Share Your Strategy?

[Khabita]

I have to admit, I'm struggling in Theoris. And I'm envious of the top dogs who already have 3 cities and at least one monument. How do you do it? I'm never going to be a Top 10 player, but I would really like to improve my city management skills, so if anyone is willing to share their secrets of success, I'm sure many of us would like to hear them.

I'm also sure there are many different ways to be successful at this game, so it would be interesting to see what those various strategies are.

So, wanna share?

[Nighteyes]

each resource promotes a different strategy, also where you begin will alter your play style, are you in the center nomes, or are you in the outer nomes is your good selling well ing the market or do you need to sell by Direct Trade. All of these will alter how you play. Personally I have decided that I will aviod tradeing by direct trades unless some one asks me for one. other wise I will focus on the market place and advance that way.

[davypi]

Well, its hard for me to say if I'm a good player or not. I started at 300 and have slowly creeped my way up to 200. I don't know if that really says I am a better player or if just that 100 simply less ambitious.

Regarding Khabita's comments, the difficutly with his strategy is that it really depends on the kind of person you are. I made another post in the general forum a couple of months back that some people are good shop owners and some aren't. Generally I am not, so I do a lot of wall trading because its the best way to ensure I get a fair deal. I'll check the market daily, but I only buy something if I either find a really good deal or I'm desperate for a resource.

I think a big factor as well though is that it depends on how much time you can afford to put into the game. Even though I started at 300, I dropped down to about 400 because when the server first opened up, things were ultra busy at work and didn't have time to watch my city during the day. Now, things at my workplace are more casual and my rank started going up right about the same time I was able to log in during the day. I have timers on PC setup to tell me when I need to log in and perform needed upgrades or move labor. I can also just sit on the wall while I'm working and wait until the deal I need comes up. So I don't think its so much an issue of having a good strategy as it is being able to make a time committment. The more you can play, the more you can micromanage.

JMHO

[Naqada]

There are 3 ways...

1) time investment. You got to log in and build as soon as the previous construction is just finished. Temple finish in 4hrs 30min...you should be ready to build something else in 5hrs.

2) Create a time dilation field powered by a zero point module. Within the time dilation field, days will pass in your cities while only seconds pass in the universe. Now it is time to create replicators, tiny nano machines, capable of so much more than humans. They shall take the form of their creators. Then these replicators can build, calculate, etc better than any human could.

3) Download addons. Get firefox browser (free). Then get the GreaseMonkey, ArmEagle's script and Pegasus Epsilon's Magic Fair Trade Calculator.

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21637

http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showpost.php?p=246881&postcount=397

[GaSplat]

The grease monkey script is a godsend. Absolutely awesome. It helps a lot! :D

At first I scrolled a lot of people to get trades. Sources for trading came from:
- people who bought my stuff in the market
- looking at folks in nearby nomes that had a city that would soon need my resource for their next upgrade and were likely to have what I needed based on their lux material.

Eventually I set up daily trades with folks. Some materials are easier to do this with than others. Having a dependable supply of a key resource makes life a lot easier and benefits both parties.

I always browse the market as you never know when you will see a bargain. Like the guys in front of your market say "One can never have enough bread". I also use buy orders at one less than the market rate to help myself and the guy who just wants to get his bread immediately rather than waiting. Getting stuff for 4 when it normally costs 5 is a nice boost if you can wait a little for the order to be filled.

When selling, I tend to split my sale in different priced lots. The guy that wants a smaller quantity may pay a higher price but he gets just the amount he needs so we both win. People able to buy more might pay one less per unit than the small lots go for. A ratio of 3-1 in lot sizes seems to provide enough savings that your larger lot only appeals to the larger buyers. That is where I sell the bulk of my stuff. But having the higher priced entries for smaller lots helps to keep the market from always setting the bottom price. It works for me but your mileage may very. If you become a major supplier for something that has an established market price of say 4, and someone dumps a bunch of little lots for 3, you can buy them up and resell at 4. You still make .6 pure profit on each even after the market fee. :) But you have to watch the trends. Eventually prices tend to go down so if a lot of people start dropping their price you might hold off on this buy and sell back option to see if the lower price becomes the standard. In my experience it takes a couple days for an established market to drop its going price so if you are paying attention, its not an issue. And prices occasionally jump back up so leave your old listings out there if you can as they tend to eventually get bought.

