Ok my advice.

[Searro]

Ok so, the most important thing is : Money !

What I mean is that i played several games and actually i never ran low on food and/or mana, but money, you need it to hire units and to upgrade them.
So mainly you just use the spacial tiles you get near your city and in every city you get, you build markets etc.. to bank or whatever. Late units cost 700g each or upgrade for 500-600... plus if you have unlocked lots of upgrades it costs a fortune.

So in my last game on large map, i was at the end making about 700g per turn.This way nothing can stop you.
You cant really lose when you have the money to produce 1 top tier unit per turn.(2 turns with the upgrades :happy

That's my main advice.

Another thing, if you create your avatar, my other advice, screw spells they are too easy to research, i usually get the +10% gold, +10% food and 100g/100mana. Easy build.

Bye.

 

[UmbralAngel]

I found myself in the negatives for food several times but generally I specialized my cities so that maybe 15% are on food production, 30% on mana production, and the rest on gold. Gold is more useful in the early game, mana more useful in the late game.

If you keep your units alive and don't spread yourself too thin you don't really need to produce that many units.

I think that +20% gold is probably the best pick, but personally I think +20% mana is better than +20% food. Also, where did you get +10% from?

Starting with 100 mana is pretty worthless in my opinion, I think starting the game with lesser heal or lesser shadowbolt is more useful. The extra spell support will help you capture neutral cities faster, which will pay off in the long run.

 

[unmerged(486128)]

If you want to capture neutral cities, I find summoned imps help a lot more than shadowbolt.

There's +20% gold and a flat +10 gold, which is probably the confusion. Percent is definitely the way to go in a long game.

Also, if you're starting as Undead it makes food less important in the early game.

 

[Searro]

Ok my bad +20% not +10% .

And well i dont build that much troops either (it takes too long to move them anyway) just that it may be my style of play but i never run short on mana I usually put all the damage buffs on my main uints, ice - fire - nature - vampiric stuff + movement buff and the rest is for when i decide to blast group of enemies around AI capitals aka skelly spam... and sometimes invoking elementals, maily fire ones, cause they are cool !)

Another advice, not relative, if you are facing an undead AI in front of you, with many vampires, try to build towers, they usually like to blast them instead of your troops )

(Ohh and for the 100mana, it's just that with this build i get 1 last point to use and i think 100 mana at start > to a starting spell in your book)

 

[Stratga]

(Ohh and for the 100mana, it's just that with this build i get 1 last point to use and i think 100 mana at start > to a starting spell in your book)

+100 mana is 2 points. Your build is the one I use also. I've also played with the two DLC character and it is good to capture early game, but they become weaker then elite troop in longer game, so I think the +20% mana and gold are better in longer game.

 

[Deggial]

What does negative food, by the way? I couldn't find anything about this in the manual. Is there any harm? Is negative food simply bought with money (same with surplus food is selled for money) and could it be "replaced" by money buildings for this reason? (This wil depend on the "exchange course" food <-> money)

Well, and yes: Do additional food buildings enhance city growth or not? I must have missed this in the manual, too. (Or they did miss to mention it... I do find both manuals a little bit lagging, in this respect.)

 

[Traks]

What does negative food, by the way? I couldn't find anything about this in the manual. Is there any harm? Is negative food simply bought with money (same with surplus food is selled for money) and could it be "replaced" by money buildings for this reason? (This wil depend on the "exchange course" food <-> money)

Well, and yes: Do additional food buildings enhance city growth or not? I must have missed this in the manual, too. (Or they did miss to mention it... I do find both manuals a little bit lagging, in this respect.)

Negative overall food impacts your city growth pretty badly. Check for yourself.

 

[unmerged(281782)]

What does negative food, by the way? I couldn't find anything about this in the manual. Is there any harm? Is negative food simply bought with money (same with surplus food is selled for money) and could it be "replaced" by money buildings for this reason? (This wil depend on the "exchange course" food <-> money)

Well, and yes: Do additional food buildings enhance city growth or not? I must have missed this in the manual, too. (Or they did miss to mention it... I do find both manuals a little bit lagging, in this respect.)

From what I've seen, every city gets penalty to growth equal to food deficit*20, and no bonus to growth for overflow.

 

[unmerged(169594)]

From what I've seen, every city gets penalty to growth equal to food deficit*20, and no bonus to growth for overflow.

When does the bonus for overflow kick in?

Also, do units that need food for upkeep disband when there is negative food?

 

[Astasia]

Actually if playing as monsters I wouldn't suggest any gold buildings, other than the ones required to unlock units (or if you have a gold mine). Every 2 points of surplus food converts into 1 gold, and most monsters towns can easily produce way more than twice as much food than gold.

I'd also say the best starting warlock perk combo is +20% cast time and a religion boost. Which lets you start researching some of the best spells in the game right as you start, and allows you to cast many of them in one turn instead of two.

