Proposed plan for 2011 spring season (not official)
This is a suggestion for council at this point. please DO NOT take this as a course to follow at this point!
Build order last year:
Ar, Lib, Ar, TH,AT#1, TH, Lib, Wall, Market, AT#2 Bank, BH, BH, ?, At#3
We ended with Rank 12 (4xx), WV rank 7 (556 - 563.61) Schaf Rank 1 (730.19).
Long term goal - highest ranking english speaking city in race for capital:
WV took that honour with a score of 564 (good for 7th place). Short of the &30 needed for 1st, but beter than our 12th place score of 482. What earned WV their score?
250 cp in buildings (same as us)
57.55 CP in Gardens (more than double our 26.09)
108.51 in clothng (almost double our 64.34)
147.55 in housing (about right where we were at 141.34)
We were tied for 4th most CP in city buildings, so I think we are OK there. Our Church push got us here. i think using the Bathhouse earlier this period may allow us to build more buildings for free, while the saved donations can be used in conjunction with walls to generate the donations needed to protect the extra CP's without losing pace.
Gardens and clothing are going to be the points we need to make up for. Like above, this will mean likely needing to upgrade them by a small amount, earlier - using the same logic of using walls to up the value we get from guard donations.
Gardens and high level clothing take a LOT of coins, so the bank will need to be at level 3 at some point. Ideally, this will happen before we start in to the higher levels of housing. We can benefit from a big housing push in period 2 with good coin exchange, then use it for clothing and garden in period 3 & 4.
Short term goal.
To ensure we have more income to build all this stuff - the needed stuff sooner and the extra CP stuff later - we want to have everyone to lv 8 housing ASAP. However, housing over lv5 start earning lots of CP points. Therefore, we need to ensure we don't lose a level to the barbarians. We can do this in three ways: 1. reduce city building CP or 2. Make Arsenal the priority or 3. Hope we have enough resourses to make enough donations.
As for option 3, I already ran a scenario where a 40 AC city could afford lv8, 4 city expantions (if two were arsenal) and make the needed donations with a good margin of leftover profit. Less than 1 guard donation was needed per citizen and even ppl at lv1 housing could afford to make their city donations and get to level 8.
Since we are already building the library as the 2nd building, that kills plan 1. Plan 2 is not acceptible. We will start the season behind in our long term goal. I feel we need to have a least 4 city buildings done (that is what we did last season > Arsenal, Library, Arsenal, Town Hall, and the next town hall was already mostly built, but we halted until after the attack). This season, with more resourses going to housing, we simply will not have enough earning power to get 4 + 95% to a 5th building by the 1st attack - AND get lv 8 housing - AND defend it all! Even with lots of earned gold from the library, monthly gold and weekley bonus (but that said, I have not made projections, so I could be wrong - but it would be risky, as my best guess, so we should be happy with 4 buildings and whatever we can put towards a 5th once we are safe).
Now, according to my 40 AC city projection, we needed to build 2 city buildings, then make a big housing push, then do the last two city buildings once we are at lv 8. This is because there is no point at being at lv8 housing unless we have some weeks to earn those extra resources. If ppl get to level 8 1 week before the atack, they only get a few extra resourses with all the defense costs. Compare that to having their housing a few weeks earlier and having the defense costs paid "for free" by bonus resources.
Since we don't have a double arsenal at this point, guard donations will go up. This is ok, b/c we can use the free library gold to offset this. The arsenal, if built 3rd, plus the extra resources from high level housing, should offset the further increased donations required by the delay in the lv3 arsenal. If the arsenal is left to the 4th building, we have 2 choices:
1. Rush the 3rd and 4th building in order to get the arsenal donating at full force, but at the cost of delaying housing and the bonus resources it creates.
2. Stick to the plan, build the arsenal late and accept that guard doantions per citizen will go up. With luck, all the bonuses will finance the extra guard donations, perhaps at the cost of getting a 5th building underway. Note - if the arsenal is put off too long, it may make more sense to delay its building to after the 1st attack and we may need the city donations to build it for guard donations.
So, with this forming the "thought process" of this plan, here is the plan I propose and why.
