Tips and Tricks for Growing at the Start

Posted in Albion by J. Rosado and R. Ross (on the Canes Inferi group page), updated by A. Patáková (Lords of Siege)

Dragonomicon Link:   http://community.kabam.com/forums/showthread.php?12039-Dragonomicon-(The-DoA-Players-Handbook)&p=65167#post65167

      

             Getting Between 100K - 300K Power Before Protection Ends!

         Ok, in every alliance I have been in people have asked me how I reach 100k~300k power before I get out of Protection without buying RUBIES. This is how I do it, also keep in mind that I play 12~15hrs a day, so if you don’t  you may or may not reach the same power as me because I play a lot more, but you should still be able to hit 100k+ in power.

• Grab you’re goodie box out of the CHEST section of the ITEMS tab! Use all of your wood, metal, and stone boosters. (They are in the PRODUCTION section of the ITEMS tab.)  They will increase how much you get of those resources per hr by 25%.
• Build 3 of each Lumber mill, Mine, and Quarry in your field. You don't need any farms because you get plenty of food from Camps, but if U do build 1 U will get 10 power points (it’s up to you).
• Upgrade 1 of each resource to Lv3. (You should have 1-Lv3 of each lumber mill, mine, and quarry. And have 2-Lv1 of each lumber mill, mine, and quarry.) This should complete 10 QUESTS      (or 9 without the farm) that'll give enough resources to move on.
• Build a Science Center and start researching Woodcraft, Alloys and Masonry. For now only research Lv1 of Alloys and Masonry because you’re going to need your gold for Woodcraft.
• Build 5 Homes and change Tax rate to 50% (You can do this by clicking on your Fortress.) I only build 5 homes, because that gives you enough idle population for resource sites and troops.
• Build 5 Garrisons and you get a quest for each garrison you build, they give you back all the resources you used to build them. When your 5th garrison is finished you'll get a quest that'll give you 10k     of each resource. (After 5 you will not get any more quests for building Garrisons!)
• Upgrade your Science Center to Lv2 and research Lv2 Woodcraft. (Don't research Alloys or Masonry right now!)
• Build a Factory, Metalsmith, Rookery, Officer's Quarters, and Muster Point. (You don't really need a Theater, add Storage vault near the end of protection)
• Upgrade your Fortress to Lv2, this will give you 3 more plots in field to build resources and allows you to take an extra wilderness (from now on, focus on building even amount of lumbermills and mines, build max of 3 farms for quest and max 4 quarries)
• Build more Lumber mills, Mines, and Quarries and upgrade all resources to Lv3. When done you should have 14 resources that are all Lv3!
• Upgrade your Science Center to Lv3 and research Lv3 Woodcraft, if you don't have enough resources to upgrade then go to the next step.
• Upgrade Fortress to Lv3, if you couldn't upgrade Science Center before you should be able to do it now.
• Build more Lumber mills, Mines, and Quarries, and upgrade them to Lv3.
• Upgrade all Homes to Lv3, this will give you more gold for research.
• If you can, upgrade your Science Center to Lv4 and research Lv4 Woodcraft. After Lv4 Woodcraft is done research Lv1~3 Weapons Calibration!
• Upgrade 1 Garrison from Lv1~4. With Lv1 Weapons Calibration and a Lv4 Garrison you can train LBM’s. (Longbowmen)
• If you have the resources train 50 LBM!  (As soon as your LBMs are done you will be doing multiple things at a time!)
• Now as for buildings you are going to work only on leveling up your resources, Lv6 Fortress, and Lv5 Science Center. While I'm online I work on my resources upgrading all of them to the same level over and over untill they are all Lv6, while I'm offline for a few hrs I’ll upgrade my Science Center and Fortress since they take so long to upgrade!  
• After your Science Center reaches Lv5 and Fortress reaches Lv6 stop upgrading them for now and only work on resources! (Do this for buildings for now.)
• As for your 50 LBM take them around to some Lv1 wilds and fill you wilderness slots up with Forests and Mountains. Then go and attack the Forests for wood, Mountains for metal, Hills for stone, Lakes and Savannas for food. The resources you build up here will be used for upgrading buildings, but also mainly for building more LBMs. (When you get 100 LBM make 100 Porters.)
• After you have a 5 Star General, 100 LBM’s, and 100 Port’s you are ready to take Lv1 Camps. This is way better then hitting a wild and getting 1k of whatever resource it holds at a time.   (Each lvl of a camp holds 112k food, 15k lumber, 500 metal, and 500 stone.)
