SoYouWantToGrow [SYWTG]
| Founded By: | Thirion (Abandoned) | Founded On: | 04NOV23 09:11 |
Important notes:
The following topics are my opinions/views/experiences. Illyriad is a sandbox game were a lot of different ways work - you should chose what you like and how you enjoy the game!
The "advanced" topics are not meant as an easy to read guide but instead are a lot of condensed information and math. They are meant for players that already have some basic insight into the topics.
Content
Note: Clicking on a link gives you an error. There is nothing i can do about it - its a bug in Illy. The links should work though.
- Changelog
- Population requirement table
- Basic: Introduction to Illyriad
- Basic: Illyriad and ways to play it
- Basic: Mechanics and common practices explained in Illyriad
- Basic: Military units and unit ranking for the races
- Advanced: City push setups
- Advanced: (Non-PVP) 7-food Sovereignty Setups
- Advanced: 5/6/7-food military cities
- Advanced: Elite Armor Equipment
- Advanced: Ranking points
- Pictures from the max cities push
- "Fun fact": Resources for max pop city
Changelog
18.01.2023: Added Basic: Introduction to Illyriad
06.09.2022: Added a comparison between the Sov setups Comparison (work in progess!)
06.09.2022: Added High military setup, Higher military setup (experts) and Pure military setup (experts)
06.09.2022: Added Basic: Military units and unit ranking for the races (work in progess!)
Population
Source: kubluntu (Has a lot of other useful information)
| Population | |||
| Town | Total | Avg | Additional |
| 2 | 450 | 450 | |
| 3 | 2,000 | 1,000 | 1,550 |
| 4 | 5,000 | 1,667 | 3,000 |
| 5 | 10,000 | 2,500 | 5,000 |
| 6 | 20,000 | 4,000 | 10,000 |
| 7 | 40,000 | 6,667 | 20,000 |
| 8 | 75,000 | 10,715 | 35,000 |
| 9 | 130,000 | 16,250 | 55,000 |
| 10 | 233,550 | 25,950 | 103,550 |
| 11 | 263,550 | 26,355 | 30,000 |
| 12 | 294,550 | 26,778 | 31,000 |
| 13 | 326,550 | 27,213 | 32,000 |
| 14 | 359,550 | 27,658 | 33,000 |
| 15 | 393,550 | 28,111 | 34,000 |
| 16 | 428,550 | 28,570 | 35,000 |
| 17 | 464,550 | 29,035 | 36,000 |
| 18 | 501,550 | 29,503 | 37,000 |
| 19 | 539,550 | 29,975 | 38,000 |
| 20 | 578,550 | 30,450 | 39,000 |
| 21 | 618,550 | 30,928 | 40,000 |
| 22 | 659,550 | 31,408 | 41,000 |
| 23 | 701,550 | 31,889 | 42,000 |
| 24 | 744,550 | 32,372 | 43,000 |
| 25 | 788,550 | 32,857 | 44,000 |
| 26 | 833,550 | 33,342 | 45,000 |
| 27 | 879,550 | 33,829 | 46,000 |
| 28 | 926,550 | 34,317 | 47,000 |
| 29 | 974,550 | 34,806 | 48,000 |
| 30 | 1,023,550 | 35,295 | 49,000 |
| 31 | 1,073,550 | 35,785 | 50,000 |
| 32 | 1,124,550 | 36,276 | 51,000 |
| 33 | 1,176,550 | 36,767 | 52,000 |
| 34 | 1,229,550 | 37,259 | 53,000 |
| 35 | 1,283,550 | 37,751 | 54,000 |
| 36 | 1,338,550 | 38,244 | 55,000 |
| 37 | 1,394,550 | 38,738 | 56,000 |
| 38 | 1,451,550 | 39,231 | 57,000 |
| 39 | 1,509,550 | 39,725 | 58,000 |
| 40 | 1,568,550 | 40,219 | 59,000 |
| 41 | 1,628,550 | 40,713 | 60,000 |
| 42 | 1,689,550 | 41,208 | 61,000 |
| 43 | 1,747,550 | 41,608 | 58,000 |
| 44 | 1,803,550 | 41,943 | 56,000 |
| 45 | 1,857,550 | 42,217 | 54,000 |
| 46 | 1,909,550 | 42,434 | 52,000 |
| 47 | 1,959,550 | 42,599 | 50,000 |
| 48 | 2,012,550 | 42,820 | 53,000 |
| 49 | 2,068,550 | 43,094 | 56,000 |
| 50 | 2,127,550 | 43,419 | 59,000 |
| 51 | 2,189,550 | 43,791 | 62,000 |
| 52 | 2,254,550 | 44,206 | 65,000 |
| 53 | 2,322,550 | 44,664 | 68,000 |
| 54 | 2,393,550 | 45,161 | 71,000 |
| 55 | 2,467,550 | 45,695 | 74,000 |
| 56 | 2,542,550 | 46,264 | 75,000 |
| 57 | 2,618,550 | 46,760 | 76,000 |
| 58 | 2,695,550 | 47,290 | 77,000 |
| 59 | 2,773,550 | 47,820 | 78,000 |
| 60 | 2,849,000 | 48,288 | 75,450 |
| 61 | 3,000,000 | 50,000 | 151,000 |
Maximum population: 48289 (22 Trade Offices + Warehouse + Common Ground + Paddock + 25 Resource plots)
Basic: Introduction to Illyriad
Welcome to Illyriad!
