Guide: Buildings

[Zephyrus]

Here is a quick explanation of which buildings you may need.

There are many buildings in the game. Each has a purpose. Depending on what you are trying to do, you may need or not need each of these.

Markets, Tents: These two control how much money you recieve. It works like this, your per capita income is determined by markets, while your workers are determined by your tents. Pay attention to this. If you gain resources through buildings, you need these. Workers come if you have space. They use empty land, but prefer tents. Each tent fills at a steady rate per turn until is has 80 workers (I think.). After that, it stops filling. If in war you lose tents, your workers will leave if there are more than 120 or so per tent (I think.). Markets increase your per capita income, or how much money you get each turn from a worker. More markets make richer workers. If you get more workers, however, you will need more markets to keep their income steady. Generally, land for markets and tents is split in the ratio of 2:1 or 3:1. That is, you should have between twice and three times as many markets as you have tents. This is because markets do not vary, whereas your workers come and leave. Markets also tend to produce more.

(to be continued...)

[Zephyrus]

(not much time)

Huts are what are perhaps the most important building in the entire game. They are the only structure you can have 100% of and still do well, with the exception of GTs after a long period of resource massing. In short, they hold your hawks, which are undoubtedbly then most impostant thing in the game, as there is nothing you cannot gain with them. They can be both offensive and defensive.

Huts work like tents in a way. They fill and empty. If you have too many, they leave. If you have too few, they come. It's that simple.

The hard part is getting the math right.

Huts and hawks are almost rock vs. paper vs. scissors as opposed to troops being rock vs. larger rock. More isn't always better. It's all ratios. (You did listen in Pre-Algebra a few years ago, right?)

Your defensive (or, more precisely, utility) ratio is:
your_hawks / your_huts

Your offensive ratio is:

(time limit, later...)

[Zephyrus]

Barracks are a nice addition to any strategy, and HPR and pvtmarket aside, there is no way to go without them in a game the size of FaF. Barracks are simple. They produce troops. The amount they make is linear, and that is the simplictiy of it. Your barracks do not require complicated math, and never will they fail.

Remember here, set your industry settings. Go to management-->manage in the menu and look where there are troop names. The FaF default is 0/0/0/0, and that makes barracks useless. Completely. You don't want this. (Exception: If you're really food starved and can't handle more troops, zeros across the board will save your current army from the rule of three, i.e. lose troop/worker for being food starved/cash deprived.) So, remember to set them, and never worry about them again, hopefully.

That's the point of this post. Set your industry, before you use any turns, because 10 mice and a squirrel do not constitute an army.

[edit:typo/]

[The Beatles]

A note of interest: The FaF default is not 0/0/0/0 - that is a bug. The FaF official default for n troops is 100/n% of each troop type. Which you will also want to change, of course.

[Zephyrus]

Guards are wonderful, and often underestimated. They're certainly a double edged sword, but well worth it for those going purely industrial. The basic concept is that a guard tower gives 500 defence points at a cost of one land, plus turns and money spent making/breaking it. Not bad, and it's one of the reasons industry can often beat leadering. You simply build guards and they work. The problem is the land they occupy. having full guards forever is wasting about 50k land at LP's current net, far too much in such a land starved game. So, you need to demolish, and build. Running turns with these guards as barracks will give an extra million or so troops, and land is often used as barrack when online and guard when not. But, remember, it's 50 of your 500 max turns to tear down, and 100 to rebuild. Keep that in mind.

NOTE: You need 150 mice (unsure of number, someone check) to occupy each guard tower. Just have 150 * your guards worth of mice at least. Else, guards are at somewhere near half strength.

[Zephyrus]

Using camps directly for cash is not really something that works well. But, a camp does have extra effects. A camp can speed up your goods en route to the public market, fill up your private market, and give you better prices both in selling and buying. Consider 10% of your land in camps if you use a industrial strategy with buying and or selling troops.