure you can penetrate good spy defense to gather info.
For all other strategies, you will be shooting for 5 discipline, and 10 to 14 mages and spies. You might not make this goal…the higher levels of discipline are very expensive, and unless you have very good research, you probably won't be able to buy 5 levels worth.
Thieves should get 12 to 14 spies. AMs should get 12 to 14 mages. Everyone should get at least 10 mages and 10 spies, except for non-Mimir Jotuns (no mages) and paladins which have chosen to skimp on spies (you will still probably want about 6 spies even then, just to gather information).
You should probably raise one level of discipline first, and then either mages or spies (whichever needs it the most) to at least 8, followed by a second level of discipline. Then mages and spies to 10, followed a third level of discipline. And so on…until you either have 12 to 14 mages and spies plus 5 levels of discipline, or you need to start researching spells.
You should probably try to get between 20 to 26 total mages and spies. That is because they are expensive to train. If you are training 10 to 14 mages or spies, you get very good experience even for the mages and spies that you have not yet purchased. See the spy and mage training guide for more details.
The next thing you will need to research depends on what day it is. If you are relying on universities for research (rather then knowledge), you will want to cast the spell "Mimir's Well" at some point to help you quickly get finished with your research phase.
If you are using universities, you will need to get "spell casting" to level 9 before you can cast Mimir's Well. You will want to train your mages to a decent level before doing that…probably till day 35 or so (could be earlier or later depending on if you want a headstart or more powerful mages. Day 35 is generally a good day to shoot for).
You will need to start researching your spell casting on around day 30 (or later if you have good research) in preparation for casting Mimir's Well. If you have 14 mages, 12 spies (reversed if you are a thief), and 5 discipline before you are ready to start researching Mimir's Well, you can then go ahead and research more mage education (you will be using them soon anyway), or start on your midgame research.
If you are relying entirely on knowledge and you will not be casting Mimir's Well, you can start on spell casting later (around day 36 or so), and start casting Hel's Wealth around day 40. You can go a little earlier or later on this as well.
If you are using universities, you will be relying heavily on Mimir's Well. During the time you are casting this spell, you might want to increase your university count, even if it means having unfilled jobs. You will probably want to get rid of all refineries in exchange for universities. Academies will not be much use during this phase, and should be converted as well (though you shouldn't have any/many to begin with).
A few WTs in this phase is okay. If having 10% WTs gives you 25% more defense which lets you take 15% more land, you come out a little bit ahead. I would advise against having a lot of WTs, though.
Midgame research will generally be focused on some or all of the following areas:
Mage education to maximum level, usually right after you start casting with your mages
Architecture to maximum level (if you have good research. Otherwise, get it as high as you can. Less then 30 levels is probably not going to get you into the top ranks)
Irrigation and alchemy 10 to 20 levels of each, purchased after your mage education and staggered in as you are raising architecture. Employment is not useful if you have poor land efficiency, so most attackers should completely ignore this research area, but it should be considered as well if you have very good land efficiency.
Smithing if you rely heavily on ore. Necessary if you are a Jotun and want to use cave giants, and nice to have for most other strategies.
Carpentry if you rely heavily on lumber, especially for Aegirs.
Development and battle acuity to reduce time required to build or train.
Explorer's foresight and explorer's intuition if you are an explorer. Explorer's luck can also be useful, but should not be a primary concern.
Annexation and battle prowess if you are an attacker who suffers from high offensive casualties. These are necessary if you lose troops in battle (unless you are a Freya in which case both are bad to have). If you have high strength or immortal troops, these are quite unimportant and only worth their cost if you have a massive research income and have already pretty much researched everything else of use.
Heimdall's sheath to let you know when someone spies on you, as well as who sends spies that steal your resources. Heimdall's guard can also be useful, but is not nearly as important so should only be researched if you have plenty of excess points.
Hoarding if you have a decent income, or if you just have a lot of research. Nobody ever complained about having hoarding.
Spy education to maximum level, unless you are a paladin that has chosen to skimp on spies. This is usually one of the last things you research.
Resource stealing if you wish to use your spies to increase your income. This is vital for thieves, and very useful for any city with low income as the resources stolen will be a greater asset if you have very little income to begin with. Paladins who do not skimp on spy training should definitely get resource stealing; it is not as important for archmages or merchants who have higher income and need to use their spies for defense most of the time anyway.
Spell casting to level 10, just before you want to start casting Hel's Wealth.
other research depending on your strategy.
Here is a much more complete rundown of all research areas, and the usage for each of them:
- Architecture
Increases your maximum population. Or perhaps it is better to think of it as decreasing the number of homes you will need. By having fewer homes, you have more useful buildings, which not only increases your power by virtue of the useful buildings you can build, but increases the number of jobs you can fill. Architecture greatly increases wealth, makes it easier to hold a high DPA and OPA, and is necessary for success. Only mage and possibly spy researches are more important.
- Carpentry
Reduces the amount of lumber you need to build buildings or ships. Carpentry is a must-have for an Aegir, and is simply nice to have for anyone else. Maximum carpentry means you will only need half as many lumber mills, so it is not too bad, though certainly nowhere near as important as architecture. It is similar in usage to lumber processing, but more powerful and useful in general, and much more powerful and useful if you are casting Hel's Wealth.
- Development
Reduces the time required to build buildings and ships. Very nice to have, but not a necessity. More useful then Battle Acuity, and is well worth the research required to max it out, if you have good research.
- Employment
Nice for some strategies (especially Baldur), but completely usuless if you do not have enough villagers to fill your jobs to begin with. Tends to be most useful after you start casting Hel's Wealth, but before your troop counts have reached insane levels. Tends to be useless in the very late game when your land is all filled with troops and houses. If you are an explorer, it is often useful in small amounts (no more then 20 levels, though), unless you are a Baldur or Frigg in which case more can be used.
- Alchemy
Increases your city's silver production bonus. Stacks additively with other silver bonuses, so it is not nearly as useful as architecture (or employment if you can fill your extra jobs). It becomes less useful the higher your silver bonus is without it, so having a lot of refineries or a powerful Hel's Wealth spell will make alchemy less useful.
- Irrigation
Increases your city's food production bonus. Stacks additively with other food bonuses, so it is less useful if you have a powerful Hel's Wealth spell, or if you are a Fenrir with a lot of wolves, but it is the only research area which you can use to make your farms more useful. Irrigation is nice to have as it will allow you to run with fewer farms, and most strategies will benefit from having some irrigation (10 to 20 points).
- Lumber Processing
Increases your city's lumber production bonus. Stacks additively with other lumber bonuses, so it is less useful if you have a powerful Hel's Wealth spell. It is also much less useful then carpentry, though a few points are not bad to have. An Aegir with maximum carpentry and a lot of research mind find a use for lumber processing, though it is really not of any great value to anyone else.
- Metallurgy
Increases your city's ore production bonus. Stacks additively with other ore bonuses, so it is less useful if you have a lot of refineries or a powerful Hel's Wealth spell. It is also much less useful then smithing, though a few points are not bad to have.
- Explorer's Foresight
Decreases the amount of time required to explore. This is a fairly useful research area for explorers, and should be maxed during the research phase if you are an explorer and you have enough research.
Finding items and resources while exploring is largely dependant upon how much land you have coming in during a single hour. If you explore 180 land and it takes you 18 hours, you get 10 land per tick. If you explore the same land in 9 hours, you get 20 land per tick. You will double your chance of finding items and resources.
I do not know the exact equation to determine the chance of finding something on any given hour, but I believe it is roughly .9% * incoming land * (100 + treasure hunting + luck) / 100. So if you are getting 20 acres per hour, you need approximately 455 treasure hunting to have a 100% chance of finding something every hour.
In addition to increasing your land per hour, you also get your land sooner so you can start building it sooner. Another benefit will be getting your hero home from exploring faster so that you can use your hero for other things.
- Explorer's Intuition
Decreases the cost of exploration. A few levels are all but useless, and you will hardly notice the benifit, but trust me when I tell you that this is one of the most important research areas for an explorer. Maxing this research area should be a goal for all explorers.