Illyriad is a slow, deep and complex sandbox game that is meant to be played forever. Some players here play for over a decade. You can play it both with little and much time investment. You can play more when you have time and less when you are busy. Planning ahead helps in Illyriad - but you can revert anything you want later on (for a sometimes high cost though). You do not need to know everything to start playing the game and enjoy it.
In general Illyriad is a rather peaceful game. There are war-alliances (and thus players) that engage in wars with other alliances - but the majority is not. In addition new and small players rarely get attacked (usually it is just another new player trying out things). There are a lot of things to do here in Illyriad. You can build up your cities, hunt NPCs, gather rare minerals and herbs, fight with other players in Tournaments, try to solve some of Illyriad mysteries, chat in gobal/alliance chat with other players and so on. It is a sandbox game - so play how you enjoy it!
In the forums you can find some new player guides: Strategies, Tips & Tricks and most basic Illyriad mechanics explained: Help
This profile is meant as a knowledge base after those guides. It explains some basic and advanced mechanics and best practices.
Have fun in Illyriad! In case there are any questions ask in General Chat, Alliance Chat or send me a message. Feedback and Improvements to this profile are of course welcome too!
Basic: Illyriad and ways to play it
Illyriad is not a classic Building, Trading and PVP game but instead a sandbox game. There are a lot of different ways to play Illyriad and most players participate in multiple ways.
- Building
- PVP
- Tournaments
- Faction/Role play
- Chatting
- Hunting and Gathering
- Crafting
- Trading
- Quests
- Diplomacy and Thieving
- Ranking
- ...
There are basic guides/introductions to the different elements of the game in the forums. In case you want to know how something works - you should look here first: Help forum
The following parts contain a basic introduction to the different ways. In addition it lists guides and resources that help you get more knowledge in that area.
Note: You do not need to understand all areas to play Illy! In case you are interested in something it should help you get a basic understanding and more information though.
Building
The core of the game and required for all players to do (to some extend). The first few cities are easy. Getting to 10 cities is one of the hardest parts in building in Illyriad - after that it gets a lot easier. In general the more cities you get the easier it is to grow (as you can produce a lot more resources and gold to buy Prestige). In the middle (30+ cities) it gets more difficult because you run out of building spots and have to replace some useful buildings like markets and barracks with higher population buildings. Towards the end (50+ cities) it gets quite hard again - as all cities have to run negative resources and you have to feed them daily.
At the moment there are 2 accounts with 60 (max) cities (Quentin the Miffed and this one) and less than 10 players that have more than 40 cities.
Guides/Resources: Look in the forums for beginners - below i have some advanced topics for later on.
PVP
With PVP i mean players/alliances directly attacking cities of other players/alliances. Illyriad also has tournaments were alliances attack and defend squares against other alliances. In contrast to PVP you are not going to lose more than your armies there though.
Note: In my opinion PVP in Illyriad is quite slow compared to other more PVP oriented games and the defender has a huge advantage - thus it is hard to capture cities of active players.
A few military alliances:
Guides/Details: http://illywarmonger.blogspot.com/ with e.g. (One Chart to Rule Them All and Military City Builds: 5/6/7 Food)
Tournaments
Tournaments are similar to PVP as you are fighting against other players/alliances - but in contrast to PVP you are not going to lose your city or anything you do not want. There are 4 seasonal "king of the hill" style tournaments were you have to fight for occupation time on squares in each region of Illyriad and the alliances with the most overall time win the tournament.
Winning a tournament square is usually a lot about how many (small) attacks you send - thus small and new players can participate too!
In addition to the seasonal tournaments it is possible to do player-run tournaments as the developers added some support for it via APIs. Some alliances (e.g. ITG) do internal hunting tournaments.
Guides/Details: Tournament overview and Seasonal tournaments announcement
Faction AI (coming soon)
Currently there are a lot of factions (NPCs) in the game that live in areas all over Illyriad. At the moment it is not possible to interact with them. After a lot of years this is going to change. By interacting with them you can change what they do - if they like you they might trade with you and help you. If they hate you they might attack you.
Guides/Details: overview/introduction and more details
Faction play
Faction play is player run content for other players. There are some factions (e.g. Elves and Orcs) that are (role)played by players and behave a bit like NPCs according to set rules. You can engage with them and improve/decrease your alliances ranking with them. They are organizing tournaments for other alliances and also do some lightweight internal PVP (again with a set of rules). In addition there is a lot of roleplaying going on (the Orcs really hate the elf king!). They are an amazing community.
