Beginners guide – Starting out.

Guide was posted by AussiePete.

This guide is best used by players who have the ability to think for themselves. None of the build orders are set in stone. You should make adjustments according to your own situation. I strongly recommend that you aim to achieve the goals set out in the order I’ve listed but special exceptions may occur. Feel free to ask for advice in a reply to this thread when you’re not sure what to do but please try to figure things out for yourself first. I’m not interested in answering stupid questions because people didn’t read the entire guide or they’re too lazy to read through the Wiki.
NOTE: This guide is still being refined. I strongly recommend that you follow this guide at least until the end of phase 5. I will continue to work on the rest over the coming days.
Your feedback is appreciated.

Getting use to using a Stopwatch and a Clock
I use a stopwatch for farming and a clock with an alarm for my attacks. I advise everyone to get use with them as it help you dramatically in taking cities. I farm at every 40 minute interval, less will increase the resources you get and therefore your speed. So therefore I set my stop watch for 40 minutes to remind me to farm. I have found this site useful for this http://www.online-stopwatch.com .. For those you cannot see 40 minutes it means that you have not researched Booty. It is a must as it will allow you to farm for 8 hours when you are off-line.

Early Building Goals
1.. Barracks (Senate 2. Timber Camp 3. Silver Mine 1. Farm 3)
2. Academy (Senate 8. Farm 6. Barracks 5)
3. Market (Senate 12. Warehouse 6. Cave 5)
4. Harbor (Senate 14. Timber Camp 15. Silver Mine 10)
5. Temple (Senate 15. Quarry 12. Wall 6)
6. Academy and Research Rush
7. Senate Push
8. Getting Ready for Conquest
9. After Expansion

Farming Villages note: for your first 4 farming villages you should aim to capture ones that allow you to convert wood to silver (or wood to stone then stone to silver). This will allow you to get the silver you need to spy and build horsemen (“Hor” and hoplites (“Hop”). After this you will want farming villages that trade wood to stone (or silver to stone) since building your academy/temple and slingers both require a lot of stone. Wood is usually in abundance until you start building light ships.

Farming other cities most of the island have at least 10 cities that are very low in points. Once you start building Hor and Chariots (“Ch”) use them to farm other cities. It will give you some limited BP but the principle is that if you are the only one farming these cities it will give you 600 resource (200 of each) each day. By 10 cities that is 6,000 resources, more than 50% of what you are getting out of you mines and forestry production. I normally farm these villages with 7Hor and 10Slingers (“Sl”) Those that what to get more BP should then start hitting larger targets. But make sure that they are either inactive or off-line. Two sites that assist in this are: http://www.grepointel.com and http://www.drolez.com .I highly recommend that every player try to control their zone of influence.

Detailed Plan

Phase I: Barracks (3 Farming villages)
Farm Village I (automatic)
Timber Camp 1
Quarry 1
Farm 2
Farm Village 2 ( Defending 1 slinger) will need 6 swords from tutorial (troop pop 6)
Senate 2
Timber Camp 2
Timber Camp 3
Silver Mine 1
Farm 3
Barracks 1
Farm Village 3 (Defending: 3 Archers)Attack with: 10 swords (troop pop 10)

No more troops until Academy built and slingers researched.

Note on Resource Buildings: The minimum levels required for building all other basic buildings are Timber 15/Quarry 12/Silver 10. After this point in the guide I do not include these in the building plan to allow you some flexibility. Resource buildings require the least amount of resources per hour of senate queue time. At the same time they boost your resource income when complete. However. your main source of income will always be your farming villages and additional levels of resource mines take a long time to pay themselves off so only build them when you need to. This will depend mainly on your level of activity. If you are clicking your farming villages every 5 minutes for 8 or more hours a day you can probably get through phase 3 and into phase 4 before you need to start building your mines to get your harbor and then your temple. Otherwise you’ll want to put mines into queue on a regular basis to help balance resource use. Give you a bit more resources and allow you to fund your barracks queue. In the hours before.you sleep you can load up mine levels to keep your senate queue going over night and have enough resources left over to load up 8 hours of troop production as well. Beyond 15/12/1 0 I would recommend not building your resource mines unless absolutely necessary so you can focus on getting your polis conquest ready as soon as possible. After beginner protection ends the resources from farming inactive polises should more than make up the difference.