- Explorer's Luck
This research area is a must for any Jotun explorer, but explorer's with mages will find it to be nothing more then a slight boost to the treasure hunting spell. Luck is nice to have, but not a research area worth investing large amounts of research in unless you have a lot of extra RPs to throw around.
- Heimdall's Guard
Has a 5% chance per level to tell you when someone uses mage info spells on your city. Knowing who is spying on and stealing from you is much more useful, but this can be useful research to have and it is not very expensive. Skip this altogether if you are having trouble getting your essential research, but otherwise it's probably worth the price.
- Mage Education
A must have for anyone with mages. At least 10 levels as quickly as possible, and 20 levels shortly after you start casting spells.
This, along with spell casting, is the single most important research any city with mages will do.
- Spell Casting
A must have for anyone with mages. Level 9 is Mimir's Well (increases research from all sources except for knowledge), and level 10 is Hel's Wealth (increases all resource production except for research). These two spells are extremely powerful and useful tools for any city that has mages, and should be researched just before you are ready to cast.
- Annexation
Gives extra land and experience from every attack. The extra land does not come from the target, but is annexed from an unknown source by your army when it is sent on a successful attack.
This research can be a very powerful advantage for you, or it can be weak and pointless. Obviously it is of no use to explorers, but it is often overestimated in its usefulness to attackers.
If you have immortal troops (Odin, Gullveig, or Freya), or you use your hero's offense to provide your city's offense, annexation is not actually all that great. The reason is that you will take extra land. This means on of two things:
1) that you cannot attack as often, because you need time to build proper defenses to hold the new land you take, and extra offense as well because you have taken yourself further out of range from easier targets,
- OR -
2) that you will lose the extra land.
Since losing land costs you the price you paid to build your buildings, and also gives you defensive casualties, it is generally better to not take land you will lose. So for most strategies, you will need to attack less if you have annexation.
This is GREAT if you have a lot of casualties when you attack, because now you have gained more land with the troops you have lost…but if you have no casualties, it's actually kind of pointless. And even though you gain extra experience, since you attack less, it really doesn't amount to very much extra.
This is even worse for uphit strategies, because now you must build more land and you spend more of your income building land then you would like to. You must slow down your attacking at a lower land level, which means fewer uphits, or otherwise you risk continously being unable to rebuild your land.
So annexation should be purchased (hopefully to max) by all attackers who take heavy casualties when they attack, and probably by nobody else.
- Battle acuity
Sometimes abreviated to BA. Battle acuity decreases the time required to build all troops except for ships. This is nice to have, but not a necessity. You will eventually get your troops in, and having them earlier can be helpful, though not as helpful as being able to quickly build your buildings. BA is nice to max if you have good research. If you don't, a few levels is still helpful though hardly necessary.
- Battle Prowess
Reduces casualties. Not by much; even maxed, this only reduces your casualties by 25%. To make matters even worse, it stacks by multiplying with other casualty reductions, so it reduces your casualties by 25%. If you are using troops with 50% casualty reduction, for example, it will not give you 75% casualty reduction, but will instead reduce your casualties by 25% of the remaining casualties, after the 50% reduction (so 62.5% total casualty reduction).
Battle prowess combined with annexation gives a very good casualty reduction per acre you conquer, and if you are a troop-based attacker with high casualties, this is a very good research area to put points into.
- Discipline
Gives your hero 1 extra attribute point (AP) per level per point of discipline. Very nice to have if your hero is a low level, but since it is not retroactive, it becomes less useful the higher level your hero gets. At least 2 points of this is always a good idea; 5 points is always nice, but not always worth the cost (sometimes it is; it depends on how much research you are making and how dependent you are on your hero).
Try to invest in this research area, along with mage and spy education, as soon as possible.
- Smithing
Very nice for strategies that need a lot of ore. Critically important if you want to run a cave giant strat. Otherwise, it is not as important as annexation, but is generally more important then carpentry (unless you need little ore or have ships).
- Heimdall's Sheath
This research area will give you a 5% chance to know when you have been spied on, as well as the identity of the spy who gathered intel on your city, and also a 5% chance to know the identity of a spy who steals resources from your city. This is a very nice research area, usually worth maxing not because of its usage so much as its low cost.
- Hoarding
Reduces the amount of resources that will be stolen from you on "steal resource" missions. Hoarding is powerful, but not necessarily good enough without additional spy defense. A good thief can still steal most of your stockpiled resources; it just takes more spies for him to do so. Still, if you have 40 million silver sitting around, expect to see a lot of thieves in your city, even if you have hoarding maxed.
Hoarding may seem useless, but if combined with spy defense from well trained spies, it is a very nice insurance policy to have. Also, if you spend your money regularly, you will find that hoarding might be adequate by itself. One or two spies to clean a target out might be worthwhile where five or six spies might not, so hoarding becomes worthwhile in this case as well.
- Resource Stealing
Gives you resource stealing missions. The 10th level allows you to steal all four resource types with a single spy mission.
Critically important if you are a thief. Nice to have if you have low income but still have decent to good spies (this often describes paladins). So-so if you have high income, and you will probably find spies more useful for defending in this situation.
- Spy education
Should eventually be maxed if you plan on using spies for defense or resource stealing missions. Try to get at least 10 levels of this as soon as possible in the early game (along with some discipline and at least 10 levels of mage education). Some paladins may choose to skimp on this research area and not train his spies all that well in exchange for early growth, but all thieves and any city that will have good income should probably invest in good spies, at least for defense.
- GETTING ADEQUATE RESEARCH
Getting enough research is often a puzzle to new players. So how is it done?
There are several methods of getting research, and which one to use depends on strategy.
Knowledge
This is the easiest method, one which I advise new players to try. This will allow you to easily get your research in, possibly without spells, but will also make your hero weaker in other ways.
Knowledge can be used by itself once it gets high enough, though you should probably build universities at least in the early game for early game research (discipline, mage education, and spy education).
Knowledge can also be combined with universities in the midgame with Mimir's Well to very quickly get through the most important research areas.
If knowledge is used without universities, you should probably train your mages till at least day 45, as you will not be using them to cast Mimir's Well.
Generally, you would put at least 200 points into knowledge, and then start raising a different attribute, though if you are running economics, strength, or vitality, you would probably raise your other attribute first and then raise knowledge.
Steady research
Build some universities, keep building some until the end of the game.
This is usually only used by Jotuns (other then Mimir) who do not wish to use knowledge. This will restrict refineries in the early and midgame, and restrict mods in the late game, so it is probably not the best method to use in most cases.
Universities and Mimir's Well
The best method for any city with mages but without knowledge. Mastering this technique is vital for most strategies that do not rely on knowledge.
1) Build some universities in the early game for early game research (discipline, mage education, and spy education).
2) Research spell casting to level 9 just before you are ready to cast (day 35, give or take, is usually a good time to do this).
3) Start casting Mimir's Well. While you are casting Mimir's Well, you should get mage education to level 20 as your first priority. Also, you will want as many universities as possilble at this point until you are finished with research, even if it means having some unfilled jobs.
4) Get as much important research as you can, as quickly as you can. This is all that matters right now.
5) Research spell casting to level 10 LAST.
6) Start casting Hel's Wealth, destroy your universities. Do this on day 65 at the latest; day 60 or even 55 is better if you can get enough research done by then, but you can go to day 65 if you absolutely need to.
7) Replace your universities and any building you no longer need with more useful buildings. You will probably want homes until you have no unfilled jobs, but now that you are casting Hel's Wealth, you probably won't need as many farms or lumber mills, though you should get rid of the mills only once you have enough lumber to rebuild all your buildings. Mods, especially WTs, are usually very useful at this point. Refineries will only be useful if you have very poor mages.
Scholars
Only available to Kvasir. Scholars are defensive troops that provide very weak research (1 RP per 2 scholars). For the most part, you won't be able to get enough scholars to do all your research by themselves, and you will probably combine scholars with universities and/or knowledge.
TRADITIONAL STRATEGY
- What is the traditional strategy?
The traditional strategy is what I call the simplest and most straightforward strategy possible. There are two phases, which you will alternate between:
1) Build defense until you can safely defend more land then you will take or explore the next time you expand.
2) Expand and build new land.
To put it simply, you sit around doing nothing but building defensive troops, then you expand when you feel you have enough defense that you will not take a hit afterwards.