1. Build Arsenal (to cut guard donations needed for 1st goal in half)
2. Build arsenal (to mostly eliminate the need for guard doantions)
2. Build library (to earn extra gold to be used for faster building so resources earned later can be used for guard donations)
3. Focus on housing to lv 8 (earn extra bonuses asap).
4. Build arsenal (to ensure the higher CP we will need to defend get enough "free" donations so that we pay less in defense - note the cost of defense is City Donations to build Arsenal + guard donations to be safe… this is an everchanging value depending on how soon the arsenal is built… the longer the delay, the higher the cost)
5. Build Bank (to help with bigger housing costs next period)
6. Defend (as cheaply as possible so donations that would otherwise go to the guard will instead be used for other purposes)
7. Finish bank (housing push can now begin)
8. Focus to housing lv 12 (for the 80% bonus)
9. Build wall (to enhance guard donations needed) - if possible, build 2 walls
10. Build market* (to make trading easier for once the Bathhouse arives)
11. Build Bathhouse
12. Donate to guard to defend, then funnel donations into next building w/o finishing
13. 2nd attack will be about here.
14. Finish Bathouse (start funnling bets to build city buildings for free, trade for gold at market and trade with each other)
15. building to consiter for free: last wall(s) (because we will be increasing gardens and clothing early - I will have to monitor for optimal ratio of extra CP vs needed donations); Assembly hall; Town Hall (depending which seems the best choice); 2nd market (if so, we will have to delay on clothing/garden - again, I can advise at that time - but it will now give possibly 2 gold options for bathousing players)
16. Make guard donations after wall is done.
17. start hoarding gold and coins from the bank for clothing/garden push
18. 3rd barbarisn attack
19. Cart blanch on clothing and gardens - Church for building (free through BH, and paid donations)
20. Ensure everyone is at least lv 13 housing. If some ppl can get to lv15 housing fast, they should. Those that can't upgrade to lv 15 before it is not worth the 20% bonus vs the huge cost of upgrading, they should stick to lv 13.
21. Since I am rushed to get this out, I do not have milestones at this point. Hope to add those in (unless of course, this plan is simply rejected on principle!)
Note, my proposal with town gold to go along with this plan is that it is hoarded in the 1st period to augment possible risk (have a guard doantion party, help build a building faster). In second period, if all goes well in 1st period, there will be next to no risk. We can have a vote for community incentives, or continue to hoard to help with building.
How we bebfit:
We will always have an income advantage b/c of higher housing.
Lower earlier defense costs gives us income boost to get our housing to lv 12 faster.
Early lv12 will give us the income to build the extra clothing/gardens to bridge that gap to beat WV
Earlier bathouse gives us extra free buildings to divert income to defending higher CP's, esp. in conjunction with the walls.
I feel the building order and better tolerance to clothing makes it easier for ppl to do what they want, without upsetting the plan too much if not done in the "ideal" order.
Problems:
We must rely on encouragment alone to get citizens active in other events. We will have no town gold i the early game as incentive.
Some may not like the "formulaic" approach to growth and go off plan (but again, the plan is tolerant to this in all but the 1st period - where we may need town gold to help out).
Final appeal to those in support of Town Hall - I feel that, if in fact reaching highest english speaking city in Capital race, we are a house of cards that must be built starting with the foundation built in period one. Town Hall will delay the arsenal (needed to save donations), the bank (needed to save resorces in higher housing), and by domino effect, the Bathhouse and walls needed to give us the CP boost and defensive ability in the 2nd and 3rd period. If it would be consitered to put the vote on hold so that I would have time, I will run comparisons to confirm or deny our ability to compete with a TH as a 3rd building. However, it is my opinion as MOD and "math guy" that we cannot. If we don't care about the goals I have outlined, then of course, the point is moot! Thanks.
THIS ENDS THE PLAN… below is what I am working on as a safety update (currently on hold due to making this plan!)
Safety strategy for the 2011 spring season
(See previouse season's strategy in the Safety Archive)
KB council has decided to adopt a more aggresive growth strategy this season. We feel this will mean more fun for players of the COW because this strategy includes getting to higher levels of housing, which means:
- Players can spend more on personal growth earlier
- Larger houses produce more bonus resources, giving you more to spend in the medium and long term
- With more income, we can build more "friendly" buildings (like the market) sooner
<to be completed>
