What should you do first if you're new to Lord of Ultima? This guide will hopefully help you through what to do.
"LoU is about building cities, managing resource income and using those resources to expand."-Sandalz
LoU runs best using Mozilla Firefox web browser. You can download it at
http://www.mozilla.com for free if you're not already using it.
Now, there is a lot of stuff going on here. I know when I first started, this was completely overwhelming. I'll try to walk you through everything in a simple way as best I can. If you have trouble understanding anything, don't be afraid to ask myself or anyone else in the Alliance. We're here to help!
First:1. First thing you should do is install Greasemonkey
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/748 on your web browser.
2. Install Lou Tweak
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/80532.
3. Install BoS Tools
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/84343What do these do? Well, they give you links to extremely important and helpful information as well as a quick way to use LoU.
Example. Once they are installed, you can quickly choose one of the 4 buttons that appear next to your chat tabs for quick additions to conversations, links to players, cities, etc. Mess around with the BOS tools button a bit to get to know it's features. I use the Jump to: buttons and Fill with Resources Button daily.
Also, they give you direct access to the City Layout Planner which is VITAL.
City Layout Planner.For every single city you have, you should use the Layout Planner. It will create the quickest and most efficient cities for you so that you can get the maximum amount of resources, Troop Score, etc out of each city.
To get to the City Layout simply click the L that has appeared under your Building Queue and Next to your Construction Speed in the desired city you wish to use, then choose 'Open Flash Planner 2'.
Now, you will have a layout of your current city with all of it's Resource (abbreviated RSS from now on) Nodes and any buildings you currently have. If you started a new city and haven't put any down, it will just be your Town Hall, and all the RSS nodes.
Here's a basic run down of everything that you see.
Top:At the top of the Planning Screen there's a series of buttons.
New-
Gives you a new city planner with everything removed except the Town Hall.Reset-
Undoes every change you've made to the Layout so far.Import/Export-
This is how you will be able to share your city with Alliance members, and how you can export your layout for use in LoU. More on this later.Special-
3 different commands that will affect your layout.Template Overlays-
A series of templates that you can use without having to manually create each building yourself.Show Gridlines-
Will toggle the grid so you can see where each building can be placed.Land and Water-
If it's a land or water cityGuide Continued...Left/Bottom:This is where all your buildings will be when you click on a space in the layout. Each building is assigned a letter for quicker placement anywhere in the layout screen. *Note: These same letters can be used when placing actual buildings in Lord of Ultima so you don't have to keep clicking and scrolling through the list in game.
Producers: This tells you how many production buildings your city has. Woodcutting, Quarry, Farm, etc.Refiners: This tells you how many refining buildings your city has. Sawmill, Stonemason, Foundry, etc.Cottages: This tells you how many Cottages your city has.The buttons below cottages (the look like Tetris pieces) are just different tools you can use to place buildings of the same type more quickly. What you choose is how many buildings you are placing and their order.
Below this is an option for Production or Military. If you choose military, all the pictures are troop types. Below that is their Recruit Time and Food Consumption.
Below this is probably the most important information in the entire planner. This tells you exactly how many RSS per hour you will get with the current layout for each type of RSS.
Next to that number is the amount of storage for each RSS type you have, and next to that is how much of your RSS is protected by Hideouts from Plunder.
Note- All these numbers are for when every building is maxed out at level 10. This is for the final product, not while your city is still being upgraded.
Building: These - and + symbols can be used to decrease and increase that type of RSS. Keep an eye on the number of buildings you have, represented by a number next to a small cottage above Add 100. You cannot have more than 100 buildings in a city. Every time you use the + you risk affecting other RSS types so keep that in mind also if you plan to harvest several RSS types.Optimizatoin Weight: These sliders tell you how weighted each RSS is. Example: If you set the Stone Slider to 3.00, it will produce all Stone. Number values can be manually entered as well, you don't need to slide it if you know what numbers you want to use.Add: This will add a set number of buildings. The default is 100, but you can manually enter any number you wish.Remove: Same as add, except it will remove. Default is 10, but can be changed as well.Lock All Buildings: Locks all buildings and prevents them from being edited or changed in any way.Lock all Resources: Locks all resource nodes and prevents them from being edited or changed in any way.Unlock All: Unlocks all Buildings and RSS Nodes and allows them to be edited.Add Cottage: Adds a single Cottage.Remove Cottage: Removes a single Cottage.Undo/Redo: Undoes or redoes the last action.Reset: Resets the entire Layout.For my Resource Cities, I usually use the Add Button and add somewhere around 95 Buildings. Then I manually add in Storage buildings, Moonglow Tower, and 2-3 Markets/Harbors depending on the city type.
