Overview
Tips for new players.
Starting Out
Disclaimer: This is from my own experience with the game, your experience/play style may differ.
When you first begin, you will not have access to a lot of money so you will not be able to automate. This means lots of clicking. Remember, you can hold down the mouse button to autoclick.
Leveling will come quickly in the early game and you should choose things that you are unable to get or are difficult to get during regular gameplay. This inlcudes: Experience bonuses, clicker bonuses, worker bonuses, gems, treasue maps, and treasure chests.
Complete the achievements located to the right for game bonuses.
Do not use your gems unless required for an achievement.
Get as many ships as early as possible. You will primarily be sending them out for mines. During active gameplay you can send them on 1-3 hour runs and get them back fairly quickly using sailors, but sailors cost coins. When you know you will be inactive send a few out for large mines and cities/treasure.
Early game coins will primarily come from trading goods to cities. Be careful not to overcommit resources that are hard for you to get. Your inns will not provide you enough to run your sailors for very long.
Mid-Game
By now you should be getting the hang of things.
Build more inns to get enough coins to wean off of trading.
Those gems you saved in the early game will allow you to get blueprints once you have the research lab (5 per) and build the Portal of Time (7). If you don’t have enough gems this can slow your progression as you won’t be able to build all of the buildings. You want to save your regular gem stones at this time.
Gems in order of least importance:
Sheep – regrows wool, wool regrows in 10 min…
Mine – change your mine randomly, you should be sailing and finding enough mines.
Power Stones – gives you bonuses to clicks/workers, equates to 1.5 Min, 5 Min, 30 Min worth of clicking/working.
Treasure Stone – will automatically open a treasure box, which you can also do by clicking.
City Stone – change the trade goods of a city, only good during early game when you rely heavily on trading. you should be able to do without.
Super Mine Stone – change your mine to a specific type, good when you need a specific type of resource and you have very large mines.
Sail Stone – 10x bonus to sailing can be bumped to 100x with 2 stones, very important when you can’t upgrade you ships and those treasures/cities are far away.
Time stones – will fast forward time by 1 hour/ 4 hour/ 1 day, CAUTION: make sure you have resources/coins for your workers or they will stop working. Requires regular gem stones to operate
Gem Stones- Versatile stones that purchase other stone, level upgrades and operate time stones. 25 are required to access new building types at new game+.
Daily Stones are important… their bonuses grow each day. You should focus on the permanent bonuses: experience/build modifiers.
Once you build all of the buildings including the mysterium, you will arrive at new game plus.
End Game or New Game?
Once you have achieved new game plus, you recieve access to new building that make long term automation achievable. Namely, the treasury – convert gold+coal=10 coins
Your ships should still primarily be seaching for mines, they should be finding 10-100s of millions worth of resources. If you have invested heavily in sailors, then they will be expensive, but will cut down on sail time drastically.
Set some workers to mine, chop wood, shear sheep
Have them refine cloth, paper, and oil (if you prefer).
Have them set to build.
Refine coal from clay – this should be the primary use for clay.
Refine coins from gold.
Coins pay for work.
Set this up for equilibrium and ensure you aren’t running a deficit on supplies/coins or workers will stop working. You can run a slight deficit on coins provided you can make up for it with your inns and you have enough saved to run your workers for 12-24 hours. Trading should not be required at this point.
Your game will run pretty effectively without you.
Good luck!