protips on how to build

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protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Sat Feb 08, 2014 4:21 am

i'm dispensing building advice for free for the next little while.

my first tip: do not build to 13k quarries and 3k rax on 25k land, especially when you know you're going to have to uphit in your next war. your train rate is going to suck so much balls that you're not going to be able to get enough scum and are therefore bound to get parkinglotted.

my second tip: build at least 4.99% forts, if not 5.99% - end-game kingdoms can get away with 4.99%, while smaller, more fully-built kingdoms should go for 5.99%. if you aren't doing this, please downsize your troops and let me take your land so that i can reconfigure the land appropriately.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Sat Feb 08, 2014 9:31 pm

and about those realms with over 4k+ guildhalls...on 30k land...
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Sun Feb 09, 2014 11:04 pm

YEUP.

it's weird because, back in the day, a lot of people built like crap by underloading on mines (20% to 25%), and overloading on ghs/hovels and/or barracks (people who chased >50% barracks to get expenses under income... only to have that ratio destroyed as soon as they attacked anyone). they'd take land and then be unable to build on it with 8, maybe 10 brt on 25k land.

now they're overloading on mines as well as ghs/hovels, meaning they're left with very little rax for train rate. they've swung from one extreme to another. no balance.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Mon Feb 10, 2014 2:16 am

I actually resemble that 25% comment. But, playing an elf (who isn't exactly a warmonger) is a bit different then playing a land hungry warrior :P

I was always taught less than 10% GH and Hovels, 14-18 BR, less than 10% forts, at least fog if your non-Elf, and rest barracks.

But, everyone has their own style/strat...and I have seen funky designs end at the top of the scrolls...

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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Kaz » Wed Feb 12, 2014 3:20 pm

The general strat I tend to follow when I play is to 'start out' with a very high quarries build. Basically I'll build my guildhalls and hovels up to 10% and then fill the rest with quarries. Somewhere around 3-4k quarries, I roll back and start to concentrate heavily on Barracks (although I do keep building quarries too). My basic aim is to be slightly over-loaded on quarries and under-loaded on barracks in the first war, and hope to get first strike.

I think that a lot of other players probably have a similar aim, but they make the mistake of continuing to build quarries at the expense of barracks after the first war. Win or loss, I aim to equalise them to about 30-35% each after the first war is done. I never stop building quarries though, I just build a lot less per turn. It's a bit of a gamble strat, but assuming it pays off, I end up in a nice position.

With the guildhalls, I think players have lost the fear of random burnings, and think that guildhalls are the only answer to the income/expenses ratio. I remember when I was being taught how to play, I was told to never go over 1000 guildhalls, simply because any scummer than scouted a kingdom with more guildhalls than that, burnt them down anyway. I've allowed myself to go to about 2000-2500 these days, but still ensure that I have a hard cut off of them.

I continue to keep my hovels at 10%, sometimes even increasing them slightly after I reach my cut off on the guildhalls. So many players seem to have it in their heads that they HAVE to have guildhalls and hovels in the same numbers. As I see it, guildhalls are risky income, population is safe income, and while guildhalls do improve you income/expenses ratio better than filling the same land with barracks and hovels, it's a risk during war rather than a benefit.

As a warrior kingdom, at 30k, I'd be aiming to look something like this.

Guildhalls: 2500 (10% until capped to prevent becoming reliant on burnables)
Hovels: 3000-3500 (10% and then maybe taking on the GH land after cap)
Barracks: 9000-10500 (30-35%)
Quarries: 9000-10500 (30-35%)
Temples: 3600 (12% - give tops spell, until they get burnt)
Forts: 1500 (5% much more and they start to get expensive)
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Wed Feb 12, 2014 7:46 pm

in general, what we found is that the brt you should aim for in the early early build phase is the highest brt possible without IDing. i seem to have the highest amount of land built in the public saved builds, and while there may be some higher end private builds, i would guess that i'm pretty close. (i was also a tad lazy in my public builds, so they're not perfect)

in the old game, in guilds/turmoil/castaway, the highest buildrate (excluding elementals or maxim tithing bonus) was 26. nowadays, with the 3/5 tithe races, it's 27, and you can roll up to 28 once you get the "inspiration" bonus from tithing.

