The Perfect Outposts

Like many other things in life, there is no one perfect combination of outposts that are better than any other. However, there are some combinations that are one of the better options. First, when choosing your outposts, you have to decide if you would rather have a really big military or a really big economy. Having a big economy means you can build more stuff and not run out of wood and stone as easily. If you want a really big military, you need a lot of Farmhouses in order to support a big army. For those who don't know, all outposts that you can capture (requires level 13) can only produce two resources, while your main base can produce all three (wood, stone, and food). All outposts have a primary resource and a secondary resource. As shown in the screenshot above, the icon of the food resource is on top, meaning it is the primary resources, while the secondary resource is the stone at the bottom. The screenshot above shows the outposts sparkling, meaning it's rare. By rare, I mean the primary resource is able to have a total of eight plants maximum at 100% occupany, while a non-sparkling primary resource can only have six plants maximum at 100% occupancy. You should try to capture the rare outposts as much as possible.

So the most basic combination that is good is shown below, in the order of primary/seondary:

1.Food/Stone (or wood here, if you really want, but stone becomes important later in the game) 2.Wood/Food 3.Stone/Food

This combination is quite balanced. You don't have to capture your outposts in the exact order listed above, but it is helpful to do it like that. The second one is the best military based outpost combination:

1.Food/Wood 2.Food/Stone (or wood) 3.Food/Stone

This way, your outposts alone can have 18 (or 24 if they are all rare outposts) Farmhouses producing at 100% occupancy. In return however, you will run out of resources more often. The last good outpost combination is economically based, so you can build lots of stuff and run out of resources rarely.

1.Wood/Food 2.Stone (or wood)/Food 3.Stone/Food

Note About Taxes 2

As you all know, you can earn coins by sending out your tax collector for certain amount of time to collect taxes. However, after that greedy pig finishes his collection, you have another limited amount of time to take the coins from the collector before he keeps all of it for himself. For example, when you send your tax collector out for six hours, you will have another six hours to take the coins after the tax collector finishes collecting. However, you as time passes after the tax collector is done, he will slowly take away coins every once in a while until all of the time has run out, as shown above. Luckily, I've discovered that even after time runs out, the tax collector doesn't take away all of the coins. The tax collector always leaves a few coins that you can pick up anytime. Even better, the amount of coins that you can pick up any time will always be more than the amount of coins you used for that tax collection. This way, if you are planning on not playing GoodGame Empire for a while, you can send out your tax collector for six hours, then take the coins from him anytime you feel like it, and you'll still earn money!

Day 8 Diary Entry

As you can see above, I expanded once again, and upgraded a few of my towers to level two. It's really strange how upgrading the towers the first time takes only 10 minutes and only a couple of resources, while upgrading it the second time requires two hours to complete and over 200 wood and stone. However, upgrading towers is really usefull. It allows you to place more guards on the left, right, and front flanks of your castle. Before, I didn't even notice that I had too many defending soldiers and too little towers, so many of those defenders is basically not able to do anything. I still have a huge stock of coins stocked up, but because of my food supply limit, I can't make my army really big. I also have a Marketplace, so I think I'm going to plan on doing stuff and giving away free resources to those who read my blog. But that's for the future.

Repairing Your Castle

Today is the first time that this message appeared. For those who don't know or never seen this message, after your castle is defeated by a player or even a robber baron castle (is that even possible?), random buildings in your castle may look like it has caught on fire, and requires repairing. Repairing is usually really cheap and only takes a few minutes to repair, but repairing should always be the first priority (even though it's not like the fire can spread). That is why you have a few options to prevent having your buildings being damaged. The options are shown above near the bottom. The first option is to buy protection. Similar to Beginner's Protection, other players are not allowed to attack your castle so long as you don't attack other players. The second option is to open your castle gates. By doing so, when other players attack you, instead of putting up a fight, you simply hand over the loot and honor, so that you don't lose any soldiers or have damaged buildings (you probably have to give more loot than if you put up a defeated fight).