Phase 2: Academy
Warehouse 2
Senate 3
Senate 4
Senate 5
Senate 6
Warehouse 3
Senate 7
Senate 8
Barracks 2
Barracks 3
Barracks 4
Barracks 5
Farm 4
Farm 5
Farm 6
Academy 1
Research: Slingers Produce: slingers (until hoplites researched)
Farming Village 4 (Defending: 60 slingers) Attack with: Slingers (troop pop 40) will win with 7 slinger or more, the more slingers the less slingers loss maximum loss is 5 slingers

Phase 3: Market
Warehouse 4
Academy 2
Academy 3
Academy 4
Research: Hoplites

Hoplite Note: Unless you are extremely active I recommend you wait until you have your market built before you start building hoplites. This is because getting to level 5 cave requires an enormous amount of silver and ironically you don’t have a market so you can’t trade to get it. .Just do the research for now (it balances well with building up your academy) and save your silver for building your cave to level 5. You should have no problem trading to get silver once you have your market built.

Senate 9
Warehouse 5
Cave I
Cave 2
Academy 5
Senate 10
Cave 3
Academy 6
Senate 11
Warehouse 6
Academy 7
Research: Ceramics (must be done before you can build ca ve level 5)

Research note: technologies like Ceramics. Architecture and Crane are not necessary in all your polises and you may never use them after your first polis BUT they give you a very big advantage in rapidly developing your first polis without restricting the research points available for other needed techs. On a speed 1 world Ceramics alone will save you well over a day of building time on your way to getting conquest read y.

Cave 4
Senate 12
Cave 5
Market I
Market 2
Market 3
Market 4
Market 5 (allows you to create trades in the market so you can trade with alliance members)
Research: Booty (gives you time management flexibility and most importantly means you can demand resources for 8 hours before going to bed every night)

***24 Hour Troop Production! ***
Once you have gotten past the huge amount of silver required to get your market it gets a lot easier to produce troops non-stop. You should be able to keep your barracks going 24/7 at this point and use trades to balance out your resource use as well as alternating between slingers and hoplites.

Building your Farm: as a general rule once you start 24 hour troop production get the next level of your farm into the senate queue BEFORE your free population drops below 100. This becomes even more important once your Harbor is built and you have three queues eating up population. From this point on the guide does not include farming levels in the build plan so it’s up to you to keep an eye on your free pop. Keep in mind that you can always create free population by attacking.

Phase 4: Harbor (Phoenician Trader)
Produce hoplites to take your 5th farming village and to prepare for the end of beginner protection. 100 to 150 is a good number to have. You should have extra silver while pushing to get your harbor.

Farming village 5 (Defending: 60 swordsmen). Attack with: 35 hoplites (troop pop 100), will lose about 30. Again more the better.
Senate 13
Barracks 6
Senate 14
Barracks 7
Timber 15
Silver 10
Harbor I
Production: transports (30 or more. Fill the harbor queue when you have the extra resources but be careful to match the transport space to the space required for existing land troops so you’re not forcing yourself to build additional farm space any sooner than needed ).

Horsemen Push
Barracks 8
Academy 8
Barracks 9
Academy 9
Barrack s 10
Academy 10
Research: Horsemen now. Architecture asap. Trainer can wait until you have conscription researched if your resource income can’t keep up with the pace of production
Farming village 6 (Defending: 100 Archers (“Ar”)). Attack with: 13 Hor (troop pop 300), will lose about 11. Again more the better.