This is probably the first strategy you should try. It can be done as an attacker or explorer; as an attacker, you need to build both defense and offense between each expansion.
Taking hits is bad. You will lose land that you will have to retake and rebuild. You will also lose defenders unless you are 100% reliant upon your hero for defense (which is unlikely unless you are playing an uphit strategy).
The most common mistake is simple to avoid: do not take land you cannot hold. This will allow you to spend more money building more defense (and offense if you are an attacker), which means your defense (and possibly offense) will rise faster, and you will be able to expand again sooner.
I have watched dozens or even hundreds of new players attack constantly, and fail. It seems intuitive that taking land is good, but it is NOT good if you cannot hold it. NEVER take land you cannot hold when running this strategy! This is even more critical for explorers then attackers.
How much defense is good?
Well, it depends on how much land you have, how late it is in the age, and even what god/hero combo you picked. For the most part, you will need at least 10 defense per acre (DPA) when you leave guard. This will increase 3 to 5 per day (or so). I am sorry, this is a rough estimate and I cannot do better then this. This is NOT an exact science. Every age is different. Some land ranges need more defense then this, some less.
If you are a Jotun, you need more defense because Thors have an OP bonus against you. If you are a Thor, you need more defense because Jorms have an OP bonus against you.
The best way to determine how much defense you need is to look at other cities near your range. How much defense do they have? If you have more then most of them, you are probably in good shape. If you don't, you might want to stop growing for awhile, or at least look at how much offense the most powerful attackers in your range have.
Always remember: safe growth is the key to success using the traditional strategy. Do not rush things. Do not try to race your opponents. Look to the long-view, and rely on refineries instead of mods whenever possible. Get adequate mages and spies, and have a great late game. It is the late game you are playing for, because the only thing that counts is how much land you have on day 85. Who cares what you had on day 10, or 20, or even 84?
- Day 1 till OOG (traditional strategy)
First off, you need to have a good start. The larger you are when you leave guard, the more income and research you will be able to earn during the early age, which you will use to prepare for the late age.
You should always start by spending your attribute points. You should have picked a god, hero, and strategy by now…so this should not be an issue. Then pick some quests. If you get 475 acres and have already run "the ring", you can run "the ring part 2", which gives you some armor with a nice bonus, and leaving guard with this armor can be helpful in making sure you keep your advantage. However, this is only really useful for paladins unless your hero is at home. Some gods have very nice quests to start with, some do not…you'll have to decide which quests are best for your hero depending on your strategy. "Abandoned Settlement" should probably always be done before you leave guard, as early as is convenient, but you do not want to get this quest finished before you explore as it will raise your exploration costs.
You should probably build your first 100 buildings as refineries. All of them. Yeah, you won't have enough food income to feed all your villagers, but you have a good food income and stockpile to start with, so you might not even need anymore food, and since you have no troops to disband, starvation will not really hurt you yet (this will be a serious problem later on, once you have troops, so starving now is fine, starving later is a catastrophe).
Alternately, you can build some or all as universities, but really I think refineries is better for the traditional strategy (some uphit strategies might be better with universities). You should be larger and better defended when you leave guard, which will help you grow faster and get more universities.
Now, you will want to explore somewhere between 18 and 30 hours into the game. Obviously, your ability to get to a computer might dictate when, but there are other factors to consider. If your god has 78 hours of guard, you can go closer to 30, but if he only has 66, I would say closer to 18. There is also a question of what you will build with the incoming land.
30 hours is a dangerous risk even if you have a 78 hour guard. In general I would say around 8 PM gametime (EST, 20 hours into the first day) if you come out of guard earlier, and maybe as late as 2 AM (26 hours into the game, which is 2 hours into the second day) if you come out of guard much later, and around 10 or 11 PM (22-23 hours) for most strategies is just about right.
If you are going to attack when you leave guard, you will probably want to explore at least 3 or 4 hours earlier, unless you are relying on strength or vitality. You will need to build troops, and attackers need to build both offensive and defensive troops.
Underexploring (exploring less then you can safely protect) will mean you will have more defense then you need, but less income then you could have had. This will slow you down a little, but is probably better then overexploring.
Overexploring (exploring more then you can safely protect) * might * pay off handsomely. Probably not, but it can. Chances are, if you overexplore, you will regret it, and you will take multiple hits. Early game attackers look for overexplored defenders.
You need 18 hours to explore completely. You need 12 hours to build your land. The more land you take, the more it costs to build. Also, as that freshly explored but unbuilt land comes in, your refinery percentage will be shrinking…so if you explore too much your income will be falling. Finally, exploring costs villagers, so you will lose most of your income if you explore a lot of land at once. Once the land is built, your income will increase again…but this will take 30 hours to completely finish, at a minimum, before you start to draw your new income fully.
It will also take 12 hours to build your troops.
If you explore too much, you will also spend too much of your income on building that land, so to be safe you don't want to explore more then 200 land for most hero types, and no more then 350 as a merchant. Less is okay, more is a dangerous risk. The exact amount you will explore depends on your god and hero type, and how soon you start your exploration.
Sending your hero on the exploration is not a bad idea, but it might be a better one to have him do quests. It's up to you, and which one is better depends on a lot of factors.
Throughout the game, these buildings are REQUIRED:
- Homes (you'll need some homes once you get some troops)
- Farms (as needed. Ideally, you produce exactly as much food as you need)
- Ore mines (depending on how many troops you will be producing…and the cost in ore. Some gods require more ore mines then others)
- Lumber mills (you won't need many at this point. You start with 35).
Though some strategies might not need ore mines at all, and some might trade ore for food and lumber. If you don't see the point to either of those things, you probably need some of all 4 buildings.
If you can figure out exactly what you need you will be in very good shape. In the early game, you might want 20% homes, farms as needed, 10% ore mines, and 10% LM. You might find those numbers work good for you. You have to start somewhere, and until you get some experience (or a spreadsheet), you'll be guessing a little.
Ideally, you will have exactly the number of homes you need to have 0 unemployment and 0 unfilled jobs. This is impossible to achieve because you are building troops; instead, anticipate the troops you will build and build a few homes beyond what is actually required.
You will want exactly the number of farms you need to feed all your villagers and troops. You will want exactly the number of ore mines you need to build all the troops you need, and exactly the number of lumber mills you need to build exactly the number of barren acres you get.
All of this is impossible. Instead, come as close as you can, anticipating your needs. As you get better at the game, you will get better at having the number of buildings you require. A good spreadsheet can help out immensely, as you can have it calculate a good approximation to what you need, but even then you are only coming close. You cannot know, for certain, how much land you will take from an attack, or anything like that, so try to come close but don't worry if you have some excess homes and resources.
All buildings which are not in those 4 types are extra. Those buildings are:
- Refineries (great for extra income. Very important in the early game).
- Universities (produce research points. Important in the early game, and critical in the midgame unless you are relying on knowledge and/or scholars (Kvasir only).
- Academies (provides a bonus to offense)
- Watch Towers (provides a bonus to defense)
You should already have 100 refineries from the 100 barren land you started with, and no universities or mods (academies and WTs are referred to as mods).
As your land comes in, you build the buildings you need, then the buildings you don't need but are nice to have. More refineries will give more income. Universities will give more research. One of those two building types is the way to go. Building a lot of universities in the early age is a good idea, so you will probably want to keep the 100 refineries, and build as many universities as you can without skimping on your necessary buildings.
Building mods will give you benefits starting immediately, but nothing for the future. For example, build 40% refineries, and you get +100% silver (double silver) and +160% iron ore. This will allow you to build twice as many troops, and then some. Now imagine there is another city which chose to build 40% WTs instead. He gets twice as much defense, but no extra silver. You build troops twice as fast as he does, so your defense is equal to his, but you've doubled all your income. So your offense also doubles (or the amount of money you have for exploration if you are an explorer). A week later, you destroy your refineries and build 40% WTs. You have twice as much defense as he has now.
The longer you wait to build WTs and academies, the better, IF you don't NEED the bonuses provided by those mods. WTs are worth building if not building them will lead to the loss of land. However, if you need WTs while playing as a traditional strategy, you could have just decided to not grow as fast and built refineries or universities instead. Remember, you should be looking for the long-term gains, not short term ones. You shouldn't build WTs unless you need them, and you shouldn't build academies at all, until about midgame.
