Lord of Ultima Strategy

Castle - Moonglow Tower

2010-07-30T00:52:00.000-07:00

A moonglow castle is a popular choice for those wishing to play aggressively. They make the 2nd best stat offensive unit, the Mage, while Berserkers are 1st place. Warlocks come in at 5th place according to the 1.75x worth in gold that was mentioned here. Although Mages are the 2nd best efficient unit, they are still very important in a large army. There are two sides to a battle story. Mages/Warlocks offer a different type of attack, the magic attack. Having this type of attack means that the enemy must have good defense in magic which come from ballistas, rangers, templars, and paladins. Magic is very good at killing troops with low magic defense like war galleons, knights, and catapults.

Almost every player begins the game by making rangers and guardians as defense which can handle attacks by berserkers and knights. Most players aren't equipped to handle magic attacks by mages, which is what gives this unit an edge in the battlefield. In order for the defender to effectively defense against mages, they'll have to make a trinsic temple castle, which is pretty rare in itself.

Anyway, Here is the Moonglow Castle layout I put together in the LOU Flash City Planner.

Stats:
Max units: 200,000
Training Speed: 6300%
Construction Speed: 900%
Mages - 10 seconds each or 9,072 / day
Warlocks - 21 seconds each or 4,187 / day
Food Produced: 42,615 / hr
Food Required: 41,666 / hr for 200,000 Mages or 83,333 / hr for 100k Warlocks

This layout is similar to the Training Ground Castle. Make sure you make >2000% construction speed (20-40 cottages) depending how quick you want to complete the castle. The amount of farms and barracks were slightly modified to fit the food requirements. Interesting Note - In order to build Mages nonstop at 6300%, you'll need to produce 56,700 gold / hour!

Tweak this layout to your desire (add/replace warehouses, swap farms, trinsic temple, cottages, etc) as this is a general Moonglow Castle layout. Good luck! Rate, Comment, and Subscribe! Thanks for the support!

Defensive Units and Their Cost

2010-07-29T01:59:00.000-07:00

Every unit has a cost and a defensive value but which unit is worth making? Which one will actually save you from losing your castle? That is the question I will try to answer as many want to know which unit is best vs which attacker.

Lord of Ultima is a game about building and training efficiency as well as strategy and tactics used to maintain score. In order to be the most efficient player, you must play efficiently. Whoever produces the most resources, should win, and troops are basically resources that have been converted into a unit that is able to destroy enemy resources/units. I have compiled a table to help understand the cost efficiency for each troop so that you may defend and hopefully kill off more 'resources' than you lose.

Understanding the Table:

The cost for a particular unit is calculated by the (Wood + Stone + Iron) + (Gold x 1.75). The gold is multiplied by 1.75 because gold is worth 1.75 x one unit of resource.

For example: A guardian costs 140 iron and 40 gold. The total cost for the guardian is 140 + (40 x 1.75) = 210 'cost'.

Given that formula, the table shows that rangers rank best vs infantry, guardians rank best vs cavalry, and ballistas rank best vs artillary AND magic. I know, you're thinking what about Templars?! They're great vs magic, too, but ballistas perform slightly better than them, stat-wise. Include training speed into the mix and you can argue that templars are better.

Anyway, take a look at "Ballista WT". These are the stats for Ballistas in a tower and with a wall level 10. Assuming such, it costs 1 resource per 1 artillary defense point. The 0.44 is the Total Cost for each Defense point. This is important because incoming attacks are unknown and stationing units that have a good (low) cost per defense point will ensure that you are defending your castle with the best units possible. All the units in deep red are not to be used for defense as they offer very little defensive value for whatever it cost to produce. You'll want to keep defensive units defending and only offensive units on the prowl to assault and siege others.