Phase 5: Temple
Production : Build horsemen while you push to get your temple built. This will leave you with lots of extra stone . Trade excess wood for stone and silver.
Senate 15
Quarry 12
Wall 1
Wall 2
Wall 3
Wall 4
Wall 5
Wall 6
Temple 1
Temple 2
Temple 3
Temple 4
Temple 5
God: Hera (use Population Growth (“PG”) whenever possible and don’t waste the favor on any other spells until you have 15/12/10 on the resources and you are nearing 500 speels and then use Happiness to increase the production of resources)

BP and Farming note: You should now be out of beginner protection and your troop production needs to accelerate as much as possible. Once you have the spell Population Growth available you can afford to take bigger losses on attacks. During the early growth of your first polis your troop count is especially important as you need to maintain enough troops to continue farming the polises you’ve already cleared. Aim for battles that result in you losing no more than 1/3 of your troop population and still leave you with at least 50Hor and 150Sl. Choose your targets well and be patient when you need to be. Building up troops to capture farming villages 6/7/8 is usually worth more than clearing the higher point polis of an active turtle near you. After you have those you can focus more on establishing Zone of Control. More on this in the BP/Resource farming section.)

Technology Push (techs and more techs – to Academy 19)
At this point getting more techs to increase your efficiency becomes the priority. Your barracks queue is also extremely import ant as you are now out o f beginner protection and clearing a lot of cities. Academy and Barrack’s balance each other nicely so building up your barracks at the same time is a good idea. Lastly. speed 1 combined with unit speed 2 requires a high level barracks as early as possible to keep pace with the farming opportunities .
Techs that you need asap are: Crane. Trainer; Conscription; Catapults
Techs that can wait a bit longer are: Light ships (“LS”) and Shipwright
Techs that you probably don’t need: Biremes (“Bri”)
Techs that you definitely don’t need: everything else at this stage

Phase 6: Academy and Research Rush
Barracks 11
Academy 11
Barracks 12
Academy 12
Barracks 13
Academy 13
Research: Crane
Barracks 14
Academy 14
Barracks 15
Academy 15
Barrack s 16
Academy 16
Research: Conscription (LS a bit later and shipwright much later)
Warehouse 6
Barracks 17
Warehouse 7
Barracks 18
Academy 17
Barrack s 19
Academy 18
Barrack s 20
Academy 19
Research: Catapult (these are essential for farming active players and establishing Zone of Control)
Farming Village 7 (Defending: 300Sl/80Hop/80Hor) Attack with : 140Sls (troop pop: 600) you will lose around 133
Farming Village 8 (Defending: 150 Swords (“Sw”)/150Ar/175Hop/lvl 20 wall Attack with 175Hor (troop pop 1000) you will lose 133Hor. I normally leave this until I have my 2nd and 3rd city

Note on Warehouse space: it’s important to keep your warehouse space big enough that you can farm. trade and go offline for up to 8 hours without it overloading. From here on in I only list the minimum required warehouse level for each stage of development but you should push it up earlier if you need the space .

PowerUp Your Polis
Now we reach a decision point. You can choose to push immediately for conquest but I strongly discourage taking this path. It is far better to power up your first polis to near maximum production and population before expanding. Potential conquest targets will continue to grow while you power up. Also expanding early puts a very big strain on your resources. Running 3 queues (senate; barracks; harbor) researching upper level techs and building colony ships (“CS”) in your first polis is very resource intensive . Trying to fund more queues in a second polis at this point is simply going to slow down your overall development. Patience pays off in this situation so don’t rush conquest unless there is some pressing need to do so.

Phase 7: Senate Push
Senate 16
Temple 6
Senate 17
Temple 7
Senate 18
Temple 8
Senate 19
Temple 9
Senate 20
Temple 10
Senate 21
Temple 11
Barracks 21
Temple 12

Divine Statue (Senate 21. Temple 12)
The divine statue gives you the same increase in favor as building another 5 temple levels but at less than half the cost or building time. This is a great way to boost your favor production early on and will give you a lot of Poseidon favor (Kingly gift (“KG”) for your harbor push. Don’t forget to build an extra level on your farm since the statue uses 60 population. You can and probably should demolish the Divine Statue later on to get the extra population for troops since your first polis should be a 100% offensive polis.
Barracks 22
Senate 22
Barracks 23
Senate 23
Barracks 24
Senate 24
Barracks 25

Barracks note: You can push your barracks all the way to level 30 if you think you can keep your barracks queue filled 24/7 at that speed. Compared to level 10 barracks a level 30 barracks increases production by 50% (the same effect as using PG 24/7).
God Switching: by this point you should consider switching gods from Hera to Poseidon
and saving up your favor for a couple days so you’ll have lots of KG you can cast while making your Harbor push. Your barracks are now at level 25 and the alliance has probably cleared out most of the polises within it’s Zone of Control so you should be able to get by without PG spells for a few days.