I keep my temple god happy but not ecstatic (the spreadsheet I reference lets you see what a 48 hour blessing is worth to you based on palace level - assumes full population is employed). This way I get a reasonable benefit. Grab a monument as soon as you can and a second as well. I did this around the time I was going to start needing limestone for palace upgrades, but the other big benefit is the production bonus for all your cities (1% per monument level so a max of 10% with two full monuments). The rules have changed a little (I did this Sabah), so you now have to build up the quarry more to get started, but its a good investment. Just be careful to keep bread production up so you can feed your workers and soldiers at the monument(s). (Did I mention you can never have enough bread?).

Nubian raider events have a nice pay off so contribute whatever you can as long as you don't have to buy all the materials at market - unless they are cheap. ;)

This spreadsheet (http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pVCbvAD0bIIQeql8S7ZU9dw)has a wealth of information, only some of which is in the wiki. Very helpful for planning ahead.

Read the wiki, especially the extended primer. Lots of good ideas and info.

I tend to avoid long trades as I did not have a cedar city initially and therefore did not have a ton of boats. But if you are having problems finding stuff, then expand your exchange, buy a bunch of cedar, and hit the trade wall.

I am not a top ten player (yet) but my progress has been better than most I know and I am getting there. There's a lot of good ideas and very different approaches out there. Hope this gives you some ideas of what might work for you. A big part is how do you enjoy playing the game. If you hate the market, then avoid it. If you hate scrolling for trades, then don't. Just enjoy the game. There is no "right way", especially since different lux materials have different strengths and every market is different. And what works at the beginning (trade lux goods for me) might not work later (so I switched to raw materials trades and built the shops I needed - but this option can be harder to do until you have multiple cities).

[Kraken]

I am trying something a little different because I'm bored with the constant scramble for trades. Instead I'm using my capital mostly for bread, bricks, baskets, and pots, with just enough kohl/cosmetic trading to meet upgrade requirements. I'm using the market much more than I did in Sabah.

My second city is focusing on military. I make a little sculpture and trade away a little bronze, but mostly I'm making soldiers and fighting bandits for luxuries.

For my next acts I intend to take a monument plot and buy a pyramid, then found a third city, then do one more palace upgrade. After that my scarabs will be gone and I'll be stuck.

I started out in 25th place, fell into the hundreds, and gradually rose back to about 75th. Not too bad considering that I am playing casually and doing very little direct trading (compared to Sabah). I like the slower pace.

[Ramzez]

Diversification, market manipulation, as well as spending lots and lots of time on the trade wall.

Theres a few ways of getting ahead:

1. Check the markets often, and work out which goods provide the highest profit percentage.
2. Trade goods on the trade wall if they don't sell for much on the market. E.G. you produce cosmetics, but they only sell for 10 on the market when jewelry sells for 15. Solution: trade all your cosmetics for jewelry. If you want to be even more proactive, trade your cosmetics for jewelry, then buy more cosmetics from the market - don't do this too often though, since it will push cosmetics prices up.
3. Work with a bread deficit, as large as you can support. Producing bread is not a very efficient way of progressing.
4. Diversify your portfolio. By this I mean making sure you always have a good mix of luxury goods in your capital to trade [and sell in the market, since if you flood it with one good, prices will just fall and you will make less profit]
5. Check trade wall for good deals, use spreadsheet and make sure the deal is always beneficial to you.

Finally, what is profitable today may not be tomorrow, so always take note of market prices.

EDIT: Sandals/Sculpture are generally toxic goods too. They are almost always bottom of the profitability chart as far as the market is concerned. Same can be said for baskets/pottery. People forget that sculpture/sandals take around 20% more bread to produce than other lux goods, and their price does not reflect this. On the other hand, if your not a producer, and trade your lux 1:1 with sandals/sculpture, you can make a nice profit.

[Fenehk]

Spreadsheet! (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pVCbvAD0bIIQeql8S7ZU9dw&gid=0) Use it to figure out what resources you'll need some time before you need them so you don't have to spend time waiting for those 24h shipments to arrive before you can start the next palace upgrade. While the palace is upgrading, look up what you'll need next and trade for it so you're ready to go again as soon as the warehouse, bakery and stuff is ready for it!

[homegrown]

I've been asked by several people "what the hell are you doing that you're so far ahead of me", so I thought I'd share some thoughts on my strategy for Theoris. I'm pretty sure all these things have already been mentioned.

1. Most important is run bread deficits. Making bread is a very inefficient use of worker hours. Use the market to make bread by selling excess goods. I started on jewelry, so it was and is pretty easy for me to make 3,000 or more bread in sales per day. (200 jewelry at 14, plus 200 leather at 5, you get the picture).

2. Stay focused on your current goal. To move quickly, you need to stay focused on what the very next thing is. Don't build anything before you need it (have workers to staff it). Don't make anything you don't need. For example, my capital city, pretty much just makes jewelry and bricks. And it's able to make quite a few of both every hour.