• At this point when you can hit camps, you can fill the rest of your city with Lv1 Garrisons. You will see a drastic drop in the amount of time it takes to train troops. After you get 100 more of each troop then upgrade your Muster Point to Lv2 so you can attack 2 - Lv1 camps at a time. This will shorten how long it takes to build up resources. Keep at doing this step over and over till you have Lv5 Muster Point, 500 LBM,  and 500 Porters. When you get up to a Lv5 Muster Point you’re going to need another General, so upgrade your Officer's Quarters to Lv2 and appoint another General.
• Upgrade your Science Center to Lv5 and research Lv5 woodcraft, after that is done start leveling up Levitation. I would research Levitation to Lv5. (Every level of Levitation cuts 10% off the time it takes to upgrade buildings). At this point you can start researching other things you want to research. I recommend mercantelism to be able to use trade (especially to buy cheap stone and sell food which you should have plenty from A.camps), other researchs in the order that is flexible depending on yoour time online. Leave dragonry at 0 until you have enough LBMs and can shift your training to dragons. (see bellow)
• Upgrade your Factory to Lv3 then upgrade your Lv4 Garrison from Lv4 to Lv6. When you have a Lv6 Garrison, Lv3 Factory, and Lv3 Levitation, you can make ATs (Armored Transports). They work the same as Porters but are faster and carry 5,000 units each. 25 Porters carry as much stuff as 1 AT.
• Train 25 AT's for a quest and then you will no longer need Porters since you have ATs. Now when you attack a Lv1 camp with 100 LBM and 25 AT's, you will get all the resources that camp has.
• Your next task is to keep training ATs and LBMs and slowly start leveling your Dragon keep. You can take a Lv2 camp with 500 LBM and 50 ATs, and a Lv3 camp with 1,000 LBM and 75 ATs. Upgrade your wilderness as you are able to. (see http://dragonsofatlantis.wikia.com/wiki/Wilderness for troops numbers, make sure to support your LBM with AT when going to 5+ wilds as a meatshield). 
• After you have roughly 5k LBM and at least 200 AT and lvl 5 medicine, mettalurgy and weapon calibration (if your researchs are more 4 than 5, use min 6k lbms), find lvl 5 Anthropus camp closes to you and hit it over and over again. This time you are not after resources but after Great dragon armor who should be near or at lvl 8. When you get all 4 pieces of armor and have lvl 8 dragon, start research aerial combat to lvl 1~2.
• At circa 10k LBMS and 1k AT start making ssd (up to 10k) then continue making ssd and bd roughly 2:1 or 3:1. (Don't forget to steadily raise your number of AT, they are very important to be able to carry your resources!) SSD will be your farming troops and BD your combat troops. Never mix up dragons with GD or other ground troops (ranged are the worst combination). For SSD you will need Dragonry lvl 2, Garrison lvl 5, RD 1 and Rookery 1. For BD you will need Dragonry lvl 3, Garrison lvl 7 and  Metalsmith/RD/Rookery at lvl 5. Higher level Rookery will allow you to research higher Dragonry which strenghten your SSD and BD, while Rookery makes your draogn training faster. (this apply only in capitol, so if you want to make different troops types in each location, train your dragons in capitol for speed bonus from Rookery)
• When you have Great Dragon able to fly you can start farming for your eggs to be able to create outposts. Pick appropriate wild closes to you and hit it with GD+LBM+AT again and again until you get egg. For water outpost you want lvl 5+ Lake (I recommend lvl 7-8, 5k+ LBMs and at least 200 AT), for stone op lvl 7+ Hill, fire op lvl 7+ Mountain, wind op lvl 7+ Savanna.
• As soon as you get egg, acquire lvl 9 Plain (you need cca 7k LBM, to be safe support with GD and 200+AT) and build outpost. I recommend capturing Plain far away from your city, so your enemy don't discover it easily. Remember to fill all your new wild slots, then start hitting next wild type for next egg, while you build your new outpost.
• In outposts do not build any Field buildings (they use your idle population wihch you need for training), do not build more Silos, build only 4-5 Houses (4 if you will keep 5 homes in capitol, 5 if you plan on destroying capitol homes wiht mass nulifiers) and fill rest with Training centers lvl 1. After you have all slots full, upgrade houses to at least lvl 5 and one TC to high level to be able to start train troops there. Lvl 4 for LBM, lvl 5 for SSD, lvl 6 for AT, lvl 7 for BD etc.

**Now you should have strong production going in your capitol and in 1-2 outposts. **

When your protection is endsing, focus on leveling your Clairoviance to lvl 6 for better spy results, your Sentinel to lvl 9 for most info about attacks on you and Storage Vault to max level to protect up to 2 mil of each resource from plundering.