Three Dragons Guide to Gaul, Part 3

    THE TROOPS


    Phalanx

    Your bread the phalanx is the cheapest def per resource unit in the game decent speed and fairly balanced stats.


    Swordsmen

    Your early game raider, robber camp clearer, and is good to notice has the same amount of inf def as a phalanx. (WHAT?)


    Thunders

    Your raider with ridiculous speed and good carry capacity. Expensive per power but why need power when you never fight?


    Druid Riders

    Your answer to heavy inf armies, think of it as your butter for your bread. Slightly more expensive then phalanx.


    Haeds

    They are jam to your favorite sandwich. Sniping enemy cav farmers. Very expensive, Very Late game, Very tasty.


    How I play it out the first 2 weeks troop count wise.

    · No real troops to speak of. Maybe 20 swords?

    · Second village.

    · 100 phalanx 100 swords

    · Beginners protection ends.

    · 250 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

    · Get that level 10 emmisary? (fields should be at least 7)

    · 500 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

    · Go to city. (you should have 1 resource tile at 10 rest 8 and build the % bonus building to rank 3)

    · Build fields in your lesser village to 5.

    · 750 phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders

    · Consider rushing a second emissary?

    · 1k phalanx 200 swords 50 thunders.

    · And that’s all folks!

    Your troops should always be at an oasis at the begging on the game, with your main town and then cropper town you should have 2 oasis’s available to you (hopfuly) or at least 1

    You use to swords and thunders to break the easy targets, you are not the kingdoms muscle, just the janitor.


    Picking Village locations.


    Coppers? But don’t go too far. Your best bet is a player who quits/inactive and his tile becomes available, keep an eye out every day by zooming out on the map displaying croppers on the map and then notice any tile without a box around it.

    Oasis are your key to victory take a look at your kingdoms map, pick those tiles which are heavy a resource next to an oasis of that resource type or 50% CROP Oasis or better yet 2 very good oasis.

    Keep in mind you have to beat the other players at that oasis. For control. Pick Oasis’s which have weak small in size players near it. Build as close as possible to both oases

    Location is somewhat irrelevant as long as it’s within your kingdom.

    A normal tile with a 50% crop oasis in your kingdom and another 25% crop oasis nearby is actually on par with a 9 cropper in crop production, and will also produce more resources to boot.

    Once you have as many Oasis’s covered as possible, Build strong holds,

    Cluster your villages, around your city, or by your treasuries or the wonder.


    Why cities or why villages?


    2 Village produce more for cheaper investment then 1 maxed out city

    However there are reasons you go city

    Your 3rd slot should always be city in your starter village because of the flat 500 culture it gives (instead of the normal 200 for none capital cities)

    Go Cities if your kingdom is weak, it’s easier to defend 1 place then many. You can feed a larger army in 1 place passively and present a harder target

    Spread out if your kingdom is strong, go as many villages as possible and get those oases!

    In the late game you will always upgrade your 9 and 15 croppers to cities, flat out because a city cropper will produce more crop then a village cropper and a normal village (there’s only so many of those special tiles don’t you know)


    How do you organize your villages?


    There are 3 types of villages, You should have a ratio of 2-3 placeholders per Defensive stronghold

    And your defensive strong holds should be your croppers

    Placeholders which have 3 crannies and a trade route setup to transfer the resources out every hour to your strong holds, you never build smithy barracks or troops or anything really in the placeholder, just the fields. Think of them are your farm.


    Defensive strong holds which have a bunch of troops posted, high walls, and good location (Defensively) this is where you max out your smithy and barracks to 20.


    Your 1 and only robber camp clearer which will have 1k swords and Haeds and a single ram, this 1 village should always exist throughout the game, coming into the late game you stack Haeds in the village so it becomes a dual role village. You siege the robber camps with this village, and get value, Swords are cheaper per resource per power, but Haeds are duel role and are worthwhile for that reason. Your hero should be based in this town.


    Interesting Tips,


    If your in the mid game where you control about 4-5 villages and you actually start upgrading your smithy, there is a certain strategy I like to use as long as my opponent is not breathing down my neck and I have a lot of time to build my troops

    I will build all of my troops in 1 location and send them to defend my other villages (also to just feed the buggers), but their place of origin is 1 place

    You ask why?

