Donation etiquette

Hey – long time no post! Apologies – I’ll try and keep this a little more current with some new info.

Okay – this is a pretty boring topic, but I thought I’d post something up here for new folks that join the alliance and we can give something to refer them to on the website.

Alliance donations are a really powerful way to make your army stronger – nothing like getting an atomic tank to compliment your medieval troops! But, they can be a cause of alliance friction if you’re not careful. So, here’s some helpful guidelines:

• Anyone can donate for regular day-to-day raiding (attacking enemy bases not in a war). Even if you’re classical, we have an alliance bonus that automatically upgrades our troops to industrial level. So, that ballista gets upgraded to an artillery and that French guard chevalier gets upgraded to a sweet industrial French tank. And, we’re about to advance to the next alliance level bonus that upgrades troops to their global age equivalent which will be super-sweet. So, donate often, no matter your age!
• Try and keep your donations about double what you’re requesting at least. That lets you know that you’re helping the alliance appropriately.
• For requesting troops, I’d say try and keep your donation requests to 3 main types of requests:
  • “Defensive troops please” these are troops you’re looking to put in your town center that can help defend your base. If someone requests these, generally the troops that will be most effective to donate are in the following order: cannon/artillery, riflemen, bazookas, mortars, tanks, machine guns, foot soldiers. Do not donate raiders.
  • “General attacking troops please” these will include just about anything but raiders. Artillery and tanks are probably the best and most common. But, it’s better to fill someone up with 18 riflemen within 5 minutes from 3 people than to wait 30 minutes for 2 artillery
  • “Raiders please” NOW you can donate your motorcycle raiders. 🙂

    You can of course occasionally request specific things like if you have a specific goal you want to do (like a revenge attack) or have a weird army configuration that would be complimented by a weird alliance troop combo, but in general, keep it general.

• For people requesting war troops, it’s very important that you read what they’re requesting, and follow instructions. You’re welcome to offer them something else if it looks like they’ve been waiting a while, but usually people want to bring the strongest troops they can into a war (atomic or cold war age) and of a specific type. Common requests might be field howitzers, atomic or better French or Greek tanks, British atomic age riflemen, or some other exotic combo someone wants to compliment their army configuration.
• For donating to war bases, leave that to atomic or higher council level players in the alliance. Very important that we get very high level troops in the war bases, typically field howitzers, bazookas, British riflemen, etc.
• For stronghold donations in war bases, if you’ve got the extra troops you want to donate, great! I’d say a rule of thumb on those is try and donate the next age up troop at least to a war base. So, for example, if you want to stick an army in someone’s war stronghold and they’re a medieval player, try and put in at least a Gunpowder level troop.

Alright, now that we’re all on the same page, come get your Cold War heavy artillery and AMX-13 tanks!

Trying a change of war tactics

The way we’ve been running wars til now is that we’ve been assigning first attacks, doing a lot of stat tracking, and keeping the wars small.

We’re going to try something new with this next couple of wars. Changes include:

1. We’re going to open them up to a larger number of people (25-35 people)
2. We’re going to let YOU choose the target. The goal is to pick the highest level target that you can 5 star and then do you best. What we’re hoping to shoot for is for people to be able to 5 star targets between their own level and 10-20 levels higher than them.
3. If you have a tricky target, ask about it! There’s always people in chat that are willing to help suggest a plan of attack.
4. The most important thing is to try and 5 star your target, without low-balling your attack JUST to guarantee you get 5 stars.

Again, I’ll reiterate here a few tips for wars:

• Upgrade your coalitions. Now that National Trade Goods are easier to get, we should be shooting for 3 coalitions for each war. And, some of the better alliances have their coalitions maxed out for their levels. If you’re a higher level player and you’ve got a defensive base (Forbidden City, Versailles, Acropolis, Angor Wat, Kremlin, high walls, etc), then maybe doubling down and getting 1-3 def coalitions is good. If you’re a middle or lower level player, getting 3 offensive coalitions might be a good choice.
• Go in with all your offensive resources. All tactics filled (preferably Decoy, Sabotage, Protection), all Mercs, coalition bonus troops, donated alliance troops, all generals, etc. The use of troop tactics is fine if you want to (I usually use about one set per war on average), but not a requirement.
• Whenever you advance an age, focus on your offense first. Upgrade (roughly in this order), armory, barracks (1 at a time), library, airstrip, factory, alliance gate, fort. At the armory, try and make sure your core troops get upgraded first: cannon, heavy cav/tank, foot soldier, riflemen, healing cart, aircraft. Bazooka and APC for later ages and raiders when you’ve got the others finished. I’d say things to avoid unless they’re on sale and you’ve finished the rest: heavy tank, machine gunner, zeppelin, mortar troop, wall breaker. In the University, try and focus on offensive troops first, especially your nation’s special unit if you can.
• don’t neglect your walls! very tedious, but very important. Level 8-10 for Industrial, 9-12 for Global, 10-15 for Atomic.