Login Bonus

I wanted to wait until I got seven days  to write this post about the daily log in bonus. For me, the daily bonus resets every day at 5:00 pm Central Time (in the US). This login bonus thing gives quite good rewards. It gives over 100 resources, or 60 rubies, or I think around 150 coins (do not trust me on these numbers, especially the coins one). I waited this long to see what would happen if you went over seven days. Now that I know, I'll tell you. After the seventh consecutive login day, I'm pretty sure it restarts and gives you exactly what you got the first day that you logged on. Maybe it gives you more the second time you get it, but I don't think so. Above the reward icon, it says "You receive a gift from your citizens every day!" That sounds extremely suspicious. I mean, my citizens were hoarding hundreds of resources, coins, and rubies without me being able to use them until they give it to me?! Since when did they get so much power?! Behead them (or put them in cages, which this game apparently favors, because at least two decorations are cages and the Guardhouse is a cage)!

Day 7 Diary Entry

So maybe I will still continue writing a lot for this blog. Actually, if it wasn't for Spiral Knight's annoying energy system which basically limits me to playing every other day, I would most definitely be working harder on my blog for that game. Well, today, I leveled up to level 12, and upgraded my Keep to level two! Actually, I woke up at like really early this morning (or maybe I didn't even fall asleep last night...), got bored, and upgraded my castle. I've also started building a Hideout, which protects some of your resources if your castle attacked and defeated. I've also completed my Stonemason and Flour Mill, so now I have all of the building things that speeds up my resource production speed. Upgrading my Keep ate up almost all of wood and stone, which is funny because upgrading it is supposed to help me not lose resources.

Traveling Armorer

Similar to the traveling merchant, this guy occasionally appears and can trade things with you. Except this guy trades both defensive and siege tools with you, instead of trading resources for rubies as the traveling merchant does. On the left column of the Armorer's shop page, he trades normal siege and defense tools that you can build with resources at your workshops. He sells scaling ladders, stone-throwing, battering ram, and castle gate reinforcement. All of the ones that you can buy with coins have exactly the same stats as the ones you can produce in your workshops. On the right column of the Armorer's shop, he sells things that you buy using rubies and can't produce at your workshops, but they work similarly to some of the tools that you normally can produce at your workshops using rubies. For example, this guy sells a heavy ram which is similar to the iron ram, except the heavy ram works around 25% better than the normal iron ram. All of the other ruby-costing tools the Armorer sells works around 25% better than their corresponding tools that you can produce.

Constant Robber Baron Attacks

Now that I don't have my Beginner's Protection any longer, I am getting constant attacks from robber baron castles. I am assuming that this is at least the third time I've been attacked, even when I'm not doing anything. Robber Baron attacks are weak and easy to defeat, but they still always manage to kill a few of my soldiers, which becomes annoying. I do not think robber baron castles even have agents, so they can never espionage you (at least at my level), meaning you can't catch an enemy agent to help prepare for their attack. I guess that's why you always have to constantly train more soldiers. This is just  a heads-up note for those who still have Beginner's Protection and don't have to worry about this yet.

Prime Action

This is also the second time that this Prime Action promotion has popped up. However, the first time this showed up, it made rubies cost less than they usually do, while this one makes everything you buy with rubies 50% off, which is a pretty good deal, especially for those who buy large amounts of rubies. I have a feeling that these kinds of "Prime Action" promotions will appear once a week, because so far that is what has happened. If so, then it would be very smart to spend your rubies on days that this kind of promotion appears. It would save you a ton of rubies. Lastly, I have just recently calculated that if you purchase the 180,000 ruby pack, then you are paying almost as much as you would for an entire year of World of Warcraft. No matter how I look at this game, I've gotta say that there is no way I am paying that much when I could use it on WoW, which is obviously a better game. So unless you somehow find GoodGame Empire to be better than the world's number one video game, then you should really reconsider paying large amounts of money for this game.

Traveling Merchant

This is the second time that this traveling merchant guy has showed up stalking on my castle. I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing you know, this guy turns into an enemy agent and gets 100% accurate espionage. Just kidding. But seriously, this guy looks evils. Anyways, I'm pretty sure that this traveling merchant only stays at your castle for one day. Traveling merchants trade almost anything for rubies (see? evil). Even though it only shows wood and stone in the screenshot above, you can actually scroll down to see that he also trades coins and food for rubies. Just like all other merchants that I know, the more you buy, the cheaper this guys sells it. What I mean is if you are buying wood for example, it is cheaper wood per ruby to buy 10,000 wood instead of 500 wood. Even so, I don't think it is worth it to buy anything from this traveling merchant, unless you have tens of thousands of rubies to spare and don't care, because buying resources is totally never sustainable.

