Researching for dummies

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.

Me>You

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