    Because you will only have to upgrade 1 smithy and 1 smithy only. To affect your entire army.

    This strategy becomes a little cumbersome after a while, however it has merit, especially if you have time.



    Gaul is the only faction which can produce defensive troops from both cav stables and inf barracks at the same time

    This is why you keep druid riders in your back pocket, I personally suggest stacking phalanx and nothing but phalanx because you get much more bang for your buck from them


    until you lose troops and are trying to recover troops as fast as possible, then you build both types.

    Anticipate this and upgrade your stables for this reason ahead of time lvl 10 is a good starting point.


    Druid riders are also your butter, and if your finishing off your army (crop consumption wise) build them at the very end as bread with butter tastes much better.


    As for Jam, Jam is for those special dukes who have the income and nothing to do but sit around and wait to snipe cav attacks and boy are they good at sniping and defeating cav attacks.

    Quote from Three#US(1)

    However there are reasons you go city

    Your 3rd slot should always be city in your starter village because of the flat 500 culture it gives (instead of the normal 200 for none capital cities)

    Do never upgrade your village to a city if you want culture points. Sure enough, you get 500 cp production, but you waste a cp slot for it. 500 cp production will never produce enough for a full slot, because the slot cost raise more quickly than the cp are produced (and remember, as soon as your village would have reached 500 cp production the city's benefits are gone). Also, you delay your 3rd village and thus significant production (also cp production) and to make things worse, you instantly lose 500 production.

    "Upgrading" a 15c in the late game for crop if you don't npc-trade might be a reason for upgrading. There certainly are some other reasons (like less things to attack), but cp production of cities is just garbage.

    This one somehow got significantly worse than the previous two??

    I only agree with having a dedicated robber killer.. that is it..


    Will concur with Be2-e4, you do not city for CP.

    The city spam in this game is incredible and really boggles my mind, has nobody though it through at all?


    Two biggest reasons to make a city:

    1. You need a ditch for your capital (as defender this means 1 location - different if you are duke/king)

    2. You want to access GB and GS (primarily for offensive players)


    If you are trying to rush CP slots faster for your first 3-4 slots 'citying' your capital quickly - which you will need to do anyway (oops you would need to suicide settle for this) will let you celebrate at 500cp early on.


    Other notes on your key headings:

    - Troops are far more important to your survival than hiding everything

    - Yes oasis are useful but are not your sole reason for producing troops

    - Waiting for a grey to found your future capital is a sure way to be irrelevant entire game

    - If you are primary def gaul in a kingdom and intend to be useful to the kingdom you should care a lot less about your oasis bonuses and more about where to position for your kingdom

    - Unless it is early and you are scaring raiders away from your secondary villages you should not be focusing on defending your side villages (investing trappers and walls for side villages is an enormous waste regardless of day 5 or day 55)

    - 3 gaul crannies to protect side villages when you have trade routes is a waste of building time and resources. Building crannies is ideally reactionary.

    - Key defensive gauls (or any tribe) train troops in MOST villages if not all.

    - Smithy is to be in action at all times you can afford it (afford it means have at least 24 hour queues up).

    Quote from Three#US(1)

    Because you will only have to upgrade 1 smithy and 1 smithy only. To affect your entire army.


    Gaul is the only faction which can produce defensive troops from both cav stables and inf barracks at the same time

    Great army, you will have maybe 1/5 to that of defenders that played properly.


    Second part of the quote is too bad to even comment on.

    You're the one hating, we're providing feedback. I was even nice enough to give you constructive feedback. You're a fool yourself, calculate it though, cities are cp inefficient as hell. But sure enough, ignore us, ignore the facts, keep living in your bubble, I don't care wether you wanna improve or not, as long as you don't play in my kingdom, lol.

    Quote from Be2-e4

    Do never upgrade your village to a city if you want culture points. Sure enough, you get 500 cp production, but you waste a cp slot for it. 500 cp production will never produce enough for a full slot, because the slot cost raise more quickly than the cp are produced (and remember, as soon as your village would have reached 500 cp production the city's benefits are gone). Also, you delay your 3rd village and thus significant production (also cp production) and to make things worse, you instantly lose 500 production.

    The "Do never" is too much. A city must be build in third if (and only if) you raised 500 pop on your capital. Will provide CP to dont delay 4th really longer. Only malus to this strategy : really hard to build a city 3rd if your capital is a 15CC.