If you go -1 food your city growth slows considerably, units do not disband though.

 

[unmerged(485924)]

If you do a mouseover and look at the breakdowns you will see that the economy will automatically convert resources if you are below your upkeep requirement; I have never gone to all resources at 0 together with negative income (so that it can't convert) but if units can disband for lack of upkeep that would be the way to force it.

 

[unmerged(486128)]

For the record, Undead cities don't experience starvation like Human and Monster cities. If you only concern yourself with Undead cities/buildings/units you can completely ignore food production. Even though there are undead units which consume food, having negative food doesn't appear to impact you at all.

 

[Sifer2]

I definitely get the feeling food is the underpowered resource of the three. Gold very important for buying units/upgrades. Mana important for maintaining summons/enchantments an general spellcasting. Food is just kind of a growth limiter not much else. It's also pretty easy to keep it in the positive once you get the harvest blessing.

That makes the perks not that balanced. 20% gold is way better than 20% food. 20% mana is actually pretty good I think since there are not as many mana producing buildings to spam. For spells its no contest that the favor of the gods one's are way better than the stuff you can easily research. Research is also too fast in general. It's about right in the early game but late game it should require a lot more research to be getting those spells as fast as we do now.

 

[Astasia]

I definitely get the feeling food is the underpowered resource of the three. Gold very important for buying units/upgrades. Mana important for maintaining summons/enchantments an general spellcasting. Food is just kind of a growth limiter not much else. It's also pretty easy to keep it in the positive once you get the harvest blessing.

That makes the perks not that balanced. 20% gold is way better than 20% food. 20% mana is actually pretty good I think since there are not as many mana producing buildings to spam. For spells its no contest that the favor of the gods one's are way better than the stuff you can easily research. Research is also too fast in general. It's about right in the early game but late game it should require a lot more research to be getting those spells as fast as we do now.

Food converts to gold though and there are many ways to significantly boost it. Like I said before it's totally feasible if not completely better in every way to go for an all food strategy while playing monsters and end up with more gold than if you tried something else. If you look at their buildings I would even suggest it's intended to work that way. Humans -> Gold. Monsters -> Food. Undead -> Mana.

It's also possible a food strategy would work with humans if you rely on the multiple large +% food generation spells. One farm could easily add almost 10 gold per turn.

 

[Featauril]

I have to agree with OP.

Once you start earning 50-100 Mana a turn, by having 2-3 undead towns mana farming, you cannot possibly spend your mana as fast as you earn it. Agile Mind helps, but you have to have happened upon it in the first place. You have a huge bottleneck.

Gold, on the other hand... being able to pump out all-upgraded end-game units is like clicking on the "I win" button. So to min/max, gold production and channeling speed are the two best trait end-game.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Starting with 100 mana is pretty worthless in my opinion, I think starting the game with lesser heal or lesser shadowbolt is more useful. The extra spell support will help you capture neutral cities faster, which will pay off in the long run.

Personally, I love 100 mana + Summon Imps combo (5 points total). You can quickly get advantage in early game (3-4 imps), that will pay off in the long run.


P.S.
Don't see a point of getting 100 mana in any other case. Exempt maybe for undead, since they will have very poor mana reserve in the early game, due to population/unit upkeep.

 

[unmerged(241678)]

Food converts to gold though and there are many ways to significantly boost it. Like I said before it's totally feasible if not completely better in every way to go for an all food strategy while playing monsters and end up with more gold than if you tried something else. If you look at their buildings I would even suggest it's intended to work that way. Humans -> Gold. Monsters -> Food. Undead -> Mana.

It's also possible a food strategy would work with humans if you rely on the multiple large +% food generation spells. One farm could easily add almost 10 gold per turn.

For humans its better to get gold directy.
Since they have an additional +100% building (treasure house) they reach a max modifier of 325% (without perk) and even if you get the food modifier up to 370% with Blessed harvesting and Fertility and the 20% perk its not worth becasue of the 2:1 exchange rate.
In addition to that humans have more ways to boost the basic gold income from resources (elven casino, donky tradepost, dragon farm ect.) than they have food options.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

even if you get the food modifier up to 370% with Blessed harvesting and Fertility and the 20% perk

Possible minor correction, but isn't it 355% because of 50% (granary) + 75% (mill) + 100% (great granary) + 60% (blessing from Helio) + 50% (fertility) + 20% (perk)?

 

[unmerged(486128)]

Humans -> Gold. Monsters -> Food. Undead -> Mana.

Absolutely true. The only thing is, Humans still use Food and Mana. Monsters still use Gold and Mana. But Undead only need Gold and Mana which gives them a big advantage.

 

[Necro-]

i disagree a lot of undead units still use food, especialy higher tier ones, zombies, vampires, dragons.