Before you leave guard, you will also need troops. If you can get more then 10 defense per acre using your best defensive troops, then you should do so, and only use those troops (vitality and hero defense should be counted in this if your hero is a paladin or you plan on leaving him home for awhile once you leave guard). If you come up short from this number, augment your troops with cheaper ones (such as archers) so that you don't leave guard underdefended. If you are an attacker, you should try to build both offense and defense…but defense is more important right now. Holding onto the land you have is more important then getting more land.
Leaving guard with more then 10 defense per acre is probably a good idea unless you want to get hit. More then 15 is probably excessive, so shoot for about 12.
There may be some very high offense, low defense cities lurking about, so no matter how much defense you built, you might take a hit. This is annoying, but you can still have a good age even if you are targetted by a city with freakishly high offense, provided you don't say anything to the player that causes him to focus on you. That would be bad.
- The early game (traditional strategy)
You should have a decent income at this point, or a very high income but very little research if you built few universities but a lot of refineries. You should also have decent defense. However, there will be some gods who are rapidly gaining offense during the early age. Thor and Freya are the biggest threats, with Jorm, Fenrir, and any strength strat also being something to watch out for.
If you are an attacker, you should try to keep about twice as much defense as offense. Right now the cities are all shuffled. As time goes on, those with low defense will be moved down in ranks, and those with high defense will move up ranks. You don't want to be one of the cities with low defense, but you do want to identify them and feed on them. Sometimes there might even be a city or two with no defense at all. If a city has no defense, it will still have a basic defense of 1.25 * acreage. Do not forget this fact. If you find such a city, you might be able to attack it several times.
Attackers should look for weak cities so that they can focus mainly on defense. If you are an attacker and you take hits, you can usually recover without too much of a problem at this point. You still have your offense, so retaking land is not a big deal. However, you still get casualties from battles, and rebuilding land, while fairly cheap at this point, will force you to move resources from building troops to building buildings. Not taking hits is better then risky behavior. Do not attack just because you have a target. This will give you a lot of rebuilding costs, and both your army and city will suffer.
If you are an explorer, you should probably not explore for the next day or two. You need to build defense to match the offense that the more aggressive gods are able to field, so spending money on exploring and building is not really a good idea until you have very good defense. Explorers who take hits in the early age rarely do well. Exploration is very expensive per acre, and though you have higher income (because you need no offensive troops) and more land efficiency, re-exploring a lot of land will give you a horrible age. All of the best explorers are the ones who started out slow once they left guard.
As you grow in land, build universities. You shouldn't build more refineries during the early age, unless you are able to get good research without universities.
During the early game, you need to get the following research areas ASAP:
Discipline
Mage education
Spy education
If you have no mages (all Jotuns except for Mimir), you can ignore mage education.
If you are a paladin and you don't expect to have high income, you can skimp on spies OR train your spies well. Skimping on spies means faster early game growth, which might be helpful, but you won't have good spy defense in the late game, and you won't have many good spies to steal with. If you do choose to skimp on your spies, you will still need a few to gather information with or else you will be forced to rely on your mages, and two of them should be trained whenever possible to insure you can penetrate good spy defense to gather info.
For all other strategies, you will be shooting for 5 discipline, and 10 to 14 mages and spies.
Thieves should get 12 to 14 spies. AMs should get 12 to 14 mages. Everyone should get at least 10 mages and 10 spies, except for non-Mimir Jotuns and paladins which have chosen to skimp on spies.
You should probably raise one level of discipline first, and then either mages or spies (whichever needs it the most) to at least 8, followed by a second level of discipline. Then mages and spies to 10, followed a third level of discipline. And so on…until you either have 12 to 14 mages and spies plus 5 levels of discipline, or you need to start researching spells (see the midgame).
You should not get more then 22 to 26 total mages and spies. That is because they are expensive to train. If you are training 12 mages or spies, you get very good experience even for the mages and spies that you have not yet purchased. See the spy and mage training guide for more details.
If you have very good research, it is entirely possible to get as many mages and spies as you want plus 5 levels of discipline. If you do this, start on your midgame research.
Slow growth is the key to victory. Train your spies and mages as well as you can, increase discipline, spy education, and mage education. Do NOT try to keep up with fast strategies; they are trading early growth for research, and this will probably work out for the top attackers in the top kingdom, but the rest will be passed by slow strategies in the mid to late game. You want to be one of these cities passing by the cities that grew too fast.
Building a few WTs as the age progresses won't hurt too much, but try to build none till at least day 10, and keep the percentage as low as possible until the late game.
- The midgame (traditional strategy)
The midgame is normally the research phase of the game. It usually begins around day 30, though some people might start earlier or later. It will usually go to about day 55, though sometimes it will end earlier or later.
See the section on research for information about what research you will be doing, and how to get it done.
University-reliant strategies will generally not grow much in the midgame, but will do most of their research during this time.
Knowledge-based strategies will generally grow faster in the midgame as they can rely more on refineries or mods.
- The late game (traditional strategy)
Now you should have most of your important research out of your way, and if you have mages, you should be casting Hel's Wealth.
At this point, your buildings should be arranged for fast growth, and you should have exceptional income.
UPHIT STRATEGIES
- What is an uphit strategy?
An uphit strategy is an aggressive strategy in which you attempt to get as many attribute points (APs) as possible for your hero by taking advantage of the rule that gives you 2 APs whenever you strike a city with equal or greater acreage.
An "uphit" is an attack against a city that has equal or greater acreage.
- Can you win with an uphit strategy?
Probably not with a long-term uphit strategy. The cost of building your land will simply become too great at some point, which will detract from building troops, until your growth is at a stand-still. Uphit strategies have the ability to damage the games of many targets, so you can definitely hurt the competition, but the constant rebuilding required to pull an uphit strategy off will also hurt your own game.
This strategy requires not only the advancement of your hero by finding attribute points, but also that you tear down your opponents and hurt their game to slow them down. I if a lot of players were to run an uphit strategy, it *might* be possible to win with one as everyone else will be having a lot of difficulties, and the uphit strategies really won't be hurt by other uphit strategies. However, if only a few cities play such a strategy, it is likely that someone will eventually slowly grow out of your range and dominate from above.
A good guild playing uphit strategies could possibly do very well. An individual is going to have more problems.
Fast-growth strategies might be able to get out of your range altogether, since staying small is beneficial for you, in which case you become a non-issue to them. Slow-growth explorers (especially Baldurs) might be able to sneak past in mid game, and if they get large enough they will be impossible to take down.
Therefore, you might find it best to start with uphits in order to get as many APs in the early game as possible, then switch to a traditional strategy. Conversion is simple: stop attacking. Build only defensive troops, then start growing again once you have enough defense.
- How is it done?
Uphit strategies are upside down strategies when compared with the normal strategy of avoiding hits by building defense and slowly growing as you are able to hold the land. If you want a more aggressive game and are too impatient to go with a slow-growth strategy, this is the strategy for you!
While in guard
You should probably NOT build any refineries while in guard…though you can if you like. Too many refineries will make it difficult to stay small. However, starting with 100 refineries and then building universities after that might also be a good way to go, as that will give you a lot of troops when you leave guard.
You might want to explore once while in guard, but if you do, start earlier then you would with a traditional strategy. Too much growth will make your targets harder, and the extra income will only be useful if you have enough time to get extra troops from it.
Ideally, you will leave guard with your offense greater then your defense and able to immediately start hitting larger targets. So growth and defense is not important while in guard, as it is using the traditional strategy.
Early to mid game
If you want to make constant uphits, you need very high offense for your landsize. You cannot attack with greater offense then 1.5 times your defense. If you have 50,000 defense at home after an attack, you cannot send more then 75,000 offense on your attack. So you should count only troops you want to keep at home and your hero's vitality if he is a paladin as remaining, at home defense. A horseman, for example, has 6 offense and 2 defense, but the defense is not counted if the horseman is sent on an attack.
You should try to keep at least 1.5 times your at-home defense in offense. However, if you are running a strength strategy, you will need to keep your strength portion of that lower or you risk being unable to attack at all. Variations based on attribute focus will be discussed later.