Guides/Details: overview/introduction or at Jejune's profile
Chatting
Illyriad has a great community and there are quite a few players that play it mostly for that. General chat (GC) and alliance chat (AC) are a good way to start there.
There are a lot of people that are glad to help - if you need resources or have questions please do not hesitate to ask there!
Guides/Details: Kubluntu profile for e.g. chat codes
Hunting and Gathering
Killing NPCs and gathering their anatomies is called hunting. In addition you can gather rare minerals and herbs all over Illyriad. Minerals stay at a location no matter what you do - herbs vanish and move if you over-harvest them. Anatomies, minerals and herbs are used in crafting items that can be equiped by commanders and troops.
Most types of NPCs (and thus their anatomies) can only be found in specific regions and biomes and some are more rare than others. Thus for hunters it helps to have cities all over Illy to be able to hunt different kinds of animals.
Guides/Details: Bolism hunting guide, Sene hunting guide and Illystuff (locations of NPCs and crafting)
Crafting
There is a huge amount of special items that can be created and equiped with the commanders and troops (see Illystuff for details). They require some more or less common herbs/anatomies/minerals as incredients. Crafters are often also hunters/gatherers or buy them at Centrum.
The items are created by building the corresponding crafting building. Some of the newer and more expensive items require magic incredients - you can create them by casting a spell in your mage tower.
The items have a lot of different uses. Some are cheap and can be used in mass for PVP/tournaments. Some are more expensive and powerful and are usually only used when hunting.
Guides/Details: Illystuff
Trading
Trading is a big and important part in Illyriad. It is always a good idea to produce advanced resources (beer, cows, saddle, chainmail, swords) and sell them on the market if you do not need them. There are 3 different ways to trade:
- You can make an offer in your local town that others can accept. For example you can buy basic resources this way
- You can accept buy and sell orders on the market with the vans of your city. You accept them and the vans transport the goods to and from the hub.
- You can send traders to a hub and then make buy/sell offers there. Hubs have infinite space and you can complete orders instantly - which makes it an amazing trade tool later on. In case you need the items you can send vans to the hub and even make the hub the "home" of the vans (if you want).
For each trade you have to pay a small percentage of taxes. Thus trading outside of a hub (usually by sending the stuff directly to cities) is a common practice for bigger trades.
Big traders usually have a buy/sell offer for an item at the hubs and "flip" the item, i.e. sell the item for more than they bought it.
Guides/Details: Basic Trading for dummies and Advanced trade guides
Quests
You can do quests in your city. Those unlock a few discoveries but other than that they only give ranking points. This part is about quests on the world map that can unlock new discoveries and craft recipes.
There are a lot of unsolved quests in Illyriad that can (according to the devs) be solved. In most of them we know some steps towards solving them but are still missing a few things.
Example on the map: Audrey/Heart of Corruption
Some of those quests have really powerful rewards (e.g. Elven Spirit Bow or Demonheart mounts) - thus solving them would be a big deal.
Guides/Details: Demonheart Mounts and Heart of Corruption and Elven Spirit Bow
Diplomacy and Thieving
Note: Attacking another active player with diplimatic units like spies, scouts and thieves is seen as an attack and may have consequences (up to losing a city).
Diplomatic units allow a variety of actions. Scouts report the units on a square/city. Spies report the buildings in a city. Thieves allow you to steal (random) resources from a city. Saboteurs increase the build and research time of a city. Assassins kill commanders in cities that are in an active army.
Diplomatic combat works different than military units. First, defending units never die. Second, the diplo attacks have a percentage chance to fail - the higher the diplomatic defense the higher the chance to fail.
A good way to defend against diplo attacks is by using magic - you can set up a rune that kills incoming diplomats. That makes it quite expensive to attack you.
Outside of PVP people usually do not mass diplomatic units - as a few scouts are usually enough for e.g. hunting. Thieves are an exception - as you can "farm" inactive players with thieves for resources. It is quite a lot of work and thieves are expensive - thus not too many players do it.
Guides/Resources: Diplomatic units (overview for races and what to build) and Diplomatic units II (how to use them)
Ranking
You get ranking points by playing the game. Later on when you are bigger and are interested in getting to the ranking top, you can "play" the ranking to some extend, i.e. get the ranking points more efficient and faster than just playing the game. Ranking in the top has no effect on the game outside of the "prestige" but some people like to compete there.
Guides/Resources: You can find some advanced information on this profile (work in progress)
Basic: Military units and unit ranking for the races
First a overview what units in general are good/bad at at
- Spear:Bad at offense. Good at defense against cav and weak against bows
- Infantry:Good attack on all terrain. Decent defense
- Bow:Decent attack on all terrain, good defense against everything but cav
- Cav:Fastest unit, amazing in attack at plains, good at forest/hills, bad on mountains/buildings. Bad at defense
Overall the following rules are a good start:
- Attacking with spears is bad. Defending with cav is bad.
- Defending plains is really expensive. Attacking plains with Cav is good.