i do go for 251 temples early on. i'm not sure how elan generation works anymore - i haven't bothered to check - and given that you don't build temples at all, kaz, in your public saved builds, i'm not sure if they impact tithing - either at all, or at the very least like they once did a very very long time ago.

in the old game, 251 temples gave you 1 elan per turn. we found that this was a very important source of elan in preparation for the first war. in regular games, you would hit somewhere around 12.7k built, a full fluff w/ 25mil to 35mil cash on hand and enough elan to parkinglot 1 kingdom with approximately 725-750 turns used. you would also have built the forts earlier on in the build, so you had some defense against UGs or an early hit (earlier than 650 turns used = guilds don't have enough elan to sorc). the build would look something like this:

4.8k mines
3.2k rax
1210 ghs
1100 hovels
1100 forts
1251 temples (if we needed a few extra sorc kingdoms, drop 500 rax and add 500 temples)
elan: 1600-ish (more like 1900+ if 1751 temples)

we would typically outbuild pretty much every other guild.

and yes, we mostly built exactly the same. we'd train people to build properly. when gming or war agming, giving build guidance was incredibly important. sometimes, people would ignore our advice, but then when they came to the first warchat and noticed how much more poorly built they were... well, they'd soon adopt our evil ways ;)

nowadays, with the higher buildrate, it's slightly different. because it's possible to run higher buildrates, you'll end up with upwards of an extra 2k built over top of that.

as a general rule of thumb nowadays, if post-fluff your (built land) < (20x turns used), you've screwed up.

as well... even though for a few recent wars i've been building extra ghs/hovels going into them because of specific circumstances under which i expected the gh burning i'd receive would be minimal, i'm usually skeptical of going over 1250 ghs/1250 hovels. everything other structure tends to seem to be far more important.

one qualification about my earlier guidance on building forts: in the game as it is now, for the first war, i would suggest no more than 4.99% forts. cash is typically at a premium in the first war, but you aren't dealing with kingdoms 2x your size. after the first war, cash is more abundant and troop cap is a more significant constraint when dealing with kingdoms much larger than your own, so bump it up to 5.99%.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Kaz » Wed Feb 12, 2014 9:12 pm

Temples are important for elan generation, but when it comes to tithe they don't really seem to make much difference unless you have greater than 50% of your land built as temples. Then they start to add a little bit extra, but it's negligible in the grand scheme of things.

Temples get used in the equation a couple of times, but essentially because of the way they are used they cancel themselves out and don't make much difference at all. On a kingdom with 1000 acres, 0-50% temples have +2.77 land per tithe, it changes a little after 50%, but 60% is only +3.33, 70% is +3.88, 80% is +4.44, 90% is 5 and 100% is 5.55. Yes you might get marginally more land by having temples, but you waste it in the inefficiency of not building quarries instead. It has been like this since the Canon alpha code, and I suspect it was like it back in the old Monarchy Perl code, but I don't have that to reference.

My public saves don't have temples because I personally don't really think about them, during the first 80 turns. They are by no means the most efficient saves I could have possibly built, I was essentially rushing out a variety of builds to ensure that all races had at least a couple of save options.

Having said that, I just took a look at the elan generation code, and the way it actually works (using rounding up to a ceiling, rather than down to the floor) is that I should change my ways and have at least 1 temple early on in the process, getting to 334 just seems inefficient for the amount of Elan I actually use. It might be low for war 1, but by war 2 I've generally got more than I need.

0 temple = 0 elan per turn
1 temple = 1 elan per turn
201 temple = 2 elan per turn (sidhe and vampire) = ceil(Temples * 0.005)
334 temple = 2 elan per turn (other races) = ceil(Temples * 0.003)
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Thu Feb 13, 2014 4:54 am

LOOKS LIKE I NEED TO CHANGE MY BUILD STRAT.

i'll do that next time around ;)
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Attero » Thu Feb 20, 2014 8:36 pm

Having been away for so long, this thread seriously helped me remember the old numbers. Oi! Thanks!

