How to Terraform

This post contains two separate guides to Terraforming


Guide 1

1st) Create the alt account – Build that first city to population 450. The buildings you use to reach this population will not serve any function besides population, so no need to plan any sort of city layout. You will need the storehouse upgraded enough to hold the res needed to make the upgrades. Additionally, make sure to send the materials to build a settler (15k gold, 8 horses, 10 saddles, and 20 beer) and start the training for the settler as soon as possible. It’s also preferable to send some books to the city, to avoid having to build a library for the few researches needed to complete the process.

You will need the following research in this first city –
Negotiation (for Consulate)
Bartending (for Tavern)
Cotters (for Cottages)
Timekeeping > Bureaucracy > Pioneering (for settler)


These will be your overall building goals:
Tavern level 14 – pop 247 (around 47 total hrs combined build time)
Consulate level 13 – pop 183 (around 36 total hrs combined build time)
Cottages x5 – pop 20
Total 450 pop

(I used http://arcanum-illyria.com/wiki/Building_Charts to calculate this data - feel free to look it over, but i think i picked the buildings with the highest pop offered at the lowest build times and costs)

Because you don’t plan on keeping the account, I would wait till day 6 and then use the pres you’ve saved on the higher timed upgrades (don’t wait till after the weeks over, otherwise you’ll have to spend 5 pres just to reactivate pres account).

After your settler is made and you reach 450 population, find a 7 food square that you like nearby and settle city #2 – this is the city you will be teleporting. Place a New Settlement on the tile.

Choose your destination tile carefully (the site you will be teleporting the new res distribution to), then – after the 1 week newbie protection is gone – teleport to the spot you want to now have a 7 food tile. You may need to have the alt account join the alliance so it allows you to teleport within 10 tiles of an ally, but this depends on where your destination tile is located.

Now, at this point, you can choose to send a siege tank to attack and subsequently capture the recently teleported city (if you have the proper technologies researched), or you can have an ally attack and raze the city to the ground (the most likely option for newer players) and then either settle a new city or exodus one of your current cities to that location.

As soon as the alt account has teleported the terraforming city, you are free to abandon the terraforming account and settle/exo a new city with your main account on the newly modified 7 food tile. The army that razed the old city can usually stay and occupy the tile until your new settler arrives, if there is a concern over having someone else take your spot before you get there..

PLEASE NOTE - this is a well known way to manipulate the terrain and switch a 5 food to a 7 food, and the GMs both know and approve of it. However, they are also very strict when enforcing the rule of a maximum of 2 active accounts at a time. Please make sure to abandon the terraforming alt account BEFORE creating a new alt (if you choose to terraform again or just play a second account) - Only 2 active accounts at a time.

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Here's another terraform guide - this ones a bit more detailed, and shows how to complete a terraform without receiving shipments from another account; it also details how to maximize your profit through production and gathering with that terraforming account

Alternative Terraforming Guide

Ok, the basic idea is to get your first city to 450 pop asap, build a 2nd on a spot with the plot mix you want to move, then teleport the plot where you want it. You also want to do this using as little input as possible from your main account while getting as much back to your main account as possible.

The best race to start as for a terra account is human, they have an even plot mix and their cotters harvest faster then any other. As soon as you start the account set your taxes to 0, build a lvl 1 library and paddock then get your storehouse to lvl 4. The first 2 shipments that you get for renaming your city will give 500/1000 food, at this point that will overflow your storehouse so make sure you que up some horses to spend that food, you will need them for caravans and your settler. Also as soon as you have built at least 1 of each resource building you will instantly receive 1k of all basics.

Then you want to build a market and as many caravans as you can. the first few vans should be sent out for wood because cottages are heavy wood users. After that you want to level all basics to lvl 4, building cottages as the excess wood comes in, then build up to 16 cottages.

Once you get all your plots to 4 and 16 cottages built you should start working on your pop. Build a lvl 1 book binder and common ground as soon as you can so you can start producing extra stuff, you will have the vans bringing in more resources to pay for this. You should give priority to the common ground because cows sell for the most. You also want to lvl your market as soon as you can to increase your vans speed as well as open up the trade techs so you can get more vans and increase thier capacity.

When you hit 450 pop stop building buildings, send your settler out and wait for him to land.

Start using all your vans to empty the city out into your main account. When you lose the rainbow(can check your prestige account for a time, it expires the same time), teleport the settled city to the coords given by your customer, leave any alliance you had to join and abandon the account. Then open a new account and start over.

