Round start tips

[Madmeater]

Put this here, seeing as it's my first proper round start and wondered if anyone is kind
enough to share some hints and tips for an efficient start.

This may also be useful for people who would like tips but were too afraid to ask!

Obviously I'm not expecting massive secrets to be revealed, but maybe things that
people like me would probably do 'wrong' without realising.

Perhaps just a few tips that will make me slap my forehead and go "Of course!"

EDIT: For those like me, wanting to have a better round start, heres a link I found while searching the wiki deeper:
Misc. Player Tips

But still, feel free to leave some pearls of wisdom!

 

[willymchilybily]

I think martins is the most comprehensive start from the wiki

some tips i was told when i first started:

• Dont buy land until you fill your acres (its wasting funds you could use to buy harvesters, and plants to fill your acres)-this is to say anyone whos on >5 acres at the moment b4 the round starts will have a marginally slower start than some one that bough gardeners/harvs and plants
  
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• like many people state in the wiki page, when using land management dont have 1 of each acre, and dont have grass or flower at round start. bush/tree should be good enough starting acres, as it requires less harvesters/gardeners. tree will give you the quickest start but the lowest return rate. grass the highest return rates, but requires much much more capital investment which will slow your growth which at round start isnt worth it. bush is a nice allrounder or part bush part tree.
  
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• make sure you have enough harvesters by using a user made dedicated calculater (such as bobwo or polo/nobreakspace app.) and fill your acres. once full buy more land.
  
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• lots of people say start stealing early 400-500-800 acres or sooner. Imo, although you can start buying troops and attacking at this stage, you should focus more on buying acres. do not spend all your funds on flak. do not get flak at the cost of buying acres and plants. start sending out one or two attacks. when you find your accumulating some spare flak. Then when you hit 1000-1200 you should be aimng to be sending out 3-4 attackings whilst still buying acres. I say this because all it takes is some one to have massed some crap lethal early and you lose your flak, and have therefore wasted those funds that you could have used to buy land.
  
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• Dont be greedy b4 you have hax0rs, if you see someone with alot of land dont get greedy and hit them, sending all your flak to one guy they could be allied, or have a good amount of blockers or worse already deved a half decent/good flak killer (apprntices/pbs/heavythug/spikes). If thier land was easy to get they wudnt have so much of it. When you do attack your looking for a nice amount of land, but not huge. and sending 4-5 attacks has more chance of succes than 1 big attack.
  
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• make sure you are sending enough flak for the average player in the range your hitting.
  aka if you send out 5 mobs with 200k gardeners and 30k wheelies. and they all get stopped (or 4/5 get stopped) then your not sending enough flak. buy more or send 2-3 mobs with 350-400k flak instead. adjust it as appropriate.
  
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• at 2000 acres stop buying land. some stop sooner. some later. imo by this stage you should be well on your way to having a nice flak army, and maybe even have hacks or geos, or close to getting them.
  
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• hitting 40% or above is the most effective range at round start(do not hit below this imo). as every one is so close in score anyway any one lower than this will just delay the amount of attacks you can send a day, (although note if you dont have enough flak hitting 5people at 30% will probably work out the same as 3people at 40% with or without the cap)
  
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• although its not my preference to attack too early on as i see it as a waste of funds and slowing my growth rate, if you do attack try and use the new public profile option to your advantage and hit people that are unlikely to be on at the time of day your attacking. look at thier occupation are they likely to be at wrk, look at thier country could they be asleep. even send the occasional mail if you like. because near round start people will be able to grow quick and be able to buy enough to stop your attack if they are on. Also they may have just finsihed a tech and have saved enough to buy some decent units.
  
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• when gurus and similar (decent) flak stoppers are out make sure you begin massing more geos/wheelies with your flak, this allows you to cheekily sneak past the sweepers. (be warned though if they have later firing lethal sweepers it can be costly, avoid known allies until you have spies.
  
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• finally when buying land, buy as much as you can (saving some money for plants to fill it) as often as you can, so each tick once you have filled your acres, buy land. even if you can only afford 1-2 acres per tick, it is much better than waiting a few ticks and getting 5 acres in one go.
  
