How to develop your castles and Outposts

How to develop your castles and Outposts

Hello Guys,

Everyday I get questions from various players of the game, where they want to learn how to attack. I visit their castles and OPs to check their development and then wonder, why do people always want to jump to level 10, instead of learning the basics. The most important aspect of this game is to develop your castles and OP correctly. And your focus should be on that. What I am about to suggest is a long term plan. It takes months to achieve it, and there is no shortcuts to it.


It is easy for beginners but tough for veterans, as they have already made their decisions and done things their way. Their way might not be the best way though. So there is no harm in rectifying your mistakes that you did unknowingly. There was no one to guide us when we started this game, even I made the same mistakes, but rectifying them now.

MAIN CASTLE

Let us start with the Main Castle in The Great Empire aka Greenland.
You can follow the same strategy for your Castles in

Everwinter Glacier aka Ice Guide for Everwinter Glacier
The Burning Sands Guide for The Burning Sands
Fire Peaks Guide for Fire Peaks

The only exception being that you can increase the number of Farms in these empires, as the Food RVs add to the production. And similarly, you can keep resource buildings lesser as Resources RVs add to the production.

People usually start playing this game keeping 1 thing in mind, attacks. Well, attacks are not bad, but dont attack till your defense is strong. Or one fine day you will login and see your castle all on fire and burning like hell.

Now here are the basics of how to develop your Main Castle (MC) for defenses.
The very first thing you need to develop are some farm houses to support defense troops. Then shift your focus towards resources. Build some Stone quarries and wood cutter. Never over do them. In the main castle, you can have around 12 farm houses and 4 stone quarries and wood cutters. You will be tempted to add more and YES, you can add more, if you are ready to demolish them going forward. Still never build any farm, stone quarry or wood cutter below 13% occupancy rate.

In the screenshot below you can see where to check the occupancy rate.

Ideally 100% and 75% are best. A lot also depends on your level and stage of the game. For example, I am level 60 player and it has been over 1 month that I have nothing to develop in my Green MC. I still need resources as I am doing my Researches in Research Tower. I have been playing this game for 3.5 months now, maybe in a month or two, I will be done with Researches also, then I will demolish all my Stone quarries and Woodcutters, leaving just 2 of each, for tools and future updates.

Now comes the most important aspect, the defense.
Once you start building your castle, I would suggest you to set priorities in this order.

1. Keep (Keep increases PO and defense and the construction speed of other buildings)
2. Farms (Just enough to support some defense soldiers)
3. Resource buildings (Just enough to cover the construction cost)
4. Walls (Increases Protection and PO)
5. Towers (Increases Protection and PO)
6. Gates (Increases Protection and PO)
7. Dwellings (Just enough to support constant soldier recruitment)
8. Farms again (This time to add more and more soldiers)
9. Resource buildings (Keep upgrading the existing buildings, enough to support further expansion)
and so on.........
10. Guardhouses - 5 or 6 important because of the new enhancements
11. Taverns -3 (Level 3)

PS: Do not build more than 2 dwellings in your MC. Keep upgrading them for now. Ideally there should be zero dwellings in the MC, better to have them in Outposts. Forget about the dwelling based task to get XP. You will get enough XP from other tasks. Once your castle and OPs are fully developed you can demolish these dwellings in your MC.

The basic idea of this game is to have Maximum soldiers and this complete guide is based on that. Resources, coins and everything else is secondary. You can win more if you have more attack and defense soldiers, that is the bottom line.

Now there are 3 things to consider here:

1. Food production
2. Public Order (PO) and Decorative Items (Deco)
3. The importance of space in the castle

FOOD PRODUCTION

Food production all of us know is increased by Farms. You can have as many as 12 Level 10 Farms in your main castle.I have 11 farms in my MC, all are Level 10, the 11th Farm has a Occupancy rate of 10% and gives me 31.9 Food per hour. If you are a ruby player, then instead of having so many farms, You can manage with 7 Level 10 farms + vet overseers + normal overseers. You motive should be to have a food production of 2100 - 2400/ hour. Your Target army size should be 1000 defense minimum. You may also think why not just build 30 farms and let them increase the food production. I will explain a bit later why more farms will harm us instead of helping us. Keep reading........

Now few things that help increase the production of Farm houses.

1. Is definitely the PO. We will discuss it later in greater length. Try to maintain a PO of 235%+ in your main castle.
2. Flour Mill: It increases the production of all farms in the castle. Level 3 gives a +30%  boost to the food production.
3. Bakery: Bakery reduces the food consumption of all soldiers in that castle. This is a must, and this has to be your first thing that you spend your rubies on. You can read more about Ruby Strategy and how to use them wisely. Don't blow away the free rubies the game gives you initially on speeding up building construction, if you are not a Ruby player, make sure to read the Ruby Strategy before you start spending them.

PUBLIC ORDER AND DECORATIVE ITEMS

Public Order represents the general mood of your population. In short, if they are happy they will work harder and all your buildings will have higher productivity and even your tools and soldiers would be recruited faster.

