Researching for dummies

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.

Me>You

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 with 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 the rest