Day 6 Diary Entry

I leveled up today again to level 11. Level 11 sure unlocks a ton of new stuff. Now I am able to upgrade my Keep and upgrade my castle wall. Upgrading your castle wall is so cool because not only does it take no time at all, but it even changes how your castle looks on the world map. I am also able to build a Sawmill and a Stonemason. Even now, I still have quests that give me hundreds of XP, and that is the only reason why I am able to level up so fast. Unfortunately, now that my level is getting higher, there are less and less things that I can write about in this blog. Why? By now, not many special things are happening now and I've covered a lot of the basics about the game already. All that I'm doing is building, attacking robber baron castles, and completing quests. Not stuff you'll want to care about. This means that I'm going to have less posts, and I'm not going to do a diary entry every single day now. On the other hand, I have started my blog about Spiral Knights, so I'll be working more on that blog for a while until something interesting happens in GoodGame Empire.

When Should You Buy Rubies?

Even though throughout the game, you gain quite a lot of free rubies through leveling up and completing quests. However, simply using those rubies that you got for free is nothing compared to the amount that players who pay real money for rubies use. As shown on the screenshot above, players can buy tens of thousands of rubies at a time. Of course, this gets to become quite expensive, so if you are not very into the game, it is quite unnecessary to pay for rubies. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before planning to buy rubies:

1. Do you play GoodGame Empire almost every single day?

2. Is GoodGame Empire the only game that you often play? (being addicted to multiple MMO games doesn't exist, trust me, I've tried)

3. Are you at least around level 30? (I don't think low level players even need rubies)

4. Do any of your friends play? (If your friends don't play, you get bored very quickly, even good games such as World of Warcraft)

5. If you are under 18, then do you think your parents would want to pay for you? (If no, you're just out of luck)

6. Is there nothing else that you really want to buy? (Especially for people who are low on money, wait until you have a stable amount before buying rubies and use your finite amount to buy more important stuff)

If you can answer yes to every single one of these questions, I think it would be quite helpful to buy rubies. Of course, these are only my personal opinions, but I thiink they are good beginning guidelines that you should at least think about.

Are Alliances That Good?

Most players want to join an alliance after they play GoodGame Empire for a while. But what can alliances do for the player? Most people want to join alliances in order to increase the protection for their castle. However, after you take a closers look, that is completely unnecessary. If you have ever attacked a real player, or even a robber baron castle, you know that there is a limited amount of soldiers and tools you can send to attack other castes. This limit depends on the level of your enemy. This is system is there for the purpose that it is hard to completely overwhelm your enemies. So as long as you continually make at least five soldiers every time you level up, your opponents shouldn't be able to overwhelm you. Plus, even in an alliance, not many players is willing to sacrifice their own defenses to help yours.

The only reason that I would join an alliance would probably be for sword brothers. The more sword brothers you have, the more different places you can attack. However, it is quite easy to get sword brothers even without an alliance by making deals with random players to exchange one of your sword brothers for one of theirs. If you have a different opinion about alliances, please write a comment about your thoughts below!

A New Blog: Spiral Knights

Today, I have started another blog about another video game. The new game is called Spiral Knights. Unlike GoodGame Empire, Spiral Knights is a MMORPG, which is different in almost every aspect. Because it is different, the posts that I will have on that blog will be very different from the posts on this blog. Even if you have never tried Spiral Knight, you can start now and follow the blog as you play, because just like this blog, I created a brand new character for the purpose of that blog. The URL for my new blog is http://pixurai2spiralknightsblog.blogspot.com/. Of course, because I started that new blog, I'll have less time to work on this blog. On the other hand, for my GoodGame Empire level right now, everything takes hours to construct and I'm going to be play Spiral Knight while I am waiting for my buildings to complete in GoodGame Empire.

