Best potential location for a capital

Winfrey

What are people's capitals? a standard 4x6 or a 9 cropper or a 15 cropper? After looking at resource outputs it seems to me that a 4x6 right next to a 15-cropper would be the best location for a capital. If you can keep your capital the same village for a long time, you can really output a lot of resources.

A 4x6 gives even distribution of resources needed to build armies and max buildings. I think if you had a 4x6 next to a 15-cropper with 2-3 oases you would be able to research/build a large constantly growing force and then offload them for storage at your 15-cropper. Also you want your oases for your capital to be focused on wood, clay, and iron. Then maybe some wheat oases for your cropper. It seems to me that the most efficient way to grow armies is to have a centralized production village (your capital) which has maxed research and military buildings All other villages can just supply the capital and max their wall for defense.

Eventually you would need another army producing village but you could specialize those forces pretty easily.

Any thoughts? Seems like the most efficient use of your capital IMO.

Invisible-Muffin

my ideal capital would have been Decorus Piscis, my 15 cropper. but i decided not to, since it had no tactical advantage from the location.
if you start early, i'd say a 15c, with support villages surrounding it. much like this:
http://speed.travian.co.uk/karte.php?z=311828
if you start later on, or aren't so good then a 9 cropper practically looks after itself, and supply villages boost its value and production, etc.

Linc

For you, the 6c or 9c will probably be best. I'm using a 15c, but it requires a LOT of feeding to get moving (and/or NPC trades). Beachhead (6c) was my original capital for most of the game.

Winfrey

Why are croppers considered best for your capital? Not saying you are wrong but a cropper seems to me like they wouldn't be able to take advantage of all the benefits from being the capital.

Linc

In retrospect, I might have been better off doing a 9c instead of a 15c capital. I do NPC trades a lot.

On the other hand, Flint doesn't need to store troops elsewhere as its force grows (Lady Jaye has filled 2 other croppers with troops) AND it is incredibly secure because I can send EVERY Praetorian I have to it without the wheat going too negative. I could muster 50,000+ troops there to defend it with ease. Combined with the Stonemason, Flint would take an entire Myth wing to level.

//edit: Not to mention that because of our location and where its support villages are, etc. I could get 80% of my reserves there before even cavalry could reach me from an opponent)

QCH

Oasis and 15 wheat fields plus the ability to go beyond level 10. I have a 6 wheat as my capital and at lvl 14 wheat each field produces 2859 an hour. Add in two or three 50% bonuses plus bakery and flour mill.... Add that up and you can go beyond 80,000 wheat an hour.

Linc

I'm working on upgrading my last 3 wheat fields to 13 (non wheat are 15) and I have 2 25% oases. That puts Flint at a little over 50K/hr.

Winfrey

My thoughts were that the resource bonus from lvling your clay pits and mines and such past lvl 10 yielded a more profitable village than one that maxed out its 15 wheat fields. I can see how having a cropper for a capital would be nice for when you transfer troops and when people send them back. My idea was to basically keep the capital maxed out in troops at all times and when you get too many you can just offload them to the 15 cropper with its 10 granaries and such. All the while shipping wheat to your capital for training and feeding troops. Then if some one wants to hit your capital you can bring back all of your troops to one location for defense. And your croppers can quickly keep it supplied with wheat.

Another thing is having a centralized village for troop making is the research problem. If you use other villages all the time to make troops you end up spending a whole lot on research to get troops upgraded. Instead have the capital max out research all the units (or just the ones you plan to use) and send them as reinforcements to other villages. You can save a lot of space/resources by using reinforcements rather than building another barracks/academy/stable/blacksmith/armory. Later on you can setup other villages (maybe a 9-c) to have a specialized army like praetorians or imperians.

I've just been thinking about this stuff a lot recently and have been wondering where we could cut the fat off of our economies so to speak.

Linc

You're absolutely right about the centralized troops production. Less than half my villages build troops, and only one builds anything other than Praetorians (Lady Jaye).

Flint and Lady Jaye are definitely my main troop production villages - their barracks queue hasn't paused in weeks (the latter has a lv20 Great Barracks going 90% of the time too). Any other troop making village just makes Praetorians with the resources on hand and ships the remainder to one of those two.

Most of my resources (combined) now go to feeding Lady Jaye's Great Barracks, Praetorian, and granaries.

Winfrey

I think it comes down to how active you are in some regards as well. With a cropper you could just queue up 24hrs worth of troops, or if you think you are going to be attacked at your capital while you sleep you can just return all your troops back for defense.

I could totally see one night where I go to sleep and the next day find out some ass decided to hit it with a 30-wave attack and just nuked it.

I also think the 6x4 is better early in the game because wheat isn't as essential to your other resources for production. Your 4x6 can crank out a lot more clay, iron, and wood to help max the capital faster than if you had to supply a 15-c constantly in order to get it up to speed.

I dunno, good dialog so far though. Maybe a "What to do, n00b!" guide would be useful for new members of alliance at restart, at least with the finer arts of strategy and tactics.

QCH

I have 4 areas... Chronos has one maxed feeder and another almost ready to feed. Chronos is crippled by the fact that it can produce more than it and the feeders can hold.

Aries has 2 feeders and another coming online soon. It produces more than it can or the four can hold.

Hera has 2 maxed out feeders, one of which is another 15-cropper. Hera is doing fine with troops. It's queues are already 18 hrs long and building. As soon as the queue reaches 36 hrs, I will work on building a great barrack and stable.

Dion only has one feeder but it's a 9 cropper with 2 50% wheat fields!!! So Dion is cranking out offensive troops. By Monday Dion will have 5k of axe and 3k of knights. I'm gearing up for some battle!!! After that, cats and rams. The end of next week, it will start sending resources to Hera so it can REALLY ramp up Defensive troops.