Galava Guide (Beta, Updated 2008-07-27)

[Tezkat]

Hey guys.

Since I did one for CN, I figured I should put together a guide for the Galava beta.

Stuff completed...

Creating New Provinces
Building Your Empire
Structures
Income Calculations
University Research
Armory Equipement

Other stuff in the pipeline (war guide, market guide, magic guide, more cost tables, prettier layout, etc)...


Our guild lives here. Come join the fun!

[Tezkat]

CREATING PROVINCES

Each province contains two different land types. Each gives you production bonuses/penalties (additive in proportion to land percentage) and a special resource you can trade with other players.

Plains (Food)
+60% Food, -20% Wood, -40% Stone, +5% Structure Defense, +45% Commerce Income.
Elderberry: +4% Population, +2% Unit Defense

Hills (Food)
+50% Food, -25% Wood, -25% Stone, +10% Structure Defense, +40% Commerce Income.
Nightshade: +8% Mana Regeneration, +2% Unit Attack

Coastal (Food)
+40% Food, -30% Wood, -10% Stone, +15% Structure Defense, +35% Commerce Income.
Seaweed: +6% Commerce Income, +10% Tax Income

Forest (Wood)
-20% Food, +60% Wood, -40% Stone, +20% Structure Defense, +30% Commerce Income.
Cherry Wood: +2% Commerce Income, -5% Construction Cost/Time

Swamp (Wood)
-30% Food, +50% Wood, -25% Stone, +25% Structure Defense, +25% Commerce Income.
Wyrm Wood: +12% Tax Income, +4% Mana

Jungle (Wood)
-30% Food, +40% Wood, -10% Stone, +30% Structure Defense, +20% Commerce Income.
Iron Wood: -4% Construction Cost, +4% Unit Defense

Mountain (Stone)
-20% Food, -40% Wood, +60% Stone, +35% Structure Defense, +15% Commerce Income.
Iron: -4% Construction Cost, +3% Unit Attack

Canyon (Stone)
-25% Food, -25% Wood, +50% Stone, +40% Structure Defense, +10% Commerce Income.
Mithril: +11% Tax Income, +3% Unit Defense

Outback (Stone)
-30% Food, -10% Wood, +40% Stone, +45% Structure Defense, +5% Commerce Income.
Adamantine: +11% Tax Income, +3% Unit Attack

Desert (Defense)
-20% Food, -10% Wood, -15% Stone, +50% Structure Defense, +0% Commerce Income.
Oil: +14% Tax Income, +2% Population

Badlands (Defense)
-15% Food, -20% Wood, -10% Stone, +55% Structure Defense, -5% Commerce Income.
Coal: +2% Commerce Income, +4% Population

Tundra (Defense)
-10% Food, -15% Wood, -20% Stone, +60% Structure Defense, -10% Commerce Income.
Blood Ice: +6% Mana, +6% Mana Regeneration


In addition, each land type gives you bonuses or penalties to resource building capacities. These turn up as bonus (or missing) resource buildings as you explore (at the usual 75 land intervals). Many combinations start off with a bonus building of the primary type. The subsequent structure bonuses aren't as obvious until your land size is in the thousands.

I don't have enough data to figure out individual province bonuses, but here's what my set looks like:

50/50 Mountain/Plains gives +0% Farms, Mills, and Mines.
50/50 Jungle/Coastal gives +0% Farms, +2.5% Mills, -2.5% Mines.
50/50 Plains/Hills gives +10% Farms, -5% Mills, -5% Mines.
50/50 Canyon/Outback gives -2.5% Farms, -7.5% Mills, +10% Mines.


At the moment, you'd be severely hurting your empire by not going with mostly food-based lands (Plains, Coastal, Hills). Sandro keeps promising to give us stuff to spend wood and stone on, but so far it hasn't materialized. The proposed castle system is a month off at least. Food will continue to be at least 10x more valuable than wood or stone for the foreseeable future.

Don't use the defense based lands for anything. They're economically gimped. As it stands now, structure defense is useless because opponents rarely bother destroying buildings. They use siege towers instead and concentrate on defeating provinces as quickly as possible by wiping out troops. That may change by the end of the beta, but don't hold your breath.

Special resources stack up to three times, and you also get one trading slot per province to share them with other players. They all provide small but useful bonuses to your empire.