PO is the most important aspect in this game. Decorative Items and defense INCREASE PO, whereas Dwellings DECREASE PO. That is the reason I suggested you above to have only 2 dwellings in the MC in the beginning and zero later on.

Our target should be to keep PO above 235%. It is doable even if you are not a ruby player.
In the beginning try to build as many decorative Items you can, later on replace them with Parks. Parks are the highest PO non ruby Deco items.

If you are a Ruby player, go for Ruby Deco Items. Nothing better than that.
Also, always give it a shot at the events. Events give you good Deco Items. And Ruby/ Non Ruby players, everyone can get them.

Here are some of the Events/ Tournaments that I am aware of.

Herald of the Tournament (Individual)

The top 3 get Victory Column. it is small in space but has high PO. 135 PO.

Battle for Berimond

This is an event that pops up once in a while. If you complete it on the winning side, you get a PO item called Grimbert's Oath. There are 2 sides, bear and lions. I chose Bear, so I know about Bear. Not sure what it is called if You are on Lion's side. This was my First Berimond event and I had no clue. I ended up spending some 200,000 rubies and when I got a deco item of 60 PO, I was disappointed. But I played this event to get Bear Soldiers and I got 4000 of them, so overall I was extremely happy. You can check various types of soldiers here: Troop and Tools stats for Goodgame Empire

Thorn King Event

Thorn King Event was an event that ended recently on Jan 17th 2013. You can click here to check the Complete Guide on Thorn King Event

It gives you a deco Item called Thorn Skull having PO of 80

All these Items do not have a Great PO, but they occupy very little space, thus that being their advantage. Ratio of space to PO.

This is how all 3 of them look in my main castle.

Colossus Event

Colossus event is an event wherein you have to contribute resources to build a high PO deco item. Initially it is easy, but once the PO reaches 150, it gets extremely tougher to increase the PO. The benefit of this event is that you spend no rubies and get a high PO deco item and above all, you can place this Colossus in any castle or OP. In rest of the events you cannot keep your deco item anywhere else than you main castle in Greenland.

Take a look.

Adventure Tasks

Another great way to get good PO items is to complete the adventure maps. You get map pieces by attacking RBCs. You may also want to read this post: How to attack RBCs
Once the map is complete you get an adventure task, defeating the main castle of the task gives you a good PO item that occupies very little space.

The importance of space in the castle

As I mentioned earlier, it is very important to save space in your castle, you wont realize it initially but once you reach higher levels and your castles are all build up. You will notice that there is nothing else to do. If you do not plan properly, you will end up having low PO and thus lesser production and low number of soldiers as compared to others.

The space in your castle is an extremely important aspect of the game. It is also based more on the need of the hour. For example initially you need more resources. Therefore, more resource buildings. Later on, you can cut these to a minimum to make way for Deco items & maximize farm numbers. Same with dwellings. Some would prefer to complete the dwellings quests before deleting them while others don't care about them & go for PO right away. End of the day it is Your choice :D


Now let us move onto your Outposts (OP).........

OUTPOSTS

Usually people try to capture 1 stone, 1 food and 1 wood OP. But in the longer run, you realize that it would have been better if you had all Food OPs and that too Shining OPs (8 food and 2 wood/stone). Please check this to figure out what are Shining Outposts. It is very important to know which outposts to acquire in GoodGame Empire.

Now again it is your decision. You would like to acquire Food Shining OPs from the word go, which will create a shortage of resources for you or you would like to capture and develop resource OPs and once done with researches, then move to Shining Food OPs. I did not have all this knowledge when I started playing. At the moment I have 1 Wood 6 OP, 1 Stone 6 OP and 1 Wood 8 OP. I am about to delete my OPs and capture Shining Food OPs. But If I knew about all this earlier, I would have definitely captured Shining Food OP. So it is your choice. Decide what you think is best.

If you have alliance members near by, ask them to help you with resources and you can help them with Food and that ways you can survive even with all 3 Shining food OPs. You can build strong army, support your neighbor alliance members with Defense troops. They can build a bigger army, you can supply them with Food, they supply you with resources.... remember it is a team game, not a solo act. Keep in mind that you can move your castle free of cost for the first time. So even if your alliance members are not near by, you can shift near them.

Now let us talk about the Shining Food OP and how to build it.

The basics remain the same as castle. Just keep the following in mind.


Number of farms - 15
Stone/wood - 4
Dwellings - 0
Guardhouses - 6
Target PO - 240%
Target food rate - 4500-4800/hr (get the normal +vet overseers)
Target stone/wood rate - 750-850/hr (w/o overseers)
Bakery Level 4 a must
Target troop capacity - 2000 per OP
Food research Level 5

In response to questions of best possible arrangement of a castle. I am attaching a screenshot of a player from whom I have learnt a lot and naturally is my Guru in this game. :P

Please do not forget to add your valuable Knowledge in comments below.

Remember, Rubies or big armies don't win you battles, Knowledge and tactics do!!

By Vishal Verma Google