Day 5 Dairy Entry

As I mentioned in my previous post, I lost my Beginner's Protection today before the one week time period was up because I attacked another player. Anyways, I also leveled up again today, allowing me to upgrade my Storage to level two. Upgrading you storage is very important and useful, so do it as soon as possible! I have a ton of coins stocked up, which I'm assuming I got most of it from quests. However, I can't use much of my coins because my food supply is limited and I don't want to build more Farmhouses. I also have a lot of wood stocked up, which is strange, because in all of my old accounts I was running out of wood. In this account, I am surprisingly running low on wood. I am guessing that I am starting to transition from using mainly wood to build stuff to using mainly stones to build stuff.

Warning About Beginner's Protection

Just today, I made a very stupid mistake of attacking another player while I still had my one week of Beginner's Protection, where your castle is not allowed to be attacked by any real players for the first week that you start playing GoodGame Empire. Unfortunately, today I attacked a real player's castle. I did that for the purpose of completing that quest that I was talking about before, where I needed to loot from a real player's castle. Right after I defeated that player's castle, I noticed that my icon for the Beginner's Protection was gone and then realized that it disappeared because I attacked a real player. That is why I am warning new players to never attack a real player before your Beginner's Protection is gone.

Tip for Attacking Players

Attacking other players can sometimes be tricking. Of course, it is always important to first send an agent to espionage the enemy's castle, but that can sometimes be very risky, and may inform the enemy that you are going to attack. I have another strategy to spy and gain info on your enemy with no risk.

For those who don't know, you can visit other people's castle by clicking their castle and then clicking enter castle. "Visiting" the castles of players who you want to attack is the key to this strategy. Once you can look at his castle and his buildings, look for things that will help you infer almost everything about his army. First, look for how many Farmhouses the enemy has and what level they are. Using a little bit of math, you can calculate how much food he produces, and thus how big of an army he can support. Next, look for what level his Barracks and Defense Workshop. The level of the enemy Barracks tells who what soldiers his army is composed of, and the level of the Defense Workshop gives you an idea of how much defenses the enemy has for his or her castle. Now that you know all of this, you can even choose to not do an espionage on the enemy because you already know so much.

Shadow Mercenaries

So today, this Shadow Mercenary camp showed up right outside my castle, which is at the bottom corner of your castle. When I clicked on the camp, the page that I am showing above popped up. It allows me to buy soldiers using rubies instead of coins and food, which is what it usually takes. Surprisingly, after I compared the stats of the soldiers and tools that the Shadow Mercenary camp was selling to the ones that you can produce, they have the exact same stats, except for the fact that the soldiers that this camp sells requires no food, which is quite helpful. Unfortunately,  You can only buy a limited amount of these soldiers or tools depending on your level. All of the things that this camp sells is actually quite cheap, especially for players to purchase rubies.

Day 4 Diary Entry

So Today, I've leveled up again and built a Stables. However, I now think that the Stables are pretty useless, only allowing your army to travel around a minute less than they usually would. Plus Stables takes up some space in your castle, which may be problematic because after you get to a really high level, you start running out of space in your castle because you can only expand a certain number of times. Yesterday, I spent too much time building Farmhouses and stuff that I couldn't complete many quests. Luckily, many of my quests today were simply to donate stuff to the Princess or whoever she was. Those quests also gave lots of XP as well, so now I'm almost level 10! Unfortunately, I think that in the quests "Big enemy, big honor 2/2," you have to attack and defeat another player. The description for the quest simply says loot from another castle, but I've looted from many robber baron castles and haven't completed the quest. I really don't want to go attacking other players, but looks like I have to.

Tip for Attacking Robber Baron Castles

As you can see above, the robber baron castles that I have circled in red are the ones that I always attack. All seven of them are within a five unit radius from my castle, so the maximum time it takes to attack is around 15 minutes. I highly suggest you choose a few robber baron castles closest to you and always attack those, so that they level up faster, giving you more loot and XP from attack them next time. This also helps with the quests that require you to attack a certain number of robber baron castles, because every time you complete one of those quests, a new quest pops up that tells you to defeat robber baron castles of the next level. Usually, those quests require you to attack three robber baron castles, so choose at least three robber baron castles closest to you and always attack them. Of course, having seven robber baron castles that I attack may be too many, but due to the cool down time between attacking each robber baron castles, this way I almost don't have to ever wait for the cool down because I can go attack the other ones.