When you have more than one province, province order becomes important--it determines the order in which they will be attacked during war. You can rearrange provinces on the Military - Provinces page. It used to be that you needed to be in peace mode to reorganize your empire, but that's no longer the case. You move them around to your heart's content so long as you have no active wars.

[Tezkat]

BUILDING YOUR EMPIRE


Progression

Progression is kinda like your empire's level. It determines the range of acceptable military targets (50% to 200% of your progression).

Upgrading progression is instantaneous, and you can jump several levels by paying for multiple points at once.

Progression improves your capacity for doing things or building things. Each point of progression slightly increases the maximum amount of Land you can explore in each province, the number and size of resource bundles you can post or purchase on the Market, and the number of workshop items you can build.

At certain milestones, you unlock Discoveries, which  you have to pay for and can then upgrade (usually for free) as you grow in progression. For University research, you get 3 points when you unlock it at 25 progression and another point every 25 progression thereafter. You get 9 points worth of Workshop upgrades when you unlock it at 50 progression and another point for every 10 progression thereafter.

The best benefit of increasing progression is being able to add provinces to your empire, available at 60, 300, 800, and 1400 points. New provinces greatly improve your economic and military potential. Building and exploration costs in a new province start over from the bottom--newbie prices with a mature empire's income.

Increasing progression does not in itself improve your economy or other aspects of your empire. Thus, if you're below your caps for building/exploring and not close to a useful upgrade, increasing progression won't help much. In some cases, it can actually be counterproductive, as it increases the power levels of the empires able to attack you.

Progression costs gold and resources in a 50:1:1:1 ratio. That's more gold than virtually any mature empire can generate on its own, so you'll often need to save up or sell resources on the market before puchasing large amounts of progression.

After ~1220 progression, costs start to get ridiculous. The current top empire has a progression cost of about 50 mil gold and 1 mil of each resource per point at close to 1350 progression. That's many times his daily production, so empires that size get their progression exclusively by plundering smaller empires. Yay for war.


Land
Upkeep: 1.78 Gold/Land (?)

Land allows you to build buildings. Buildings give you income. Therefore you need land.

Each unit of land takes 3 minutes to explore. Land queues are separate for each of the two land types in each province. (So you can explore a maximum of 40 land per province per hour.)

You get your first new set of resource buildings at 188 land, and then again every 75 land thereafter. It's best to plan exploration in 75 land increments.

Your province bonuses from land types depend on the relative proportions of each land (e.g. a province 2/3 Plains and 1/3 Swamp will have a 60*2/3 - 30*1/3 = +30% bonus to food production). You can have at most a 70-30 ratio of land types.

As with progression, if you're not built up, exploration might not be very helpful (and can be slightly counterproductive, since the effectiveness of Walls and Roads depends on the % coverage in a province).

Land costs gold and food in a ~15:1 ratio. Starting out at 150 land, it's 564:37. Up at 19320 land, I'm paying 2414:155. You can buy up to 50 units of land in one go. Since land isn't all that helpful except in increments of 75, it pays to save up and explore in batches.


Population
Upkeep: 0.36 Food/Citizen

Population count is a function of housing. Each house adds 4.5 citizens to your maximum. If your population is below that cap, it will grow by roughly 10% per collection. Near the maximum, it will randomly fluctuate within about +/- 5% of your maximum every collection. Population bonuses from special resources will increase both the cap from housing and the wiggle point (so +10% housing will increase your population cap by 10% and fluctuate around 110% of that new maximum from collection to collection).

At the moment, due to the high price of food, raising population can actually hurt your economy. (The value of the food they eat is higher than the value of the gold they produce in most empires.)


Soldiers
Upkeep: 0.036 Food/Soldier

Galava is "The Browser Based Game of Medieval Conflict", so obviously you need troops. Unless you're a hippie. Peace mode penalties are small but hurt after a while (-0.05% to all collections per hour spent in peace mode, up to a max of -25%). And war can be very profitable if you're bigger than the next guy. Peace mode is free until you get your second province at 60 progression. In fact, you can't enter wars at all until you have two provinces, so you only need to worry about troops when you reach that level.

You get your first unit at 10 progression. New units become available at 200, 600, and 1200 progression.

Each unit takes 30 seconds to build, and there are queues for each type of unit in each province. (So a 3 province empire with 3 types of units can build 3 of each unit every 30 seconds.)

They cost 3 Food and (10 + Weapon Cost + Armor Cost) Gold apiece.