- Cav counters bows. Bow counter spear. Spear counter Cav. Inf is good in attack against everything.
The power of the units of each race are slightly different. The difference is not huge (usually ~10%) - but it is usually a good idea to keep it in mind. Different units have different purposes - thus in a lot of cases it makes sense to go for a variety of units. I would go at least for a offensive and defensive unit (with the exception of elves - as Sentinels are a good "Jack of all trades"
| Population | ||||
| Race | Spear | Inf | Bow | Cav |
| Humans | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| Dwarves | 2 | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| Elves | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| Orcs | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
Note:: The first place is usually clear - the places after that are quite close and often depend on the situation and tier.
As a conclusion humans usually go mostly for Cav, Dwarves for inf, Elves for Cav and Bow, Orcs for Spear and Inf. It is okay to build elven spear/inf - the most important part is to use them well.
More details: One Chart to Rule Them All
Advanced: City push setups
City push setups are layouts for your cities while you are trying to get more cities. In Illyriad you only have to meet a population requirement to capture/settle new cities. This means that as soon as you have the amount of cities you want you can rebuild and not care that much about population anymore. Because of that it is often a good idea to get rid of some useful buildings with low population for some time and rebuild them after you are finished. It might sound like a lot of work but it makes getting more cities a lot easier! The following chapers show some different city setups to get more cities and what you have to sacrifice for them.
Some advice
- To grow fast you need a lot of Prestige. Selling terraforms, advanced resources and minerals/herbs/hides gets you gold to buy Prestige.
- Having an army makes building a lot harder. If you want to hunt, hunt with elites
- If you want to grow fast focus on population for buildings and not their use. You can rebuild later.
- Getting a lot of cities requires a lot of endurance and work. Illyriad is a grind game. The more cities you have the easier it gets though (up until 40 cities)
- A cluster and beeing near a hub helps a lot while pushing cities
- Building up the resource plots costs a lot of resources and gives almost no population. If you have a way to get a lot of resources (e.g by buying them, GC Prestige builds or from your alliance) build the population buildings first. It is a lot more efficient!
Basics
- Basic resource increase buildings (Carpentry, Kiln, Stonemason) are expensive but required later on (30+ cities).
- Use Herbalist/Skinner/Miner guilds to fill up empty building spaces. They are cheap.
- Demolish low population buildings (Barracks, Marketplace, Brewery) if needed. It is really expensive to keep them later on (30+ cities)!
- The best building for population is the Trade Office. It has a high resource upkeep, thus build as few and as late as possible. Other good buildings with high resource upkeep are Infantry Quarters and Spearmen billet.
- 7-food. 3-wood sucks for pushing cities. A lot of advanced resources require wood, thus try to avoid 3-wood as much as possible. 3-stone is bad for pushing cities but you can work around that. The by far best distribution is 3-iron. Keep in mind though that later on you do not want only 3-iron, thus mixing it (3-iron, 3-clay some 3-stone) is in my opinion best.
- Food sov is by far the best. Trying to "fix" a 3-plot with sov is really inefficient (as sov is a multiplier for the base production)
Good 1497 pop buildings
The setups below only specify the buildings with a resource upkeep - as that is the bottleneck. Buildings with 1497 and no upkeep are used as "filler" buildings to increase your population. The choice is completely yours - there are differences in those buildings though:
- Cannot be replaced: Common ground, Paddock
- Expensive but fast build time and useful later on: Consulate
- Cheap and useful later on: Blacksmith, Saddlemaker (, Spearmaker, Fletcher, Tannery)
- Expensive but useful later on: Carpentry, Kiln, Stonemason (, Mage Tower, Foundry)
- Cheap filler buildings: Herbalist/Skinner/Miner guilds (can be built multiple times)
Food
Food calculcations are not included in the above templates - as that would make them more complicated with little benefit. Food is only a problem later on (40+ cities) and in the end wood (50+ cities) is the main problem. Some tipps:
- Run one Geomancer city for your cluster. The city casts Natures Bounty on all other cities in your cluster (100 square range) and is boosted by multiple Geomancer Retreats. You can get a 23.2% (or more) food boost this way.
- The Geomancer city can run (high) negative mana - with mana crystals you can transfer mana from one city to others (similar to books for research). This means you only have to run one Geomancer city for 100+ cities.
- To run a lot of food sov the "Overflowing Insight" Totem is really important! It allows you to run a lot more sov than usual - thus it is by far the best totem there is.
- With the totem and low taxes (and you are going to run low taxes on your push setups) you can run lvl 5 sov in every spot. This gives you a boost of 5%*(4+4+4+8) = 100%.
- Even though the Flourmill gives no population it is important for sustaining food. Thus get rid of it last - and only if you really have to (40+ cities)
- Overall this means you can support a city with up to 40k population
Food multiplier: 25% (Taxes) + 40% (Flourmill) + 22-23.2% (Nature's Bounty) + 100% (Sov)
City setup templates
Important note: The following setups are template that are NOT set in stone. They give you an idea what to do/expect and what to sacrifice to get a specific amount of cities. You can adjust/improve them to what you like.
