Need advice on 2nd city

[Avogadro]

Planning for my second city, although it's going to be a week or so before I actually build it. Still, I'm thinking about the best resource to take next. Here are a couple of my thoughts:

- My starter city is emeralds, so I could start a gold city and crank out jewelry without having to trade for gold. Not that I mind trading...

- Henna seems to be a good choice, in that it's needed for making two different luxury goods, plus used for basket and pottery shop upgrades. Also, my starter city is in a Set nome (19S - Setdep), so having some materials for cosmetics could be handy.

- A lot of the Top 100 players on Theoris seem to have bronze and/or leather cities (I assume for maintaining armies), so maybe I should *really* plan ahead and get one of those - trading/selling the resource until I am ready to use it myself.

Any thoughts from the experienced players? My early thought is to go with henna.

[Tinkerbell]

Howdy, Avogadro!

It really depends on several factors, among them what type of Nile you wanna play. I'm gonna assume that you are playing the full four-city game for rank.

You should never compliment luxmats, especially both jewelry luxmats. Several reasons for this, mostly that gold emeralds are totally useless, except for making jewels. Not needed for upgrades nor soldiers.

Diversification is the name of the game with additional cities.

Upgrade luxmats ~ kohl, henna, oil & leather

Military luxmats ~ leather, bronze & cedar

If you plan on upgrading for rank, a leather city is absolutely required. 12 barracks in four cities means a LOT of leather.

Henna would be good for you, since that one you were thinking about. It's all good. Some native luxmats just require more work than others.

Good Luck! :)

[abana]

In my opinion, all of those arguments are valid, I have a couple other thoughts for consideration. I think that the location is as important if not more than the rescource. If you are in a good market(and expand it), you can buy what you can't produce often at a lower price than you can sell your rescorce for. Do you want to have the cities close to each othet(makes for easier transporting between them, or I like to place them with 44 Nomes in between, a fully expanded market will reach for 22 Nomes. At that distance, it takes almost 6 hours with the transportation bonuses from two level 5 monuments.

[Avogadro]

@Abana: The thought I had was to keep my second city relatively close to my capital, then put my third and fourth cities further out on the map for arbitrage opportunities. I'm new to NO, so I'm not sure how to tell if my local market is really good or not. I'm assuming it is, since I'm close to the middle, and when I click on open city plots within my nome to get the market preview, there are 15-30 sell orders for just about every luxmat and luxitem (within +/- 10 nomes, so with an L22 market it would be even better).


@Tinkerbell: Good point that doubling down on gold and emeralds is a bad idea. I sort of thought so, but then wondered if jewelry is a really hot commodity because of palace upgrades. I suppose emeralds are a slightly tougher resource to start with, but it seems like as you go further along in the game it matters less.

I like the way you classified materials for military and upgrade purposes. Looks like my instinct towards henna was right, but I'll definitely plan my third city to be leather. And yea, I'm thinking that I might as well shoot for the moon and try to get a high rank with four cities. The one city challenge sounds pretty tough, and maybe better left for my successor Avogadro II. ;)

Thanks to both of you for the advice!

[tutmoses ii]

You must also keep in mind what resources are much in demand and what resources are being overproduced. If there are a lot of henna sellers about, it might make more sense to take kohl, if that's hard to get, or oil, for the same reason.

[Tinkerbell]

Good point that doubling down on gold and emeralds is a bad idea. I sort of thought so, but then wondered if jewelry is a really hot commodity because of palace upgrades. I suppose emeralds are a slightly tougher resource to start with, but it seems like as you go further along in the game it matters less.

Yes, jewels are very important, but everyone makes jewels eventually. You should definitely have a jewelry city, but not two of them.

The cost for additional cities increases greatly with each city. No jewels are used. None. Zip. Nada. That's where the balance comes in. They want the other lux.

The late game is about trading raw luxmats for raw luxmats, cuz we soon have all lux coming outta our ears. No one will want your jewels.

[abana]

I have had both gold and emeralds in two incarantions, and it has worked very well for me, it probably helps that I ship gold to my emerald city, and emeralds to my gold city, so that I can trade either resource from either city, and because I spread the cities out, people can get either rescorce from me in a close trade for a lon expanse. Although I may have a high level shop, jewelry production is usually not maxed out in either, sometimes I even have no jewory production in one of them.

[tutmoses ii]

The palace upgrades require 6504 sculpture, 10260 cosmetics, 8880 sandals, 7625 perfume and 34289 jewels. That probably accounts for new towns not costing jewels, the fourth town option was after all added later. Those numbers must mean more, but I'll leave an explanation of all the fine details to the experts. An obvious conclusion however sseems to be that sculpture is a rather worthless product here that doesn't require a fully upgraded shop (or if fully upgraded for rank, not fully staffed).

[Q-Man]

I think leather and henna have the most potential. Although gold and emeralds are clearly important for leveling up palaces, there are three barracks plots which equates to a lot of leather for anyone maxing out their plots. Henna is a triple threat with common shop upgrades, cosmetics and perfume all needing it.

Of course when founding additional cities, it always pays to check availability. If no one has kohl, then kohl will still trade and sell well. But all other things being equal, henna and leather are my favorites.

[Tinkerbell]

Two things to keep in mind when picking additional cities

1) Never judge how rare something is from trade wall posts. By far, most players do not use it. Everything is available in huge amounts just by scrolling the neighborhood.

2) Picking a new city is all about predicting the future game, not following the past. Something that "appears" rare on the trade wall today, may not be rare tomorrow, cuz other players are picking the "rare" ones today for additional cities also.

Let's say kohl is rare on the wall today. Everyone picks kohl for their next city. If you do also, then in a month when all these new kohl cities are upto speed, we have a glut of kohl on the wall.

Follow your Bliss & Good Luck everyone. Definitely have FUN !!! :)

[Avogadro]

As it so happened, there was a henna nome exactly 44 steps away (25N) from my capital city's nome (19S), so that's what I picked. I'm definitely going to go leather for my third city though, given what people have said about needing it for an army and also for barracks upgrades.