The Swine King: Beginning

Right after you finish the last adventure thing, which is "Hunt for the Relics," which you can see my guide for it in my "Hunt for the Relics: After Finding Map Pieces" post. The page that I am showing above is what should pop up after you defeat the last castle in the Hunt for the Relics treasure map. A note about Hunt for the Relics, I think now I understand why I already had all except two of the map pieces. I think every time I defeated a robber baron castle, even all of the ones before I reached level 8, gave me a map piece that I simply didn't know about.

Anyways, The Swine King is the second treasure map adventure thing, and you have to collect 13 pieces, which I assume means defeat 14 robber baron castles to complete the map. I'll have another post as soon as I collect all of the pieces for The Swine King, which will take much longer.

Day 3 Diary Entry

Now that I constantly use one of my old accounts to transfer free resources to this new account, I'm never running out of resources like I used to. However, each transfer costs a little less than 100 coins that my old account has to pay, so that account is going to run out of coins, so I still have to play on that  account to make more coins. As you can see above, I've added a lot of Farmhouses, which wasn't planned, but my army is pretty big, so I need a lot of food. Actually, my army only has like 50-60 soldiers, and I already need this many Farmhouses. I really want to capture an outpost right now but I need level 13. By now, upgrading anything takes more than half an hour which can be annoying to wait. Guardhouses are very important, so build them as soon as possible because it makes enemy espionages a lot harder.

Hunt for the Relics: After Finding Map Pieces

Strange enough, not only did I start with this map missing only two of the pieces, I have already collected both of the missing pieces already. Maybe it is simply that this game didn't notify me when I collected a piece of the map, but after the page that I showed in my "Hunt for the Relics: Beginning" post, there was no other notification that I ever collected another map piece, even though I did attack two robber baron castles.

Anyways, now this thing wants me to attack those towers on that map above. As you can see on treasure map, supposedly my Military Camp is the red building at the top left corner, and the treasure is in the castle at the bottom right corner. Even though the castles that I have to attack are all level one, they are quite strong. I have lost one Maceman in the first castle, three in the second, three in the third, and 14 in the last castle!!!

Luckily, the time it takes for your army to travel to the castles all take less than a minute! The reward for defeating the very last castle is a decoration called the "Ancient Relic" that gives +14 public order!!! This was totally worth it, and it has cut down my army so I'm not running out of food any longer.

Hunt for the Lost Relics: Beginning

Now that I've turned level 8, I've unlocked something that's quite interesting that I want to share. It's a treasure map where you can collect parts of it by attacking robber baron castles. I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen, but the first time this page popped up, I already had all of the pieces except for two of them. Actually, this page popped up after I collected one map piece after attack a robber baron castle. If you had something different or similar happen, please tell write about it in the comments section below!

I will have at least one other post about this treasure map thing after I collect both of the pieces that I am missing to inform anyone isn't level 8 yet and can't do this yet what the reward for it is. At least from the  description on the page, it says that the reward is going to be some sort of decoration!

Let's Look at a Pro: Patriotis

Here we have another player who is ranked number one in the entire game. However, last time, TrafficCop was ranked number one for building points, and Patriotis is ranked number one for honor points. Surprisingly, in the rankings list, the number one all the way to number 16 is filled by players from the same alliance (including Patriotis), Bloody Blades, except for two to three who are in other alliances.

Now let us get on talking about this player's castle. To start off with some numbers, Patriotis has 13 Farmhouses, seven Dwellings, six Townhouses, six Woodcutters, and six Stone Quarries. At least a third of all of those buildings are still level nine even though Patriotis is level 60 (I'm assuming this is the highest level and allows you to build everything). Also, Patriotis has 14 Jousting Lists, which I think is the best decoration that doesn't require rubies. Lastly, Patriotis has two Taverns and three Guardhouses.

Personally, I would have more Woodcutters, but maybe Patriotis has two Outposts that give him lots of wood, one that has a 100% occupancy of six and the other one of eight, so I guess Patriotis doesn't need that many Woodcutters at his main castle.

Marketplace is Useless Without Outposts

Unlike in other similar game such as Evony, the Marketplace in this game is pretty much useless if the player doesn't own any Outposts. In GoodGame Empire, you can only give away resources to other players or to your outposts, you can't simply sell your extra resources and see who wants to buy the resources unless you make a real life trade. Marketplaces can also become a waste of land if you don't use it, which may force you to expand your castle when you don't have to. However, for me, I built a Marketplace in the castle of one of my old accounts and I use it to transfer the resources that are stocked up over time (because I don't use that account).

