Settling – A Guide to Choosing Tiles to Settle At

Hopefully this guide will help make you all self-sufficient for choosing tiles to settle as you progress through the game, and I am hoping this will help you to better understand the World Map, and the world around you in general.

First thing, Food is King!  When choosing a location to settle, your first priority is finding adequate Food for future growth.

Basic Rules:

1.  Do not settle within 10 squares of another non-allied player without first gaining permission to do so.  Doing so is opening your city up for future removal from that location, as it is common courtesy to not settle within that distance.  This is a game of diplomacy, so think ahead before you move.
2. Do not settle in locations where there is a Occupying Army within a few squares, that is NOT holding a rare resource such as Rare Herbs/Minerals and/or Grapes.  An Occupying Army is often used to mark a location for settling ahead of time, and is often the deciding factor on who has claim of that location.

Why Are You Settling?

• There are two (2) groupings when it comes to settling your cities, those are Teleporting your Capital (Telandril’s Spell), and Settlers/Exodus.
• In the first situation, Teleporting, the square that you are landing on is far less important than the surrounding squares.  Here you will want to be looking for a ‘Food Dolmen’ (any square with 12+ Food) nearby the square you are planning to settle.
• In the second situation, Settler/Exodus, you want to be landing on a 7 Food tile, also with a nearby Food Dolmen for future sovereignty claims.

Why you NEED a 7 Food tile.

• Simply put, you need population to build new cities.  This increases with each new city you build.  Since Food directly correlates to Population at a 1:1 ratio, the more Food you can produce in a given city, the higher total Population that city can sustain.

Some Numbers To Think About:

Population necessary by City:

# Settlers Population

2nd     1          450

3rd      2          2,000

4th      3          5,000

5th      4          10,000

6th      5          20,000

7th      6          40,000

8th      7          75,000

9th      8          130,000

10th    9          233,550

Food Produced per Farmyard:

• Each Farmyard can produce 2,014 Food P/H, before calculating in Sovereignty bonuses and other boosts such as Spells.
  • 5 Food Plots can produce 10,070 Food P/H, before bonuses.
  • 7 Food Plots can produce 14,098 Food P/H, before bonuses.

So if you do some basic math you can see that if each of your cities is at max Food Production, with 7 Food Plots each, before bonuses, you get the following:

#         Food P/H

1st          14,098

2nd        28,196

3rd         42,294

4th         56,392

5th         70,490

6th         84,588

7th         98,686

8th         112,784 (Food Plots alone are no longer enough for your next town, you need bonuses.)

9th        126,882

• I won’t go any further into the numbers here in this guide, but you can see that you will need to maximize food production in order to reach your 8th, 9th and 10th cities.

Now, How Do You Go About Finding Squares to Settle?

• There’s two (2) basic ways to go about this; your first option is to simply scroll about the map, identifying desirable squares by sight, tile type, etc.  This is time consuming, and very tedious.  The second option is to download the browser addon “Illytools”  (Available for Chrome, Firefox and Opera as of this writing), and use the SweetSpot extension included.
• I use the Illytools option, as it speeds things up a lot and allows you to identify desirable squares that are readily marked on the map for you.
• Once you’re on the SweetSpot tab of IllyTools, click Enable SweetSpot.  This will bring up 3 tables.
• The first is Primary Target (Red Dots), I set this for finding ‘7 Food’ tiles to settle on.  I set the Minimum on each other resource to 1, and leave the max at 99.  I then set both the min/max on the Food portion to 7/7.
• The second is Secondary Target (Orange Dots), I set this for finding ‘Food Dolmen’ tiles, or rather tiles which have a Food value higher than 12 (you can set to any value you like, but this is a minimum I will choose).  I set the Minimum on each other resource to 0, and the leave the Maximum at 99.  I set the Food value here to Minimum at 12, and the Maximum to 22.
• The third is Tertiary Target (Blue Dots), I set this to find other desirable resource tiles, such as a high value Wood/Iron/Stone/Clay tile.  I set the desired type of resources Minimum to 10 and the Maximum I leave at 99. I set the Minimum for all other values to 0, and the Maximum at 99.
• There is a checkbox that will show the 10-Square radius around cities as well, make sure this is selected.
• Click “Find Sweet Spots”.
• On your map, you will now see some different things.
• You will see the dots, and around cities you will see large circles showing the 10 square radius you should not settle within.
• For Settlers/Exodus: Begin looking for Red Dots with Orange Dots within 2-3 squares of them.  These signify a good location for your future settlement.
• For Teleporting: Begin looking for Orange Dots.  Settle on a desirable square within 2-3 squares of these Orange Dots.
• Obviously, multiple Orange Dots within 2-3 squares of where you want to settle is better than just 1 dot.
• If you are planning on settling on a tile that only has 1 of a certain type of resource, consider setting the Tertiary Target numbers to look for that type of resource, and settle on a tile which has both Blue and Orange Dots nearby.

