Races, Units, Buildings

[Seravy]

You should build those early whenever you can, those buildings are super important.

Not as important as settlers, units to defend myself, alchemist's guild for those units to actually work, and...well that's it. But on a high growth race I prefer the miner's guild-university-mecha guild unless I need more food than I can conveniently have. If I'm playing a magic based game instead of military, I might even want the wizard's guild or sage's guild or amplifier tower first. If there are unrest problems, shrine and oracle (or units) takes precedence. More people are just giving more rebels.

[GermanJoey]

I almost never build a settler before granary+FM unless my capital is really bad and there's a really good contested spot nearby. I mean, what's the point in getting new cities if your current city can't support their growth?

And I find that I rarely have a need to build military in the very early game, unless there's a close-by and high quality neutral city to take and I have some sort of good early unit (e.g. Horsebowmen). The AI can't even declare war on you before T50 or something like that, and early raiders will get munched up by your tower's lightning bolts.

[Seravy]

I mean, what's the point in getting new cities if your current city can't support their growth?

To make sure you build there and not the enemy. Or to get that extra 32 gold from the gold mines. Or because you don't care about the capital if you have mithril/adamant on the first new city you can build.

Even with elves I do settlers before granary. The difference is, with elves I do granary after settlers and the bare minimum defensive forces. On other races I don't build the granary in my first few cities for a long while - military buildings, power buildings or research buildings are priority, whichever is needed for my strategy most.

Cities grow ~100/turn without a granary. Sure, 150 is better but if the choice is that, or 8 longbowmen with magical weapons defending the town before the enemy declares war, I pick the latter.
...the change to militarist might have made this matter less, but attacks without war declaration are still a thing in the early game.

The AI can't even declare war on you before T50 or something like that,

It's 40 nowadays. Numbers below are totally made up and random but close enough to a typical game I play :

-Sawmill : 10 turns.
-2x Settlers : 7 turns each = 14 turns
-1x Library : 1 turn
-1x Alchemist Guild : 7 turns
-1x Foresters Guild : 3 turns

Now we are at turn 35 and we have't made a longbowmen yet...but we can start making them. Without a Barracks. They suck without it. But while the capital makes bowmen, the two settlements can do sawmill-granary-marketplace-farmer's.

In case of other races, replace "Forester's Guild" with whatever else the race needs to get to the earliest better-than-swordsman unit.

The difference is, in the "2x settlers" slot you buy a Granary/Marketplace/FM. Which is ok but not my style unless the terrain I can reach is so horrible I don't want to build anywhere at all.

[GermanJoey]

That's not the only difference. First of all, a 10T Sawmill sounds pretty slow. But, even granted that, just replaying from T10->T35 by getting Granary/Market/FM first, I'd have:

- roughly +1 whole population point
- an extra ~150 production from the extra workers (this is the main immediate benefit of the early food buildings; you're getting ~4 raw production from them together, just from farmers reassigned to workers)
- an extra ~150 gold from the marketplace

That pays for one whole settler right there. For very early longbowmen, I'd straight up skip the Alchemist guild and just get the Barracks, maybe after a Stables (extra production plus Cavalry are very good for reinforcing early settlements because of their high movement), unless I knew for sure that there was something nearby that had weapon immunity or I had mithril, as they won't get the +1 to-hit from magical weapons for their ranged attack. You'd probably also want to build a bit of housing after two consecutive settlers, FWIW.

So, my economy and production would be better and I'd be just as well protected.

[Seravy]

That's not the only difference. First of all, a 10T Sawmill sounds pretty slow. But, even granted that, just replaying from T10->T35 by getting Granary/Market/FM first, I'd have:

- roughly +1 whole population point
- an extra ~150 production from the extra workers (this is the main immediate benefit of the early food buildings; you're getting ~4 raw production from them together, just from farmers reassigned to workers)
- an extra ~150 gold from the marketplace

That pays for one whole settler right there. For very early longbowmen, I'd straight up skip the Alchemist guild and just get the Barracks, maybe after a Stables (extra production plus Cavalry are very good for reinforcing early settlements because of their high movement), unless I knew for sure that there was something nearby that had weapon immunity or I had mithril, as they won't get the +1 to-hit from magical weapons for their ranged attack. You'd probably also want to build a bit of housing after two consecutive settlers, FWIW.

So, my economy and production would be better and I'd be just as well protected.

The price of that strategy is, if other wizards surround you with their own outposts, you don't have a choice and must go to war, and if they are too strong to fight, or have spells your primary units are weak to, you lost the game. Maintaining peace until becoming strong enough is not an option with only 1 city.
Longbowmen get the +1 hit from magical weapons and do much worse without, I won't say they are useless, but it's easy to notice the difference, especially without the extra level. Death wizards start with Wraith Form and Chaos wizards with Fire Elemental most of the time, and those mean weapon immunity so it's a common thing as well. Life wizards just have too much armor on their units to damage without the extra hit.

