Civil Engineering: Research Plans

Research Plans: The Skeleton of Your City

Of all the things you should stop to consider, it’s what you’re researching that will effect you the most.  What you research determines the direction you head in Illyriad. ~Humbled

You need to do researches to unlock buildings and units.  Having some goals in mind for each city goes a long way to faster progress and bigger gains.   Some basic examples might include:

City 1: Used to supply future cities while continuing to grow.

• Primary Priorities: Resource Production/Storage and Gathering
• Secondary Priorities: Military for Skinning/Hides, Books, Cows, Horses, Hub Trading

City 2: Used to supply military growth in first 2-3 cities, location should have rare herbs/minerals or lots of animals nearby.

• Primary Priorities: Resource Production/Storage and Gathering
• Secondary Priorities: Military for Skinning/Hides, Saddles, Cows, Horses, Spears, Bows, Leather Armor

City 3: Setup to take advantage of lots of animals in area, gather materials for equipment crafting and resale.

• Primary Priorities: Resource Storage, T2 Gathering
• Secondary Priorities: Specialty Crafting, Military for Skinning/Hides, Resource Production

The important part to note is that your city does not have enough plots to build every building that’s available to you.  So each city will be specialized in some way.  This means that you don’t have to research everything in every town, and will streamline your wait times a lot if you’ve been clicking semi-randomly.

 

The Essential Researches

It’s important to have your researches planned out, so you can ‘unlock’ new buildings and units when you want them, as well as protect your growing town with magics.

Starting a new city you want to build some protection against intruders, get your gathering and trade abilities started, boost resource production, then begin to build a small army for hunting animals with.  You will follow this by producing other resources like Cows/Horses/Saddles/Leather Armor/Spears/Bows/Books, to name a few of the more basic ones.

The following is a good start for your researches, with a quick note on why:

• Arcana(Allows you to build a Mage Tower)

• Runes (Defense against Hostiles)
  • Mark of Slaying > Ward of Destruction (To offer some protection from hostile incoming units.  Will slay ‘x’ hostile units depending on the level of your research done in this tree)
• Geomancy (Buff your town’s Resource Gains)
  • Spirit of Nourishment > Nature’s Bounty (Boost your food production.  You can choose other Geomancy spells as well, depending on what you’re short on)

• Haggling (Allows you to build a Marketplace and Caravans; Caravans are capable of transporting goods as well as gathering basic resources from the world map)

• Cotters (A key gathering unit)

• Foraging (Opens up ability to gather basic minerals, basic herbs and hides.)
• Grape Picking (Allows Cotters to gather from Grape patches.  Only research this early if there are Grapes nearby, and you control them)

• Timekeeping
  • Bureaucracy
    • Bookbinding (You will need books to cast spells, produce advanced units as well as to send resource points to new cities.)
    • Pioneering (Build a Settler unit for your 2nd city)
      • Inventory Management (Opens up Warehouse, your long-term storage building.)

• Craftsmanship (Various buildings to boost resource production, build weapons and armors, as well as city wall with further research)
  • Carpentry, Pottery, Smelting, Stonemasonry (Boost your resource production by a percentage.  Build these as your plots reach level 7, and gradually upgrade.)

• Negotiation
  • Scouting (Develop Scout units that can tell you more about NPC animals and monsters, Rare Resource plots and other players.  Warning: Some players consider being scouted a hostile act.)

• Militia
  • Spearmanship (Your first available unit, not really that good but a prerequisite for all that follows; I found that Tier 2 Bowmen, Swordsmen and Cavalry comprise my entire ‘Hunting’ army.)
  • Conscription (Opens up additional Commander slots.  Essential to developing a responsive army.)

After this point, you will start to get an idea of your own on what you want to develop.  The above is key to starting any new city though, as it lays the groundwork to develop the rest based on your needs.

Next: Gathering for Gains and Growth

Previous: Buildings in a New City