I think that covers the basics (if somewhat comprehensively) on what to look for when choosing a place to settle.

Thank you for your time!  Happy Hunting!

Resources and Illyriad Related Guides

The Illyriad Effect Topics:

• A Guide to Planning Your Life in Illyriad
• A Guide to Buildings in a New City in Illyriad
• Civil Engineering: Research Plans
• Gathering in Illyriad
• Where to Settle / Teleport / Send Settler in Illyriad
• Illyriad Resources, Rare Herb Locations, Rare Mineral Location

 

New to Illyriad?

– Tips for New Players, courtesy of Manannan

– Tallica’s Newbie Guide (Part I)

– Tallica’s Newbie Guide (Part II) (aka – Not So Noobie Guide)

– TD’s Guide for Newbies.  Covers a lot of random points not covered in some of the other guides above.

– Basic Self Defense for Newbies

– Planning your Path in Illy.

 – Advanced Tables and Calculators for many facets of Illy.

– ILLYTOOLS: Browser Addon that helps with city management, exploring your map surroundings, and coordinating attacks. Very useful once you have a basic grasp of the game.

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Looking to Expand?

– Essential Guide for Claiming Sovereignty, courtesy of Mara Zira.

– Rill’s Guide to Real Estate and moving your cities.

– Cerex’s Guide to Exodusing.

– Auraya’s Quick Explanation on why/when to Teleport vs Exodus/Teleport.

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Want to Kill Something?

– Equipping and Scavenging

– Obvious Troop Load-Outs in Illyriad – Courtesy of Kurdruk

– NPC Difficulty Guide, courtesy of Manannan.

– A Chart/Table on Critters in Illyriad, unofficial Illy Wiki – plenty of other info here as well.

– Links to common mobs, groups sizes, attack/defense values, etc.

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Eager to Collect Goods and Craft something shiny?

 – Rill’s Basic Guide to Gathering

– Illy Crafting tables – shows all harvestable items, what recipes they are used in, as well as all craftable items and their traits.

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Looking to corner the Market?

– Trading in Illyriad

– Illy Black Market.  Making high ticket purchases or sales?  Want to bypass the ingame taxes?  This may be for you.  Understand the risk associated with trading via this method.

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Official Illyriad HELP Forums by Topic:

Master Link

1) Game Interface

2) Buildings in Illyriad

3) Diplomatic Missions in Illyriad

4) Armies in Illyriad

5) Combat in Illyriad

6) Environment (Seasons + Lunar Phases)

7) Prestige

8) Moving your Capital City

9) Trade in Illyriad

10) Gathering in Illyriad

11) Crafting in Illyriad

ILLYRIAD Tutorial Videos

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Something Else?

http://wisdomofkurdruk.wordpress.com/ — The Wisdom of Kurdruk, a lot of helpful advice and discussions.

Please message me a link in-game (Humbled), or leave it in a Comment below, if you have a helpful guide to add to the list! Thanks. 😉

Civil Engineering: Gathering For Gains and Growth

GATHERING FOR GAINS and GROWTH

by Humbled.

This Guide is meant for Players with at least 2500+ Resources p/h coming in, that can afford to raise Taxes to sustain an army.

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First, who are your gathering units?

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• Cotters: Can gather Basic Minerals, Basic Herbs, Hides, Grapes and dropped Crafted Equipment.
• Caravans: Can gather basic building material resources, and gold.
• Skinners: Can harvest Animal Parts, and Elemental Salts.
• Herbalists: Can gather Rare Herbs.
• Miners: Can gather Rare Minerals.