Day 2 Diary Entry

Today is my second day with this account. As you can see, I've added a lot more resource plants, more Dwellings, and a Tavern. Already, I'm running out of wood even though I have two level two Woodcutters, while I only have three level one Stone Quarries but I have too many stones. That's why at the beginning, build a lot of Woodcutters because at the beginning everything is made out of wood. Luckily, my coins haven't run low even though I produced like 30 Macemen and 20 Spearmen. One tip I have is that in the beginning, you don't have to waste any coins on Spearmen because for the first week, no one can attack you, so it is unnecessary to defend. Unless, that is, you try to attack real players' castles. Then robber baron castles well send a very small amount of soldiers to attack you.

Guide to Leveling Up

Leveling up is very important in this game because it allows for more buildings, upgrades, and army units. However, leveling up can be really tricky because building stuff gives very little XP and there are not a lot of ways to gain XP. Basically, the only ways to gain XP is to attack the castles of players or robber baron castles, upgrade your castles, and quests. For beginners, quests are your easiest way to level up. That is why whenever you play, you should always check which quests to be working on and don't do things that are not part of any quest. The better part is that completing the things in most quests help your castle a lot because they tell you to upgrade, build, train an army, and attack. So you don't even need to do anything that isn't in a quest (at least in the beginning). Later on in the game, as the level of robber baron castles are really high (they level up every time you attack them), they will give a good amount of XP and loot, so you can do that later on to get your XP. Just remember that as robber baron castles level up, their defenses are increased and you will need a bigger army to win. Lastly, for more advanced players, always try to upgrade your buildings, especially expensive ones, because those can sometimes give as much XP as quests!

Let's Look at a Pro: TrafficCop

The screenshot above is the main castle of a player known as TrafficCop. TrafficCop is the number one player in terms of building points right now, meaning this player has the most buildings and the most upgraded buildings. The number one position is consistently changing, but we can still learn from the set up of this player's castle.

The first thing that I notice is that this castle is very, very big. All players should increase the size of their castle as soon as possible to allow more room for buildings. This player has chosen to place all of his or her resource plants at the left side of the castle. You can choose to place your resource plants differently, but it's always smart to place them close together and not all over the place. Also, TrafficCop has a lot more than three of each resource plant (there are actually around 10 of each). The game will tell you that you can only have three of each plant working at 100% occupancy, and adding more plants will produce less resource. However, adding more will always produce at least some resources, and building more plants is always cheaper than upgrading your existing ones. Lastly, you will notice near the bottom of TrafficCop's castle, there are around 20 Festival Squares, which I think is the decoration that gives the most pubic order for the amount of space it takes up. Building so much decorations will allow you to produce resources much faster than normal.

Of course, beginners will not be able to make their castle as big as TrafficCop's in the beginning, so you will always have to continuously rearrange your buildings as you add more space to your castle.

Using Your Resources in the Beginning

Because of the tutorial and all of the required quests to start-up your castle, you receive a ton of resources, coins, and XP as rewards. However, after you really begin playing, you will use up a lot of your starting resources to complete more quests and improve your castle, especially if you play almost all of the time. Plus there is never a quest that gives more resources as a reward than the amount you have to spend in order to complete the quest (even later on in the game).That is why I suggest that beginners should try to build a lot of resource plants and Dwellings (to increase tax revenue), even if it is not required in your quests. Build at least three Farmhouses, Woodcutters, and Stone Quarries, and try to go for five Dwellings (remember to have decorations to keep pubic order up). Luckily, you will have seven days of free beginner's protection where you can not be attacked and have your resources taken from you.

Free Resources From Citizens

Many people, including myself in the beginning, don't know the secret behind citizens in you castle with a speech bubble and a resource or coin in it, similar to the screenshot above. At first, I simply assumed that the citizens were telling me that they were going to go collect the resource that was shown the the speech bubble. However, after accidentally clicking on one of the speech bubbles once, I found out that they actually give you the resource shown in the bubble. Speech bubbles appear randomly in your castle and are easy to spot. They give you resources depending on either your level or the number of plants that you have. Also, there is no such thing as a ruby speech bubble that gives free rubies. At the beginning, speech bubbles only give two to four resources or coins, while later in the game it slowly increases. Even though you will not be able to collect a lot of resources or coins, it can still be very helpful to collect them while you are playing (especially the coins).