Be efficient! Try to demolish as little as possible and as much as needed. Start with your current city setup and fix/improve buildings to get closer to one of the templates. Usually replacing low-population buildings is a really good step towards a lot more population!
Some possible (minor) improvements/changes:
- Having a good wood sov(s) next to your city might enable you to build an additional Trade Offices
- Running slightly negative resources (-1/2k) might allow you to build additional buildings. Be careful with that though.
- Keeping a low-pop building (e.g. barracks) and building more Trade Offices is a valid approach. Not recommended though - as you have to feed your cities!
Basic city setup (20 max cities)
This template does not use any buildings with resource upkeep and has the important non-population buildings.
If you plan to go for more than 20 cities soon do not start with this setup but work towards one of the next two instead.
City population: ~30k
- Non-Pop: Warehouse, Flourmill, Library, Marketplace, Barracks, Brewery
- 1497 Pop: 19 (you are completely free here)
City setup with important low-pop buildings (28 max cities)
This setup allows you to keep most of your important low-population buildings and uses buildings with resource upkeep to get more population. It is convenient but kinda inefficient.
City population: ~34.5k
- Non-Pop: Warehouse, Flourmill, Library, Marketplace, Barracks, Brewery
- 1497 Pop: 5 - That includes Paddock, Common Ground, Carpentry, Kiln, Stonemason and 3 free choice
- 2 Infantry Quarters and 2 Spearmen billets
- 7 Trade Offices
Note: Replacing the Brewery with a 1497 building allows you to get to 30 cities.
City setup with cheap but mostly useless buildings (29 max cities)
This setup allows you to push your amount of cities fast - but it limits your gameplay. It is cheap and efficient but you cannot do much else.
Warning:You can use your vans (at half speed) and military units - but you cannot build new ones. And you cannot produce beer. Thus it limits your other gameplay quite a bit.
City population: ~35k
- Non-Pop: Warehouse, Flourmill, Library
- 1497 Pop: 2 - That includes Paddock, Common Ground and 20 free choice (Good 1497 pop buildings for details)
Note: Replacing the library temporarily with a 1497 building allows you to get to 32 cities.
Efficient City-Push setup (38 max cities)
This setup does not run negative resources but has only the really important low-population buildings. It is only useful for getting more cities!
City population: ~39.3k
- Non-Pop: Warehouse, Flourmill, Library
- 1497 Pop: 10 - That includes Paddock, Common Ground, Carpentry, Kiln, Stonemason and 5 free choice
- 2/3 Infantry Quarters and 3/2 Spearmen billets depending on resource plot
- 7 Trade Offices
Note: Replacing the Library temporarily (you need some research stocked up to continue running sov) with a 1497 building allows you to get to 40 cities.
Temporary City-Push setup (45 max cities)
This setup gets rid of both Flourmill and Library. This setup requires another account to feed the cities with food!
You need to have a few million research points stored up to continue running sov and you need to feed more food. Getting rid of the Flourmill "costs" you 5k food/h, keeping it means you have to build 3 addition TOs for > 8k wood/h consumption (and stone+clay too).
City population: ~42.3k
- Non-Pop: Warehouse
- 1497 Pop: 12 - That includes Paddock, Common Ground, Carpentry, Kiln, Stonemason and 7 free choice
- 2/3 Infantry Quarters and 3/2 Spearmen billets depending on resource plot
- 7 Trade Offices
Note: After this setup it gets really hard. You cannot replace any low-population buildings, thus you need to replace 1497 population buildings with TOs. You get "only" 500 population for a huge additional resource upkeep.
Making your own template
This topic is how you make your own template. It helps a lot to use a spreadsheet first to calculate all the values/data - you should do that!
The basic idea is to get as much population as possible without running negative resources (other than food). For higher pushes you have to run negative resources. This is a lot more work and harder to do - thus you should try to avoid it as long as possible.
The general approach:
- Decide what non-population buildings (marketplace, barracks, brewery) you really need. Every building costs you a lot of population, thus try to have as little as possible. Without marketplace you can still use your vans - they are just a lot slower. Without barracks you keep your military units but you cannot build new ones.
- Reduce your taxes to 0-10%. Use as many Trade Offices as your wood production allows
- Use as many Infantry Quarters and Spearmen billets as your clay and stone production allows.
- Use Carpentry, Kiln and Stonemason, as this allows you to run more of the above buildings
- Everything else should be buildings with 1500 or 1497 population. Build the useful ones first (e.g. Saddlemaker, ...) and fill up with ones only for population (miners/herbalists/skinners guild)
Advanced: (Non-PVP) 7-food Sovereignty Setups
Most sov setups you can find are focused on PVP, thus getting as much military sov as possible. These cities usually run low taxes and thus consume a lot of gold. Those players usually have a way to generate a lot of gold by e.g. "hiding" a gold farm in another non-PVP alliance.
