Researching for dummies

Note on outdatedness

Since this guide was written before passive research, it is no longer as effective. The general principles still apply, with the easiest substitution being to explore with the turns that would have been used for researching. Beware though, this will put you farther from the council protection level at 1500 acres, and more forts will be required to prevent a very early and frustrating death.

Researching right after reincarnating your mage

You have a couple of choices to make the first day, on how to spend your first turn cycles:

• Rushing for land with relative simple units available in the beginning of the game (not discussed here)
• Gelding for off-color spells, heroes etc. (not discussed here)
• Just researching as quick as possible (YEAH! discussed here!)

If you to do the latter, you can still do it in several ways. This post presents a straightforward simple way, and some alternatives.

note: This post is not intended to present the very best, quickest, most optimal researching strategies. Even if you start a mage when the gameround on your server is a couple of days to weeks old, the stuff from this page can work fine too.

First, Second and Third run

(print this and stick it to your monitor)

• don't keep an army: you are not gonna waste time defending, just research.
• you are going to use the council protection feature to your benefit
• don't spend more than 120 turns on the first run: you want to stay in protection as long as possible, and leave protection when YOU are ready for it... not 'by accident'.
• Depending on your server, you will have accumulated 120 turns 10 hours (Blitz) / 20 hours (Guild) / 30 hours (App) after official server-opening.

simple focus on research

First run

• use the first 120 turns doing stuff like this
• disband all the troops you get initially
• explore a few turns - build some farms and towns -
• explore a bit more - build workshops one turn by one turn
• explore a bit more - build some workshops more
• watch your geld income using status report, watch your population growth
• if your population is close to max: build farms and towns for 2-3 turns.
• keep food production (from farms) and residential space (mainly from towns) in balance

If you don't grasp the above: go read Players Manual sections INTERIOR and MAGIC , then read this again!

Doing the above stuff in small steps, in 120 turns, you should be able to build to:

• 800 land
• around 400 workshops
• about 350 land in farms-plus-towns
• remaining small amount of forts, barracks, nodes etc.
• No guilds yet - we'll build those in the 2nd run.
• if you have turns left: great - explore a bit already in advance for 2nd run, but don't build that land yet.

Second run

• explore to 1550-1600 land
• build to 8 forts (and add 2 forts for every 100 land above 1600 land)
• then build guilds on the remaining land
• build ~100 turns at one time, and check your status report inbetween
• Notice that your income drops as maintaining guilds cost geld.

• You will have about 150 turns left:
• start researching advanced and simple spells

Watch the geld in between... if you have a (too) negative budget (see below)

Third and following runs

For a couple of days:

• just stick to the basics presented below
• when you are nearly finished researching, you need to prepare for leaving research mode and start 'the real game', warring opponents.

• Council protection will work for the first 2000 turns

Your status report shows your spell level.

A fully researched mage will have this spell level:

	With Ultimates	Without Ultimates
Speciality (color)	Guild and Blitz	Apprentice
Ascendancy (white)	421	421
Verdancy (green)	428	428
Eradication (red)	456	456
Nether (black)	470	470
Phantasm (blue)	589	589

Basics of financing your research

• don't keep an army (see basics of troopless defense), so that won't cost you geld.
• If you keep an army: make it disbandable m.p. eaters. Disband it when you are spending big amounts of turns doing the research.
• watch your geld stock (make notes) to see how fast it is dropping. Perhaps at some point you need more geld... someway.
• you could sell some items
• you could reduce your upkeep costs: a bit more farms and towns... and a little more guilds and workshops: use destroy to free ~ 100 land, build it up
• remember you need to have people living in the towns and eating from the farms before they give you geld.
• you can geld for a few turns (e.g. to allow your pop to grow into new farms and towns). Gelding doubles the income (but you can't research and geld in the same turn unfortunately!)
• spells that increase your geld income usually are not worth the their m.p. upkeep/turn investment/node-landuse during research phase - unless you are researching on 3k land.

Basics of troopless defense

• as long as you are not attacked: spend every turn researching
• when you are attacked and are 'in council protection "P"' : DON'T MOVE ANYMORE: You'll lose council protection by moving 1 turn (or by not spending turns for 48 hours, see Players Manual, section on Protection.
• wait without moving until you have accumulated ~200 new turns
• be on the watch if you are not hit online: if it happens: check yourself on the ranklist: if you are in "P" - don't move anymore just wait for turns
• you'll need to rebuild a fort or two occasionally.

Basics of speeding up Research

See also section on MAGIC in players manual

• more guilds = faster research
• at some point you may want to cast Concentration, to reduce the number of turns used to research a spell.
• It depends on what colour you are when it is benefitial. Green+Red: cast once after spelllevel is ~200, Blues cast every 100 spell level, white+black inbetween. When you are about ready for Concentration:
• build a few nodes, then spend more turns researching (and let the nodes fill),
• cast Concentration (it may fail if you are not a blue mage and unlucky)

• veterans dream of researching with the help of a Sage hero... competition for the few available sages early in the game is tough though.

• investing geld in donations to gods, CAN give you concentration level 777, and that will speed up research for a brief while (research a big spell in one turn!)

Basics for exiting research mode (nearly finished!)

You should start to prepare to upkeep an army (e.g. get nodes for m.p. for summoning and a first enchantment, get some barracks). There are mages that finish research very fast - but they need an extra day to switch from research to grabbing... and then they lose the time they won earlier.

You can try to start grabbing when you are NEARLY researched (e.g. last ultimate to go), you can start generating a basic army (with enchantment that gives troops, and/or with setting a slow recruit (low number of barracks). Be sure you have the geld for this. If not: try pilllaging at the start of the 200 turns in which you will finish researching, and summon an army with your last 20 turns!

Alternative strategies

Geld start, switching to research

This is an alternative way, aiming to get less land and workshops at turn 120, but more geld in stock saving you from worries. Skip it if you did the above.

First run

• try a gelding start (on 550-ish land, Geld Optimizer Applet), for the first 120 turns.
• don't bid on anything, just sit and wait for 200 turns (max turns) before you move out of Apprentice Status and enter the battle zone.

Second run

• do 50 turns more gelding (to 170 turns)
• then explore to about 1550 land
• then build workshops 1 turn by 1 turn to about 399
• build to 8 forts
• then build guilds on the remaining land
• start researching advanced and simple spells until 0 turns.

third run

• with 200 new turns
• destroy A PART of your Farms, Towns and 100 workshops (in 1 and the same turn) and build the remainder with guilds.
• you will have enough geld from the first gelding day to keep researching.

thereafter

as above