Day 1 Diary Entry

The screenshot above is my castle that I have just started today. I'm playing a lot because it is the summer right now, so you should be going at a slower pace than me. If you want to check out my castle at any time, simply search "Pixurai II" at the top of the world map in the game and my castle is "Pix II Kingdom". Right now, because I haven't been able to build a lot of stuff, you can't tell, but I'm a very organized person. I have already planed out the general placement for buildings. Everyone has different ways of organizing, but I am planning on placing my dwellings are going to be at the right side of my castle and all of my resource plants will be at the left side. I have even started a separate row for each resource plant. If I plan on keeping those rows for my resource plants, then I can have four plants for each resource before it reaches the wall. Lastly, in the center, I'll use it for future higher level buildings such as Taverns. By being organized, it allows you to have more buildings using the same amount of space.

Note About Taxes

One misconception that I, and probably a lot of other players, had was that I thought the more time you let your tax collector collect tax, the more coins you receive. Even though it's true, I have also discovered that actually letting your tax collector collect taxes multiple times for shorter amounts of time is better than one long collection trip. One example is letting your tax collector to collect taxes once for six hours earns you somewhere around 10 times less coins than if you let your tax collector go out on 10 minute trips for 36 times, which requires the same amount of time as six hours. Of course, it is very time wasting to sit do the latter choice, but whenever possible, it is the better choice to let your tax collector make shorter trips. This rule does not apply to the tax collection choices that you pay rubies for.

Tip for the Tutorial 2

Continuing from my previous post about the tutorial, there is one more thing to be careful about right after you finish the tutorial. So right after you choose your flag and get your own castle, you will be forced to build many things. All of the things you are forced to build are very necessary for the game, such as a Barracks for training soldiers or resource plants (Woodcutter, Stone Quarry, and Farmhouse) to boost your resource collection. It doesn't matter where you place the buildings that you are forced to build, because you can always move them for free.

Not long after you begin your new castle, you will be required to name your castle. The default name is Castle (your username), but I don't really like it. Your castle name is what other players see when they look at your castle on the world map, so choose carefully, because changing this castle name requires 2,500 rubies (rubies are explained in "Tip for the Tutorial"), which is a lot even if you purchase rubies. Lastly, note that during the time you are forced to build buildings, your buildings speed is around 10 times faster than your normal building speed, but you are only allowed to build what they tell you to build.3

Tip for the Tutorial

Let's start at the very beginning. After you create your account for GoodGame Empire, you will go through a fairly quick tutorial that goes over the basics. The tutorial is pretty self-explanatory, so I'm not going to talk about it. However, there are a few important key points that you should be careful, especially if you are a perfectionist like me. The first important note about the tutorial is that the castle and army you use for the tutorial is not actually yours. You get moved to a brand new empty castle after the tutorial. I consider the tutorial to end right after it teaches you to attack a robber baron castle. Second, when you defeat that castle, a page as shown below should pop up.

This is where you choose your flag and your colors for you castle. You should take your time and choose your flag very carefully because later on, if you want to change your flag, it will cost close to 3000 rubies, which is the game's "premium" currency that you have to buy with real money. Also, the colors that you choose will be everywhere, from your castle walls to your soldiers. Press play once you've selected your flag to move to your own castle.

All-New Beginning

Welcome to Pixurai II's new blog about the game called Empire made by GoodGame Studios (which I simply call GoodGame Empire). My blog will include posts about my experiences with the game, tips, guides, and many other helpful things. I am also going to create a whole new account so that I am able to include posts that are useful for even the newest beginners of the game, if your new friends needs help, direct him to this blog! On top of that, be assured that I am not doing any of this blog for money from AdSense or any other program. In fact, I'm only a teenager so I legally can't earn money from this blog. If you have any questions or suggestions about the game, please feel free to leave a comment under any of my posts any of the posts on this blog or directly email me at pixurai2gameblog@gmail.com and I will respond to you as soon as possible.

Without further ado, let us begin our adventure!!!

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