You can switch all unit characteristics freely (e.g. turning a offensive footman mage into a defensive mounted swordsman), but you pay a cost each time. Basic changes (like name or type) are free. Mounting status or Offensive/Defensive/Balanced stance cost 3 gold per soldier. Every time you change weapons or armor, you pay the full cost of the equipment for each soldier. For large militaries, that can be in the millions.

There are three types of unit (Melee, Ranged, or Magic). It's a rock-paper-scissors arrangement (Melee beats Ranged, Ranged beats Magic, Magic beats Melee). We're not quite sure just how large the type bonus is, but does appear to be significant. In practice, however, because you need to explore equipment technology trees, it seems best to stick with a single type for all your units.

There's currently no cap on the number of soliders. The big empires have soldier queues permanently filled, so many of them now have ridiculous armies. Something around 30-40k soldiers in your outer province seems to be the minimum "too strong to bother raiding" range, if you're above 500 or so progression, but even that's not surefire protection if your opponent is particularly strong or ambitious. I got attacked at nearly 80k troops.

Basically, unless you're planning to stay in hippie mode, train soliders whenever possible.

Sandro indicated that a system whereby soldiers are converted from the civilian population is on the horizon (but it probably won't be implemented for several weeks).

[Tezkat]

STRUCTURES

All buildings have a build time of 5 minutes/structure (minus bonuses).

The number of Farms, Mills, and/or Mines you can build increases every 75 land (starting at 188).

The number of Houses, Roads, and Walls you can build increases every 5 land (starting at 153).

Building costs increase gradually as a function of the number of structures of that type in the province.


Houses
Upkeep: 4.5 Gold, 0.5 Wood, 0.5 Stone each

Houses raise your population cap by 4.5 citizens/house (plus bonuses).


Resource Buildings (Farms, Mills, Mines)
Upkeep: 13.5 Gold, 4.5 Wood, 4.5 Stone each

Resource buildings are the foundation of your empire. You need resources for all aspects of growth. Unfortunately, resources aren't very balanced at the moment. Food is consumed in higher quantities than wood or stone, and thus is much more valuable. Hopefully, there will be more balance as the beta progresses.

At any rate, resource buildings are your first priority when building up unused land. Start with Farms, of course.


Roads
0.5 Gold, 0.1 Wood

Roads increase your commerce income by an amount equal to the % coverage in that province. So at max roads, your commerce income for the province is doubled.

Since commerce income is a per citizen affair, roads aren't cost effective unless you have lots of houses. So they're lower on the priority list than other income generating structures.


Walls
0.5 Gold, 0.1 Stone

Walls provide some kind of defense to your province. Like roads, the effectiveness is based on coverage (0 to 100%).

Sandro originally made the claim that a province without walls would get duck rolled. However, in the current war system, defeating provinces is a matter of taking out as many troops as possible rather than worrying about buildings. Damaging economic structures can actually hurt the attacker if he plans to occupy a province. Siege towers allow them to largely ignore walls and take down provinces with minimal structure damage.

I'd max them out anyway. They do improve defenses, especially against those players who don't want to spend the extra transit time sending a lot of siege engines along. Also you won't have much else to do with all your wood and stone.

[Tezkat]

INCOME

Fun with numbers...

Income is calculated on a per-province basis. Some bonuses, such as those from land types and weather, apply only to that one province. Others, such as bonuses from special resources, university research, spells, and artifacts, affect all provinces in the empire.


TaxIncome = (1 + TaxIncomeBonus) * BaseCitizenIncome * #Citizens

TaxIncomeBonus comes from special resources. Possibly artifacts as well.
BaseCitizenIncome = 8.23 gold + 0.98 gold per % above 10% tax rate.

CommerceIncome = (1 + CommerceBonus) + (1 + #Roads/MaxRoads) * (2.80 + (1.48 * #Provinces)) * #Citizens

CommerceBonus is the Commerce Income bonus from the provinces land types and the empire's special resources. Possibly artifacts as well.


Each resource type has its own bonuses and penalties.

ResourceIncome = #Buildings * ResourceBonus * ResourceRate

ResourceRate = 74.49 resources - 0.784 per % above 10% tax rate.

ResourceBonus includes bonuses from land type, university, weather, and artifacts. All the bonuses are additive. A proper land distribution calculator will probably give more accurate bonuses than your province overview for calculation purposes.

e.g. A provinces at 10% taxes with 100 farms, +30% food from land types, +10% food from university research, +5% food from spells, and Sunny weather (+5% to all resources) will have ~11174 Food/Collection.