Take a look at the Ranking section on the right. The ranks are shown with #1 being the best. If you are being attacked by:

Infantry - Defend with Rangers #1, Ballistas #2, Guardians #3

Cavalry - Defend with Guardian #1, Crossbowman #2, Sloop #3

Magic - Defend with Ballista #1, Templar #2, Ranger #3

Artillary - Defend with Ballista #1, Sloop #2, Ranger #3

I hope this table has helped you understand the defensive cost efficiency per unit. It may seem that ballistas are the best but there are other factors that should be taken into account when determining the best defensive troop as this table only rates by the defense stat. Other factors are training speed, march speed, food consumption, and the ability to use a frigate for continental defense, which I will talk about next time. Coming up soon, I will talk about the Offensive Units and Their Cost. Rate, comment, and subscribe. Thank you! :]

Gold's Worth vs Resource

2010-07-29T01:03:00.000-07:00

The Gold City allows one city to make 45k gold / hour while the Resource City lets you make 70k resource / hour. When you play the game, you'll notice that gold is usually your rate limiting factor when recruiting troops and/or making moonstones. I assume that the time it takes to construct a maximum level 10 resource city to 70k is about the same time it'll take to make a gold city to ~40k. This is because a Gold City will have little to no cottages in the end. So, gold is worth roughly 1.75x more than one unit of resource, or 70/40, or a factor of 1.75:1. Gold is precious because we're not able to produce as much of it per city.

I believe the 1.75x worth in gold is reasonable and can be viewed as such by simply viewing the in-game market. The average of most of reasonable items for sale is ~600g per 1000 resources. 1000/600g = ~1.75.

Keep this ~1.75x factor in mind as we delve into the Defense and Offense cost efficiency of troops coming soon.

I hope this has given you a different perspective of the game and has given you insight on the worth of Gold vs Resource. Don't forget to Follow, Rate, and Comment! Thank you! :]

City - Gold!!

2010-07-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Gold is a very important resource that you should not skimp out on. It is required to make moonstones as well as train troops. If you make a Moonglow castle similar to the Training Ground Castle post below at 5800%, you will need 56k gold / hr to maintain nonstop production of Warlocks!

To get gold you can make a few Townhouses around each Marketplace in a regular town but this will 'waste' building slots in that city or you can make a pure gold town. Here are some Pros for this type city:

Set it and forget it! - When complete, it is independent and gold never hits maximum capacity
Gold never needs to be shipped out, it is shared between all cities, magically!
No troops necessary - Gold can never be plundered so no hideouts or protection is needed
Become rich! - Being rich in gold will allow you to expand on other continents easily by purchasing on the market rather than shipping resources which can take anywhere from 8-36+ hours. End-game players should be rich in gold to buy 'some' resources on new continents rather than to micro-manage additional regular resource cities.

To begin, create a city along water for the Harbor bonus to gold. Make sure it is near a resource city that is high in stone as the gold city needs a lot of it. I would suggest building the cottages first to get a decent construction speed. Your construction speed should depend on your playstyle, other resources, and whether you need gold now or later. A decent construction speed would be 2000% although some may argue for more or for less. Either way, create ~30 cottages up to your desired construction speed and clear the center resource nodes at night when you sleep. Fill in the buildings and level everything, except cottages, to Level 10 to make ~36,160gold / hr. Here's what a half-complete Gold city should look like.

As you complete all the Townhouses, Markets, and Harbors, you will need to demolish one cottage at a time and replace it with the desired gold producing building. The final product should be something similar to this:

In the end, the Completed Gold City should be producing a little under 45,120 gold / hour. Watch the gold pour in!

These layouts were created using the LOU Flash City Planner. Special thanks to Eliador, Stapleman, and Visibiliti. Please reply if you have any suggestions, comments, or concerns. I hope this has helped you. Good luck!

Castle - Shipyards

2010-07-26T15:38:00.000-07:00

Look in the recruitment training window. Which unit is the most badass and feared unit? It's probably the one that costs the most and it is! It is the War Galleon!

As the game progresses and your training ground castle defense and offense is in place, you may want to test the waters and and make a shipyard castle. There's nothing more scary than attacking out or even being hit by 400+ galleons. This many galleons can knock down a 11k castle very fast compared to a few thousand catapults. So here, I give you a 'good' Shipyard Castle layout that I put together in the LOU Flash City Planner.

Stats:
Max Galleons: 510
Shipyard Training Speed: 1900%
Food Production: 53,816 / hr

This Shipyard Castle can cap out at 510 War Galleons which in turn eats 53,125 food/hr (This town makes 53,816 food/hr). It has 1900% train speed which is the fastest navy training speed possible. Tweak this layout to your desire (add warehouses, etc) as this is a basic, yet efficient, Shipyard Castle layout.

