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[LordBucket]

Is it better to have one really good resource harvester, or many mediocre ones?

It is more cost efficient to have many mediocre ones. Upgrading lumber from 3 to 4, for example, costs a total of 449 resources for a gain of 6 resources per hour. ~75 hours to break even. From 4 to 5 costs 784 resources for a gain of 9 resources per hour. 87 hours to break even. The higher the level of the harvester, the longer it will take to pay for itself.

But, several research trees require a level 7 harvester, so you'll want that anyway. Lumber for slinger units, iron for your attack units, and stone for city walls. Clay and food don't appear to be required for important research.

If I do something before the tutorial tells me to, will it screw things up?

I had some problems with it before my account was reset, but after the reset it didn't seem to care.

Note that you'll benefit from doing the tutorial as it gives you a caravan at the end.

Does changing the tax rate, etc. happen in the tutorial, or can I do that safely?

Go ahead. 5% is plenty.

What technologies should I get?

All of them.

But if I were to prioritize, I'd recommend the following:

"Haggling" so you can build a marketplace so you can build carvans so you can gather up all the resources laying around on the worldmap.

"Trade Contacts" soon to gain access to quests for cheap weapons and armor. Check the forums priot to doing each quest to see if it will be worthwhile. Some quests cost more than they reward.

"Safeguard" if you're in a hostile area. It will allow you to protect your resources from raids.

"Spearmanship" by the time your protection expires so you can have military units to run around raiding all the inactive players in your area for resources. Note that you can't attack anyone until it does, so you can wait a few days for this. If you do quests you'll probably have some leather and spears layign around from quest rewards. If not, be sure to have spearmaking and tanning completed so you can build your own.

That should cover you for a couple days. By then you'll be researching anything and everything anway.

[Cheddarius]

Thanks!

So should I get a level 7 harvester first, or level them all equally and invest in a level 7 when the ime comes?
After I get those four researches, does the order matter, or can I just research anything I can afford?

[BuriBuriZaemon]

So should I get a level 7 harvester first, or level them all equally and invest in a level 7 when the ime comes?
After I get those four researches, does the order matter, or can I just research anything I can afford?

Important ones:
Wood (lumberjack) so you can produce bows and train archers.
Iron (mine) so you can produce swords and armours and train other troops.

Stone (quarry) isn't that urgent. You need that to build City Walls, but the possibility of getting attacked so early in the game is low plus one level of City Walls only give 2% protection. Better be on the offensive and get troops to pillage inactive settlements.

Clay (pit) is the least of your worries. It doesn't get used as much as other resources and no research comes out of it.

[Cheddarius]

Er, sorry, I might have phrased that badly. What I mean is, do I, for example, level a lumberjack as much as I can, or get a bunch of level 1 lumberjacks, then level them all to level 2, etc., only getting a level 7 lumberjack when it's required for research?

[Orb]

In my opinion, if your a person that logs on once or twice a day, upgrading your high lv resource buildings even higher is better imo. Maybe not for the first like 4 days, but after that your likely not going to log on every hour. You can only que two building projects. So simply upgrading your resources is faster by doing the higher ones first. Of course, this is the situation im in now, it might not have been good before or later from now. However, I tend to keep farming fairly balanced, but still have one a couple lvs ahead.

Also, since im starting to get lots of food(I tried to keep it just above zero before, but now im actually in a produciton mode), I got lots of cows and will likely get some horses out too. For the newby players I can send you like 300 food for free, since it only requires me 1 caravan. Of course, if your in the SE, it may take a day to get there or more.. Hopefully not too long, waiting a week for my caravan to get back doesnt sound pleasent.

For research, I guess it depends on where your going to specialize. I tended to try and get my quest/trading research done, which helped with gaining resources/advanced ones in the begining and still now. There are some important city technologies you will want to get, if you want to actually get advanced goods. Magic is iffy, since you need books, which takes a bit to get to. Though, building a mage tower in the begining will help you stack up a lot of mana for later use. Im at like 3k or something from a lv 1. Finely, food/wood is quite important in raising an army, since cows/horses require a lot of it(cows are made into sadals and leather armor)

I could type more but its really late, so im going to cut it here.

Also, right now I have 50 cows in the production line and 30 horses.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

To all new Slaves (all in Central East?),

We have two food providers in South West, one of which is Orb. The other guy is Evilgrim, I believe. They may be too far to help you, though.

I myself have food deficit, but I can help with woods and iron. Let me know if you need 'em. 

[Cheddarius]

Can I be a provider and have a title? Maybe, for example, have many cities that require vast food imports from the rest of the guild, but churn out tons and tons of steel armor, and be named an Expert Metalworker, or something?

[BuriBuriZaemon]

That is possible and that's the plan, but most of us have not reached the point of being a specialist. I myself specialise in iron and wood, but that's about it for now. I plan to specialise in sword production in the future. Love my axmen.

EDIT: Actually I should've been focusing on stones because dwarves have 7 quarries in their first settlement, but I found out I need iron more so I let my stone production lag behind.

[LordBucket]

Can I be a provider

Maybe, for example, have many cities that require vast food imports from the rest of the guild, but churn out tons and tons of steel armor,

From what I've seen so far, I think game mechanics heavily discourage specialization and trade. It's easier and more efficient for everyone to produce everything they need, than for people to specialize and trade with each other.

For example, higher levels of resource generation buildings become increasingly inefficient. It only takes 40 hours for a level 1 building to generate as many total points of resource as it cost to build. By level 8 it takes almost a week. If two people both need 1000 iron and 1000 stone, it is faster and more cost effective for them to each produce it themselves than for each of them to produce 2000 of a single resource and trade half.

And then you have to actually move the goods around with caravans that take time and can be intercepted.

We may end up with people who produce more of some good than they can use, and by all means send them to someone who can use them...but I don't see any benefit to people deliberately specializing in things for the purpose of trading with each other. Game mechanics discourage it too much.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

I agree with what LordBucket said. Specialisation here doesn't mean you supply the rest of the alliance. It's done in much smaller scale. It means supplying excess resources to another Slave or two near you. That's what Glyph (Noryasha) and I have been doing, since we're located close to each others.

The way StA does resources allocation should be more on emergency-basis, rather than regular-basis.

Also, you can specialise within your own controlled settlements. It's more on advance resources production (horses, weapons, etc.) than basic resources (clay, wood, etc.) though. My capital will focus on infantry and ranged, so automatically they will produce swords and bows relatively faster than my next settlement (whenever I get one).

[Orb]

I was thinking more of that, after getting you guys the food, that you would turn it into cows/horses. Or I can trade you the cows/horses. Its not for upkeep....since I know I wont be active enough to do that.

I can still do emergency food shipments. Its just that I cant store a lot of food, but I can store lots of cows(even if they arent protected by the vault ).

[Evilgrim]

I have too much food, but I have no idea who is close to me..
So.. Yeah.. Tell me and I'll send you.. Lots of food!

[Orb]

I have too much food, but I have no idea who is close to me..
So.. Yeah.. Tell me and I'll send you.. Lots of food!

Send me lots of free food. XD

[Cheddarius]

Hey! Can we put everyone's coordinates on the first post, and categorize them into mini-divisions (southeast of southwest, etc.)? That way people can find each other.

[Akura]

There's a topic on our forum, sorry about forgetting the invite.