If you do these things, watch some replays of good war attacks, and ask questions, you should be taking out bases 10-20 levels above you in no time.

What this means for our alliance

So, with the change of how we run wars, our goal is to create an alliance that has a good core group of attackers. So, in order to do that, we’re probably going to be a bit more selective than we’ve been in the past. To date, as long as you’ve not missed your attacks, donated, and we could communicate with you, you position in the alliance was secure.

And, that will still be generally true – as long as you’re showing improvement and growing as well as those other things, your position is secure. I think that’s part of the reason we’re changing it so YOU select the target – this forces you to get to know your own strengths and to push yourself to bigger challenges.

While there won’t be a hard formula for who gets cut from the alliance, some things to base the criteria on are:

• missing attacks in wars. At the very least, if you can’t take your attacks, let someone know that you won’t be able to so we can plan ahead.
• always being unavailable for wars. If you don’t prefer wars, that’s fine as long as you’re a valuable member otherwise (donate, helpful, make the alliance a more lively place, etc). And, if you don’t prefer wars, at least be open to occasionally jumping in if we need someone.
• not communicating. You don’t have to be our best friend, but if we try and reach you and don’t hear back, that’s missing a pretty important part of being an alliance. At the very least, scroll back and read the colored text in chat and any inbox messages.
• not growing militarily. If you like upgrading farms and roads and caravans, maybe this isn’t the best alliance for you?
• not improving. And, this is where it might be a little different than what we’ve done in the past. This could include not following suggestions we make for improving, not being able to consistently attack enemies at or slightly above your own level, not using your full offensive capability in wars, etc.

So, yeah, we might have to make some hard choices. But, as leaders, we’re hoping we can step things up a little bit and make the alliance a little better. While we’ll continue to work to make the alliance a fun place to be and a good group of people helping each other out, we do recognize that maybe some of the people that join won’t share our exuberance to try and continue to improve our play. And there’s nothing wrong with that – fortunately there are literally thousands of other alliances out there to pick from that might be a better fit for them, so no worries.

So, here’s to hoping we can have a good time and spur each other on to get better and better.

When to advance to a new age

So Nexon loves to offer Town Center upgrade sales to try and get people to move up in ages more quickly. Good business for them because new ages bring new toys that entice people to spend money/crowns on speeding up their buildings. But! Sales shouldn’t determine when you advance an age (although if it coincides when you’re ready to advance, why not!).

I’m global now, so I might be a little rusty on some of the earlier ages, but I think I can reasonably remember back to Enlightenment age at least.

There’s two schools of thought on when to advance ages:

1. advance to a new age as soon as your offensive upgrades are done (troop upgrades at the armory, offensive library research, barracks, merc camp, airfield, factory, alliance gate) and you build any new defensive structures up to at least gunpowder age.
2. advance to a new age when you have everything upgraded (except farms/caravans/roads – don’t bother upgrading those. ever.)

There’s probably no wrong answer, but maybe a more right answer depending on your play style and the rest of your alliance. It’s probably good to have some folks in an alliance that take both paths.

