Planning your work and working your plan.

Planning your work and working your plan is a work ethic which i believe all our members should uphold. However, I will not personally enforce this onto you guys as that is a violation of my personal ethics and beliefs. I will, however, attempt to convince you guys into upholding it, but the final decision shall be your choice, and there will be no consequence executed on my behalf should you choose not to follow my beliefs.

Planning your work and working your plan speaks for itself, you plan out your work, and you get that plan to work. I'll break down it's few steps for clarity's sake.

Planning your work-

To begin planning, you first must have something to plan it could be an idea, it could be a feature of the game, hell it could be how you log onto your computer faster. But what is needed is an idea of what you're going to plan.

Just to make it easier, I will use a simple layout of how I intend to build up my Stronghold Villages. That alone, is my idea.

You then must work out the aspects and restraints of that idea you wish to incorporate into the finished plan.

In my given example, I intend to have maximum efficiency in raising at least 3 villages in the Stronghold whilst saving the expansion slot of my cropper. In this example, I want one thing in the plan: 3 villages, and I must complete that with my restraint: Not settling from the cropper.

After you have discovered the aspects and restraints of the plan you want, you then begin thinking up how you can execute the idea. Research is often required, for that, a good source of data is [url=help.travian.com]help.travian.com[/url]. For many other things, you may need to ask other people. If you need to ask people, ask, I'm sure people won't mind. If you need to ask a question, your leadership roster is a good place to look. If you can't decide, try me, you can use this guide as a binding contract to make me help you as it is my full responsibility to for see the outcomes caused by this little rambling.

The concept of my plan is fortunately simple. Settle twice from one village which isn't my cropper. There are two ways to settle twice from the same vilalge (in this case). They are a level 20 residence or a level 15 palace. Through my sheer mathematical capabilities, i have managed to discover that a level 15 palace is cheaper than a level 20 residence, however, seeing as how this is done outside my cropper, which in the end should possess the palace, I must then destroy the palace afterward. However, this is of no consequence as I will most likely have no need for a residence/palace from that support village(yes, I will do the double settling from a support village as it's expansion slots are expendable). My second village should be a support vilalge to allow further resource boost to raise the palace to 15 as I most likely will not need a cropper at that stage in the game.

After having a good idea what you plan to do, write it down as simplistic as you can, so that anyone else can understand. It is a good idea to keep a record of your plans in case you requires someone to sit for you and they need to execute stages of the plan for you.

In my example, it'd be a short procedure:
Settle support village in stronghold (village 1).
Raise palace to 10
Settle support village 2 in stronghold.
Raise palace to 15
Settle cropper
Demolish palace when cropper requires it.

And that, is how you would execute the plan. Make sure you have a way to clean up any new problems that may arise, also, thinking a few steps ahead often proves profitable.

Working your plan-

Now that we have a plan with much hard work put into it, we need to figure out how to execute it. If your final plan had extremely simple steps, you would be fine, however, if it was a more sophisticated plan, it is important to know roughly when the various stages will occur. When working your plan, be sure to be flexible, but make sure to stick to the plan until you have completely changed your mind to use a different plan. It is important to be unanimous and decisive in Planning and working.

Most of working your plan comes from experience and common knowledge. Unfortunately I cannot direct you in this area as much as I can in the planning aspect because most of Working your plan is solely defendant on the plan, likewise, there are too many options to cover.

Feel free to comment and whatnot. Got a question? Ask.

I have a question.
Should the 9-cropper that I'd like to make my capital be the first village I settle, or should I settle a resource village first so that I get to having a 3rd village sooner?

Capitals have the level 10 resource cap lifted so i would seriously consider a 15 cropper to maximise crop production not a 9 cropper for a capital, as to where to settle first my general preference is a square close to a 15 cropper with an abundance of needed resources...

Usually, If you're settling a 15c, you'd settle a support first and then migrate over to the 15c. However, If you chose to use a 9c, then you can simply conquer it first as a 9c can usually pull it's own weight.

As for the capital, That part is arguable. Some say that a smaller crop production is compensated through a much higher possibility of normal resource production which helps you grow. Also, do not forget that you can out source crop from other villages.

Hmmmm! Your resource villages help you grow not an additional 200 production in my opinion and micromanaging crop so that you can field a large off/def army every hour or so is quite the drag...

Like i said, it's a debatable topic, I remember last server, quite a few people in the top 20 had 9c's as capitals and quite a few 15c's not as capital.

Thanks for the help. I have neither requested nor been allocated a 15c (and would not expect one as a new player) and so will be working with a 9c. I will go straight to start building it.

A further question: if I am going to be primarily a defensive player, is there any reason to keep the village founding slots on my capital open? I assume people do this because it means that later on, they can use their massive capital army to conquer larger enemy cities. I am probably not going to be doing much conquering, so assume it is ok to use my 9c's palace to settle my 3rd village?

Well, with the palace you get 3 settling slots. One at level 10. One at level 15. And one at level 20. So you should decide if you want to use them all to settle or use 1 or 2 to conquer a village.

One other quick point, it is in your best interests to not change your capital from your strating village to your 9 cropper until you absolutely need too!

Arkonix wrote:One other quick point, it is in your best interests to not change your capital from your strating village to your 9 cropper until you absolutely need too!

This is absolutely true whether you change it to a 9 or 15 cropper because the sooner you change your capital from your starting village, the sooner it will be conquered. If you keep your starting village as your capital until there is a need to change it. Then it will remain with you for a much longer time due to the fact people are more likely to leave it alone.

The thing about expansion slots is that the cost to save it early on is extremely high. Think carefully whether you want a trifecta chief force or not.

I don't think I want a triple chief force as I don't think I will be conquering lots of villages later in the game.

Thanks for the tip about not switching capitals too early. Good point! I had assumed the point at which I would want to declare my 9c my capital would be when I was ready to upgrade my first level 11 resource tile.