You have to lose land to constantly uphit. If you do not lose land, your targets will eventually become too large and well defended as you grow past all the easy targets. Therefore, a significant portion of your income must be spent on rebuilding land and possibly troops. This makes an uphit strategy rather counter-intuitive in its usage. You don't mind getting hit by other cities because you must shrink to be able to make more uphits. Making sure your offense is 50% greater then your at-home defense, and that you attack as much as possible (3 times per day is possible for most gods, 4 times for a Thor or Jorm) will insure that you are attacked by larger cities. The more attacks you make, the more APs you get. 50 days worth of uphitting twice per day will give you 200 extra APs.
Since you don't mind getting hit, it is okay to get into a back-and forth war with another city. Aegirs can be ignored without fear. Threats and taunts can be shrugged off or even laughed at. You are basically a bully, and the only way for someone to avoid your attention is to stay smaller then you or to build enough defense to survive.
Don't try to grow too much. You will have to balance your increased power and income as you grow with your increased cost of buildings per acre. The larger you get, the more land you will gain from your attacks and lose from your enemies attacks, so not only will the cost per building be increasing faster then your income, but you will also have more buidlings to rebuild.
Universities are important. You will need some spies to gather information, some mages for your late game, and some discipline as soon as possible.
Refineries are also important, but only as needed. You need a decent economy to build and rebuild troops and land as needed, so 10% to 20% refineries is probably a good target, but lower is better if you can swing it as it means more universities.
If you want to grow and you are doing okay with your rebuilding, mods CAN be used. If you are running a vitality Freya and you have plenty of swordsmen, and your offense is much greater then your defense, building some WTs might be a good idea. Not building them might also be a good idea, as growth will increase your costs as explained above, but higher growth might be necessary to hit certain cities if you have specific targets in mind.
You should try to make uphits, but not major uphits. Gaining a lot of land is NOT beneficial; try to hit cities very close to your own city size so you take as few acres as possible while still making an uphit. You will grow based on how much defense you have, not on how much land you take, as you should be under constant attack anyway. Taking more land only means more buildings to build and then rebuild when you take the land back again and again. However, you might want to target cities that you consider a threat. Taking down a large, powerful city that is a threat to you or your kingdom will probably be worth taking the extra land. Hitting people that can hit you back is perfectly acceptable, as is hitting explorers in order to stop their progress. 8 hour attacks are best if you will be able to attack again when the 8 hours are over, so you can make more attacks.
Researching annexation is an absolute mistake while you are uphitting. Once you have finished uphitting, you can research it if you like.
You will need good research to survive the late game (20 mages, all spells, 30 to 40 architecture is the absolute minimum to do well in the late game; Jotuns will need some alchemy and irrigation instead of mages and spells), so low mods/refineries and high universities will probably be necessary during your research phase. This will be difficult as you will probably be fairly large by this time, and will have very high rebuilding costs. This will probably be your greatest hurdle to overcome, unless you chose a knowledge strategy.
Mid to late game
If you are able to grow continuously and take down the top cities, you might want to try to keep your uphit strategy running well into the late game. If not, you will need to switch gears in the midgame.
At some point you will need to STOP uphitting, grow and hold your land. The point at which you do this depends on your god/hero choice and how your age has gone, but if you notice it is taking a couple of days to build all your land between attacks, you've grown too much. Time to build defense and switch to a traditional strategy.
Focus entirely on building defenses and WTs until you are stable and able to hold your land, then grow conservatively, keeping your defense higher then your offense exactly as if you were playing the normal slow growth strategy. You have an extremely powerful hero and have hurt the competition considerably. However, you are far behind on land and troops, which means you are going to have a tough time catching up to the top cities.
- What hero type/attribute should I chose?
Any attribute can be used, though some will be easier then others. Vitality is the most obvious choice, but here are my thoughts on all the attributes with an uphit strategy:
Strength adds offensive to your hero if you use him on attacks.
Advantages:
- few offensive casualties, few offensive troops required, saving your income to build or replace your buildings and defensive troops.
Disadvantages:
- If your defense falls below 2/3rds your hero's offense after you take a hit, you will be unable to attack. If your defense is too high, you might not take enough hits to allow you to continuously uphit. This makes a strength uphit strategy a bit tricky. The easiest way to deal with this issue is to look for the easiest uphit you can make, and increase your strength to what is needed, when it is needed. This keeps your strength as low as possible. Your remaining APs would be in reserve, unused. You can also consider splitting your attributes between strength and another attribute if you get enough extra APs, but make sure you keep enough reserved that you can raise your strength if needed.
Vitality adds defense to your hero.
Advantages:
- No defensive casualties.
- Easiest, most intuitive attribute to use in an uphit strategy
Disadvantages:
- You must keep your defenses low. If you find your defense growing too fast, you might be forced to build more refineries (to increase the speed you can increase your offense), build some academies, reserve attribute points temporarily until your offense increases, or split your attribute points with vitality and something else. This is a very minor disadvantage, though. Keeping your vitality as low as possible, only raising it when you need to raise your defense in order to send out your offense, will make you an easier target.
- Can only be done with a paladin, as other hero types do not defend when they attack.
Knowledge gives research points. Does not multiply with Mimir's Well.
Advantages:
- No universities required, very fast research phase. You should still start with a few universities, but will be able to get rid of them quickly as your knowledge should be rising very quickly. Once your knowledge is around 100, stop building universities, and once it is near 200, tear them down and build something else.
- No point in casting Mimir's Well; your knowledge should be high enough, soon enough, that you won't need to. You can cast Hel's Wealth earlier then normal, or train your mages longer then normal, which might be enough to make up for what is certain to be poor growth in the early age.
- 200 to 300 points is the most you would ever put into knowledge, allowing you to have 2 seperate attributes. Knowledge would normally be the first one to invest in, though a 50/50 split of knowledge with strength, vitality, or economics would also be completely reasonable in an uphit strategy.
Disadvantages:
- Rebuilding costs. Ouch. This should be considered a pretty big disadvantage. It will be very difficult to build/rebuild offense and/or defense with no help in this matter from your attribute. On the other hand, the speed of research might make it worth doing; get 200 or so points into knowledge then stop uphitting altogether, perhaps, and change to a more defensive strategy? This might work very well, it might fail spectacularly. However, if you are playing a god that needs high attributes, and has casualty reduction or immortal troops, this is likely to perform very well, as it will allow you to very, very quickly get good research.
Economics gives a bonus to city gold production; available only to merchants.
Advantages:
- Works very well at low land levels. Since you will probably be smaller then many cities during the early game, you should be able to easily rebuild and increase your troop size in the early game with the added income economics provides.
- High rebuilding costs are offset by high income.
Disadvantage:
- Tends to fizzle out at high land levels, even if it is very high. Since you will be coming from behind, the long-term success of this strategy is questionable.
Thievery increases income from stealing missions. Only available to thieves.
I probably wouldn't try a pure thievery uphit strategy. Should work if combined with knowledge, though. Start with knowledge. This might also work if combined with strength.
Advantages:
- High income possible in the mid to late game, regardless of land size, so you might be able make up for what is certain to be a horrible early game.
Disadvantage:
- Useless in the early game.
- High rebuilding costs.
Wisdom gives a bonus to the power of your mages' spells; only available to archmages.
Advantages:
- Very powerful spells
Disadvantage:
- Useless in the early game. Consider combining with knowledge or even strength, developing wisdom in the midgame and the other attribute in the early game.
- High rebuilding costs.
- Income from wisdom requires high base income. Wisdom is GREAT at high land sizes; terrible at low land sizes. A wisdom uphit strategy is sure to have little growth in the early game, thanks to the rebuilding costs, which might make it very, very difficult (if not impossible) to do well with.
Wielding gives a bonus to offense and defense; available only to paladins.
Advantages:
- Bonus multiplies with base offense and defense, making it very powerful in the late game if you have a large and powerful army.
Disadvantage:
- Nearly useless in the early game. Consider combining with strength, vitality, or knoweldge, developing wielding in the midgame and the other attribute in the early game.
- High rebuilding costs.