1. Dawn – Medieval Age: pick option 1. Advance as soon as your offense is ready and you’ve built your new defensive structures and leveled them up 1 or 2 levels. Definitely expand your alliance gate soon into your advancement so you can get more high powered alliance troops to help you defend and attack. I’d pick Acropolis as your wonder in the Bronze Age – that will help with your base defense. Classical wonder selection in order of preference in my opinion: Colosseum, Forbidden City (if you want to be a defensive player in World Wars), or Terra Cotta Army.
2. Gunpowder Age: I would suggest pausing here in Gunpowder and upgrading all your offense and defense. If you wait here, you’re safe from attack from industrial players with tanks and fighters that you have no chance of defending against. You’ve got some new defensive structures available to you (redoubts) and an additional tower and stable that’ll help. Also, either Versailles (the best wonder imo) and Angor Wat will help with your base defense. Also, this is a great age to do some university research on mortars, towers, riflemen, foot troops, and to finish Hiawatha and Mansa Musa if you haven’t already. Try and get all your walls up to level 7-8 (higher if you can!).
3. Enlightenment Age: I would suggest trying to get through this age as quickly as possible. Upgrade all your offensive troops as listed in option 1 and then advance. Also, avoid building your oil structures (wells and refinery) until you’ve built your new defensive buildings (redoubt, garrison, cannon tower) and upgraded your new available walls to level 7-8. The reason is, once you start collecting oil, you’re going to be a nice easy target for industrial players. If you don’t have oil, they might pass you by. So, I’d do your oil once you’re almost ready to advance to the next age. The offensive (aircraft, tanks, artillery) and defensive (anti-tank guns, tank depots, sniper tower, AA guns, bunker) upgrades available in Industrial far outweigh any hesitation in advancing.
4. Industrial Age: I would say industrial is another good age to take your time in. Lots of important offensive and defensive upgrades to take advantage of and a maxed out industrial player can certainly take on global and even atomic opponents (especially those that advanced too early). I would go so far as to say max out all your defensive structures, finish mortar/tower/riflemen research and maybe begin on the artillery research. Get at least 2-3 generals up to level 16-21. For wonders, I’d pick from Statue of Liberty, Brandenburg Gate (factory troops are pretty meh, but the Blitzkrieg tactic is pretty powerful in wars) , or Kremlin (especially if you’ve already invested heavily in your wall upgrades). Also don’t neglect to max out your traps for defense!
5. Global Age: jury is still out on this one, but I’d say once you get your offense upgraded and a few key defensive structures (tank depots with their 2 upgrades, at least 1-2 garrisons, fully research the Resistance line in the library, max your command post especially if you’re French or Greek to get the defensive tanks, castle, and at least 1 bunker) you should be good to advance. Also, with Amelia Earhart in the University now, upgrade all the aircraft research you can before advancing. If you were diligent in the Industrial era to max out your stuff, it shouldn’t take you too long (relatively speaking at least) to advance from Global to Atomic.

How to determine the chaotic ways of plane attacks

One of the most frustrating things in attacks is sending your planes in to attack a target and realize that instead of flying over a nice peaceful approach of farms and houses that they instead choose the route of flying directly over an anti-aircraft gun and several towers. While the direction that the game chooses to have your planes attack from can seem random at times, their approach direction IS predictable.

You can determine which direction the planes will attack from by dividing the enemy map up into 4 triangles, like in the image below:

The grid lines need to be drawn from the 4 corners of the map – the corners being the far corners of the possibly cleared area, not the actual area cleared. They may have chosen to leave forest uncleared around say the NE edge by the embassy, but corner is still going to be the area of the map that they could have cleared.

So, once you divide a map into a grid like this, you can look at the individual buildings within the triangle and see which ones are vulnerable to attack. When you click on a building to attack using your planes, the game will send them in from the direction of the blue numbers on the triangle edge. So, attacking the bazooka tower will send your planes in from the direction of the blue 3. Attacking Angor Wat will send them in from the side along the blue 4.

Sometimes, a building will straddle TWO grids, like the Acropolis in this case. If you want to try and be really precise (and it can be tough in the heat of battle) you can click on a specific part of a building to choose which way your planes approach from. Like, if you were to click on the southern tip of the Acropolis, they would approach from the blue 3 side. Anywhere else, they’d approach from the blue 2 side.

Using this technique, you can spot potential weaknesses in the enemy base (or your own if you examine it using this approach!). For example, I would say this base is vulnerable in quadrant 4 – there’s only 1 tower in the middle of the triangle (assuming there’s no SAM traps hidden in there). If you were to take out that tower, that would give you free attacks on a mortar, bunker, tank depot, garrison, and Angor Wat. You could be attacking with your army from one side while your aircraft destroy his structures in section 4.

Now, what does seem more random is the return path that your aircraft can take once they destroy a target. They’ll always return to the same point you deploy them from, but if they destroy a target before using up all their ‘flight time’ they’ll meander around and attack other structures on the way back. The trick to help with that is to only deploy as many aircraft as it takes to destroy the target and then return home the same way without having more flight time. But, that can be tricky to do depending on the enemy research and temporary boosts.

