Ideal Recruitment Times

[This came from headlessheep in World 20.]


If you want to master layouts, ideal recruitment times is one thing you should keep in mind.
What's an ideal recruitment time? The higher the better, right? Not always.

The game will round recruitment time to the nearest second, and you reach a point where no matter how many more stables/temples/etc, the recruitment time will not get better.

You can use this to your advantage in 2 ways:
1) Do not bother to increase recruitment time if it will not get you close enough to the next second.
For instance, if you need a min of 8000% for 2sec, and a min of 7000% for 3sec. Then don't bother adding extra buildings to go over 7000% unless you can go pass 8000%.

2) Cheat. Kind of. As I mentioned earlier, the game will round recruitment to the nearest second. This means that 3.4999 will be rounded down to 3 secs ;D So, this potentially helps you reduce your number of buildings even more.


So, how do you calculate the absolute minimum required?
I use: roundup ((basetime / (secsyouwant + 0.5)) * 100 + 1)
So, for 7 secs mages: roundup ((600 / 7.5) * 100 + 1) = 8001

Realistically, that means 8025 because of the building bonuses work, but I like raw numbers. Bottomline, as long as you're not too far above 8001, you're not wasting buildings on recruitment rate.

I'll be happy to share my spreadsheet, but for reference, here are the minimum recruitment rates for the usual # of secs used for all units:

City guards: 3335 (1s), 2001 (2s), 1430(3s), 1113 (4s), 911 (5s), ...
Berserkers: 8001 (2s), 5716 (3s), 4446(4s), 3638 (5s), 3078 (6s), ...
Rangers: 7144 (3s), 5557 (4s), 4547 (5s), 3848 (6s), 3335 (7s), ...
Guardians: 8573 (3s), 6668 (4s), 5456 (5s), 4617 (6s), 4001 (7s), ...
Mages: 8001 (7s), 7060 (8s), 6317 (9s), 5716 (10s), ...
Warlocks: 8389 (15s), 7880 (16s), 7430 (17s), 7029 (18s), ...
Rams: 8476 (29s), 8198 (30s), 7938 (31s), 7694 (32s), ...
Ballistas: 8435 (41s), 8237 (42s), 8047 (43s), 7867 (44s), ...
Catapults: 8423 (47s), 8249 (48s), 8082 (49s), 7922 (50s), ...
Templars: 7779 (4s), 6365 (5s), 5386 (6s), 4668 (7s), 4119 (8s), ...
Paladins: 8237 (8s), 7370 (9s), 6668 (10s), 6088 (11s), 5601 (12s), ...
Scouts: 8573 (3s), 6668 (4s), 5456 (5s), 4617 (6s), ...
Knights: 7694 (6s), 6668 (7s), 5884 (8s), 5265 (9s), ...
Crossbowmen: 7060 (8s), 6317 (9s), 5716 (10s), 5219 (11s), ...

For ships: Max recruitment rate maxes out at 1900%. but it can still be boosted with research, and from faith. Best you'll ever get is still: 3900% (1000% from max research and 1000% from 100% Humility)

Take advantage of this.

sure, but the equation I used is in the post, so you can easily make your own...

Better yet, check out this google doc sheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Anyaav0-uapTdHZjZWFJdmxCMkphWEVDOURkR1lENEE&hl=en#gid=2

Raiding Dungeons and Bosses

Lou wiki provides some good info on dungeons and bosses.   But they're also lengthy and not optimized for advanced stage dungeons.   My recommendations are optimized for ministers.  You can set an army of a certain size to repeat raids on a dungeon until it reaches 100% and closes.  I mainly use berserkers to raid, but any type of unit (except city guards, scouts, catapults, rams and balistas) can raid


Dungeon Level      1        2         3 4        5       6         7         8         9        10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended    15     200     1k     3k     6k     15k     25k     40k     60k     100k
Zerks

Boss Level             1       2        3 4        5         6         7         8         9      
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended    50     300     2k     4k     10k     15k     20k     30k     45k
Zerks

Berserkers, Knights, and Mages are strong offensive units so they can be used to raid any type of dungeon.  However, each type of dungeon has a weakness against a type of troop.

