Another week, another post! Welcome back! This time around, I am going to touch on my guild a bit (spoiler alert: I may change guilds) and then jump into a generic game reflection. Stick around at the end for a new development in my game progress!

Guild Activity

I think that I successfully joined the largest least-talkative group in the Forge of Empires universe. I hesitate to say that they are inactive because there are a few people who participate in guild expeditions. Emphasis on a few. From a simple glance, it seems as though we are a formidable, active guild: we have 47,893 guild expedition points, for goodness sakes! While that is technically correct, the sad reality is that those points were acquired by only 6 of our 76 guild members. Not even 10%. Just about half of those points were accrued by only one member! (Who has a wonderful reference to Friends as her name).

Quick moment for a question: how is it that my seven completed encounters are worth fewer points than aldabaron’s five? How are aldabaron’s five equivalent to not even 10% of Sir sairick of lockslee’s five? Just when I think I am beginning to understand something about this game, it slips away.

Back to the activity of my guild…or lack thereof. Do you remember last week when I took a screenshot of the guild’s chat? Check out the new developments:

No, you are not seeing double; no, I did not accidentally put in the same picture twice. These are two different pictures, taken about a week apart, of our guild’s chat. Nothing. Has. Changed. Here’s the interesting part: Forge of Empires does not tag messages with dates, just times. I sent my message last week at a touch before midnight, but to someone logging on right now, I could have sent that message this past midnight. The same goes for RictorBoon’s message: I could be trying to answer a request that he sent the same day I responded, or three weeks prior! Who knows!

Anyways, I think I am going to start hunting a new guild. I am not exactly sure the bonuses I am getting out of this one, so I do not see any risk. Not only that, but I can always re-join the guild if others do not work out. It surely is not taking anything away from my game experience. Stay tuned.

Evolving Thoughts

My empire officially turned one month old yesterday! It is quite odd to say that: it seems like longer when you look at the differences in design and technological advancement between now and then. At the same time, given how much I am still learning and still growing to understand about the game, it does not seem like it has been a month.

Since I started, I have progressed through two and a half ages. Technically, it is really three and a half ages, but the tutorial takes you from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age with the unlocking of one technology, so I do not count that. That equates to 46 technologies researched thus far, with two in the works. That is equivalent to 518 total Forge Points for those of you counting at home; 127 by the end of the Bronze Age, 256 during the Iron Age for a total of 383, and 135 so far in the Early Middle Ages. Speaking of Forge Points, I have spent a total of 320 on my Great Building (the Oracle of Delphi), and am currently a level 5 with 140 more Points until level 6. I definitely did not have the Great Building when I started this game a month ago, nor did I know that I would spend over 800 Forge Points in four short weeks. It is clear that I benefited from free Forge Point packs or bonuses that I unlocked or won; naturally, it would have taken me 35 days of 24-hour collection in order to earn the 838 Forge Points I have spent. Whew!

There is not a single thing that has persisted since I started this game. All of my buildings have either been replaced or automatically upgraded; the headquarters and tavern are the only two buildings that auto-upgrade, however. Not even the road is the same: if you remember from a few posts ago, I replaced all of the existing trail with gravel road that gives me more population happiness. Hunters and potters (production buildings) were phased out and are currently replaced with goat farms, pending a better building through research. Huts and stilt houses were replaced with cottages, which I predict will be around for a while. Even as anti-military as I have become, my military building has improved from when I started this game. I began with simple foot soldiers, but I now have a single horsemen stable that replaced the foot soldiers a while back.

As far as my mindset towards the game, allow me to reference this quote from my original Forge of Empires set-up blog: “Thankfully the tutorial is guided by a little helper in the bottom-right corner, as well as a blue arrow that shows you exactly where to go. I was already getting a bit lost at this point since I still was not quite sure what all of the options were going to be.” One portion of this statement has persisted thus far, and the other has long since disappeared. Sadly, it is my confusion towards the many options of this game that still runs amuck, while the tutorial ceased long ago. I definitely have a more firm grasp on some of the options and abilities, far superior to my grasp when I wrote my original blog, but I am surely still learning. I think my statement a few blogs ago sums this up well:

“I feel like with this game, you have the choice between three things: understanding, lots of features, and short time increments. You get two of the three: you either have a deep understanding of a lot of the features but dedicate a lot of time; spend a smaller amount of time, understand what you’re doing, but only in a few of the facets of the game; or spend a smaller amount of time and navigate through a lot of the features, but do not have a deep understanding of them.”

Ditto, past me.

Something New!!

Something that was not part of my original city but is now a fascinating and fun aspect of my growing empire is my new “settlement”. When I unlocked it through a technology at the very end of the Iron Age, I did not really pay it much attention; I was much more focused on unlocking the Early Middle Ages era. Once I unlocked the new time period and settled in a bit, I decided to investigate the Viking ship looming in my lake.

As it turns out, I had unlocked a miniature Viking town that I am in charge of building. Just like my main city, there are a series of quests and objectives that I have to complete in order to progress in the development of the settlement. There are only 25 tasks, however, until the settlement is considered “finished”. I am not exactly sure what it means to have a “finished” settlement and if that will aid me in any way, so we shall see. Until then, it is very similar to my town: residences house people and produce a distinct type of coin (copper coin); production buildings also produce copper coin. Goods buildings currently produce axes and mead, but I still have two more varieties to unlock. Similar to “happiness” in my main city, my settlement has “diplomacy”: points earned through certain cultural buildings and decorations. The settlement’s version of research, called embassy advancements, is fueled by diplomacy and produced goods. So far, I have unlocked four of the possible ten embassy advancements.

There is no military or trading affiliated with the settlement (thus far), and the only cross-pollination between my city and the settlement are the rewards I get for successfully completing tasks. Other than that, they are two completely different systems in terms of population, resources, currency, land, etc. Stay tuned for more!

Progress Report

Since last week, I have sold my two triumphant arches and my marketplace in favor of some more residences, a carousel, and some flower bushes. Even though I increased my total number of population and sold these cultural buildings, I actually ended up with more happiness than I had. On top of all of that, I bought a new expansion (far right-hand side) and built a stone mason. I am now able to produce all Bronze Age goods and three of the five Iron Age goods (I am missing cloth and limestone). This is not the most advantageous place to be in since I am currently in the Early Middle Ages, but I have a boosted production of multiple goods; this means that I am able to trade for the goods that I cannot produce (or cannot produce quickly) in the marketplace. So far, I have been managing quite well.