Aircraft are probably the most powerful unit in the game if they’re used correctly and can determine the outcome of a battle. Hope this helps!

Tips for 5 starring your attacks

With our latest war (and some of our more recent ones as well), we’ve been able to 4 star a lot of our opponents, but the 5th star has eluded us on many attacks. As we face better and better alliances, many wars will come down to just a few stars being the difference. So, we’re going to have to work on closing the deal and turning a 4 star attack into a 5 star.

I’m going to assume for the most part that the 5th star that we’re missing is usually coming from not getting the quick victory. Here’s some tips to try and make sure you get the quick victory and get that 5th star:

• Make sure you research the Level 4 Banners technology, esp the last one which gives at 15 sec boost to quick victory requirements. This is available at Gunpowder age.
• Needless to say, work quickly on your attack. Plan it out – decide beforehand the point you’re going to deploy at, the first sabotages you’re going to use, the first target your planes will attack, etc. For a particularly hard target, I’ll plan out my route around the base and where I plan on using each tactic. Not to say everything goes according to plan, but going into it, at least you start with a plan.
• Deploy quickly! If you’re playing on a touch screen device, did you know you can use multiple fingers around a spot to deploy your troops more quickly? This is especially handy on big groups of troops like riflemen. I usually deploy tanks (heavy cav) first to soak up some initial hits, then cannons, then healing carts, then alliance troops, mercs, riflemen, foot troops, war coalition troops.
• While killing the town center quickly is key, never rally on the TC to kill it. Instead, pick a structure that, when destroyed, serves as a good spot to rally on  that your cannons will be in range of the town center.
  As an example, let’s look at this GP base from a few wars ago:
  
  For this attack, I would approach from the west side near the barracks by first applying a sabotage to the castle/tower, deploying your troops and taking out redoubt, castle, and Acropolis. Then, I’d sabotage the town center so the donated troops don’t come out, as well as the stable/mortar next to it. Then, I’d rally on a point where the Acropolis stood and when all my troops are there, lay a protect tactic over them plus your Strength of the Gladiator if you have the Colosseum. Just being in close proximity to the TC will destroy it in no time. If that’s successful, you have your 2 stars already and you’re inside the enemy base with your whole army protected and powered up. The rest will fall quickly.
• Make sure your rally spot puts the TC in the range of your cannons. As a visual guide, the barracks is the same dimensions as your cannon range, so you can use that building to visually gauge if the spot is within the cannons’ range.
• Make sure you put a sabotage on the town center BEFORE your troops get within range. The enemy TC will have two enemy troop deployments: one is the alliance troops that come out of the TC the second you step into it’s range. The second are the protecting foot troops and that is signaled by the brown troop deployment countdown bar. If you sabo the TC before you get in range, usually at the stage above where you’re about to rally on your TC kill spot, you can ensure that both troop deployments don’t emerge. As you know, several howitzers popping out of a TC as you get close can ruin your attack…
• Use war coalitions! I usually use 2 offensive and 1 defensive per war. It’ll give you a big offensive boost and 2 offensive bonus armies to deploy.
• Save your troops you get from events for wars only. Upgrade your Stronghold to be able to use a max of 4 (currently) for each war if need be. With the events they have, if you complete them, you can usually accumulate 3 per event per week.

Some of this might be self explanatory, but if you can work on these tactics, you can improve your chances of turning a 4 star attack into a 5 star one!

Good Youtube videos

So, someone mentioned in chat the other day the desire to get better at war attacks and how useful it would be to be able to observe some good attacks. I came across this Youtube channel from a really good player that has a lot of his attacks posted on it. Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5SmYRE_wcbLrORMkEK4zoQ

There’s also this channel that has some really useful tips on it – he also has videos from the Industrial age and the Classical age, so you can get a feel for attack strategies throughout the ages.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrgbgzCtQLcQdlbimF4hFuA/videos

Anyway, hope these are helpful!

How to win at war: war base design and more

By getting more stars than your opponents. Simple, right?

Okay, maybe there’s more to it than that, but at the end of the day, that’s it. Every decision you make in a war should be toward ‘will it get us more stars?’

Now, assuming you’re not facing some hacked out Korean cheaters-alliance, here’s some tips to try and help us win some wars.