Forest DungeonWeakness:  Calvary
Best troops to send: Knights, Paladins, or Xbowmen (Knights and Xbows carry 1.5x the goods as a zerk. Palies carry 2x as much as zerks so adjust the number of troops accordingly.)

Hill DungeonWeakness:  Magic
Best troops to send: Mages or Warlocks  (I use zerks here too because mages and warlocks are not good raiders and does not carry as much as zerks.  If you send mages, send 2x as much as zerks)

Mountain DungeonWeakness:  Infantry
Best troops to send: Berserkers, Rangers, Guardians, or Templars 

Sea DungeonWeakness:  Artilery
Best troops to send: War Galleons or Sloops

How to Force Palace Enlightenment

Enlightenment Chance 

Only the closest 16 castles within a 20 squares radius surrounding a shrine can get enlightened, with the following exclusions:

• Cities with a place that is currently being built or upgraded
• Cities with a lvl 10 palace
• Cities that has a palace of another shrine
• Cities of a player that does not belong in an alliance
• City that just got enlightened by that shrine

EnlightenmentScore = CityScore / (DistanceToShrine + 2)

This means that higher City Score and the shorter Distance to Shrine gets bigger chance of enlightenment.

Forcing enlightenment

To win LOU, you need one level 10 palace.  So you need a chosen city to get lit over and over again, (provided that you already have enough faith.)  (On a side note, it is better to build many low level palaces for faith then a few higher level palaces.)  

To reduce the chance of enlightenment of other castles around the chosen castle, you have to reduce their score to as low as 7.  What we did was castled 16 cities around the shrine, and flattened it with cats/rams.  These castles, even when closer, has next to zero chance of enlightenment.  The palace right below it was locked before the March update, so it doesn't count.   The result was amazing.  The chosen palace got enlightened every other time and we were able to build lvl 10 palace.

Updates

After months of playing on World 20, we finally got that Burger King hat!  Yup, we won!  I'm currently playing on world 38.  If you want to play with me http://www.lordofultima.com/ref/2371748513.  Send me a message and I'll send you a welcome package.

Stats at time of winning:

- Rank: 4

- Score: 6,017,144

- 625 cities, 167 castles, 20 palaces

- over 1 billion resources contributed to Phoenix

Final stats:

- Rank: 3

- Score: 8,226,529

- 809 cities

- over 1 billion fame, 20million unit killed, 110 billion plundered resources

Other Millitary Cities

Landlocked Castles

If you haven't read my posts on Berseker Castle and Mage Castle, you may want to start there first.

Knights Castle

They travel 2x faster than infantry!  They have decent attack stats and provide a different type of attack than beserkers and mages.  But they eat a lot so make sure you have enough food for them.

Paladin City/Castle

Paladins are good because they are twice as fast with their horses.  They are a great defensive unit type against magic attacks (mages.)  They're great for raiding forest dungeons.  A really awesome bonus is that you can recruit a baron in less than 10 minutes.  I personally have at least 1 paladin castle on each continent for the purpose of recruiting barons.

 I don't castle defensive cities unless the city is landlocked and on a secure continent.  I.E. your alliance dominate that continent with little or no threat of attacks.

Ranger City/Castle

In addition to being great defensive units, rangers are also great for raiding.  I use rangers to raid mountain dungeon when they're not defending.  Wood is used to recruit rangers so it lightens the demand on iron.  Layout is very similar to Berserker Castle, I only change Foundry to Sawmill for wood storage instead of iron storage.

Catapult/Ram

 Good for castles on the same continent.  Useless otherwise.

Ballista City/Castle 

 Really awesome as a defensive unit.  But can't raid so they are useless when not defending.

Water Castles

War Galleon Castle 

If your alliance wants control of the water, you'll need WGs.  They are awesome at destroying water castles.  A full castle of WGs can destroy a 10k score castle in 4 hours.  You can also raid sea dungeons/bosses with them.  Their only downside is their food intake.  So make sure you have a  lot of food around.