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Things you can gather that are worth money, and/or hold trade value or crafting value for you and your Alliance are:

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• Hides:  [Market Price: 5000g] (Dropped at a 40-70% rate off of most ‘furred’ animals, and some others); widely used in crafting and for training Skinners.

• Grapes: [Market Price:  680g] (Random spawned square that can be harvested, and replenishes itself.  Do not OVERHARVEST, and Occupy the square with a token army.); used to create Barrel of Wine, which is needed to recruit Traders.

• Basic Minerals: [Market Price: 260g]; widely used for crafting and training Miners.

• Basic Herbs: [Market Price: 500g]; widely used for crafting and training Herbalists.

• Elemental Salts: [Market Price: 100000g – 230000g]; selectively used in crafting.

• Rare Herbs, Rare Minerals and Animal Parts: please see the crafting charts here [http://www.puzzleslogic.com/illy/illy_crafting.html] for a list of gatherables that are useful, as many have no use.

*prices are based on rates at time of writing, and noticed patterns.  subject to change.*

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Hides/Animal Parts/Elemental Salts can all be found lying on the ground for any player to gather.  Sometimes NPCs get into fights with other NPCs, and they leave body parts strewn across the World Map.  Feel free to harvest these if there’s no signs that they belong to another player.  The more reliable way to get these animal related resources is by targeting the animals, and slaying them with an Army.

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Building Your Army to Supply Your Gatherers

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First, what do you need to build?

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• You want to do necessary researches to be able to build Tier-2 units at your barracks.  These are the more expensive unit of each type.  The available types are: Spear, Sword, Bow, and Cavalry.  Tier 1 units are simply inferior, and make poor commanders in most situations.

You want to look at your surrounding terrain, or the terrain you will be fighting on most commonly to also help determine which unit type to focus on.  Each type has strengths and weaknesses on different terrains as follows (copied from the official Illyriad Combat Guide):

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Mountains favour ranged units and nimble spearmen, and penalise cavalry heavily. Attacking swordsmen are also hampered by the passes, gulleys and canyons that make frontal assaults more difficult.

Hills also benefit ranged units and spearmen to a lesser extent, and still penalise cavalry, but also to a lesser extent.  Swordsmen are largely unaffected by hilly terrain.

Forests penalise ranged units and cavalry due to the foliage, but swordsmen and spearmen love all the opportunities for cover and ambush.

Plains provide the opportunity for cavalry to shine – their ability to maneuver makes them the masters of open flat space.  Lightly armoured spearmen dislike the open terrain of plains, where they are easier targets for cavalry and archers.

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In my experience I have focused on Bow and Sword units first, followed by Cavalry, then Spears for city defense.

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Commanding Your Armies

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• You will want to make a Commander of each type of unit you are using.  So build yourself a Tier-2 Bowmen, and a Tier-2 Swordsman as you can.

• Your Commander gains experience as his units slay Animals and Monsters, and other Player Units as well.  This experience can be transferred into boosting certain traits of the Commander.  Your Commander can have points placed to either boost his personal performance, or to boost the units beneath him/her.

The following is my recommendation on the first traits you should research and put points into as your Commanders level up.  You may place future points as you see fit, and some should most assuredly be placed into traits that increase your armies defense against commonly fought enemies.

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Commander Traits Placement

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Self Bonuses ////

• Accelerated Healing: 3 Points [Allow your Commander to regenerate between fight faster, so you can attack more often.]
• Vitality: 2 Points [Your Commander can sustain more damage in each fight by having more health.]
• Heroism: 4 Points [Drastically increase your Commanders Attack.  Your Commander fast becomes more deadly than dozens of his/her un-promoted equivalents.

Division Bonuses ////

• 3-5 Points in the Attack Bonus for that unit type.  If it’s a Bow Commander, put points into Concentrated Fire.  If it’s a Infantry Commander, put points into Bloodlust.  Etc.

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After this, rotate points between those same Self Bonuses and Division Bonuses until your Commander has at least 5 Points in each.  Then customize as you see fit.

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What to Attack and How To Do It

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• Again, reference the Crafting Guide for harvestable Animal Parts that are useful.  Meaning that they are actually used to make useful equipment or items.  [http://www.puzzleslogic.com/illy/illy_crafting.html]

• Now, you want to next know how many enemies are in a group nearby that you have identified for useful parts.  As well as taking note in the Scout Report you will receive just what the strengths and weaknesses of that group’s animals are.