Also, even if we assume you get +4 extra production from the 2 extra workers, that is only 4*25=100 production, minus the turns when they are still being built which is like half the duration. I think 50-70 production is closer to the truth than 150.
The +1 population and 150 gold seem more accurate but you are forgetting that you can build the marketplace without the granary and farmer's market so it shouldn't be included. I often build it without the other two if I need the gold early.

A sawmill costs 100 production. With 1 worker and 3 farmers you have 4-5 production depending on the terrain, which means 20-25 turns. You also get ~7-8 gold in taxes, with that 10 turns is reasonable. If you also spend the starting gold on it, you can save another 1.25 turns for each level of difficulty lowered, but this assumes you don't get a hero offer before buying and don't want to save for one. If you want a hero, you're looking at way over 10 turns in most cases. Of course a starting gold ore, wild game, etc can speed it up a lot.

[GermanJoey]

That's not the only difference. First of all, a 10T Sawmill sounds pretty slow. But, even granted that, just replaying from T10->T35 by getting Granary/Market/FM first, I'd have:

- roughly +1 whole population point
- an extra ~150 production from the extra workers (this is the main immediate benefit of the early food buildings; you're getting ~4 raw production from them together, just from farmers reassigned to workers)
- an extra ~150 gold from the marketplace

That pays for one whole settler right there. For very early longbowmen, I'd straight up skip the Alchemist guild and just get the Barracks, maybe after a Stables (extra production plus Cavalry are very good for reinforcing early settlements because of their high movement), unless I knew for sure that there was something nearby that had weapon immunity or I had mithril, as they won't get the +1 to-hit from magical weapons for their ranged attack. You'd probably also want to build a bit of housing after two consecutive settlers, FWIW.

So, my economy and production would be better and I'd be just as well protected.

The price of that strategy is, if other wizards surround you with their own outposts, you don't have a choice and must go to war, and if they are too strong to fight, or have spells your primary units are weak to, you lost the game. Maintaining peace until becoming strong enough is not an option with only 1 city.
Longbowmen get the +1 hit from magical weapons and do much worse without, I won't say they are useless, but it's easy to notice the difference, especially without the extra level. Death wizards start with Wraith Form and Chaos wizards with Fire Elemental most of the time, and those mean weapon immunity so it's a common thing as well. Life wizards just have too much armor on their units to damage without the extra hit.

Also, even if we assume you get +4 extra production from the 2 extra workers, that is only 4*25=100 production, minus the turns when they are still being built which is like half the duration. I think 50-70 production is closer to the truth than 150.
The +1 population and 150 gold seem more accurate but you are forgetting that you can build the marketplace without the granary and farmer's market so it shouldn't be included. I often build it without the other two if I need the gold early.

A sawmill costs 100 production. With 1 worker and 3 farmers you have 4-5 production depending on the terrain, which means 20-25 turns. You also get ~7-8 gold in taxes, with that 10 turns is reasonable. If you also spend the starting gold on it, you can save another 1.25 turns for each level of difficulty lowered, but this assumes you don't get a hero offer before buying and don't want to save for one. If you want a hero, you're looking at way over 10 turns in most cases. Of course a starting gold ore, wild game, etc can speed it up a lot.

It's fine if the other wizards take some nearby spots though, unless it's a really killer spot. I wonder if the fact that I always play with "Rich" resources makes the difference here, where you might place greater importance on claiming one of sparse few resources on the map? At any rate, because of the way outposts work and because of the way trade routes work, it'll take a looooong time before any given city contributes significantly to your empire-wide income. There's an inflection point when an outpost becomes a hamlet (due to resources now providing income, and because the hamlet can provide food and garrison spearmen to artifically pump your tax rate), but other than that it's gonna be several dozen turns before that settler can really do anything for you. So, you've gotta rely on your capital for everything for a long time. Thus, it's almost never worth risking an early war against a vastly more powerful AI just to claim a spot for yourself, especially since they'll end up developing the spot for you faster and more cheaply than you could do yourself. At any rate, one usually wants to spam far more settlers early than just two of them, and so getting the basic production buildings online early will be easily faster than to skip them.


Longbowmen only get the +1 to hit from Magical Weapons on their melee attack. They get +1 to-hit baseline. So, all that magicial weapons is doing for them is bypassing weapon immunity. And I agree, that's a nontrivial motivation but I don't think its worth skipping basic production income for that as there's ways of getting around it early - various common battle summons, holy weapon, various common direct damage, eldritch weapon, etc. For course, sometimes you really do need that alchemist's guild that early but I feel like that's more of a niche scenario, not something that's a necessary assumption by default.