So, now that you know how to use the City Planner, you need to know how to export it to Lord of Ultima for use in game.
Simply click the Import/Export Tab, copy everything listed in the first box (you will have to scroll down, or use the hotkey CTRL+A then CTRL+C to select all and copy.
Then open your LoU tab and using the same button you got to go to the City Planner (The 'L'), then click the Overlay Layout tab. Paste everything into the empty box using the hotkey CTRL+V Once everything is pasted, simply click 'Apply Layout' then click "OK'. You will now see a map on top of your city of where to place what building. To remove a layout, just go back to the Overlay Layout tab and select remove. Deleting the information in the above box does not work, you have to use the Remove Layout button.
What type of city should I make?Before I go any further, there's something you must learn and remember always. DO NOT CASTLE A RESOURCE CITY. EVER. In fact, don't even think about castling for now, we'll cover it later.
If this is your very first city on LoU, it needs to be a Resource City. Using the Layout Planner, I would Add 91 Buildings, then manually add a Barracks, Trinsic Temple (TT), Moonglow Tower (MG), Training Ground (TG), 3 Marketplaces or 3 Harbors (Not both right now), and 2 Warehouses. Make sure to put Warehouses next to a Refinery building for added storage. This layout lets your Build a Baron to make cities in the future once you have the required Resources and Building Levels.
Once you have maxed out all your buildings at level 10, you're ready to start working on recruiting a Baron. To do this, you need to start purifying resources. Simply click the P located next to the L you use for City Layouts, or Click the Trade Button, then go to the Purify Tab, and start purifying resources. Most of the time, you don't want to purify everything you have, especially if you're still building upgrades to your city. The quicker you can get your Moonglow Tower to level 10, the quicker you can start purifying any excess resources you aren't using.
Be sure to check your progress towards being able to recruit a Baron in the Research Tab. Title Advancement is what you're looking for, and if you hover your mouse over it, it will tell you how many more purified resources you need and of what type. If it doesn't show up, it means you have enough for the next TA.
Once you have enough resources for the next Title Advancement, click on it, and scroll down and select research. You can now recruit 1 Baron!
To do so, click the Recruitment Tab, then scroll down to Baron. Click on the 1 and select Recruit.
Once you're ready to make a Baron, you need 50,000 Iron and 100,000 Gold. Then click the Recruitment button, scroll down to Baron, and select Recruit.
Now that you have a Baron recruited, you will be able to create a second city. You will need to do the above process for every city that you want to create, with increasing numbers of resources needed.
When you select the place you want to put your next Baron on the map, you will need to have 100,000 Wood, 100,000 Stone, 25,000 Iron, 25,000 Food and either 250 Carts or 25 Merchant Ships. *That's why I said either 3 Markets or 3 Harbors in your first city, don't mix them.*
When choosing a location for your cities, if it's RSS you want the highest number of nodes that you can find, but close to your first city. Touching is best because carts and trades between them take only 15 minutes. The further you go, the longer it takes. RSS cities can be bordering water or landlocked.
When you have all of those, simply click anywhere you want on the map that's open, type a City Name, and click Settle.
Your first 2-3 cities should be Resource Cities. The following cities can start to focus more on the military aspect of the game, or can be RSS Cities as well, it's up to you.
I would recommend some time within your first 5 cities, making a hub. A hub allows trasport of mass amounts of resources to all your cities, and storage for all your excess resources. An example of a hub would be something similar to this:
http://louopt.com/OKdt When Building a Hub, build iit similar to a military city (covered below). Build 30-40 Cottages while leveling you Town Hall up before making Storage Units. Then build the interior and some markets and Harbors, then demolish Cottages one by one and replace them with a building, level it to ten, then repeat. This way, you can get a majority of the hub done before you drastically lose Construction Speed and have 10 hour build times.
Because I added the Barracks, TT, TG and MG, you can now Purify out of your Hub, and recruit Barons there as well.
Military CitiesIf you choose to make your next cities Military Cities, they need to be made a specific way.
Military Cities need to have a focus. There's 1 important rule you need to have when building a military city. Remember this and live by it. DO NOT RAINBOW CITIES. EVER.