3. While staying focused on the short term goal (#2 What's Next), don't forget the longer term goals. This is why I started on monuments early. The plan was to take the monuments about Level 8 or 9, then build the pyramids (with their nifty production and travel bonuses), and be done before I needed limestone for palace upgrades. My 2nd monument completed yesterday, and I'll be looking at starting the P12's very shortly.

4. Do longer timed upgrades overnight or when you know you won't be able to get to the computer for a few hours. Do your shorter upgrades when you have more attention to the give to the game. Idle builders are wasted time.

5. *Most Importantly* Don't get too caught up on Rank. What's really important is for you to have fun watching your cities grow and mature. Play the way you want to play.

Kenhotep on Theoris and Sabah

[Jaguar]

If you are worried about rank, don't forget that ALL building levels count for something in ranking. I think I'm the only person in the top 10 who doesn't have any city above L10 (although I just hit the upgrade for my first one). And I've been asked how the heck I can be above people with higher level palaces :D Just upgrade EVERYTHING :D

Bread defecits are definitely very important. And trade everything you can!

I'm taking my time in between upgrades to upgrade stuff inside my city, but I'm sure I'm wasting time with some of it. I don't have the workers to staff everything to full anyways. But it looks so much nicer to have everything L6 or higher :D

Having some great trade partners also helps a lot. The four people I make daily trades with are people, with one major exception, that I didn't know before I started on Theoris. And although I knew that one person before hand, I haven't really interacted with this person in NO until Theoris either.

My trick is that I pump out the raw materials and only covert some to luxuries. Most I trade raw. And I hate making pots/baskets, so I trade for those as well.

I only make some sculpts, mostly just produce bronze to sell/trade. I make some cosmetics for trade, but since they sell so low, I generally just use the kohl I produce to sell or trade rather than cosmetics.

I make my daily consumption bread from selling some jewelry as well as bronze, kohl and emeralds (or traded materials I don't need)

And I have to second homegrown's long term goals. The monument bonusses are great! You get your ships back faster, produce faster, etcetera. If I weren't trading away most of my limestone I would have started my second pyramid, but I felt it was time to upgrade into the double digits on at least two of my cities :D

I never expected to be in the top 10 for this long, especially since I don't upgrade my palaces that quickly. I'm sure someone else will be passing me by soon!

But I'm having fun. I spend a lot of time on the trade wall, which is a wonderful thing!

Edit: Oh, and very early temple blessings. 10% boost in production means fewer people needed to produce bread and more people making stuff to sell/trade/upgrade.

Another trick to sell items: I happen to be the only person selling jewelry out of one of my nomes. People that haven't upgraded their markets as much can see my jewelry, but not the jewelry that is being sold one nome further north, so I can reliably sell my jewelry to people south of me. That and travel times. People to the south of me can get my jewelry 18 minutes sooner than going one nome further north. And by selling at the same price, the difference becomes travel time.

[Bradius]

There are a lot of good tips here. I am friends with many of the top players and I can tell you we each have different ways of doing things, so there really is no single path or method to succeed.

I agree with those that say don't get too focused on rank for rank's sake. Work on upgrading your cities/monuments. More workers = greater productivity. Keep your stuff upgrading.

I like the markets. It is a good way to make profits to pay for things you need. Look at my sales (InkBlot I in Theoris), you can see I like selling stuff.

Most of us do spend a good bit of time playing the game, it is not essential for success, but it does help. Good trade partners I think is critical. You need to go the extra mile with trade partners. Help each other out in times of need, and you will each do better.

The best advice I can really give is to play in the way that you like. Don't get too hung up on rank and just have a good time.:)

[abana]

I need some strategic advice. I need to start thinking about where to put my third and fourth cities on Theoris. Location is much more important to me than the resouce, I need to place them so that when the markets are fully expanded they will just reach the end of civilization. For a timeline in devloping those cities, I plan that upgrading the market takes prime importance, I will spend most on my time and resources doing that, as far as I am concerned, levleing up the palace, and other buildings are of a lower priority.

[Deguar]

I need some strategic advice. I need to start thinking about where to put my third and fourth cities on Theoris. Location is much more important to me than the resouce, I need to place them so that when the markets are fully expanded they will just reach the end of civilization. For a timeline in devloping those cities, I plan that upgrading the market takes prime importance, I will spend most on my time and resources doing that, as far as I am concerned, levleing up the palace, and other buildings are of a lower priority.

Ideally Theoris will continue to expand, so there will never be an end of civilization.