Good luck and watch out for my 510 Galleons!

Castle - Training Ground

2010-07-22T10:51:00.000-07:00

Training Grounds (TG) give the most basic offense and defense units in the game. Training grounds let you train Berserkers for offense and Rangers/Guardians for defense. Rangers are the best anti-infantry unit in the game even without the wall and tower bonus. The guardian is also the 'best' anti-cavalry unit in the game which is debatable partly because of their slow march speed. The berserker is also the 2nd best offensive unit in the game against units, next to mages. I'll get into troop comparisons later. Anyway, here's the castle!

This castle is ideal if you plan to make your first or even your 2nd castle. Here is a TG Castle layout I put together in the LOU Flash City Planner.

Stats:
Max units: 188,000
Training Speed: 6550%
Construction Speed: 800%
Food Production: 47,779 / hr

To begin, you should always get the construction speed higher than 2500% by making 20-40 cottages depending on how fast you want to complete the castle. In the end, it has 6550% train speed which gives 3sec Berserkers, 4sec Rangers, and 5sec Guardians. It makes 47,779 food / hr in which 47,000 food / hr is required to feed the 188k Berserkers at maximum capacity. Did you know that at 3 seconds each, you can make 25k Berserkers per day!? Isn't that awesome? Of course it is! Although, you'll need to make 157k iron / hour in total. If you use the resource city layout below then you'll only need a bit over 2 support cities!

Tweak this layout to your desire (add warehouses, more/less barracks, more/less cottages, etc) as this is a basic, yet efficient, Training Ground Castle layout. Good luck!

Wiki

2010-07-20T14:57:00.001-07:00

This is the wiki for Lord of Ultima. Need to know about night protection or morale boosts? It's got it..

www.lordofultima.com/en/wiki

City - Resource

2010-07-20T14:42:00.000-07:00

A foundation is the most important part in creating a large and successful empire. You must be able to make a lot of resources PER city. A very good city layout will utilize the center section in order to get up to 70k resource per hour per city.

Up top is all wood but if you don't need that much wood then you can substitute some woodcutters for stone or iron.

Don't forget about the markets so that you can transfer resources out. Good luck!

Tools for the Competent Player

2010-07-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

There are many tools available for Lord of Ultima. These are a few of my favorites for those who want to compete against the best.

1) LOU Tweak
A Chrome / Firefox add-on that enables keyboard shortcuts. Some features:

Upgrade / Downgrade buildings with keyboard (u, d - once; Shift+u, Shift+d - max, d - works for natural resources too)
Generate city layout sharestring
Create Moonstones buttons
Clickable coords in chat
Selectable chat text
Current / Max Queue info

Lou Tweak was created by AmpliDude. Greasemonkey created by Anthony Lieuallen, Aaron Boodman, Johan Sundstrom.

Chrome Users: Install Lou Tweak
Firefox Users: Install Greasemonkey, Install Lou Tweak

2) LOU Summary
A Firefox add-on that gives you a window with a summary of ALL of your cities. This is a must for those with more than 10 cities. You'll know exactly when you need to shuffle resources and building/training time completion. Created by Raisun.

http://www.bloodscape.net/~personal/lous_v14a.xpi

3) LOU Player/Alliance Statistic Tool
This web page will allow you to view an alliance or player's growth over time on a graph over the past 26 days. You can use this to compare yourself vs another players or an alliance vs another alliance. Additionally, you can find out whether your neighbor has quit playing by seeing no growth (0 slope on the graph). Make sure you check capitalization in the names because they are case sensitive. Created by dokan.

lordofultima.kilu.de/

4) Combat Calculator

This will give you a pretty good estimate of the outcome of a battle. Use this to estimate whether or not you should attack. A good scout report is required so you know their Tower types and levels. Created by Crenshaw.

http://www.archinquisitor.info/lou/Default.aspx

5) LOU Flash City Planner

Ever wonder what kind of income you would make when your town is complete? Use this tool to plan ahead for your city. Modify your buildings and try to squeeze out the most efficiency with what you've got. Created by Lee Trilsback.

http://www.lou-fcp.co.uk/map.php

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Lord of Ultima Strategy, a Blog

2010-07-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

Today marks the birth of the Lord of Ultima Strategy Blog!