    Quote from Aillas#FR

    to dont delay 4th really longer

    4th cp slot (which you want to make a city from) = 10k cp

    5th cp slot (4th village after city) = 20k cp

    I don't know about you, but the time to produce 10k culture points is quite long, And after you produced them, you're still worse compared to a guy who founded the 4th village instead, because he is already close to his 5th village where you just found your 4th.


    It's quite simple: If you citify your capital you need to have one cp slot more than a guy who didn't, to control the same amount of villages. The only cp difference is the capital's production (+ parties and artworks, maybe). And this difference alone needs to produce enough cp to get you one slot ahead - and that's only to be equal. Cp slots don't become cheaper, by the way.

    So I'll defenitely stick with "don't upgrade your capital IF you want culture points". Maybe I should be more accurate and say "... if you want to use cp slots", because yes, you obviously have more cp, but they're not enough to compensate the blocked slot from the capital.

    On time, Capital-City build will provide more CP than a full village build. In the beginning, a village will take long time before generate his 500 CP/day. You have to up your capital into a city by the way and sooner is the better since the benefit is greater early in the game.

    Why does everyone miss my point. :(

    You will have more cp when upgrading, but less villages, because your upgrade alone needs to get you enough cp for a whole slot just to be equal.


    If a non-upgrader has 150k culture points, the upgrader needs to have 210k, just to be equal. Because 9 slots for the non-upgrader means 9 villages, but 9 slots for the upgrader means only 8 villages. So the upgrader needs to have a slot more (= 210k cp for slot 10) to archieve the very same - this is 60k cp!

    At first the upgrade produces roughly 480 cp / day more than a new village. Plus 150-200 (lets say 180) if you celebrate small parties. Plus 500 if you buy artworks like crazy. 1160 cp / day ... at the beginning.

    As the non-upgrader's 3rd village and capital grow the upgrader's advantage shrinks, because the 3rd village gets more passive production (thus the advantage of the passive production shrinks), and his capital gets more passive production (thus the party bonus shrinks).

    Let's say the non-upgrader needs 10 days to get his capital to 500 cp / day (for full party bonus) and his 3rd village is completed and celebrating 20 days after settling. On average the city's advantage over the 3rd village is about 50 cp / day for celebrations and about 250 cp / day for the passive production (plus 500 for artworks) for the first 20 days. This is 20 * 800 = 16k raw cp advantage for the upgrader. Now the non-upgrader starts to celebrate in his 3rd village, which means his village produces roughly 400 cp / day passively and 400 cp / day by parties. So after day 20 the upgrader's advantage is:

    * + 100 passive production (city vs 3rd village)

    * +- 0 capital parties

    * - 400 3rd village parties

    * + 500 artwork bonus

    So already no advantage anymore. Without artworks it looks even worse, without parties even more worse. Speaking of experience, 20 days after village 3, we have 6-7 cp slots, which means the upgrader would have to have 30-40k cp advantage over us to be equal in terms of village count. Like I calculated, his advantage is roughly 16k. Maybe it's more and my calculation is not precise, but it definitely gives a shot in the right direction. ^^


    Cities are definitely nothing for early game cp production (or cp production in general).

    Quote from Tiitana

    yes you can turn city back to village by destroying/catapulting enough buildings so that city pop goes below 1000

    The reply from Be2-e4 was in 2018. THe advice is to still get capital to city asap right to benefit from the 1500 CP/ day bonus right?


    CUrrently I have a 15c and no other villages after destroying spawn. Should I put res in palace and settlers to spawn a second village and then capital, or should I put res in getting pop to 500 to make city?

    Quote from iribuya

    CUrrently I have a 15c and no other villages after destroying spawn. Should I put res in palace and settlers to spawn a second village and then capital, or should I put res in getting pop to 500 to make city?

    You have only 1 village, therefore it is already your capital.
    You can build palace or residence in this village at this point, it does not matter.
    What matters is that you rush this capital village to 500 pop as soon as possible and upgrade it to city to reap in the insane bonus :)
    Usually 500 pop is reached after getting lvl 12 ressfields + lvl 12 cropfields, unless you're a king. If you are, then you might rush it with lvl 12 ressfields + lvl 10 cropfields by building random buildings.