Civil Engineering: Buildings in a New City

Buildings in a New City

I can’t stress this enough, you need to stay focused for the first 14 – 21 days of each new city.  Focused on leveling up your resource plots, storage capacity and a select few buildings (unless you have another city or player sending your new city resources constantly).

Buildings to build when you start a new town:

• Storage
• Mage Tower
• Library
• Marketplace
• Consulate
• Barracks
• Resource Boosting Buildings (more below)

Your first goal should be having enough available storage so that your coffers do not overflow between visits to Illyriad (resource totals will be in red at top of your screen), and those initial care packages many veterans will send to polite newcomers in Global Chat .  Note: you need Storage leveled up to level 15 to research Inventory Management.  This lets you create your Warehouse, a far larger storage building once it gets leveled up some.

The Library, which generates Research Points each hour, should be treated as a resource plot, just like food, wood, iron, stone and clay.  You will need those research points to rapidly progress through research without waiting, and to later be turned into books to send to your starter towns and make advanced units with. Stop leveling this at level 12, unless you’re ready for Sovereignty related pursuits, for which you will need the additional Research Points.  For more on Sovereignty read here.

The Mage Tower gives you the ability to cast spells on your city that benefit your resource gains, protect you from enemy units, and to cast damaging spells at enemies that have various negative effects.  One of the first things you should do is Research ‘Runes’ and ‘Mark of Slaying’, to help keep hostile player units away.  More on Magic defenses can be found here.  Once you’ve leveled this to level 15, you shouldn’t need to level it any further.

Your Marketplace is essential to begin gathering resources from outside your city.  It can make Caravans, Cotters, Skinners, Herbalists, Miners, and Traders.

The Consulate allows you to join an Alliance and begin producing units responsible for gathering information, stealing or dealing covert damage.  Early on you just need a couple scouts hanging around to check out rare resources and animal groups around you.  Get a feel for what’s available to you in the countryside.  Once you have enough population to maintain some units gold upkeep, consider investing in Scout, Spy and Thief units for defense in your city (parts of this guide explain basic self defense).  You may also want to keep some of these units handy for completing quests, a healthy distraction early on in the game with some minor rewards.  More on Quests here.

Barracks are responsible for building your Military.  Your military in this guide is solely responsible for fighting animals and monsters, and benefiting from it by leveling up your commanders and keeping your Cotters and Skinners busy.  Only worry about leveling this up once you are ready to build an army, and can afford to maintain its gold upkeep.  You will likely have 2500+ resource p/h coming in or greater when you begin building an army.  The higher your population before you begin an army, the better.  As you can keep taxes low while still affording the upkeep.

As a new player you should try to do the following:

• Level a Mage Tower to Level 3, research your desired Seeking or Slaying Rune, and cast it on your city.
• Level your Storage so that it never overflows between visits to Illyriad.  If your resource gains p/h can’t fill up your Storage between visits, then upgrade your resource plots.  If it does overflow, upgrade your Storage.  Leveling this to Level ~5-7 early on is a good idea, as almost any Alliance you join will help by shipping you resources, or friendly veterans in GC might even help you out too.
• Level your Library early on, until your incoming Research Points exceed how many you’re using.  Probably Level 9+.
• Build a Marketplace, and train some Caravans.  Look around on the World Map nearby and start gathering any basic resources you may see.
• Build a Consulate, and Research Negotiation early on so you may join an Alliance, if you so choose.  (Might I recommend FORGE as a place for you to begin your journey in Illyriad?  Hint, Hint, Wink, Wink.)  Don’t worry about leveling up your Consulate right away.
• Fill in some of the blank spaces with Cottages (after researching Cotters and Foraging, Grapes as well if those are nearby).  Cheap filler, and anything the Cotters can gather is useful for later in one way or another.

As noted in Tallica’s Newbie Guide (part 1), a good measuring stick for what you should have accomplished by the end of Week 1 is:

• Level 10 Storehouse
• 3 x Level 7 Lumberjack
• 3 x Level 7 Clay Pit
• 3 x Level 7 Quarry
• 3 x Level 7 Iron Mine
• Level 10 Library
• Level 10 Architect’s Office
• Level 5 Marketplace
• Level 3 Mage Tower

-and- KEEP FOOD PRODUCTION POSITIVE!!!!

 

When leveling up your standard resource plots (this doesn’t apply to the Library) I found it ideal to level up a single plot of each kind to level 7.  Then balance the rest out afterwards.  The reason for this is when a resource plot hits level 7, you can begin researches that allow you to build Resource Boosting buildings.  So level up a level 1 Wood, then a level 1 Clay, then a level 1 Stone, then a level 1 Iron.  Then level 2 Wood, and so on, until you reach level 7.  Then back fill the rest.

Resource Boosting Buildings:

• Carpentry (Wood)
• Quarry (Stone)
• Foundry (Iron)
• Kiln (Clay)
• Flour Mill (Food)

Each of these buildings will increase its respective resource type by two-percent per level.  This means that a level-five Flour Mill will increase Food Production by ten-percent.  This is a very noticeable boost when you start producing thousands of resources per hour.

The Flour Mill is pretty well essential in every city, the other four are helpful but not critical if you don’t mind losing some resource gains.  Keep in mind, these buildings are also needed to build or research other buildings and technologies.  Carpentry leads to a Fletcher, Quarry to City Walls and Siege Researches, Foundry to Blacksmith, Kiln to…

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