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About chapter 17...

Hekata

Hekata

Artisan
I might as well ask this while we still have the forum :)

I've been sitting at the end of chapter 16 for an eternity now. Partly because it was such a tedious chapter that I didn't want to move forward and partly because I remember a lot of negative feedback about chapter 17.
However, I've gotten very bored sitting in the same spot for age and I'm considering moving on. I was hoping that some of you kind people who have finished that particular chapter could tell me a few things about it.
  • How tedious is it compared to chapter 16?
  • How long does it take to complete?
  • Do the upgrades to various building eat up a lot of space?
  • What goods to prepare before going there? (I checked architect, mana seems to be the big bad wolf?)
  • How hard is it to keep up with booth seeds and unurium demands?
  • Do I have to build a huge (full) settlement?
  • How helpful are PPs?
  • Any particular tips?
  • And probably my biggest concern: how do all those extra techs impact tournament/spire result? I'm not a huge tourney player but I like to have my 7k score (26 provinces). I only auto fight and can't say I'm a big expert at fighting so I mostly rely on having enough troops to throw at the enemies. Currently I can just barely keep up with the weekly needs without activating my brown bear. I can also fight the whole Spire with ease if I have boosts or cater without losing too many goods if there are no boosts. Does all of that get much harder? (= costs a lot more goods and troops?) And not just chapter 17 but moving forward in general, how bad it is for tournaments/Spire?
Sorry, that's a lot of questions, but I'll appreciate any answers :)
 
SkyRider99

SkyRider99

Mentor
  • How tedious is it compared to chapter 16?
More exciting to begin with. But just about as tedious towards the end.
  • How long does it take to complete?

How long is a piece of string?
You could hurry through with enough boosts, and a few diamonds I suppose.
  • Do the upgrades to various building eat up a lot of space?

Oh yes. Change of shape/orientation rears its ugly head again.
  • What goods to prepare before going there? (I checked architect, mana seems to be the big bad wolf?)

Can never have too much mana. I think divine seeds are problematic also.
  • How hard is it to keep up with booth seeds and unurium demands?

Both seeds and unurium will become an obsession. Two albatrosses around your neck. I had to find the right buildings to add to production and offset decay.
  • Do I have to build a huge (full) settlement?

I can't recall on this. But I find the higher chapters do not demand massive layouts if one is willing to take longer to fulfil research, quests, etc.
  • How helpful are PPs?

Occasionally helpful. Mainly once the Guest portal is at L3 or L4.
  • Any particular tips?
Patience is a virtue. :)
  • And probably my biggest concern: how do all those extra techs impact tournament/spire result?
Other players may disagree, but I feel that the increase in City Advancement Level (CAL) has made my tournament and spire more costly and difficult. But the costs are offset to a large degree by the greater capacity of your city.
 
MinervaOz

MinervaOz

Enchanter
It's tedious but not as bad as Traders. The first half of the tech tree can be completed before building the settlement and includes most of the building upgrades, so you'll have space to reorganise your city. I took a long break at that point. I think I started building the settlement in July (shortly before the new chapter came out, anyway) and I'm about 2 weeks from finishing the chapter. Once you've got the settlement built and fully upgraded, producing the research goods is painfully slow. A high level BTG is a big help.

PPs are useful once you've collected the 72 dark matter that you need to upgrade the portal 3 times. After that you can stop building towers and use PPs for the black and white magic (needed to produce the creatures). This gives you more space for breeding facilities. There's a quest to have 10 of those, but if you can build more, do. I've got 12, fully upgraded. Aim to have 0 towers by the time you get to the 2nd upgrade research (ie to level 3, then 4) of the breeding facilities.

Building upgrades in the first half of the chapter need a lot of seeds, after that the need isn't particularly heavy. While you're building the settlement you'll probably want to use seeds exclusively for production in the breeding facilities (you have a choice between mana and seeds). I pulled a couple of seed-producing buildings out and fed the Raccoon a few times. Mana needs are eye-watering. A high level Dragon Abbey is essential. I converted an area of my city to a mana garden. I recall several of my FS members complaining they had used up all their spells, so I carefully preserved mine, using them to supplement the regular productions. The portal tracks alone cost >400k mana per piece, so designing your settlement to use as few as possible is a good idea. You need a fair amount of unurium for the settlement, so again I pulled out all the relevant buildings. Once it's built it's no problem balancing seeds and unurium. The demand for ascended goods is high, particularly T1. I was trading it as soon as I'd collected it and then using it straight it away.