For tournament players/traders/crafters/hunters a different approach is in my opinion better. Use a sov setup that can both run high taxes to generade gold and produce military at a decent rate. The advantage is that those cities require less work and you are more flexible - you have more medium-sized armies instead of a few huge ones.
This chapter contains some sov setups that are able to run high taxes with no/medium troop production.
Basics
The limiting factor of the following templates is research. More research means you can run more sov with high taxes and thus better food boost -> more population -> more gold income via taxes. Thus it is a good idea to save up some research whenever possible.
In the following setups there are links to the "Illyriad City Planner" to show the math behind the setups. You can copy the template sheet and play around with it.
Illyriad City Planner - Forum thread
Sov Setups
Gold farm setup
The goal of this setup is to produce as much gold with taxes as possible without going negative in research. We are going to run 100% taxes.
City population: ~20.3k (Food multiplier: -75% + 40% + 23.2% + 56%)
- Inner I : food sov lvl 5
- Inner II : food sov lvl 5
- Outer I : food sov lvl 4
Gold income: ~73k/h
Illyriad City Planner - Gold farm setup
Note: Running "Outer II" sov instead of some lvls of "Outer I" sov works too - it is a bit less efficient though. The upside is that it is easier to change to the following setups and you claim more land for you.
Advanced note: It is possible to run negative research and food with higher population to generate more gold. It is efficient but requires a lot of work and is quite risky (you forget to send food -> buildings get leveled down). Thus i do not run it and think it is not worth it (make gold with cotters/hunting instead) - but the option exists if you want to.
Basic military setup
The goal of the following setup is to run decent military sov while beeing able to run 2 cost reduction buildings and no negative resources. You should run high taxes and can support a medium sized army with that. It is enough to rebuild your army to a decent size between tournaments while not having a gold burn.
Important note: The following setups only works if the main and secondary resource upkeep cost of your cost rection building is NOT your 3 plot!
Option 1: Troop production version
City population: ~21k (Food multiplier: -55% + 40% + 23.2% + 40%)
- Inner I : food sov lvl 5
- Inner II : food sov lvl 5
- Outer I : military sov lvl 2/3
- Outer II : military sov lvl 2
Gold income: ~55k/h with 75-80% taxes
Troop production increase: 120-140% with 2 cost reduction buildings
I run this setup most of the time.
Illyriad City Planner - Military setup (troop production)
Option 2: Troop sustain version
City population: ~21k (Food multiplier: -55% + 40% + 23.2% + 48%)
- Inner I : food sov lvl 5
- Inner II : food sov lvl 5
- Outer I : food sov lvl 2/3
- Outer II : military sov lvl 2
Gold income: ~64k/h with 90% taxes
Troop production increase: 80% with 2 cost reduction buildings
I change to this setup when a city is starting to run negative gold. You can build a few levels of a third military cost reduction building to reduce troop cost a bit.
Illyriad City Planner - Military setup (troop sustain)
Option 3: Temporary max troop sustain version with negative research
Important note: This setup runs negative research and is not sustainable for a long time!
City population: ~21k (Food multiplier: -55% + 40% + 23.2% + 64%)
- Inner I : food sov lvl 5
- Inner II : food sov lvl 5
- Outer I : food sov lvl 2/3
- Outer II : food sov lvl 2
Gold income: Up to ~75k/h with 100% taxes - it is not sustainable in the long run though! (and thus not better than the gold farm setup)
Troop production increase: none
This setup can run a third cost reduction building. It is a bit of work to get too thus i try to avoid it as much as possible and instead accept some gold burn.
Illyriad City Planner - Military setup (max troop sustain)
High military setup
This setup allows you to run higher military Sov compared to the basic military setup (+40%) but produces less gold income (-10k/h). For tournament players having a good gold income and sustain later on is helpful - thus i personally prefer the basic military setup.
City population: ~19k (Food multiplier: -55% + 40% + 23.2% + 20%)
- Inner I : food sov lvl 5
- Inner II : military sov sov lvl 3
- Outer I : military sov lvl 2
- Outer II : military sov lvl 2
Gold income: ~45k/h with 70% taxes
Troop production increase: 180% with 2 cost reduction buildings
Note: Similar to the above setup you can scale down military sov and replace it with food sov for better gold production. It is not as easy/efficient though - as Inner II Sov is only lvl 3 Sov.
Illyriad City Planner - High Military setup
Higher military setup (experts)
Only experienced Illyriad players should use this setup and need to know what they are doing!
The focus of this setup is to run a lot of military. You are not going to make much gold. Thus you either need a gold farm as a second account or sell Prestige to finance it.
City population: ~19k (Food multiplier: -55% + 40% + 23.2% + 0%)
- Inner I : military sov sov lvl 3
- Inner II : military sov sov lvl 3
- Outer I : military sov lvl 2
- Outer II : military sov lvl 2
Gold income: ~30k/h with 50% taxes
Troop production increase: 240% with 2 cost reduction buildings
Illyriad City Planner - Higher Military setup
Pure military setup (experts)
Only experienced Illyriad players should use this setup and need to know what they are doing!