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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:34 am

after some testing, i have updated my builds in both domination and guilds. my guilds build pushes up my built acreage by about 60 built acres over my previous best, if i'm not mistaken, and substantially over the sloppy build i did the first time around (lots of temples, but otherwise... god it's terrible).

i'm pretty sure they do change, but can someone confirm that the 2 "selectable races" (like elemental and droben in guilds, and vamp and centaur in domination) get changed every age?

based on seska's previous comments, they change... so i don't particularly feel like building out droben, or elemental (don't get me wrong, they're phenomenal races - both are better than goblin or elven, without a doubt... just don't feel like spending the time doing so if they're not going to be around next age as i've spent the last 2.5 hours building... and rebuilding... and rebuilding again...).
Last edited by bundesbank on Fri Feb 21, 2014 6:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Jokingjoe » Fri Feb 21, 2014 2:52 am

There used to be a fun bug where if you had a template for a race, you could use the build even if it wasn't a choice race. It was fun to be the only elemental in the game ;)

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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Fri Feb 21, 2014 3:40 am

Bundes,

Thanks for making it easier, especially for anyone coming back to the game.

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WHEREIN DIE EXPLAINS TITHING AND BUILDING

Post by bundesbank » Fri Feb 21, 2014 7:03 am

as long as people use them...!

i also haven't generated builds for elven or goblin. i'm not a machine, so there's actually a point at around 1.1k land where you can "miss" the window and the build crashes.

i haven't seen the game code, but i will attempt to explain. by reading this, you will also learn how the tithing function works.

this is something that i long suspected and had discussed at one point in time or another with steven, but we never bothered to fully test it out. we were actually kind of lazy that way haha

by confirming that temples have no impact on tithing, kaz confirmed something else: at high buildrates, additional income from ghs/hovels doesn't benefit you when it comes to tithing. it never has, and it never will.

but you need to discern between tithing on the one hand, and Building (capital-B for this post) on the other (which includes tithing and constructing buildings). let's first talk about tithing.

if temples mattered, then they would conceivably act as a modifier on the quantity of cash you're tithing, so in theory under that scenario additional income could help. since temples don't help, then, the only important question is: what is the highest buildrate that you can run? because the higher the buildrate, the fewer turns i'm using to build with, and the less income i'm generating to tithe and build (this may seem like an oxymoron because i just said extra income from ghs/hovels doesn't help you tithe faster or for more land - but keep reading and bear with me).

the way tithing works - and i haven't seen the game code, so i could be slightly off - is that the game keeps track of the amount of money you've spent so far on tithing. this is why, say, around 800 acres you can tithe 20000, get zero land, then do a bunch of micro tithes for 500 gold (maybe 3 or 4 of them) and get 88 acres for one of those 500 gold-tithes. (incidentally, this is also why, if you try to tithe back up after you've been knocked down to like 500 acres, you get fewer acres for the same amount of gold. as best as i can tell, tithing will still give you land because the amount of acres you get is partially predicated on kingdom size... but you'll get less land per tithe because the game notes that you've tithed a lot of cash already)

but the game ALSO takes note of your income for purposes of tithing. this is why, as you increase your income through ghs/hovels, you ALSO have to increase your tithing amount. so when it comes to tithing, by building LOTS of ghs/hovels, you can actually make it pay off and increase the amount of land that you're tithing.

the problem with this is two-fold:

1) the amount of ghs/hovels you have to build is such that your buildrate will suffer horribly... so you'll be awash in cash, and building much more slowly. in other words, it's incredibly inefficient.

2) more importantly, when you construct ghs/hovels at something like 26-27 buildrate, your income skyrockets very quickly, but you won't be able to use many turns at that higher income... so you actually don't manage to generate enough income, and so you may be forced to ID even though you've been building ghs/hovels! it ends up that constructing ghs/hovels at high brt hurts you.

now let's talk about Building, which encompasses both tithing and actually constructing buildings ("developing" acres to use the in-game term on the build screen).

now remember before i said you're trying to run the highest buildrate possible that allows you to consecutively construct buildings (without IDing)?

here's the zinger. i don't know if most people pay attention to this number, but on the build screen it tells you how much each acre costs to develop. i'm kind of lazy, but that number is somewhere between 310-325 gold per acre.

when you're constructing buildings at 27 buildrate and it's costing you 319/acre (this is usually the case at around 1.1k acres), that's 8613 gold. at very low incomes (when you're at 80%+ mines between around 1.1k land), that is actually a very high expense! i'm too lazy to go back and check, but my income is somewhere around 30,000, and my expenses are somewhere around 7k - but when i'm constructing 27 buildings, my expenses are around 15.6k!

so while i said that income from ghs/hovels won't help you with tithing, it IS important overall for Building.

bottom line: the key to optimal Building (tithing + constructing) is minimizing the amount of ghs/hovels that you build such that you have enough money to cover the development cost per acre (between 310-325) and still have enough money to tithe, all without having to ID.

this means that most of the ghs/hovels (in the case of my guilds build, that's 97 each) are built very early on in the build purely in order to defray the 310-325 development cost.

also, do yourself a favour and build 1 temple. if you don't, i'll smack you!
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Sat Mar 01, 2014 8:20 am

tip #3: ALL HUMANS SHOULD USE MY PUBLIC HUMAN BUILD.