Regarding production, don't forget that you get the terrain bonus to that jazz, and that a Forester's guild gives extra production as well... an 150 production is perhaps pretty optimistic terrain though. You definitely shouldn't be recruiting a hero before Sawmill though, unless you're Famous and it's a really really good one. Pretty niche scenerio IMHO.

[Seravy]

It's fine if the other wizards take some nearby spots though, unless it's a really killer spot. I wonder if the fact that I always play with "Rich" resources makes the difference here, where you might place greater importance on claiming one of sparse few resources on the map? At any rate, because of the way outposts work and because of the way trade routes work, it'll take a looooong time before any given city contributes significantly to your empire-wide income. There's an inflection point when an outpost becomes a hamlet (due to resources now providing income, and because the hamlet can provide food and garrison spearmen to artifically pump your tax rate), but other than that it's gonna be several dozen turns before that settler can really do anything for you. So, you've gotta rely on your capital for everything for a long time. Thus, it's almost never worth risking an early war against a vastly more powerful AI just to claim a spot for yourself, especially since they'll end up developing the spot for you faster and more cheaply than you could do yourself. At any rate, one usually wants to spam far more settlers early than just two of them, and so getting the basic production buildings online early will be easily faster than to skip them.


Longbowmen only get the +1 to hit from Magical Weapons on their melee attack. They get +1 to-hit baseline. So, all that magicial weapons is doing for them is bypassing weapon immunity. And I agree, that's a nontrivial motivation but I don't think its worth skipping basic production income for that as there's ways of getting around it early - various common battle summons, holy weapon, various common direct damage, eldritch weapon, etc. For course, sometimes you really do need that alchemist's guild that early but I feel like that's more of a niche scenario, not something that's a necessary assumption by default.

Regarding production, don't forget that you get the terrain bonus to that jazz, and that a Forester's guild gives extra production as well... an 150 production is perhaps pretty optimistic terrain though. You definitely shouldn't be recruiting a hero before Sawmill though, unless you're Famous and it's a really really good one. Pretty niche scenerio IMHO.

Resources, or just a good max pop. When you're on a continent that has one spot for a 25 city on the river and the rest are swamps, deserts and tundra with max pop of 5-9 then you can't afford losing that one. It's less of a problem on huge continent and rich resources although having enemy cities right next to your capital is always inconvenient.
Also watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huGX4JsBhrs for extra lolz. Hadriex built a Forester's Guild before his settler. The price? Two other AI built on his Orihalcon.

Thus, it's almost never worth risking an early war against a vastly more powerful AI just to claim a spot for yourself

And this is exactly why I make sure I'm the one first on that spot. Unless I can afford to lose it, but that's rarely a case if not playing large+ land. Even on a medium sized continent that has room for 5-6 cities, if the AI takes the best 2-3 of those, you've probably lost because the remaining place will be max pop 10 or worse.

especially since they'll end up developing the spot for you faster and more cheaply than you could do yourself.

If you can afford going to war, certainly. But you just said you can't.

Longbowmen only get the +1 to hit from Magical Weapons on their melee attack. They get +1 to-hit baseline.

Look at a longbowmen unit with magical weapons. Which do you see? "+2 To Hit" or "+1 To Hit, +1 To Meleee"? The days where you couldn't tell which bonus affects what are over a long time ago. If it says HIT the it's every attack type. If it says RANGE then ranged only. if MELEE then melee only.

and that a Forester's guild gives extra production

I thought I'm the one building that (for longbowmen) and you don't - you said granary and farmer's market.

You definitely shouldn't be recruiting a hero before Sawmill though,

I won my previous game by doing that. I got a Beastmaster with Soul Linker and AEther Master and I was playing red-white.

[GermanJoey]

Ack, damn browser ate my post. Let me try again.

Re early war: you obviously can't give up those spots forever, you just need to hit them when the timing is right. So, even if I can't afford a war during the first 35 turns, I'll still make sure I can afford a war later. I mean, you win the game by going to war. At any rate, even a max-25 spot takes ages to get up to the point where it will contribute significantly to your whole empire. It would take something I'd need to base my whole game around, like mithril/adamant/orichalcum especially with coal and/or lots of mountains. But, like I said, if the spot was good enough and my capital was bad enough, I too would also do everything I could to get that spot before an AI could. Likewise, if there were an awesome neutral city nearby, I would put priority on capturing that ASAP. However, both of those are niche scenarios, IMHO. I would not say that a "standard" build would consider them.

Re alch guild giving +1 to hit on ranged: well I'll be damned, I just checked and you are right, my apologies. I know about MELEE and RANGED so I don't know how I got it in my head that magical weapons was melee-only.

Re forester's guild: I would obviously build a FG too if I wanted LB, perhaps even before the first settler depending on my terrain. The Granary and FM are before settlers, and thus delay the settlers and the Barracks/Alch Guild. (but not by as much as you're claiming because of the extra production they bring in)

[Seravy]

you obviously can't give up those spots forever, you just need to hit them when the timing is right.

