What's My Ideal Building Configuration?

The answer, like most answers in life, is "it depends." It depends on where you're at in the development stage. But I made some mistakes going through the building process, and I hope hearing about them is helpful for you.

STARTING OUT

My strategy when starting out was to establish a solid defense array first -- upgrade walls, max out wall defenses ASAP by building Archer Towers, traps, and a small amount of the other defense items.

The idea is, this helps me develop, which gives me a kick-ass resource stream. If I make myself a hard target to attack, I can develop in peace -- meaning I give myself the ability to build a big army because no one is attacking me. This has worked out well for me, although that might be less the defense strategy and more that I was fortunate to spawn in a peaceful area.

Generally I think the "defense first" approach is a good strategy for beginning players, though. There are so many soft targets around -- players that quit, or are inactive, or just haven't built defenses -- that even if a neighbor can whack you, why would they? They can either whack you and take some losses, or whack someone else and not. Easy call.

Then, I focused on resources. In retrospect, the mistakes I made involved building too many farms and WAY too few sawmills and slightly too few iron mines.

I thought I'd need to feed my big army I planned to build. I was right, I would -- but it's basically impossible to feed a big army by just using your resource fields, even if you fill all 9 valley slots with high-level lakes. You'll have to NPC farm, and when you do, food becomes a non-issue. At least with the current game patch.

Another mistake I made: leaving too few empty building spaces. I didn't leave myself enough flexibility to build what I needed as I was learning. I think I improved upon this with subsequent cities.

The thing is, your needs change. Just as you were really stoked to get 40,000 food from the wheel when you were level 1, and now you hate getting that food worse than the Devil, your building needs change. With a little foresight, you can plan for these.

For example, you need more barracks. No, really, you do. You might not need them now, so you don't necessarily have to build them until you have the resource stream to keep them humming with troops, but you should leave spots for them.

Specifically, right now we in Z2K need to build bigger armies and that means building more barracks. If you have a good resource stream, we can maximize productivity by keeping a bunch of barracks full of training troops at all times.

How many more? Well, again, that depends on where you're at. I'd say you need at least 3 once you're out of beginner's protection, and most of my cities now have at least 6.

There are two good reasons for this. First, you maximize troop production, and second, you maximize speed of production in a crisis. That is, you might not be able to keep all barracks stocked for six hours at a clip, but when you REALLY need those archers, 6 barracks make them 6 times faster than one.

THE ACADEMY IS YOUR FRIEND AND OTHER INTERMEDIATE THOUGHTS

When you start to have multiple cities, you have different needs.

For instance: Remember all that research that took like 180 hours? Well, you can apply it in every city you have. But you MUST have an academy that's high enough in EACH city. Handy trick: inside the academy, you can tell what level of each skill you have access to. The first number is how high you've researched it; the second number is how high the academy in that city will let you access.

So if you've spent a ton of time and resources on archery 9, get all your academies up to level 9 ASAP.

Oh, and your ass really needs an embassy. If you want help from other alliance members, anyway. You need to have that sucker at level 3 or better, and the "allow allied troops to garrison" box has to be checked.

Why? Say you're offline and get attacked. If that box isn't checked, we can't do anything to help you. We might be able to attack the attacker, but that's a) if we can find him, b) if we're in the area, c) if he's vulnerable (defenders get bonuses in combat), and d) it still might not work because another enemy might always attack you or the current opponent might attack from a different city.

Why level 3 or better? Because the level determines how many waves of support we can send. Let's say me, Seasnake, sunshinerinker, ToRak1i, Bostitch, LDMisha, and Medici can all send, oh, I dunno, 5000 cavalry each to help you.

If you're at level one, you get 5000 cavalry from one of us. If you're at level 7, you get 35,000 cavalry from everyone. That's a HUGE difference, and can make the difference between a city being taken or not.

You know what's sweet that I didn't think was super-necessary at first? A relief station. This is only when you start to get several cities and need to ship resources around a lot, or you are the resource maven who needs to re-supply alliance members.

It makes shipping resources so much faster, which is very handy for supplying a friend in need or for when you need to start your level 9 walls but ARGH I HAVE ALMOST ENOUGH STONE. The difference between it taking an hour to ship stone from another city and it taking 15 minutes could save you from heart disease due to stress.

Remember, though, after level 5 relief station you only get bonuses again at level 8 and 10. So getting to level 5 is a higher priority than advancing beyond that.

Again, a station is only helpful when you have several cities or need to help your far-flung friends -- but when that's the case, it's a godsend.

WHEN YOU'VE BUILT TOO MUCH

So I've spent far too many words telling you about things I think you need. But what DON'T you need?

Some buildings will always help you. You definitely need high-level barracks, academy, beacon tower, rally spot, academy and feasting hall. These help you build troops, access research spot enemies, and kick enemy ass, in that order.

But there are some buildings that once you're done with them, you can just dismantle them -- either with dynamite if you have that, or one level at a time if you don't. To dismantle, just click on the building, and click the little red circle/slash icon on the left.

These buildings include structures that help you get valuable stuff -- but after that lose their usefulness. You need a stable and a forge to do certain research, and a workshop to build walls. But unlike an academy, once you have met the requirements, they don't help you any more.

Once you have level 10 walls, for example, you don't need a workshop. It, like an old baseball trophy or that copy of A Brief History of Time you never read, is just taking up space. So knock that sucker down and build a barracks, or a cottage if you're having population issues, or a relief station if you didn't see why you needed one before (but don't knock down the stable until you've leveled up the relief station!).

This isn't an exact science, and I'm still learning a lot about it. Everything is situational and context-dependent. I'll just wrap it up there and hope some of this was helpful.