Thermal Baths (senate 24. Farm 35)
By this point you should already have your farm built up to around level 30 or higher. The baths are essential in your first polis as you really need the extra population.

Phase 8: Getting Ready for Conquest
Academy 28. Harbor 20. Warehouse 21
Conquest Nuke (first polis)
This is an ideal nuke which you may not complete before your first conquest. The high number of horsemen is essential in your first polis to maximize farming. They do weaken the overall power of your nuke compared to having more slingers or even hoplites but early on blunt defense is usually the weakest in most polises and few players have significant numbers of Ch, Hop or Pegasus. Avoid using the horsemen in your nuke when possible but don’t hesitate to use them if you need the power to clear your conquest target. In addition many players may wish to maintain about 100Hops for clearing Sw – when making new farms and build less Sl.
800Sl
200Hor
4 Catapults (“Cats”)
57 Transports (“Tra”)
60LS
1CS

Production note: at this point you probably will need to catch up on your LS production. Combined with pushing your harbor level to 20 you will need a lot of wood. If you have saved up 400 or more Poseidon favours you will be in good shape. 400 Poseidon favours = 16 KG = 12,800 wood. You can also use Call of the Ocean (“CotO”)to boost LS production but I recommend you wait until you have finished level 20 harbor.
Warehouse 13
Academy 20
Academy 21
Academy 22

Research: Plow Bunks and Colony Ship (Light Transports are optional but I don’t recommend them this early in the game. Your CS limits the speed of your conquest attack anyway. Also, the population demands of Divine Statue/Merchant Shop (60) and CS (170) are already limiting the troop count of your conquest nuke and light transports will only exacerbate this problem at a point where you probably haven’t yet reached farm level 40).

Harbor Push I
Harbor 1
Harbor 2
Harbor 3
Harbor 4
Harbor 5
Harbor 6
Harbor 7
Harbor 8
Harbor 9
Harbor 10
Warehouse 19
Academy 23
Academy 24
Academy 25

Research: Mathematics and Phalanx (If you haven’t researched Shipwright yet. now is the time to do it)

Harbor Push II
Harbor 11
Harbor 12
Harbor 13
Harbor 14
Harbor 15
Harbor 16
Harbor 17
Harbor 18
Harbor 19
Harbor 20
Warehouse 20
Academy 26
Academy 27
Academy 28

Research: Conquest. Battering Ram and Cartography

Phase 9: After Expansion
Demolish Divine Statue (as you push up your resource mines you will need the extra population)

Market 15 (Important for resource transfers to your new polises)

Cave 10 (you’ll want to get at least 20K silver stored here to catch enemy spies)

Academy 30 (this will let you get an extra tech or two. More importantly it will allow you to hold City Festivals when you have the extra resources. This can be a great help in speeding up your culture point growth allowing you to expand more quickly).

Additional Researches worth considering:
Cryptography – My first choice. A good way to ensure that your silver stores stand up against enemy spy attempts and makes it more likely you’ll detect enemy spy attempts.
Biremes – this can be handy as a backup for your first polis in case you come under early revolt attack.
City Guard – useful if your polis is coming under attack regularly. it will earn you plenty of extra BP.
Espionage – can be helpful if you’re sending a lot of spy attempts from your first polis and
want to speed it up.
Wall 25 (essential for making ground support effective)
Resource Mines 40 (you need all the resources you can get and these never stop producing)

Guide was posted by AussiePete. If you are the Author let me know and i will credit you. Thanks.