Even a level 20 market, which would take weeks to build to that level, can only reach 41 nomes. The current end of civilization to the north (and presumably similarly south) is 311, therefore you would need to be out at least in the 270s.

Both cities would also be almost certainly 24 hours away from the rest of your empire which will tie up significant portions of your shipping for internal trades and puts an end to the ability to send emergency supplies of some good from your other cities within a few hours. Additionally they would almost certainly have to be virtually self sufficient in basic goods.

~~~~~

Personally I find 3/6 hours apart has been a fairly nice spread back on Sabah. It allows me to cover the intervening distance with L10 markets. It gives me some diversity in the prices and especially demand I see. I quite like having my cities mostly self sufficient in basics. Ignoring my monument speed reduction my maximum end to end journey length is 15 hours which is rarely undertaken, since for the most part I use staged shipping. So my typical journey is 6 hours, which is a great -- kick it off in the morning, knowing it will be there by afternoon, kick it off in the afternoon knowing it will be there by late evening, kick it off before bed knowing it will be there in the morning -- scenario.

[abana]

My cities on Sabah are, at the closest, 9 hours apart, I like having them in vastly different areas. I have them now totaly independent as far as the basic goods, and the ones on the outskirts have a good supply of the Lux goods, the one in the center can buy off the market cheaply. By reaching the end of civilization, I meant at the time, I would like to have it that the market reaches level 20 just as the nome 20 nomes away gets the first settlers. The cities on the outskirts wouldn't be shipping goods out that much, they would mostly be recieving, their own production would probably be used up on thier own market.

[GaSplat]

45 nomes apart prevents any overlap even with maxed out markets, but 4 cities have to be further apart in order to get the kind of coverage you seem to want.

Suggest you make them all cedar (those you add anyway).

#1 - you will need the boats to cover the 24 hr internal trades and to take advantage of the disparities between markets.
#2 - cedar does well in the very young markets (first boats), the very mature markets (immortality), and some of the middle markets as people go for city 3 and then city 4.
#3 - you will feel free to build all the lux shops you need (IMHO, trading in raw just seems to work out better in the long run than trading in goods - on markets as well as regular trading). Of course I don't have self sufficient cities. I would try a basket - pottery leap frog effect and just plan ahead on where to send stuff for upgrades. But I enjoy playing that way. Individual mileage may vary. ;)

[Bradius]

GaSplat, I like your approach. It is interesting and something I have not tried. While I have not played that way, I can not fault your logic and approach. It sounds like a winning combination. I generally try for a variety of materials with my different cities, there is no doubt in my mind that such a strategy could work well, especially with the cities placed in good markets.

[GaSplat]

I actually have different materials - the three war supplies and henna (since it ties well with two other raws). But the all or mostly cedar route is what I would explore if doing as Abana wants with very widespread cities.

Her idea is interesting. In Sabah I put my cities in two nearby nomes to double up on temple blessings and keep internal transfers short, but I might try her approach for a change of pace if/when I hit Theoris. I think it would slow down the early game a little when spread far apart, but it would make for a very different game play. It is also very market oriented. Would probably want one emerald or gold city early, but otherwise it would be all about the cedar. I personally am just not crazy about 24 trades, so I have to think this one through more before actually attempting it. I love giving up a basket or pottery shop in cities after the first one though. I make all my goods myself and make more jewelry than any other lux - and I have neither gold nor emeralds. ;)

[abana]

I am using a similar strategy on Sabah, only one is a "buying city" , my cedar city has two brickworks. The other two outskirt cities are leather and bronze, in part because you only need it's own lux material, and in part because I wanted to be able to capitolize on military. My center city is on oil, partly because it isn't difficult to get the other material, but more for sentimental reasons. I started over twice on Sabah, the center city is in the firts nome that I had.

[GaSplat]

Heh heh. Then we are very similar in Sabah. My capital is the only city I have that even has a market! I don't think two brickworks are needed though. I did that in my fourth city, but late in the game, the upgrade times are so long that only the palace upgrades use more bricks than I can replace during the upgrade. I use the brickworks and even some pottery and baskets, as "slack time" locations. They fill up after a palace upgrade and I slowly cut back their workforce as I upgrade more important stuff. But that is strictly a late in the game strategy and assumes you upgraded those plots earlier when they can be more of a constraint on your upgrades. I recently destroyed a pottery plot to make a second perfume shop and will soon do the same to a basket shop to get more jewelry capacity quickly and cheaply. My temples take perfume and jewels ya see. ;)