What's the best tax rate to use? A simple test is to add up the gold and market value of resources produced at 10% and 20%. Whichever gives you more is the tax rate you want to use. Given the current price of food, most provinces will be more productive at a tax rate of 10%.


Both commerce and tax income are a function of your citizen count. Thus, you need citizens to generate gold (outside the market, that is). Now the problem is that citizens also at food. And food is really, really expensive. So raising population often decreases overall productivity. On the other hand, being completely at the mercy of the market for your gold needs can make life difficult. Your ideal level of housing coverage will therefore depend mostly on playstyle.

[Tezkat]

UNIVERSITY RESEARCH

The University discovery becomes available at 25 progression. You get 3 points to spend on technologies right of the bat, and one more every 25 points after that.


Food Based Technologies

Fertilizer  +2%
Rationing  +2%
Livestock Stockade  +3%
Basic Irrigation  +1%
>>  Mono Agriculture  +2%
>>  Crop Rotation  +5%
Rudimentary Canals  +3%
Basic Processing  +2%
>>  Simple Storage  +3%
>>  Pickling  +4%
>>  Pasteurization  +6%
Plows  +4%

Wood Based Technologies

Basic Chopping Techniques  +2%
Processed Wood  +2%
Dimensional Lumber  +3%
Forest Management Plans  +1%
>>  Treeplanting  +2%
>>  Prescribed Burning  +5%
Fungus Education  +3%
Basic Processing  +2%
>>  Oak Processing  +3%
>>  Maple Processing  +4%
>>  Yew Processing  +6%
Sawmill Development  +4%

Stone Based Technologies

Soil Erosion Studies  +2%
Mining Safety Union  +2%
Basic Smelting  +3%
Blasting Caps  +1%
>>  Strip Mining  +2%
>>  Mining Revolution  +5%
Deformation Monitoring  +3%
Basic Geology  +2%
>>  Sedimentary Rock Studies  +3%
>>  Igneous Rock Studies  +4%
>>  Metamorphic Rock Studies  +6%
Biomineralisation  +4%


Obviously, due to the current market conditions and game mechanics, research the food tree should come first.

Fully researching a tree will give you a +37% bonus to production of that resource. You'll fully research all trees by 850 progression.

The technology tree displays up to three items for purchase at once. Buying one will make the next item down the list available. Some have prerequisites. (e.g. Mono Agriculture requires Basic Irrigation. If you skip Basic Irrigation, the next one to appear will be Rudimentary Canals.)

I'll leave finding optimal paths through the tree as an exercise for the reader.

[Tezkat]

ARMORY EQUIPMENT

You get one point to spend on your armory for every point of progression. Researching an item allows you to equip it to one of your units--and only one one your units. (So you give your best weapons to one unit, your second best to the next, and so on.)

Also, there's a chance of getting special equipment in random events. These are nice, because they're free.

The Armory works a lot like the University does--four items on display, and buying one makes the next item down the list available. The best item in each category costs 91 points. Thus, you can afford to skip up to 3 items on your way to the best toys.

Remember that you'll have four different units to equip by 1200 progression.


(Name, Cost, Attack Bonus, Defense Bonus)

Melee Weapons:
Bone Knife 1 Points 1 0
Flint Dagger 3 Points 1-4 0
Bronze Sword 5 Points 4-6 0
Simple Sword 7 Points 8 0
Iron Blade 10 Points 8-10 0
Long Spear 13 Points 11-13 0-2
Iron Mace 16 Points 15 2-4
Basilard 19 Points 17-21 0-2
Steel Sabre 22 Points 25 0
Battle Axe 26 Points 28 2-3
Ivory Basilard 29 Points 33 2
Warhammer 33 Points 28-36 4
Scimitar 37 Points 40-45 1
Steel Long Sword 41 Points 44 3
Great Sword 45 Points 49 3-5
Dagger of Defense 49 Points 48 12
Doubled Edged Sagaris 53 Points 58 5
Claymore 58 Points 65-67 3
Steel Broadsword 62 Points 70 3-4
Hardened Katana 67 Points 80-84 0
Polished Sword 71 Points 82 5-6
Morningstar 81 Points 90-93 10
Double Headed Labrys 86 Points 98 9
Zweihander 91 Points 110 5