The focus of this setup is to run as much military sov as possible. You are not going to make any gold. Thus you either need a gold farm as a second account or sell Prestige to finance it.
City population: Up to ~26k (Note: You are not running taxes - thus population is not important)
- Inner I : military sov sov lvl 3
- Inner II : military sov sov lvl 3
- Outer I : military sov lvl 3
- Outer II : military sov lvl 3
Gold income: ~0k/h with 0% taxes
Troop production increase: 300% with 2 cost reduction buildings
Illyriad City Planner - Pure Military setup
Comparison
| Name | Mil Sov | Gold (k/h) | Sents per h | Sents per month (k) | Sustaining (d) |
| Gold farm | 0 | 73 | 9.6 | 7.2 | 316.9 |
| Basic (sust) | 80 | 64 | 17.28 | 12.9 | 154.4 |
| Basic (prod) | 140 | 55 | 23.04 | 17.2 | 99.5 |
| High | 180 | 45 | 26.88 | 20 | 69.8 |
| Higher | 240 | 30 | 32.64 | 24.3 | 38.3 |
| Pure | 300 | 0 | 38.4 | 28.6 | 0 |
Advanced: 5/6/7-food military cities
Cities can be settled or moved on different resource distributions. The most common is 5 of everything (5-5-5-5-5) - but other than that there is almost every other distibution available.
Additional information about this topic: Illywarmonger - Military city builds (5/6/7-food)
Introduction
On one hand food is a valuable resource and it defines how much population you can have and thus gold via taxes you can generate. On the other hand the other basic resource plots define how much military sov you can run. There is no best resource distribution for all cases in Illyriad. Depending on what you want do to one distribution is better than others. This section explains the advantages and disadvantages of each setup.
There are 2 important factors for a military city. First the speed you can train units (and thus how much military sov you can run) and second the amount of units you can sustain (and thus how much gold via taxes you can generate).
For the following calculations i make some assumptions:
- 0% taxes
- All necessary buildings are at lvl 20
- All resource production stays positive
- 2 troop cost reduction buildings with a major and a minor upkeep cost
Up- and Downsides of each distribution
We get the following results from some calculations (see Detailed calculations)
- 5/6-food cities can run up to 330% troop sov, while 7-food can only run 305%
- Geomancer or Prestige boosted: 5/6-food cities can run up to 350% troop sov, while 7-food can only run 315%
- Pure production: 5-food cities can run up to 375% troop sov with help of 2 Prestige boosts and 1 geomancer spell.
- 7-food cities can generate ~73k gold/h, 6-food ~61.5k gold/h and 5-food ~50k/h
Additional information - personal experience and some math that is not listed here:
- Running 300+% Sov means you have to supply a lot of addition advanced resources - as the city can produce not as much. This can be done (up to a point) by using smart setups (using different troops that have no/little advanced resource overlap, e.g. Sentinels (Bow+Beer) and Marhsals (Horse, Chainmail, Saddle, Speer))
- With 300+% Sov you are producing a lot of troops and the gold sustain gets expensive fast. You need a plan on not just how to produce fast but also on either how to pay for them or kill them fast. As an example: With just ~200% troop sov i can produce over 60K Sents in just 3 month (in between tournaments)
- Outside some special cases being able to sustain troops is in my opinion more important for most players than having insanely high troop production.
- Easy of use is important. Changing sov is a lot of work - try to avoid it as much as possible (especially with more cities).
This means you should use the setups under the following conditions
5-food (Highest production, lowest tax generation)
- + Good to use when gold is not an issue (gold farm, cotter/hunting/Prestige sales)
- + Good to use on dedicated troop production areas (e.g. spear/inf desert locations with a lot of troop production bonuses)
- - Sustaining your troops long time is harder
6-food (medium production, medium tax generation)
- Middle ground between setups.
- + If you do not want to use Prestige to boost the res plots (expensive) or use your spell then it is always better than the 5-food variant
7-food (Lowest production, highest tax generation)
- + Easiest to get more cities
- + Can sustain the highest amount of troops
- - Lowest production (but still decent compared to the others)
- - Boosting with Prestige and Geomancer spell doesn't change much
Conclusion (personal opinion)
There are a few cases where i would recommend 5/6-food as a distribution (Gold farm as alt, Dedicated sov cities, Generation gold via Cotters/Hunting/Prestige sales) - you should know a bit about Illy though and know what you are doing and getting into.
For all other players and especially new players i would recommend 7-food setups. They allow you to grow faster and are more flexible. The downside of a little bit less production is not really important - most players do not run 300+% military sov anyway. In my experience the bottleneck is usually generating gold for both sustaining the troops and buying advanced resources - not troop production speed.
Detailed calculations
Resource production
Boosting a major resource plot helps making up for the cost reduction building. This can be done by either a geomancer spell or the Prestige boost (gets expensive over time!). Because of that we are going to look at the values without a boost and with a Geomancer or Prestige boost.