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  Edit: forgot the crowning jewel of the wisdom I have been told
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• cheese, in the thread i couldnt find, said that it takes 10yobs to stop a geo. this is pure gold dust info. as you can relate yobs to other flak stoppers and most commonly early on if you hit a solo the yob will be the sweepers, so If you have hacks you can send enough geos to get past. or if being attacked buy enough yobs to sweep, after your main flack stopper fires

ps. ive been looking for the old thread where this was discussed. it was very comprehensive, but cant remember what it was called. ive trieds start up and variations of that. maybe it was hints and tips or something, hope some one else is better at using search than me, alcibiades can vouch that im a tard with the search button

 

[antisback]

Tbh, since the reduction of land cost i personaly find it most effective to keep buying acres up to 2500 after that it gets expensive

 

[Iamsmart]

O.O

The general rule of thumb is like 1100-1200 I thought...

 

[willymchilybily]

O.O

The general rule of thumb is like 1100-1200 I thought...

depends tbh, what development your saving for. attacking at 1100-1200 fine. but to stop buying alltogether imo is unecessary. and if you are new to the game. VERY UNWISE. as you wont have perfected your stealing technique. I say if its still cost effective then you should keep buying acres.

the main resason people stop is because they are saving, or thats my interpretation of it. TBH no one will agree exactly, as different things work for different people. But if you want to get ahead even that 1 extra acre counts. so if its cost effective its better to keep buying, especially if new-ish to the game, whilst attacking. well thats what works for me anyway.

 

[antisback]

Meh its the way i used to do it also found i had solid starts even if i never stayed up past 12

at the end of the day round start is irrelevant, you want to be approaching peak about 1 week in - don't think i've ever seen someone who took r1 in the first four days still have it at the end

 

[Martin]

O.O

The general rule of thumb is like 1100-1200 I thought...

depends tbh, what development your saving for. attacking at 1100-1200 fine. but to stop buying alltogether imo is unecessary. and if you are new to the game. VERY UNWISE. as you wont have perfected your stealing technique. I say if its still cost effective then you should keep buying acres.

the main resason people stop is because they are saving, or thats my interpretation of it. TBH no one will agree exactly, as different things work for different people. But if you want to get ahead even that 1 extra acre counts. so if its cost effective its better to keep buying, especially if new-ish to the game, whilst attacking. well thats what works for me anyway.

Developments are irrelevant, it's either more economical to steal it, or it's not. After 1.1k it's taken as cheaper to start attacking.

Most of what willy said in his first post is right, although there's no point in stealing when you are still buying. No need to attack until you have stopped buying land, why have small amounts of flak and try and get lucky when it's still seen as more economical to buy?

 

[f0xx]

I would suggest stopping at 1.1k as well.

 

[Tombi]

I would suggest stopping at 1.1k as well.

Meh last round i tried something different and brought over 2.5k land and i kept a fairly good rank (~50) for having no specific starting strategy.

 

[willymchilybily]

sorry to post again but just seen on ds' post on another topic
Note that for next round fly overs will show the "spy" from last 15 minutes
i dunno if next means the one about to start or one after

but this does change my view on some of my first points, and may make it more advantages to flak a little earlier for land, as you now will be able to tell to some degree if your attacking an allie or a solo target. As alot of dying and losses would make the flak attacks less cost effective than buying the land for sure, but this should happen alot less i imagine if you get flyovers actings as an early sort of spie

also it may even be advantages to get a little extra flak if allied as you can even fake defences at an earlier stage. though i doubt it will have a significant impact, but does shift my idea of "cost effective land amount to stop buying at" a bit

 

[f0xx]

I would suggest stopping at 1.1k as well.

Meh last round i tried something different and brought over 2.5k land and i kept a fairly good rank (~50) for having no specific starting strategy.

I don't care even if you buy up to 50k. I only care about what is more cost effective and buying up to 2.5k is not.

Certain tactics can guarantee you almost 100% success on your attacks at the start (before Gurus come out) and from that point of view, buying up such an amount of land is not a good choice.

 

[Steve_God]

My tip?
Don't fall asleep 3 hours in...

(Also... around 1,500 land is a reasonable amount to buy up to, but if your attacks are failing, buying up to around 1,800/2,000 is still worthwise.)