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Jon Shafer's AtG - Tips and Tricks

By Einstein

A few tips & tricks to get you to mid-game without dying of hunger

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Einstein
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Category: Gameplay Basics, Secrets, Walkthroughs

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

21 Jul, 2019 @ 6:54am

24 Jul, 2019 @ 11:34am

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Guide Index

Overview

Tips and Tricks

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Tips and Tricks

I plan on building a bigger guide but, here's my compilation of tips and tricks for now

Do's and Don't

IMPORTANT: Don't upgrade your clans until you've built your first stone structure and secured your food production
IMPORTANT: Adapt! Sometimes you won't be able to play exactly as you did last time, you might not be able to focus on livestock and might need to live of farming instead.
Livestock, Rancher + Meat Cutter is the best and easiest way to get food if you are lucky to have cattle/sheep/pigs/horse nearby, go for it.
With the initial 12 clans you need at least, 1x Explorer, 1x Rancher, 1x Meat Cutter, 1x Wood collector, 1x Hunter, 2x Reaper/Gatherer, 1x Digger.
With the rest of the clans and depending on your map and the clans that spawn, you will want to maybe add more wood collectors, more hunters or more diggers.
I recommend Rancher & Meat Cutter above but at the start of the game they will have nothing to do so train them as fisherman if you can spot fish nearby, while you wait for your wood to build up. If there's no fish, then there's no need to rush in training them.
Most important job is Explorer (imo) then one of Hunters/Gatherer/Reaper/Fisherman (depending on what's next to you), one logger then one digger. If you have to switch them around, due to a clan being better at X than Y, you should be fine but those 4 jobs are important to have before training other things.
You can create wooden structures and use them until it warns you. Once it does, destroy them and don't use anything else there until you can build a stone structure (unless you don't care about that resource, for example, if you have 2 iron/stone/coal close by, you only really need 1 mine, even in late game!).
Try and use gatherers instead of reapers, initially, especially for berries as you can't build farms on those. Save the best resources for farms. If you need to reap a normal wheat field that's acceptable but don't do that to a large wheat field :(
Using the initial digger, you need to find either coal or stone ASAP, and build a wood mine, unless you are lucky enough to find two of them then it might be better to just dig the resource. Depending on what you found next to you, you will train a brickmaker or a blockcutter. You need stone blocks before you need iron.
First two wood structures will either be a ranch of a stone or coal mine
Don't worry about eating your ranch animals until you have ~2-4 left. If you rushed stone then you should have 40 stone at this point to replace the wood ranch so that you don't drain your animals any longer. As the game progress you will be able to grow the animals back. You can tell your Meat Cutter to stop working so that you don't kill your last animal :)
Make sure you use "Disable Substitution for Food" at least on the animals. 20 meat > 4 food!
If you are next to a wood area and you can fit a logging camp with access to 5/7, might be worth training a logger but I generally tend to rush to stone so I end up not needing that much wood
Caravan: Buy low, sell normal or high, even if you don't need those specific items. Try to upgrade the caravan as much as your economy allows.
As you start to produce more and more things, try to not send that caravan away with all your gold, it will never come back and makes buying and selling harder
Focus on producing a few items only (normally the most expensive ones and depending what you have next to you) and buy the rest you need.

Hope you find this useful, do you have other tips?

7 Comments

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I like space info 29 Dec, 2020 @ 6:50pm

Continued
Next is upgrade the caravan plus your tribe and buy 10 horses and tons of tools. It is time for a Guide, Potter, Sledge Driver, Wood spliter, Bard, and a profession of your choice. There are a lot of upgrades for Diggers and digger aiding pros. You Are gonna want EVERY Single One Of them before a Single Pic Strike

Now that resources are scarce it is time for watchmen. The 7 tile diameter boarder creating centres. Yup 7 tiles you can fit a lot in their.

For 13 - 18 the only two professions that are a must are the Surveyor and the Galley as it is time to look for home sweet home

Let me know what alterations you would make to the starting 12 since my suggestion is forgo tool and stone block production in favour of hording plus trading boards for tools, horses, booze and any other upgrade required items

I like space info 29 Dec, 2020 @ 6:44pm

So I waited for a trader and took a gander at the buy n sales plus tech tree

Here is what I discovered:

Lumber buys for 2 and boards sell for 7.5.. 3.5 x ... Yup it's a firewood economy. I checked the other resources and their refined counterparts. Stone blocks are at 3.75x with 4 to buy and selling for 15.
Only issue is you need a Lot of stone blocks stored before you consider settling. I'd say 40 per main resource plus 40 lumber per watch tower. Solution nomadic traders who horde their mine-ables and turn animals into warhorses or parchment with cheese on the menu.

Getting to that point takes time. @ 7.5 per board that's one tool and weapon for 2 boards
So collect all the resources an area has then move on

Starting six my suggestion:
Hunter, Gatherer, Reaper, Logger, Lore keeper, Trader. It's 10 wood to train then 40 wood to plant him down earning 10 treasure per turn

I like space info 28 Dec, 2020 @ 9:36pm

I spent 50 treasure because Rome was literally next door. I waited until I had scouted a better permanant city location before packing up on the second spring. Reasons: I wanted to know who my clans were mostly going to be and what the resources inside my new boarders were going to be.

Thoughts?

Pietje Puk 4 Aug, 2020 @ 3:21am

I just had my game in order with stone farms/ranches/mines, 1 pig/1sheep/4 wheat/1 stone/1coal/1 iron. But then came the romans and with about 12 turns i was done, utterly destroyed with no food left.

How do you deal with the romans?

They can't be defeated (by me) and they just keep circling my buildings to pillage them as soon as they are repaired. Any advise

Einstein [author] 2 Jan, 2020 @ 1:20pm

I would say not until the first winter comes. Staying put until Winter or Spring gives you time to scout the area a little bit and since you will be foraging/hunting for the 1st year you would have to be on a VERY bad starting position to pack up straight away. Every time you pack you lose at least 1 turn of training and for the first year you will want to be training so packing and moving around seems a bad idea imo.

OrkhonGhazi 26 Dec, 2019 @ 12:57pm

Thats a nice question @Chevraut. Would to know a answer for that question ^^

Chevraut 22 Dec, 2019 @ 5:07pm

What's your take on migrating the starting position if disadvantaged? Should one do it early or mid-game, or never?

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