'cept goblins, since they war right out of npp.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Sun Mar 02, 2014 4:31 pm

Bundes,

Added a decent Elf design for first 150 here in guilds...peeps should be able to use it...

100 GH, 100 Hovels, 3k+ Mills, and 500 Temples...all on 3.8k acres. Since I personally feel that Elves still dominate as Elan intensive realms I invest heavily in temples early, 500 on first build...to help generate elan for Fog to cover guild and ensure elan availability to use top spell 4 days into game and actually PL someone.

After that it is about 500 temples a day. After last age I modified my Elf build strat a little...here is my current recommendations (and yes my fort req is bit a higher than yours, but this is due to Elves usually needing a higher scum count to protect temples.)

Guildhalls: 7%
Hovels: 10%
Barracks: 25%
Mills: 30% (BR: 16)
Temples: 20% (Top Spell +8%)
Forts: 8%

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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Sun Mar 02, 2014 5:05 pm

Just added a goblin build as well, 100 Smithies/Warrens, 3331 quarries, 335 Shrines...all on 3800+ acres. Looks to be the most complete Goblin Build to date in guilds.

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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Aeropagitica » Mon Mar 03, 2014 2:36 am

What? You outperformed my Aerogob? A challenge!!!
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Kaz » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:25 pm

On the subject of public saved builds, I'm thinking about making some tweaks to the system to improve the load/save feature and also the builds that are available. This discussion thread has been posted in the development forum, simply because it'll need a lot of pretesting. As usual, if you're interested in having test things but don't currently have access to the development environment and forum, send me a PM.
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by bundesbank » Thu Mar 06, 2014 10:46 pm

tip #4: read my thread and pay heed to my warning about overbuilding mines.

DON'T BUILD LIKE THIS GUY FROM BLOODBATH WHO ATTACKED ME BECAUSE THEN YOU CAN'T REFORT. 1.3k train rate does NOT constitute a train rate.

xxxxxxxxxx
Mallaig
Number: 1xxxx
Race: Vampire
Faith: Angelique
Guild: None
Turns: 4 Networth: 779809
Income: 878625
Expenses: 1038663
Peasants: 118614
Chest: 13207260
Turns Used: 1611 Acres: 37900
Underwoods: 1886
Tombs: 1885
Great Halls: 1785
Bloodbaths: 15035
Focus Points: 2374 Mullo: 0
Lamia: 0
Raksasa: 121
Centrocs: 379
Wampyr: 3520
Aswang: 0 Green
Green
Elite
Elite
Elite
Green
Allies: 1xxxx 0 0

xxxxxxxxxx
Storr
Number: 1xxxx
Race: Vampire
Faith: Angelique
Guild: None
Turns: 11 Networth: 606024
Income: 693796
Expenses: 811754
Peasants: 81822
Chest: 2586141
Turns Used: 1529 Acres: 23792
Underwoods: 1776
Tombs: 1762
Great Halls: 1627
Bloodbaths: 11914
Focus Points: 2546 Mullo: 0
Lamia: 0
Raksasa: 73
Centrocs: 509
Wampyr: 3436
Aswang: 0 Green
Green
Elite
Elite
Veteran
Green
Allies: 1xxxx 0 0
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Re: protips on how to build

Post by Nymphsong » Thu Mar 06, 2014 11:25 pm

Bundes,

That's impressive...

a 20k realm might best look...just a thought...nothing special here just a basic give you balance and options template...like Top Spell and Fog, Decent Earned Income with GH/Hovels...close to 4k Train Rate...and a great BR...

1500 Guildhalls (7.5%), 1800 Hovels (9%), 6000 Barracks (30%), 7000 Quarries (35%) 2500 Temples (12.5%) 1200 Forts (6%) ...

Or *looks above* you can try that and see how it works out.

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