I plan on building markets in my other cities only after they hit L22 and are stable. At that point I will upgrade the lower level plots strictly to quickly bump my rank in search of a nice phat pyramid to go immortal in. :) Same reason I will be donating heavily to the temples then. I used to be frugal in the temples but now a 1000 donation is not only still profitable (I have two big cities in each nome), but seems to help bump me up.

[abana]

In part I wanted to show or resident expert that he doesn't have the only valid strategy. I have sent out scrolls to nearby producers of a given item when I needed it sooner than I can transport it, I don't often use the trade wall for these things as I need it soon, and I don't like to say "Sorry, you aren't close enough", The problem with the scroll method is that you don't know who is available now, so you need to send out a lot of them, and I don't like to tell someone, after they answer my scroll, that I've already gotten it, so I ended up trading for more than I needed, but that's ok.

I have even bought from Mr. "My Way Is The Only Way"(yes he does use the market), although not often now, I have expanded my MARKET and can now get a better price.

[davypi]

Well, I wouldn't call this a strategy, but maybe perhaps a notation.

I captured my first monument site last night. I woke up this morning and my rank had jumped from 201 to 125. Again, not necessarily a strategy, but if all you care about is ranking, its apparently a great way to get a huge jump.

[abana]

Wait till you see what happens when you build the monument, and then a second one!

[Kraken]

My strategy of aggressively responding to bandit invasions is not working out as well as I had hoped because the invasions are too irregular. I went four days without any action, and now suddenly have simultaneous invaders in all three of my nomes. I rapidly depleted my leather and cedar stockpiles and resource shortages are limiting my ability to respond. I'm going to get one nice juicy payoff from the first invasion, but can only send token forces to the other two because they came so rapidly.

This strategy could still work, but I'm going to need bigger stockpiles in case of another surge like this.

[GaSplat]

Yup. Feast or famine. Kind of like contract work. ;) Got to save up so you can strike it rich when the good times come. :)

[Bradius]

I also like to go for bandit booty. Kraken does point out a major problem with bandit camp attack strategy. It can be feast and famine. If this is your strategy, you had better be ready to deal with it. Try to build up and maintain lots of reserve bronze, cedar and leather in stock. If you are cranking lots of troops, you will suck those materials like a black hole!

I produce troops during the day and put them to work on other stuff at night so I don't have troops eating my profits while I sleep. When I am producing troops, I crank down my luxury material and goods production. After all, this is what you are getting from the bandit camps when you get your payout. This can work if you have some reserves of needed luxury goods so your palaces can keep evolving. Otherwise, if you pull away folks from bricks, pots and baskets to make troops, your palace evolution and building upgrades will suffer.

Since this can be feast and famine, you must be able to keep your people busy doing other things when there are no bandits.

[abana]

Lux goods is also where I get my labor for the barracks, but my sleep patterns are very strange, I sleep not more than a couple hours at a time. Finnaly found a benfit to depression.

[Tinkerbell]

Yep, love Bandit Events. I cannot stop myself when they pop up! Definitely upload from all cities in real time asap so they won't sit around eating bread.

If you want to take a quarry plot from bandits, wait until a Bandit Event pops up & send the extra leftover soldiers to the Event after you nuked the quarry plot.

One thing that I finally learned in Theoris, that I did NOT do in Sabah, was to realize the power of bricks. I have always been able to pump out TONS of bricks (I learned this from COTN), but never sold or traded them. Since my Capital in Theoris was jewelry & 2nd city cedar, I made ZERO 3rd city lux myself. Never had this problem in Sabah (bronze, leather). During new city founding times, no one wants jewelry, they want the other luxes, or swap lux for lux.

So, I started trading bricks 3for1 for 3rd city lux. 300 bricks for 100 lux is a bit of a loss, but it definitely worked miracles! Of course, trading 3for1 requires a lot of boats!

[shasamrat]

I can't say much Theoris-specific, but I plodded away on Sabah for over five months. Monuments mean a lot for rank. But I don't think I figured it out until just recently (despite lots of better players sharing much of this advice for many months).

I went from around the 200 mark to 70 (and then clicked the immortal button) in 2 weeks by... producing nothing, selling a lot, and upgrading everything. I didn't need any more immortal goods, so I just shut down all production and focused on bread production. I sold all of my extra goods for profit (better for rank than trading evenly). And I upgraded every single building as many times as I could squeeze in. I timed them carefully to put long upgrades on during work and sleep, but when I was awake and bored I'd take care of the short ones over and over again.

I was running a fairly efficient system before, but rank boosts really came from my new emphasis on profitable sales and lots and lots of building upgrades, not just palaces.

Good luck and farewell, my friends.

[GaSplat]

Happy trails Shasamrat!