A brand new online MMORTS will be launching tomorrow. The game officially ended its Beta testing phase this morning and the servers are being wiped and rebooted for official launch tomorrow. I was in the early Alpha testing and then took a little time off before I got back into it during the Beta. It's an MMO that uses the the TCG booster pack model instead of a normal MMO model of the monthly subscription fee. For anyone who likes MMO's or RTS games, I suggest you check it out. The official web site is www.playsaga.com.
Saga is a persistent world. This means that even while you are not logged in, your nation keeps on running. The most important thing that happens while you are not online is your peasants continue working, gathering resources, building buildings, and doing their other peasantly duties.
Some of you might be thinking, what happens if I get attacked while I'm offline? Well the good news is that you can't be all out attacked while you're not online. You can however, be the target of espionage. Other nations can spy on your army, steal your resources, even murder your peasants and burn your buildings. You can defend yourself from these types of attacks by setting peasants to police your lands. But we're not talking about espionage today, so let's get back to the topic of the day, the economy.
Just like the real world, a strong economy is the backbone of a great nation. As anyone who has ever played an RTS knows, your city building skills will have a direct impact on your military might.
One of the downsides to most RTS games is the frantic pace that must be maintained to build a city and manage resources while also running a military campaign. Luckily, Saga removes this franticness as the city building and military "phases" are essentially split up in this game. The city building aspect is much more controlled than most RTS games. The resources accumulate much more slowly and the buildings take longer. The military aspect is split away through the MMO constant, questing which gives you plenty of time for both economic and military growth.
There are six resources to manage in Saga.
1. Gold-Gold will probably be your most used resource and is obtained through gold mines. You will want to get to producing gold quickly. You can tax your peasants just about any amount of you want which will help boost gold production, but be careful taxing your peasants too much. They will become unhappy with your oppressive ways. Unhappy peasants don't work as hard as happy ones which will affect your bottom line. If you don't improve their happiness they will start to move away and possibly even riot.
2. Food-Food is obtained through farms. You will need to assign several peasants to farming early as the peasants each consume five units of food per day, and you have to keep up the production. Food production is one of the main things that affects peasant happiness.
3. Wood-Wood is obtained through your lumber mill. Wood along with stone will be required for your building projects. Most of your early projects will require more wood than stone so keep that in mind when assigning your peasants to work.
4. Stone-Stone is obtained through your Stone Quarry. Like wood, stone is primarily used for buildings, and later to improve your town's defenses.
5. God favor-This is one of what I consider the two special resources. God Favor is used to resurrect dead troops that have fallen in battle and to cast spells during battles. You can obtain God Favor by assigning your peasants to worship and through winning battles.
6. Mana Shards-Mana Shards are obtained through Mana Shard Mines. You don't have to assign peasants to mine for them, they are produced automatically for you when you have mines. Mana Shard mines are not able to be built in your main city. As you level up, you will have the opportunity to win new territories. After you build a Keep on your new territories, you will have the option to move them to the wilderness. Once you do that, you can build Mana Shard Mines.
Getting started as an economic power is rough because you don't start with anything. It takes money to make money after all. You don't start with very many peasants and you don't start with many resources. You will need to lean on your military to get things started.
Your main source of resources through the first few levels will be plunder and rewards from quests. Remember, especially while you're just getting started, it's important to plunder all the buildings you can when you do a quest. Plundering a building will give you a plunder bonus for whatever resource that building produces. Gold mines will give you gold, lumber mills give you lumber, etc. One of your biggest plunders will be houses because they give you more peasants. More peasants = more workers gathering resources.
Your first four buildings will need to be a gold mine, a lumber mill, a stone quarry, and a farm. Getting them done in that order will be a help as the food doesn't help you that much as far as furthering your economy. You may need to build a farm sooner depending on how quickly your peasant population rises because you need food to support them and keep them happy.
Peasant happiness is also a big key to your economic success. When your peasants are happy, they will work harder and you will see a happiness bonus to their production. In addition to working harder, a happy peasant population will entice more peasants to move into your city and start working. The more peasants you have working, the more resources you gather. So it pays to keep your peasants happy.
There are several key factors that go into peasant happiness. The first is housing. Do you have enough houses for all your peasants? The more peasants you have without homes, the more disgruntled they will grow. Do you have enough food to keep their bellies full? Hungry peasants are unhappy peasants. How is your military faring in their battles? Your military results will directly affect the morale of your peasants so make sure you're winning those battles.
It's important to make sure that you get at least one of each of the resource gathering buildings built because you won't be able to assign any peasants to that resource until the proper building is put up. Once that building is up, your first 5 peasanst assigned to that resource will work at maximum efficiency. Every peasant past that will be considered overstaffed and work at less than max efficiency until you get more buildings up to support the higher staffing. But it's better to have all 4 up and be slightly overstaffed than to make extra buildings before you're gathering all four resources.
Once you're producing all 4 resources, there are a few other buildings you want to get quickly to help with your economy. It's a good idea to keep your eye on your house/population ratio. If it gets too out of whack, your peasants will become unhappy. Building a few more houses is a way to get a quick boost to peasant happiness. Like I've already covered, happy peasants work harder and bring in more peasants.
Storehouses give you production bonuses as well. Each storehouse is worth a 2% boost in production, and you can build 4 storehouses per territory.
The final building that will really help you out is a University. It's a bigger investment than any of the other buildings, but its bonuses are greater. Once you build your University, you will have access to many upgrades to your peasant efficiency and how they work each type of resource. This can be a big boost, so go for it as soon as you get the chance.
There's one other source of economic boost which can yield vast and immediate results, joining a guild. Each member of a guild receives a bonus from each other member of the guild. This is particularly beneficial early on when resources are in short supply. If you're just getting started out and interested in joining a guild, shoot me an email at blyonsmagic@yahoo.com.
Well, that should help you get started on the path to economic superpower. Remember, a solid economy is the backbone of a great empire.
Tags: SAGA