Melee Armor:
Leather Armor 1 Points 0 1
Iron Boots 3 Points 0 4
Simple Hat 5 Points 0 6
Simple Chain 7 Points 0 8
Bleached Leather Armor 10 Points 0 11-13
Brigandine 13 Points 0 15
Judo Gi 16 Points 0 15-20
Chainmail 19 Points 0 20-23
Jujitsu Gi 22 Points 0 26
Heavy Gauntlet 26 Points 1 30
Lamellar Armor 29 Points 0 34
Karate Gi 33 Points 0 35-41
Haut Brigandine 37 Points 0 44
Rusted Plate 45 Points 0 55

Ranged Weapons:
Throwing Knife 1 Points 1 0
Simple Bow 3 Points 2-4 0
Flimsy Harpoon 5 Points 5 1
Flimsy Crossbow 7 Points 8 0
Wooden Bow 10 Points 10-12 0
Javelin 13 Points 12-14 2
Shuriken 16 Points 15-20 0
Light Crossbow 19 Points 20-24 0
Short Bow 22 Points 22-28 0
Hand Crossbow 26 Points 23-34 0
Harpoon 29 Points 32 3
Swift Bow 33 Points 30-42 0
Long Bow 37 Points 37-48 0
Throwing Axe 41 Points 41-49 4
Compound Bow 45 Points 46-55 0
Crossbow 49 Points 58 0
Recurve Bow 53 Points 56-65 0
Steel Harpoon 58 Points 60-67 5

Ranged Armor:
Light Boots 1 Points 0 1
Silk Shirt 3 Points 0 3-4
Hunters Gloves 5 Points 1 5
Leather Helmet 7 Points 0 7-8
Brittle Shield 10 Points 0 10-12
Padded Leather 13 Points 0 13
Thick Cloak 16 Points 0 15-18
Wooden Shield 19 Points 0 18-24
Chain Mail 22 Points 0 25
Juniper Coat 26 Points 0 30
Medium Shield 29 Points 0 33-35
Compound Silk Jacket 33 Points 0 35-40
Layered Silk Vest 37 Points 0 40-46
Copper Shield 41 Points 0 49
Barbed Leather 45 Points 0 53
Pitted Leather 49 Points 0 58
Sauternes Leather 53 Points 0 64-65

Magic Weapons:
Wooden Staff 1 Points 1 0
Rod 3 Points 4 0
Enchanted Rod 5 Points 6 0
Sorcerers Ring 7 Points 8 0
Wand 10 Points 12 0
Power Rod 13 Points 14-16 0
Oak Staff 16 Points 18-19 0
Sage's Potion 19 Points 20 3-4
Mystic Tablet 22 Points 26 0
Blessed Oak Staff 26 Points 29 0
Spell Book 29 Points 33 0
Spell Tonic 33 Points 35 5
Bloodstone Dagger 37 Points 43 0
Force Staff 41 Points 47 1
Mythril Trumpet 45 Points 40-55 0
Jade Staff 49 Points 57 0
Rod of Trickery 53 Points 62 0
Sylph Staff 58 Points 70 0
Flare Staff 62 Points 77 0
Spellbound Ring 67 80 0
Molten Rod 71 84 0
Rod of Glass 76 94 0
Flaming Elixir 81 96 5


Magic Armor:
Plain Robes 1 Points 0 1
Silk Robes 3 Points 0 3
Thick Coat 5 Points 0 5
Force Charm 7 Points 2 5
Cantrip Robes 10 Points 1-3 10
Light Shield Charm 13 Points 3-5 11
Enchanted Robes 16 Points 4 15
Leather Garments 19 Points 0 21
Enchanted Longcoat 22 Points 3 23
Ring of Protection 26 Points 4-6 22-26
Barons Ring 29 Points 5 30
Fur Wrap 33 Points 0 37
Enchanted Footwear 37 Points 1 43
Aristocrats Dress 41 Points 0 44-49
Ring of Shielding 45 Points 5 50
Enchanted Robe 49 Points 2-6 54
Rivers Thread 53 Points 3-5 60
The Seventeen Seas 58 Points 2 70
Robes of Thatch 62 Points 2 75
Scorpion's Bane 67 Points 4 79
Everglade Wraps 71 Points 4-6 82
Vermillion Vest 76 Points 5 89-91

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Questionable usefulness. Sandro originally made the claim that a province without walls

... Did you miss something there?

[Tezkat]

Fixed.