- Bonus multiplies with base offense and defense, making it very weak if you have a weak army. Rebuilding costs will be high in the early game, making it very, very difficult to get a large enough army to make wielding better then strength or vitality.
What god would you recommend?
- Freya: This is the most obvious choice. Build a LOT of swordsmen. Send as many swordsmen, your hero, and as few draugar as possible to maximize swordsmen casualties. If you want to move quick, all refineries is good, though you might find yourself with so much offense you cannot use it, as Draugar are very inexpensive when created from swordsmen. This strategy * might * secure you a top spot very early in the game, but if it does not, you will find that you will have great difficulty getting uphits, because you will be larger then most other cities, and people will be reluctant to hit you because they will be afraid of you.
A better way might be to run heavy universities instead, and increase your discipline as quickly as possible. This will allow you to remain smaller, and make more uphits.
Freya is probably BETTER as an uphit strategy then a traditional strategy, since you need to make attacks to convert swordsmen into draugar anyway. Vitality paladin is probably the most obvious choice, though Freya could be used in an uphit strategy with any attribute except for strength. Economics should also be a pretty good choice.
Freya needs to get as many draugar as possible as soon as possible. Once you get too large (1500 to 2000 acre age), you will be spending too much time and income on rebuilding. You must switch to a traditional strategy, or watch your income all go to rebuilding land. So build, build, build swordsmen until then, and only swordsmen and land. No spears for vitality paladins, even if you cannot use your full offense, and for other strategies build just enough spears to have enough defense to make uphits. Once you switch to slow growth, you might want to switch to alchemists instead of swordsmen, but honestly if you have enough draugar you might find yourself with enough offense to last the rest of the age. After you convert, you will be building only spearmen until you need more offense (which might take awhile), and then you have to decide if you want more swordsmen or more alchemists. Swordsmen will cost less per point of offense and give you more draugar on your attacks, but alchemists will be more space efficient. Since you will not be attacking as much in the late game as you did in the early or midgame, that might be more important then having cheap offense as too many swordsmen will hurt your economy.
As a Freya, having too much offense to use is okay as long as you can find targets. Sending as many swordsmen as possible is more important then holding land, so using draugar for defense might not be a bad idea.
- Odin or Gullvieg: Second most obvious choices…immortal offense! No income is spent on rebuilding offensive troops. It will be difficult to keep your offense high enough, though, as your troops are very expensive and you still have to build/rebuild land. Any attribute could be used, but vitality would probably be the best as you would have no defensive casualties, and would be able to focus most of your income on your very expensive offensive troops. Like Freya, probably not a good choice with strength.
- Frigg or Tyr: Casualty reduction for both offensive and defensive troops. Probably a good choice if you don't want to run strength or vitality.
- Thor: WoL have offensive casualty reduction, and Thors attacks are all 2 hours faster, making Thor a good choice for any attribute. Strength-based Thors will benefit from the faster attack times as well as Thor's naturally high strength, but don't let your defense fall too far behind! A vitality / strength split should be considered if you are having trouble.
- Jorm: you really can't go wrong with 6 hour attacks on an uphit strategy, if you will be able to get to a computer often enough to take advantage of it. Leviathans have very good cost per point of offense, but you have two major weaknesses: high casualties, no mages. Still, 6 hours for all attacks at all ranges is pretty tempting when your entire strategy is based on making as many attacks as possible…
- All other gods: ANY god can be used to make uphits with…getting higher attributes and relying more on your hero, but sacrificing early growth. Split knowledge strats such as knowledge/thievery or knowledge/wisdom might be able to take advantage of the quickly advancing attributes in the early game, as fast gains in knowledge will translate to many late-game advantages (better mages/spies), and you will also have a lot more attribute points to place in your other attribute(s).
FAST STRATEGIES
- What is a "fast strategy"?
A fast strategy is a strategy in which you try to get much larger and much more powerful then other cities as quickly as possible, and then dominate from above. Short-term goals become more important then long-term goals, as becoming the top city (or one of the top cities in the top kingdom) as quickly as possible is the point to a fast strategy.
- Attack, or explore?
You can do either. Attacking, you will be trying to become the most powerful city in the game, and trying to hold that position. Exploring, you will be trying to build enough defense that the top attacker cannot take you down.
Exploration will be just like the traditional strategy (read up on this), except without universities.
Attacking will be uphits when possible, but it is NOT an uphit strategy. You are trying to outgrow all opponents, so downhits will be necessary if you do it right. Focus on building defense and attack constantly; if you do not have enough defense to hold you land, your fast strategy has failed. You must then evaluate where you are. Can you still succeed and defeat all other cities? If you think you can, you need to convert some of your refineries to academies and/or WTs. Otherwise, convert to an uphit or traditional strategy.
- Solo or guild?
Past ages have proven that a lone fast strategy attacker CAN dominate the game. However, recent ages have proven that a guild can do so even better. The more people in your guild running a fast strategy, the easier it will be to gain a dominant position. A solo player can, however, dominate based on the fact that if you have more defense then any other city has offense, you cannot be conquered. Guilds can do better because any city in that guild might gain the upper hand at any point, and then the entire guild will climb together. In the late age, it is much more difficult to take down several cities then it is to take down one, so holding the top ranks is easier.
- Conversion
A fast strat cannot usually remain a fast strat forever. If it did, you would be unable to do any research, and eventually you would be destroyed by those beneath you. Unable to quickly perform research which you would now be way behind on, you would have a very poor showing for your final rank.
You MUST convert to another strategy at some point in time.
When and how to convert and which strategy to convert to depends on your situation.
If you have secured a top rank and are completely safe from attack, you will need to start to invest in universities and/or knowledge.
If you CANNOT secure a top rank, admit it. The sooner you make this admission, the more likely you will be able to salvage your game.
You can convert to an uphit strategy if you are small enough and have enough offense…simply attack as much as possible (though only with uphits), concentrate on building as much offense as your defense will allow you to use, and build universities with as much incoming land as you possibly can (or start to develop knowledge).
Attackers can also to convert to a traditional strategy. WTs should be held onto, but do not build more. Refineries and academies should be slowly converted to universities and other buildings as needed. Do not take land you cannot hold, and stay out of range of anyone that can take your land from you.
If you are an explorer and it has become obvious that you cannot sit in range of the top attackers, dropping back a bit will be necessary. You need to secure the land you have, and if you have WTs, that is going to be problematic. You cannot tear down the WTs you have…so instead, start to slowly convert refineries to universities. Do not build more WTs, but keep the ones you have, and do not explore until it is safe to do so. Any attacker that can strike you must remain out of your range, so you might have to wait for others to enter his range and feed him their land.
Once the top attackers have secured their places in the top ranks (usually all from one kingdom), this is the "wall" that people talk about on the forums. There are a lot of opinions as to how walls should be handled and taken down…but the truth is that they are generally impossible to deal with in the short or mid-term of the game. Freya uphitters might get to make some hits on the wall, but it will probably not be enough to take it down, and will also end up feeding land to the wall. Other strategies really should not worry about it…instead focus on not feeding your land to the wall, do the best you can, and don't worry about other cities.
- Hero choices
Paladin: Paladins get to keep their full defense when not at home. This is a great bonus in the early game, as it means more defense for less money at a critical point. Paladins can run strength or vitality in a fast strat.
Merchant: Merchants get cheaper spy and mage training, more powerful refineries while home, the ability to trade resources at a very good exchange rate, and access to the "economics" attribute. Merchants can run strength or economics in a fast strat.
AM: Archmages get cheaper mage training, extra experience while training mages, and 2 extra mages. This means a better late game, as player's spells will be better. However, the early game benefits to paladin or merchant far outweigh the cheaper mage training, which is the only early game benefit AMs have. AMs can recover well from a failed fast strat, as they can run strength/wisdom and will possess more powerful mages, but they are less likely to succeed then a paladin or merchant.
Thief: Thieves get cheaper spy training, and shorter capture times for spies. They also start with some resource stealing. However, they cannot steal any decent resources until their spies are well trained, so this is not really a very good benefit. Thief is probably the worst choice for hero in a fast strat.
There are also only 3 attributes of any use:
Strength (paladin or merchant)
Vitality (paladin only)
Economics (merchant only)
No other attribute will be fast enough to be usable as a fast strat.