LOGISTICS PRIORITIES
day 1, send your terra account 1 shipment of 50k gold, 100 books, 20 beer, 10 saddles, 2240 wood, 2210 clay/stone/iron this uses 3 caravans and you should use the pres in your terra account to speed this up to about 1-2 hours, make sure your storehouse is at least lvl 4 before arrival(15 min build time storehouse lvl 1-4)
day 2-5 buy/harvest basics with tera accounts caravans, ship out as needed all gatherables and produced products. (a trader from your main account in the local hub for your teraform alt helps this a lot)

day 6-7, as soon as city hits 450 and all production lines clean out empty the city out, including gold by shipping to your main, use any remaining prestige to speed this up. if you have vans available drop any basics you have into a local newbs city otherwise they will be destroyed with the city.

BUILDING PRIORITIES
paddock lvl 1(start making horses asap)
storehouse as needed to lvl 6
library to lvl 5
16 cottages
all resource plots to lvl 4
3 farms to lvl 7 and 2 to lvl 6
market to lvl 5
common ground, paddock, and book binder to lvl 8
tavern and consulate to lvl 9
arch office to lvl 7


TECH PRIORITIES
use books as needed
haggling(trade) market
timekeeping(city)
cotters(trade) cottages
bureaucracy(city)
foraging(trade) cotters can now harvest
pioneering(city) settler
stop using books
architecture(city) arch office
book binding(city) book binder
bartending(quest) tavern
negotiation(diplomacy) consulate
bartering(trade) 5 more caravans
improved loading(trade) van capacity to 300 each
grape picking(trade) only if grapes are nearby

NOTES
1. you want to get to 450 pop asap using as few resources as possible, once a building gets to lvl 8 then the resource/pop gain starts to get too high so lvl a different building(tavern/consulate are expensive but fast, you will need 2 of your buildings to lvl 9 i went with these because you should have the resources built up by day 5 or 6 to afford it)

2. if you get all resource plots to lvl 4 then you will actually gain more resources then you spend lvling up the book binder, the common ground and paddock only spend more clay then you earn while upgrading. you can actually leave 3 of the plots at lvl 3 and still have the pop, i suggest 2 iron and 1 stone because you will need the clay for the common ground/paddock and wood for cottages/production ques, also the tavern is heavy wood while the consulate is heavy stone usage. also until lvl 4 basics now have a faster pop/min growth rate then all other buildings accept cottages.

3. arch office, tavern and consulate can be used to soak up resources early on or when you wake up in the morning since they are quick builds and you dont need the arch office for speed increase(this assumes you are online a lot to que buildings), just for pop so doesnt matter when you build it

4. the cottages you want to build early on so you can start harvesting hides, minerals and herbs to send to your main(this is only to increase your profit from making the account) also you want to keep any production lines you open working until you hit 450 pop and abandon the account

5. the farm levels i listed will produce a little more then 450 food with 0 taxes so if you want to build them early go ahead, it will just increase your stockpile and let you build more cows/horses as well as increase the amount of time you are making 1800g/h from taxes(this happens when you set your taxes to 100 at 450 pop, when your food hits 0 you lose a lot of pop and tax income), this note refers to a step that is no longer needed but i left this note in to help you decide on any modifications you want to do for your account.

6. you can speed up emptying the city if your main account has a spare trader that you can park at the local hub of the tera account, you can have your main account set up buy orders for the amount of product in your tera account at .0001g per item. This will shorten the distance your tera account needs to send its vans considerably. And besides you will probably be selling most of the goods it gets rather than using them yourself.

7. if you get the bookbinder started and library done by day 4 and give it a little priority it will actually be sending your main more books then your main sent out so after you get 100 books set aside for terras you dont need to worry about making a bookbinder on your main. and the only reason you need to send the account books is for pioneering, it needs to be started by day 2 so you can have your settler built by day 6.

ACCOUNT DELETION TIMES
the timer on this starts as soon as you abandon and it counts total pop among all of your cities. you can drop the pop of your first city below 100 just by setting taxes to 100% and letting food hit 0, it will auto destroy buildings for you until you get below 100 pop.

0 population, last active 4 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (No email)
Less than 20 population, last active 7 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (No email)
Less than 100 population, last active 14 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (Emails sent at 7 and 1 days)
Between 101-500 population, last active 30 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (Emails sent at 14, 7 and 1 days)
Between 501-1000 population, last active 45 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (Emails sent at 14, 7 and 1 days)
Over 1000 population, last active 60 days, [non-prestige purchaser] = deletion. (Emails sent at 14, 7 and 1 days)
Any population, last active 90 days, [prestige purchaser] = deletion. (Emails sent at 14, 7 and 1 days)