What does this mean? It means you should have one troop type per city. That's it. Example: Do not make Rangers and Berzerkers, or Guardians and Crossbows. Make only Rangers in the whole city, or only Berzerkers. Military depends on Troop Score (TS) to be successful. If you mix and match troop types, it affects the TS you get out of a city and makes it inefficient.
To start bulding a military city, you need to do certain steps. The guide that helped me the most is called Basic LoU Speedbuilding. And I will link to it here.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0KKN9sk9nLuN2FlNTMyNWItMjc5ZC00MTUwLWE1ZWYtOWFlNjNhMTQ3OGMy/edit?pli=1Read the above guide step for step. Changes can be made, but the process is the same.
1. Clear All RSS Nodes from the center of your town.
2. Clear Nodes from 1 of the quadrants of your town where you need to. If you don't have to, don't clear all the nodes from the quadrant.
3. Build 10 level 1 Cottages.
4. Level Town Hall (TH) to 2.
5. Build 10 Level 1 Cottages.
6. Level TH to 3.
7. Build 4 Level 1 Warehouses.
8. Level Warehouses to level 3 or 4.
9. Build 6 Level 1 Cottages.
10. Level TH to 4.
11. Build 10 level 1 Cottages.
12. Level TH to 5.
13. Build 10 level 1 Cottages.
14. Level everything to 3 or 4.
15. Level TH to 6.
16. Build 10 level 1 Cottages.
17. Upgrade TH to 7.
18. Build 3 level 1 Cottages.
19. Level all Cottages to 10.
20. Level all Warehouses to 10.
21. Level the Wall to Level 10.
22. Build 2-3 Lookout Towers to Level 10.
23. Depending on the City type, build the interior and exterior towers. More on which types later.
Now by this time you should have:
TH Level 10
Around 60 Level 10 Cottages
4 Level 10 Warehouses
Wall Level 10
All Towers Level 10. *This can be done later and doesn't have to be done immediately, but they will be built quicker now do to build speed being around 6000%
It should look something like this, but with more RSS Nodes because it would be a major waste of time to clear everything out.
http://louopt.com/jbetThere are several types of Military City Layouts that you can use, and they can be found in the Guides and Tips forum under the All Types of Layouts thread.
If you have a quicker recruitment speed, you lose out on troop numbers, and vice versa.
Now that you've chosen what Troop Type you want, it's time to start building the Production Buildings. They are what affect your Recruitment Speed and should always be boarded on every side by Barracks.
For this example, I'll be using TGs for a Ranger City.
http://louopt.com/tcetBuild all of your Production Buildings, and Build 2 Refineries between the warehouses for increased storage of you RSS that you will need. Also be sure to build a Moonglow Tower so that you can purify RSS out of your Castle/Military City.
In this example, more food (Mill) since it's a military city, and more wood (Sawmill) because Rangers need wood to be recruited. Always use a Mill for food, and the appropriate Refinery for whatever RSS your troop type needs.
Level everything to 10.
This is what it should look like now.
http://louopt.com/sdetCastles and Finishing Your CityNow you're ready to start building Barracks. Start by demolishing 5-8 Cottages at a time and then building Barracks. Level them to level 10 and repeat until you get to around 2000% Build Speed. Make sure that as you are building Barracks, you're also recruiting your troops. When you're TS hits 30K on a safe continent or 50K on a hostile continent, you can then Castle your city if you want to.
NEVER CASTLE ONE OF YOUR FIRST 5 CITIES. Every military city does NOT have to be castled. In fact, you should have 2-4 Defense cities that aren't castled.
Your city should look like this:
http://louopt.com/AfetLevel your Castle to level 10.
When you hit this point, so your Barracks aren't taking forever to build, start only demolishing one Cottage at a time and replacing it with 1 Barracks.
Final Product with a Castle:
http://louopt.com/2fetFinal Product without a Castle:
http://louopt.com/cgetThis particular Layout (Castled) gives 256k TS with a 3 second Recruitment Speed, and they consume 32k food/hr.
Please remember:
DO NOT CASTLE UNTIL YOU ARE READY! This means the city that's being castled has the appropriate TS for the situation (above), and ALSO means 2-4 Defensive cities PER Castle. One of them should be Ballistas to protect against an enemy Siege. Every Offensive Castle should have 2-6 Defense cities with 1-2 of them being Defensive Castles.