- God choices
Gods with bonuses that help in the early game can be used for a fast strategy. Other gods should be avoided.
Frigg: extra housing means more employees, fewer houses, and more refineries. Frigg is a good choice as a merchant explorer for this reason. Easily converts to a traditional strategy if the fast strat fails.
Thor: without a doubt, the best choice for strength-based attacker as a fast strat. Thors can dominate the early game with their extra strength (both from levels and equipment) and their +15% OP bonus vs. Jotuns. Strength paladin or strength merchant are probably the best choices, though you could run an econ merchant while in guard, then switch to strength. If you want to run a pure econ merchant, there are better choices. Thor is easily convertible to an uphit or traditional strat if the fast strat fails.
Tyr: good bonuses to OP and DP, additional benefits from equipment. Not as powerful a Thor, but still powerful enough to do well. Easily convertible to an uphit or traditional strat if the fast strat fails.
Aegir: good bonuses, retaliations against the kingdom, and offensive casualty reduction for any troop (including swordsmen). Not a bad choice, probably not the best.
Fenrir: a surprisingly good merchant explorer. Great defensive troops and a high defensive bonus. Can also run strength-based attacker and use wolves for defense.
Jormungandr: Powerful on the attack, with cheap offensive troops and 6 hour attacks regardless of distance. High defensive bonus, and casualty reduction against all non-Jotuns.
Loki: Loki kinda sucks, but the ability to plunder targets can be used to help considerably in the early game…if you can find wealthy enough targets. Defensive troops cannot be seen except by mages, and a lot of players will simply be reluctant to use a mage to spy your shapeshifters. If you can't find good plunder targets, you'll wish you had picked a different god to run your fast strat with.
Frey: food from hunters, extra food from farms, and no ore required for defensive troops.
Freya: hands down, the cheapest offense you can get (other then strength). Freya can gain awesome offense in the early game as a fast strat, by using a lot of swordsmen and getting them killed with unending attacks. Getting enough defense to run as a fast strat is more problematic then the question of offense, despite not being able to wield a weapon.
Kvasir: Kvasir can run a rather weird fast strat: relying entirely on high income from refineries, and using either economics or strength, build NO universities, and use NO knowledge. Instead, build as many scholars as you can. Unlike other strats, this one does not need to convert…you can simply do this from day 1 to day 85, making Kvasir the only exception to the "must convert" rule. This strategy should only be attempted with strength or economics, as no other attribute will be fast enough to allow for the number of scholars you will need to build in the early game.
- Early game exploration
You MUST explore in the early game to run a fast strategy. Build refineries with your first 100 acres, and possibly convert other buildings to refineries and/or ore mines (as a merchant only…merchants with more then 30% refineries can trade ore for lumber and food).
You should try to take your spies and mages out of training when your refineries are finished, and leave them out until you explore.
How much you explore depends on your hero.
For paladins, you should get the ugly chain mail from "the ring part II" before leaving guard. This requires 475 land…225 from exploring, or 190 from exploring and 35 acres from "the abandoned settlement" quest. This should be enough land to give you good income as you leave guard, but not so much that you will not have time to build it plus troop.
Econ-based merchants should take more land. You should probably not explore any less then 300 land before leaving guard.
Exploring too much will have the same consequence for a fast strategy as it does for a traditional strategy…you will lose the extra land, lose defending troops, and lose time and income. This might be enough to end your fast strat right then and there.
Exploring too little has the same consequence…you will not have enough income to build enough troops to quickly secure a top place. Your fast strat should end as soon as you recognize this.
Do not bother with a fast strat unless you are able to explore at the critical time; the earliest time possible to explore the amount of land you need. For most gods, this will be about 20 to 24 hours into the first day; later will overexplore, earlier will underexplore.
Once you explore, you can put your mages and spies back into training. You should probably take them out again once your population recovers, while storing up money for troops. Once you actually leave guard, you should probably put the mages back into training, and use spy missions to train your spies as best you can for free.
- Buildings
You will build as many homes, farms, ore mines, and lumber mills as you need, and then build the rest of your land as refineries. Merchants might find that building only homes, farms, ore mines, and refineries is better…trading ore for food, lumber, and even silver thanks to the very high ore bonus given by refineries.
You will NOT build any universities until you have secured a top spot or converted to another strategy.
When needed, you will build academies and WTs, but ONLY if you still have a shot at securing a top spot. Try to rely on refineries as long as possible, as quickly building troops is more important then anything else for an early game fast strategy.
- Spies and mages
TRY to fully train your mages. CONSIDER training spies…however, you are in a race. If you are competing against someone who seems to be creeping ahead, suspend all your training and use info missions for experience instead. Significant investment into training might slow you down enough that you have no chance of success.
- Quests
If you are an attacker, you will be attacking a lot, and won't have time to do many quests. However, any quest that gives very good bonuses might be worth doing. Here are some to focus on:
The Ring (Part II) [PALADIN ONLY]
Gives "ugly chain mail", a very important bonus to defense which should be gained before leaving guard. Requires completing the ring part I and 485 acres of land.
Garm's Failure (Part II - The Murderer)
Requires 7th level hero and 713 land. You must complete part one before doing part 2.
Gives the Slayer's Sword…a MUST HAVE for any strength-based fast strategy. Also useful for other attackers, except for Freyas who cannot wield a weapon.
Other quests are also useful, but for most attackers, those two are highly recommended.
As a merchant, you will find that staying home might be more useful in some cases. However, you still need to quickly increase your economics…so quests that give good experience for the time involved will also be useful.
Quests that give land might or might not be useful. If you are an attacker, do these quests when you cannot find a target. If you are a merchant explorer, you will have to calculate if it is worth the price of your hero leaving home for the duration of the quest or better to stay home and gain extra resources to explore with.
SPREADSHEETS
Spreadsheets are great for Norron. If you are good with excel, I highly recommend building one. If you are not good with excel, it's never too late to learn.
You should start simple. Inputting all of your buildings into the spreadsheet so you can calculate maximum population and food production, for example, will let you see if you have enough (or too many) farms. You can add fields for incoming buildings, planned buildings, barren land, etc. to calculate almost anything about your economy, if you've also included the proper spell, god bonus, and research items.
Adding troops into the mix, you can figure out your offense, defense, number of troops you can build per hour and if you have enough ore or not, and a bunch of other things.
Useful equations:
maximum population = (35 per home + 15 per academy + 10 per other building) * (100 + architecture + any other modifier) / 100
other modifiers include Gullveig's penalty and Frigg's bonuses.
food production = (100 per farm) * (100 + irrigation + total spell bonus + any other food % bonus) / 100
food production is different for a Frey, as the farm amount may be different. Fenrirs get a % bonus based on the number of wolves they have.
Thor's population eats 10% extra food. This does not affect maximum population or food production, but will require 10% more farms in total. Having a field that actually keeps track of food eaten is useful anyway, as Freya's troops do take up housing but do not eat, and Thor's people need more food.
ore production = (75 per ore mine) * (100 + metallurgy + total spell bonus + refinery bonus)
Refinery bonus for ore is 4 * (# of refineries / total land). It is 6 * (# of refineries / total land) for a merchant who is at home.
lumber production = similar to ore, but with no refinery bonus unless you are an Aegir.
silver production = very complex. I won't bother putting the formula here. My spreadsheet does calculate silver income, but you'll have to figure this one out yourself if you want to.
Ore required = also complex, based on your smithing and the amount of silver you have for troops, and the troop type/mix you are using. Nice to have, required if you want to know exactly how many ore mines you need.
Ore mines required = ore per hour required / ore per mine per hour. Not perfect, because when you build buildings or use silver for other things, you will not be building troops, so you will actually need less then a straight per hour usage.
Like I said, start simple. Use the spreadsheet first to calculate your total population and the number of farms you need, then go from there. Double check everything; a mistake on the spreadsheet can cost you dearly.
After a few ages, your spreadsheet will probably be an ugly mess of calculations and data. It's worth it.