A city with 5 resource plots, a resource production increase building (40%) and 0% taxes produces 5 * 2538 * (1.0 + 0.40+0.25) = 20938.5 resources. The upkeep of the major resource for the troop reduction building is 2700 - if you use two you end up with 15538.5 resources. Prestige boosted its 23476.5 or 18076.5 resources.
A city with 4 resource plots, a resource production increase building (40%) and 0% taxes produces 4 * 2538 * (1.0 + 0.40+0.25) = 16750.8 resources. Geomancer or Prestige boosted its 18781.2 resources.
A city with 3 resource plots, a resource production increase building (40%) and 0% taxes produces 3 * 2538 * (1.0 + 0.40+0.25) = 12563.1 resources. Geomancer or Prestige boosted its 14085.9 resources.
This means we get the following resource production:
| Build | Neutral | Major | Maj (boost) | Lowest | Low (boost) |
| 5 food (5-5-5-5) | 20938.5 | 15538.5 | 18076.5 | - | - |
| 6 food (5-5-5-4) | 20938.5 | 15538.5 | 18076.5 | 16750.8 | 18781.2 |
| 7 food (5-5-5-3) | 20938.5 | 15538.5 | 18076.5 | 12563.1 | 14085.9 |
As we can see for 5/6 food cities the major resource of the cost reduction building is the bottleneck while for 7 food cities the 3-plot resource is the bottleneck.
Troop production
Military sov has the following upkeep cost for each resource:
- lvl 1 sov: 150
- lvl 2 sov: 300
- lvl 3 sov: 600
- lvl 4 sov: 1200
You can have 20 sov buildings - 20 * lvl 3 sov costs you 12000 resource upkeep. Each sov level gives you (excluding specific sov bonuses) 5% troop production speed increase.
We end up with the following troop production:
| Build | Sov cost | Sov | Sov cost (boost) | Sov (boost) |
| 5 food (5-5-5-5) | 15600 | 330% | 18000 | 350% |
| 6 food (5-5-5-4) | 15600 | 330% | 18000 | 350% |
| 7 food (5-5-5-3) | 12600 | 305% | 13800 | 315% |
Pure Production: For the 5 food (5-5-5-5) setup there is another option: Prestige boost both major and minor resource cost and use a geomancer boosted spell for the major resource. Then you end up with an overall production of almost 21000 resources and with almost 375% troop sov.
Remark: Higher base production of a resource means additional multipliers (Prestige boost, Geomancer) have a better effect. Thus boosting resources increases the difference between the setups.
Gold production
For all setups we assume the same buildings and sov (as detailed in the secion gold farm setup) with a overall 44.2% (=-75% + 40% + 23.2% + 56%) food multiplier with 100% taxes.
This means we get the following result:
| Build | Population | Pure taxes | Gold production |
| 5 food (5-5-5-5) | 14521 | 58083 | ~50k/h |
| 6 food (5-5-5-4) | 17425 | 69700 | ~61.5k/h |
| 7 food (5-5-5-3) | 20329 | 81317 | ~73k/h |
Advanced: Elite Armor Equipment
Units can use crafted gear of the same type of adv res used to make them
| Race | T1 Spear | T2 Spear | T1 Inf | T2 Inf | T1 Bow | T2 Bow | T1 Cav | T2 Cav |
| Human | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8][@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] |
| Dwarf | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] | [@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] |
| Elves | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8][@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|9] |
| Orcs | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8][@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|8] | [@i=3|9][@i=3|10] |
Advanced: Ranking points
This section explains how the overall ranking works. In addition there is information on how you get ranking points in each category and ways to "play" it, i.e. efficient ways to gain ranking points (not recommended though, as it is wasting resources for "just" ranking points).
Overall ranking
How the ranking points calculation work can be found here: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/25aug11-overall-ranking-and-score_topic2314_page1.html
The important part is the following formula:
It means that each players ranking points are calculated by summing up his contributions in each ranking category and multiplying them with the total score.
The contribution of each ranking category is the players score divided by the leading players score. This has the following effects:
- Each ranking category is equally important and can contribute a maximum of 1 (if you are rank 1 in that category)
- If the rank 1 players in a category gets additional points then his contribution to overall score does not change (it stays 1) but instead the other players are losing some contribution (and thus usually overall points)
Pictures from the max cities push
Max pop city with 100% taxes and no sov
"Fun fact": Resources for max pop city
- Resource spots: On average 566k per resource
- Trade Offices: On average 600k per resource (771k wood, 400k iron/clay, 830k stone) (Note: Might be inaccurate)
- Common ground / Paddock: On average 415k per resource (332k wood/iron/stone and 664k clay)
- Warehouse: On Average 970k per resource (808k wood, 1132k clay and 970k iron/stone)
Overall: 25 Resource spots + 22 TOs + Common/Paddock + Warehouse = 25 * 566k + 22*600k + 2*415k + 970k = 29.150m on average per resource or ~555 van shipments (52.5k res each)