Yes advancing your city will make your tournament and Spire more costly, but I haven't found it hard to overcome that. Upgrading military wonders definitely helps, along with using booster buildings to minimise troop losses. To help produce more troops, a high level Simia is essential IMO. I've also found it useful to push my training time beyond 20 hours (more armouries and upgrading Bulwark and Shrooms), to take advantage of the bigger time boosts (most of my troops are time boosted, so timers are the main limitation to troop numbers). I've been steadily increasing my tournament score despite continuing with chapters, placing expansions and upgrading AWs (though I'm picky about which ones), and I don't find it hard to score 15k or more most weeks. You just have to adapt.
 
Hekata

Hekata

Artisan
Thank you @SkyRider99 for answering all my questions and in such a clear and user-friendly format :) (something that could not have been done on discord if I my notice) I had to chuckle at those albatrosses :D

Thank you @MinervaOz for the very detailed walked through the chapter and settlement needs.
Although I believe that you are talking about chapter 19 maybe? Chapter 17 is the Traders one, with all the ships (and, apparently, a very tedious one :D) and I think 18 is called Team spirit.
I will however copy/past and save your post as it going to be very useful when I reach chapter 19 as, sadly, the forum might no longer exist by the time I get there. :(
I see that you have excellent tourney scores even in that chapter so it gives me hope that I'll be able to keep up with my 7K.

In any case i think that the first thing for me to do is upgrade the DA and the BTG as they seem to be essential for all advanced chapters. And maybe the sunset towers? Do they help enough to we worth upgrading to max levels?
 
Jake65

Jake65

Sage
What @SkyRider99 said sums it up well :)
I didn't struggle with OhNo!rium as much as I thought I would but I did build a second armoury to increase required culture which boosts OhNo!rium production.
I've got a level30 BTG, good investment IMO as it boosts production of all the settlement buildings whereas PPs only work on the Trading Centre goods. (Also 0% trader fees and your first wholesale trade is 2*) I actually had the trading centre idle for quite a while as it's goods are capped and I was waiting for the ships production to catch up.
I am finding tournaments more difficult/costly but it could just be that the recent ones are nasties.
I started with an equal number of the 3 different types of ships (both large and small) but changed this towards the end as some goods were lagging. I did fortunately have space to juggle with.
I don't feel like I should have parked at the end of 16 but I'm delaying starting 18 until after the next FA. Which hopefully is coming shortly after the 30th of Neverber ;)
 
Hekata

Hekata

Artisan
Thank you @Jake65 :)
Very good point about the BTG boosting all settlement productions. I have started upgrading it, as well as the DA and Sunset Towers. I also plan to start chapter 17 after the next FA (if it's right after the Halloween event) as all my space will be taken over by guests, those ships seem to be huge!
My current culture requirement is 580000. Is that considered high or low? I already have 4 armouries and I'am not overly keen to build another one, but I might add another sentient factory if I need the culture thing to be higher.
 
Jake65

Jake65

Sage
Hekata said:
ships seem to be huge
Click to expand...
The large ones are, the small ones are easier to fit into gaps.
The small ships produce more goods per tile so are more efficient BUT their maximum production time is only 3 hours so they're idle overnight.
You'll need to tweak the large/small mix to suit your playing style.
 
C-Nymph

C-Nymph

Necromancer
I also remember using A LOT of teleport spells in that chapter, because at different times you need more of one type of ship than the other (if you care about production efficiency that is), so I kept a large amount of different types of ships in inventory that I could switch out for the other types when I needed a different guest race resource more than the other. I found that this was the way to minimise the 'tedious grinding' feel that the chapter gives :p
 
Hekata

Hekata

Artisan
Sounds like a good idea and I happen to have quite a few teleports in store :)

Will I be getting my first ascending goods or is that in chapter 18?
 
MinervaOz

MinervaOz

Enchanter
Hekata said:
Thank you @MinervaOz for the very detailed walked through the chapter and settlement needs.
Click to expand...
Sorry @Hekata - brain fade. Yes I was talking about ch 19. Traders, yes - extremely tedious, lots of patience needed. To add to what others have said - the small ships produce more than the large ones, even allowing for being idle overnight, so it's worth selling off the large ones and building only small. And teleport them in and out as needed, as @C-Nymph says.
 
Hekata

Hekata

Artisan
Thanks for all the suggestions, it will all be put to good use :)
Might also teleport other buildings to make more space for the Ships and hopefully go though it faster. I don't particularly like the aesthetics of the traders but I'm looking forward to chapter 18, that settlement is really amazing.
 
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