War Defense:

• Before the war starts, fill war bases with as high of troop level as possible. Yes, this puts a greater burden on our Industrial and Enlightenment level members, but it makes a difference. Troop types to donate are: Cannons (they can be devastating – in war they have splash damage also), tanks, heavy Gatlings, heavy cavalry (particularly the Greek and French), and riflemen (particularly English, Korean, and Chinese).
• Make sure you pick at least one general and level it up as high as you can. When you go to war, it’ll pick your highest rated general whether he’s available for you to raid with or not and put him on defense.
• This should be obvious, but protect your town center at the center of your defenses. If you can keep them from destroying it, that’s denying them one star. If you can keep them from doing it in the first minute, that’s another.
• Place any non-military building outside your walls. There is no reason to protect your resources in wars – the enemy can’t raid your resources. In fact, your mills and markets have twice the hit points that your wonders do, so they’re great to stick in front of your walls to create extra structures the enemy has to cut through to get to your TC. Your vault also has a lot of hit points, so that’s good to use as a blocking building.
• Put a few buildings in the far corners of your map. This forces the enemy to at least cover a wide area to destroy all the buildings on the map. Who knows – if they end up destroying everything on your map and can’t reach that forge they didn’t see in the far corner by the woods in time, maybe it will save you an extra star.
• Use only war-related Wonders. Remember back when you started and thought Hanging Gardens/Pyramids/Stonehenge would be cool? Yeah – only useful to farmers and farming gets you a fraction of the resources that raiding does and won’t help at all for winning wars. This is one good place to use your hard earned crowns by replacing those wonders with the Acropolis. In the Classical Age, I’d probably say the Colosseum is the best, but Forbidden City is definitely powerful to deny people a star in war if you use it right.
• Good base design. Base design is absolutely critical to withstanding the enemy. If you want to check out some decent examples of some base design, I’ve created a gallery here from medieval to industrial (regular and war bases are mixed together, but you should be able to tell them apart).

In addition, I wrote some suggestions on the other post about protecting your home base that also apply here, so I’ll post those again:

• Overlap your defenses. Set up your defensive structures so that their fields of fire compliment each other. What can kill mortars and redoubts? Cavalry. What kills cavalry? Cannon towers. So, place a cannon tower in proximity to your redoubts and mortars. Preferably with enough space that a single sabotage tactic won’t disable all three.
• Increase the hit points on your town center. How do you do that? By connecting your buildings with a road(s) that connects to your TC. If you do this, you can add at least 25% more hit points to your TC which takes that much longer to destroy in battle. You need a little balance though because roads inside your walls usually space things out too far to protect everything.
• Upgrade your walls. Walls are very expensive and it’s about as much fun as watching paint dry, but they’ve got to be done. Don’t neglect them. Target levels to shoot far are probably level 7 for Gunpowder, 8 for Enlightenment, and 9 for Industrial.

War Offense:

• Disable their Castle first thing in war with a sabotage and then destroy it before it can deploy the generals. If you can destroy it before the generals are released, you won’t have to fight them. 🙂
• When the war starts, COMMUNICATE. Let people know when you’re about to attack and who you’re about to attack. I’ve seen the same folks go after the same target without knowing they were duplicating their efforts. Ask for specific troops you think will help you out.
• It works best if the lower half of the alliance takes their attack first. So, if it’s a 20 person war, players #11-20 should take their first attack first if possible.
• For your first attack, try and attack roughly around your mirror ranking in the enemy alliance – usually within 1-2 slots if you can. So, if you’re ranked #10 in our alliance list for war, try and target between #8 and #12 in the enemy alliance.
• For your second attack, ask leaders or council if they agree with the target you’re going after. The target for your second attack depends on if we’re winning or losing, by how much, and how much time is left.

Any more useful suggestions on how we can win wars, let me know.

Yeah, it’s just a game, and maybe this is taking it a bit too seriously, but I happen to find it fun when you can work together as a team and defeat others trying to defeat you. 🙂

 

How to not get your stuff stolen: home base design and more

Unless you’re Industrial level (or now Global Age I guess), let’s be clear: medals don’t matter. The benefits conferred from climbing the medal ladder are minuscule. If you’re not a maxed out Global Age person (and you’re not), the main goal is to protect your resources so that you can grow.