Sometimes "timing is right" can mean "after eliminating the other 3 wizards". It all depends on who the wizards are but I don't like to start the game with a handicap of "and I have to attack this guy eventually, so alliance and long term peace are out" because the other guys might be all maniacal militarists or playing something I have to knock out early if I don't want to lose (like someone with all Sorcery books if I plan to rely on enchantments or summons)

I don't know how I got it in my head that magical weapons was melee-only.

Probably because they don't affect magical ranged attacks, only physical ones.

[Seravy]

I noticed how I always tend to mass-buy Amplifying Towers nowadays in midgame instead of Wizard's Guilds or Sage's Guilds so I thought I'll try to place how good they are using math and comparing to other options.

An Amplifying Tower costs 1600 gold.
For this 1600 gold, it's possible to buy 800 mana crystals, which - assuming high enough power base and mana spending, can in a few to a dozen turns substitute itself for 800 SP. So we can say 2 G = 1 SP if used this way, but the amount is limited to the existing power base and mana usage. If every power is already spent on SP, this method is unusable.
Alternatively, a Wizard's Guild costs 1400 gold and produces 10 power/turn. So you can get 11.4 SP/turn for 1600, obviously, this method is slower than the above, and even has maintenance in gold. However this can be used infinitely, as long as you have cities where you can build them.

If you buy an Amplifying Tower, you get +7 Casting Skill. Assuming it's midgame or lategame (unrealistic to build this earlier), the player probably has 50 casting skill or more. At exactly 50, this additional 7 is worth 102+104+106+108+110+112+114= 756 SP. This means you pay 2.11 Gold/SP, roughly identical to converting the gold into mana. At 100 casting skill, it's twice as effective, at 200, four times, and so on. So we can conclude, buying an Amplifying Tower for gold is usually superior to using alchemy to be able to allocate more on casting skill. However, it's not just superior but with increasing returns, and no limitations on how much can be done per turn as well.

That same 756 SP would take 66 turns for a Wizard's Guild to produce, if it was produced that way, but the Amplifying Tower will get you this amount instantly.

However, the Wizard's Guild keeps producing power for an unlimited duration, eventually becoming more profitable...the Amplifying Tower does not produce such income...or does it?
It actually does. Although your effective casting skill is 7 higher, it wasn't achieved through actual growth in the SP pool. What this means is, although you have 57 Skill now, you still spend power on increasing skill as though you had 50. In other words, for the rest of the game, you spend 2 less power on SP to increase your skill by 1 point, every time you do so, for each point of Skill granted by Amplifying Towers. Assuming you grow your skill by 1 point/turn, which seems a relatively reasonable assumption (a 300 turn game ended with 300 skill is about normal), an Amplifying Tower is actually producing you 14 SP each turn by not having to spend that amount to gain skill. Or, we could also say that whenever your skill increases, the Amplifying Tower will be worth as much as though it added the +7 at the new increased value instead of the original...ultimately the SP value of that +7 skill it added grows over time.

Summarized :
An Amplifying Tower produces more resources per turn (14 vs 11.4, yes I'm ignoring research, we can say it's roughly identical if it's also included) than a Wizard's Guild for the same gold cost, but also comes with a massive initial boost of 50-200 turns worth of resource instantly added worth roughly as much as the cost itself. In other words, the Amplifying Tower, when purchased at 50 casting skill, gives you the fair amount for its cost TWICE, once instantly and once in SP/turn. At 100, it's effectiveness is 4x the intended, at 200, 8x etc.

Ultimately, I believe the Amplifying Tower is massively underpriced and the original design goal of it being the best choice only with medium or higher casting skill (idk if I wanted 50, 70 or 100 anymore) is not achieved.
To achieve the original intention the building needs to cost roughly several times as much as it does now, which is crazy expensive.

However, "fixing" this that way would slow down the game, a lot, if it's even possible to have a building cost more than 1k production - probably not. This building is responsible for the availability of enough costing skill to use mid and late game spells at a reasonable rate.

Which leaves two more solutions :
1. A massive increase in the maintenance cost. Something like 20 or 30 Gold/turn total depending on where we want it to turn into the better option.
2. Do nothing and accept that Amplifying Towers are the first thing you'll want to spend on no matter what in all cases if you want a higher casting skill, as every other option is inferior. Ultimately, casting skill cannot be changed into other resources, so it's not altering overall game balance, just raises the availability of casting skill. It's worth saying that in this case, races without the building are massively penalized : Barbarians, Gnolls and Dwarves, though I think in case of those three that's acceptable. This still means you have to make a choice because skill is worthless if you can't provide the mana to use it (or the research to have expensive spells that need any).

Unless, there is a mistake in my calculations?