• Send a Scout to check EVERY group of animals/monsters.  [Note: Also send Scouts to monitor levels on Rare Herbs and Grapes, so you don’t harvest them to 0.]

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Enemy Group Sizes are as follows:

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• Few: 1-3
• Handful: 4-8
• Several: 9-21
• Pack: 22-81
• Many: 82-128
• Gathering: 129-227
• Horde: 228-462
• Throng: 463-815
• Host: 816-2,500
• Legion: 2,501-9,999
• Myriad: 10,000-24,999
• Sea: 25,000-49,999
• Cornucopia: 50,000-Inf

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All that’s left at this point is to build an army bigger/stronger than that group, and slay it.  A great reference for building your army can be found Building Armies in Illyriad.

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What’s Yours is Yours, Secure It

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When attacking a group of Animals (or staking claim to a Grape Plot or other square you value, consider the following:

• If you have more than 1 Commander, consider building a ‘token army’ which can move quickly, and can follow up after an attack to ‘Occupy’ the square.  This is a claim of your ownership of that tile.

• If your army is fast moving, and virtually guaranteed success in the attack, consider ensuring that second army is slower than your attacking army, and you can send your attacking army against the target, followed immediately by the second slower army, which you send to Occupy the square.  Your army will kill the enemy, and your second will lay claim to the square in one action.

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That’s it for this bit of instruction.  I know it’s been a long read, but it should help you to start gathering what you need to begin trading and crafting of your own.

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I will try to follow up with a more personal version of a guide to Trading, but for now please read this very thorough and helpful guide which will get you started.  I am including this because procrastination is an addiction of mine. 🙂

• (Building a Trader and getting into that part of the game is something that should probably wait until at least a 3k+ population, but if you want to get into it sooner the only damage you are doing is slowing your resource and population gains some in the meantime.)

Guide to Trading: [http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/9-trade_topic3989.html]

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Cheers,

Humbled.

 

Next: Early Diplomacy (coming soon…..ish)

Previous: Research Plans

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

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…

Next: Research Plans

Previous: The Plan

Civil Engineering: The Plan

The Plan:

Your cities should be able to operate under their own steam.  Meaning:

• FIRST THING YOU SHOULD DO STARTING A NEW TOWN: Lower your TAXES to 0.  Doing so increases resource income drastically, allowing you to grow faster.  Raise Taxes only as you need to.
• Enough ‘Building Materials’ Resources coming in to sustain your growth; with enough Storage to not overflow.
• City placement should include looking at surrounding rare herbs or minerals, food production ability, and animal density.  Rill has written an excellent guide on Real Estate Planning as well.
• Lots of Caravans means more gathering basic resources from the world map, as well as transferring between your cities or with other players.
• Keep 4 – 6 Cotters on-hand during the early-mid days of your city.  Between gathering Hides, Grapes, Equipment, and basic minerals and basic herbs, Cotters are very handy and highly profitable when you get into trading.  Replace Cottages with other needed buildings as your city matures.
• If there’s rare herbs or minerals nearby that are actually useful (more on that later), you should be gathering them.  Always scout the location to make sure you do not over-harvest, and it’s a good idea to send a token army to a rare spot worth keeping to Occupy the square for an extended period of time (so long as it’s not too close to a neighbor – consider asking if they’d mind if it’s quite close).
• Your military is a great tool for gathering animal parts and hides, as something needs to die to drop the parts you can harvest.  Look at your surrounding terrain, use appropriate units, and slaughter all the innocent bunny wabbits.  More on Military here.
• Scout EVERYTHING.  Every animal that wanders by that you might consider killing/harvesting from.  Every rare herb or mineral that pops up nearby.  Every grape patch.  There is vital information to be gained from scouting.  With Rare Herbs/Minerals you want to know if it’s worth gathering.  With Rare Herbs/Grapes you want to know how many pieces are present so you can harvest from the square without over-harvesting, and destroying the patch.  I will be writing a more in-depth guide on Scouting in the future.  In the meantime, some more on diplomatic units can be found here.
• You can’t build everything in each city.  You need to specialize.  Some forward planning goes a long ways towards reducing frustration later on.  Some insight into planning your path in Illyriad can be found here.

Next: Buildings in a New City

Previous: Main page