So, in order to accomplish that, here’s some tips to protect your stuff:

• First, stop protecting your town center! If you have a home base design that protects your town center behind walls, I would strongly encourage you to change it. Move the town center outside your walls. If people destroy it – who cares?! They might steal a few of your trade goods in the process, but you should be stealing a bunch when you raid anyway, so it all evens out.
• Use your town center as bait. Placing it outside your walls, make it an easy first target for people to deploy their troops at. And then trap the heck out of it. And cover it with mortars/catapults, redoubts, cannon towers, and troops. 9 times out of 10, I’ll have people attack my town center first and get half their army shredded in the process which then cripples them from destroying the rest of my base. Below is an example of my current base. Due to the traps (especially the caltrops that reduce their damage), they get tied up so long trying to destroy the base that it gives time for the mortars and the rest of the troops to descend on them and wipe them out.
• Create a kill zone. If you don’t use your TC as bait, pick a spot on your base that makes people think ‘ah! here’s a good safe spot to deploy my troops!’. And then trap that spot. And try and place some mortars to target that spot too.
• Protect your mills, markets, and refinery. Leave your farms, houses, and roads outside your walls.
• Use a base design that breaks up your buildings into sub sections. Either a maze-like design or walled off sections of 2-4 buildings. Preferably a mix of resource and defensive buildings in each box. When I’m raiding someone, nothing makes me happier than finding a base that’s just one big box with all the stuff inside. Once you break through the outer wall, there’s nothing holding you back from sweeping the inside.
• Try an asymmetric design. They’re a little trickier to build, but you can take advantage of the fact that your attacker only has about 30 seconds to assess your base and plan an attack or move on to an easier target. If your base is a nice symmetrical form that has all the defensive structures evenly spaced around it, it may look pretty, but the human mind excels at identifying patterns and can quickly identify the best route to their target or at least determine that all points of entry are equal. If you break things up into an unusual pattern or a spiral, it can be difficult to identify the best way in to attack before time runs out.
• If you’re enlightenment level or above, protect your oil reserves at your center. That’s what higher players will go for many times. If I see someone with 1-2k or more in oil, I’ll usually go after then no matter what other resources they have.
• Keep your medals below 1200. I’m not sure if there’s anything to this or not, but I’ve found that the minute I go above 1200 in my medal count, I get raided by some fairly gnarly industrial level players with tanks and aircraft. I suspect they use that as a filter on their matchup algorithms – that’s why they set that quest to get over 1200 medals I suspect to get people to go over that level. Anyway, not positive on that, but if you find yourself getting your resources stolen, try dropping your medals and see if that helps.
• Overlap your defenses. Set up your defensive structures so that their fields of fire compliment each other. What can kill mortars and redoubts? Cavalry. What kills cavalry? Cannon towers. So, place a cannon tower in proximity to your redoubts and mortars. Preferably with enough space that a single sabotage tactic won’t disable all three.
• Increase the hitpoints on your town center. How do you do that? By connecting your buildings with a road(s) that connects to your TC. If you do this, you can add at least 25% more hitpoints to your TC which takes that much longer to destroy in battle. You need a little balance though because roads inside your walls usually space things out too far to protect everything.
• Keep your resources low. It doesn’t always work, but try and plan your next 2-3 upgrades so you can alternate spending gold/food/gold/food on things. That way, usually one of your resource types stays low while your saving up for the other one.
• Tailor your alliance donations for when you’re away. If you’ll be offline for a few hours, try and request troops from your allies that will protect your base the best. I usually prefer cannons, shooting troops, and Gatling guns.
• Don’t advance to the next age too early. This one is more of a global philosophy, but for me, I don’t advance to the next age until I have all my defenses upgraded and all my research completed in the forge and library. When you advance to the next age, you’ll open yourself up to attack from people one age above you. It helps a lot to be upgraded and ready for them.
• Upgrade your walls. Walls are very expensive and it’s about as much fun as watching paint dry, but they’ve got to be done. Don’t neglect them. Target levels to shoot far are probably level 7 for Gunpowder, 8 for Enlightenment, and 9 for Industrial.
• Spread out your farms. If you can, don’t cluster all your farms in one location. Spread them out around your perimeter, preferably within the radius of one of your towers. Just to prevent and easy target.

That’s about all I can think of for now. If you have more suggestions, feel free to comment and I’ll add them.

If we have resources, we can grow. If we can grow, we can win. Good luck!

To go along with this, check out the gallery I’ve made of some decent base designs (in my opinion).