Sloop City/Castle

Like WGs, sloop can travel to other continents to help protect your alliance castles.  If you have water castles, sloop cities/castles are a must!

Mage/Frigate Castle

 Mages are the best unit against ship.  So Mage/Frigate makes a great offensive water castle.

 Knights/Frigate Castle

They provide a different type of attack.  On ships, they loose their speed because they travel the same speed as frigate.  

Berserker/Frigate Castle

When not attacking, they are a great type of unit for raiding.

Knights

Knights castles are ideally built on landlocked spots.  But once you run out of spaces and your alliance control the navy, you can build other types of castle on water.

Zerks 

Mages

xbows

Palies

Templars

Very good at defending against magic (even better than paladins but not as good for raiding) 

Level 10 Palace City Layout

Requirements:
- High construction speed
- Food storage, some wood and stone storage
- Castle (required for enlightenment)
- Moonglow Tower for purification of excess resources
- Basic defense
- External defense
- Nearby hub
- High score and short distance for increased chance of enlightenment


Building Strategies and Procedure

1. Build around shrines and take up as many spots around them.  This ensures that you have control of the shrine and takes up spots so that other alliances cannot take them.  Take the closest landlocked spot to the shrine and designate it as your alliance's level 10 palace.  Unless your alliance has control of the water, it's usually not recommended to build your palace on water.
2. Build a regular resource city with a Cityguard House.  Recruit your City Guards in that city.  Build walls and 2 Scout Towers and 22 Ballista Towers, or other defense towers of your choice.
3. As soon as the shrine becomes activated, build a castle.  Make sure you have external defenses nearby.
4. When your castle is enlightened and resources are shipped in with "Palace Delivery," build the palace. As you upgrade the palace, convert resource buildings to cottages for increased construction speed.  See chart below:
5. You should also have hubs nearby (see System of Hubs for Palace Donation).  A lot of defenses should also be somewhat close.
6. There should be plenty of other castles around the shrine to build up faith.  A level 9 palace only contributes 16% faith.  Your alliance needs a minimum of 96% faith to build a lvl 10 palace.  So 80% of faith must come from somewhere else.  Building a whole bunch of low level palaces is a lot easier than building a few higher level palaces.  Just make sure you "Lock The Palace" at a certain level to prevent it from getting enlightened again.  You want to focus on the lvl 10 palace and get it to enlighten as often as possible.

                       Palace Level   -  Recommended Min CS  -  Time

                       --------------------------------------------------

                       1                        400%                              2.5days

                       2                        2000%                            3 days

                       3                        2500%                            3 days 

                       4                        2500%                            4 days

                       5                        3700%                            4 days

                       6                        4400%                            5 days

                       7                        6000%                            5 days

                       8                        7500%                            6 days

                       9                        10000%                          6 days

                       10                      10000%                          9 days

Construction speed can be accomplished by cottages, shovels, research, or faith bonus.  Thus it is possible to get over 10k CS.  You may also use Medallions to fast forward construction.

Example of a level 10 Palace Layout

How to Lock Palaces from Being Enlightened

Update:  After the patch of March 13, 2012, you can no longer "lock" the palace.  When you build or upgrade a place, it automatically jumps to the top of the building queue.  If another building is being built, it's reset and pushed down the queue for the palace.


You can, however, reduce the enlightenment chance of that city by  reducing the city score.  This means demoing walls/towers and all other buildings inside the city except for the palace.  More information on forcing enlightenment is here

---------------------------------------------------

When the alliance has enough faith (or close to having enough faith i.e. 96%) to build a lvl 10 palace, you only want your level 10 palace to get enlightened.  To prevent surrounding lower level palaces from being enlightened, you'll want to "lock" the current enlightenment so it wont get enlightened again.

Since palaces that are being upgraded cannot get enlightened, you can accomplish this by putting the upgrade on the building queue but never let it upgrade.

1. Set the Building Minister to "Keep the Building Queue Order"
2. Make sure you already have 100 buildings.  Assign another new building to the Building Minister
3. Upgrade the palace.

That's it!