My spreadsheet currently tells many things, including my offense, defense, income for every resource, income from 1 acre of any economic building (farm, ore mine, lumber mill, refinery, or house [assuming I have unfilled jobs]), as well as what the value of its resources are converted to any other resource, such as how much wood the ore from my refineries can be traded for. Because of this, during age 9 I knew that my ore mines would produce enough ore to trade the ore for lumber and make MORE lumber from an ore mine then I would have from a lumber mill, even if my hero was away and I am not getting his refinery bonus. With a merchant's exchange rate, this is always the case provided you have at least 30% refineries. Non-merchants have worse exchange rates, so this is not necessarily the case. I tor down my lumber mills and replaced them with more refineries and ore mines, as ore mines gave me greater income in lumber then lumber mills do. I did not plan on having less then 30% refineries (until late in the age, anyway), so this was okay for me to do. Thanks to my spreadsheet, I knew that I would never need a lumbermill, though I would need extra ore mines in the early game, and farms later on to make up for it.
Having a spreadsheet automatically kept track of this for me and told me when I should start building farms and trade food for silver or ore, as I gained more and more wolves. This was very useful.
I highly recommend building a spreadsheet if you want to take this game seriously. As the ages pass, your spreadsheet will continue to change (based on your god and hero), and become more and more sophisticated. It will always be helpful, regardless of your skill level, and help you to be more efficient.
SPY AND MAGE TRAINING GUIDE
Here are some important things to note:
1) unresearched spies/mages get experience as your other spies and mages get training. Each new spy or mage will enter service with 1/20th the total experience of your other spies and mages. That means every spy or mage you have in training is giving experience to spies or mages that you have not researched yet, but NOT to any spy or mage that is researched.
So training 10 mages while you have 10 mages unresearched will give more total experience then training 10 mages while having 10 other mages casting.
2) if you research multiple spies/mages at once, you have lost experience. Don't do it. Research one at a time. That is because you will get them simultaneously. For example, if you have 15 mages with 30000 total experience, and you train 5 mages at once, each one of those will get 30000 / 20 = 1500 experience.
Training mages one at a time gives a different result. Each mage gets 1/20th the total experience, so your 17th mage will get the 1500 experience + 1/20th of what the 16th mage has. The 18th mage gets 1/20th of what the 16th and 17th mage have, etc.
Buy one mage or spy, push the "Spend Research Points" button, refresh, and repeat until you have all the mages or spies you want.
3) since training available spies/mages will give experience to unresearched spies/mages, unresearched spies get partial training for free.
Here's an example with 10 mages:
Training mages 1 through 10 will give 5 experience per hour.
mage 11 will be getting 2.5 experience per hour, because he will get 1/20th the total experience of all other mages. You are making 50 total experience per hour. 50 / 20 = 2.5.
mage 12 gets 2.625 experience per hour, because he gets the same experience as mage 11 gets, but also gets mage 11's experience. 50 + 2.5 = 52.5 total experience per hour. 52.5 / 20 = 2.625
If mages 1 through 10 are constantly in training and are trained till they have 5000 experience each (level 50), mage 11 will be at level 25. 5000 * 10 = 50000. 50000 / 20 = 2500 exp (level 25).
Mage 12 will get (50000 + 2500) / 20 = 2625 exp (level 26)
Mage 13 will get (50000 + 2500 + 2625) / 20 = 5756 (level 27)
etc.
Heres the number of experience points per hour of training you will get for each mage if you have 10 in training and 10 unresearched:
1 thorugh 10: 5 exp per hour
11: 2.5
12: 2.625
13: 2.756
14: 2.894
15: 3.039
16: 3.191
17: 3.35
18: 3.518
19: 3.694
20: 3.878
Overall, your mages are averaging 4.072 experience per hour, 81.44% as much experience as you would be getting with a full 20 mages, but at only half the training cost!
4) How many spies/mages to get, and how soon:
If you are a thief, you need a lot of spies for obvious reasons. Merchants and archmages need spies for defense. Paladins don't really need spies except to gather information, but can augment their mediocre income by stealing, and may sometimes be the victims of thieves.
I recommend 12-14 spies for a thief, as soon as possible. 10-12 spies for an archmage, and 8-10 spies for a merchant mainly for defense. Paladins should get 6-8.
If you are an archmage, you need mages quick. Thieves need mages the least, followed by paladins.
I recommend 12-14 mages for an archmage, as a priority. 10-12 mages as a merchant, 8-10 for thieves and paladins.
Gullveig and Mimir cities might want to pick up an extra mage or two as well, since they get higher self-spell bonuses then other gods. This is particularly true for Mimirs.
Obviously, a few more mages or spies might be okay if you have a lot of research and are okay with the additional training cost. Fewer might be better if you need early growth for your strategy. The most experience you can get per hour for your mages/spies is 5 experience each, only possible if you have all 20 researched and in training. Note that 20 mages and 20 spies would take up 80% of your silver for training (60% even for a merchant), causing you to stagnate so much that growth becomes virtually impossible.
13 mages and spies will train on average at more then 90% the speed of 20 of each…but leave you with 48% of your silver instead of just 20%.
5) chart.
20 spies/mages train for an average of 5 experience per hour. This chart will tell the average amount of experience your mages/spies will get per hour if you have a given number, an all are in training. The numbers drop if some are in training and some are not. The chart assumes that you will eventually research all 20 spies/mages; if you do not, you gain less overall benefit from training.
Not counting Jotuns with no mages, the fewest spies or mages anyone starts with is 2.
2: 1.203 exp per hour (24.07% of maximum possible)
3: 1.719 (34.38%)
4: 2.183 (43.66%)
5: 2.599 (51.97%)
6: 2.97 (59.40%)
7: 3.3 (66%)
8: 3.592 (71.83%)
9: 3.849 (76.97%)
10: 4.072 (81.44%)
11: 4.26 (85.32%)
12: 4.433 (88.65%)
13: 4.573 (91.46%)
14: 4.691 (93.81%)
15: 4.786 (95.72%)
16: 4.862 (97.24%)
17: 4.92 (98.4%)
18: 4.962 (99.23%)
19: 4.988 (99.75%)
20: 5 (100%)
6) mage training notes
individual mage power = (10 + level) / 10
Total mage power = (10 * number of mages + total level of all mages) / 10
spell power bonuses, such as wisdom, Gullveig's bonus, or Mimir's bonus from wizards, is multiplied by the total power, as is the power of the spell.
An individual mage's level is completely irrelevant. Only the total level counts. 19 mages at 1st level and one at 181st level is the same as 20 mages at 10th level. Therefore, the average experience becomes far more important then any given mage's level. 10 mages in training, 10 not researched will increase the total mage power that is 81.44% as fast as 20 mages in training all at once, and the fact that the 11th mage is only half the average level of the 1st ten mages makes no difference whatsoever. It is generally better to train all your mages, or none of them. Trying to get some arbitrary minimum level makes no real sense; if you want higher level mages, train them all longer.
It is worth training an individual mage even after you are finished with training if he is very near the next level. This is often the case with newly researched mages. Mages also gain experience when casting info spells, which can make a good way to top off a level, though the experience is too low to replace actual training.
If you have mages, you should ALWAYS get 20 mages around midgame, after you have finished training. Even a poorly trained mage is a huge boost to research while casting Mimir's Well, and to income with Hel's Wealth, because of the 10 free levels given to all mages with regards to spell power.
7) spy training notes
spy defense is just a little higher then total spy level / 10 (though this really doesn't work well at lower levels). Spies in training or on missions are not counted.
Spy defense has a 0% chance to capture a spy that is twice the level of the defense, a 50% chance to capture one that is the same level, and a 100% chance to capture on that is half the level. All other numbers make a smooth curve through these 3 points. Info missions have better chances of success.
For spy defense, an individual spy's level is irrelevant. For missions, lower level spies should be used on poorly defended targets or to test defenses, and higher level spies will be required for targets with better defense. It might make sense to train some spies differently, such as having a few very high level spies to break defense, rather then training all or none as with mages. An attacking paladin might not need as much spy defense as an archmage or merchant, for example, because his income is much lower and he will not be a priority target. He might want 2 or 4 very high level spies to help him gather information, though, so it can make sense to keep your first few spies in training as much as possible while using your lower level spies for missions, or after you are done training most of your spies. Explorers should still train all or none, as they will only need them for defense.
