A Few Tips On BUFFING

Buffs are a great thing. They help boost our production and they add colour to our islands!

But here's a few things you may or may not know about buffing:

1 - When a building is being upgraded it's production STOPS. This means if you buff it... nothing will happen and your kind gesture will go to waste...

2 - When a building is sleeping or is lacking a settler to operate it, the same thing as above will happen. If the production is stopped the buff will not boost anything...

3 - When you are buffed by someone the buff lasts time and a half more. This means a Solid Sandwich runs for 3h, instead of the usual two - and a Basket runs for 9 hours instead of the usual 6h. Good huh?!

4 - Most of us are a bit peculiar about our buffing. This is because our production lines are tailored in a specific way. This means that you should always try and check with someone before you actually buff them. They will be able to tell you, better than anyone else, what they need help the most with.

5 - If you're buffing something that has various buildings producing, buff those of a higher level. Remember, if they are higher level, the buff will boost more!

6 - If you want you can try and setup a buffing partner. Someone that will buff you regularly in exchange of you doing the same for them. I will try and setup a post for this matter here in the Guild Blog so that everyone knows who is helping who. As soon as a buffing team has been set we can simply add it so all know that those people are pretty much sorted.

On Trading

The first thing you need to know about trading is that you have something called a Trade Calculator!

Here is the link for it:

http://www.castleempiresim.com/trading.php#results

(our server is Newfoundland, so make sure you select the correct one from the top of the page)

The second suggestion is: you do not need to trade goods into gold coins and then use those gold coins to buy the goods you really need...

You can simply swap one thing for another.

So, instead of selling marble to get bronze swords, perhaps you can simply sell the marble directly for the bronze swords.

There are several advantages to this. First it's a much easier transaction. Second, it is only one transaction.... so less waiting time, hopefully! 

And, to do this you're going to use the Trade Calculator, right?

Only you should be careful in the way you use it! And I say this because the Trade Calculator is not totally reliable...

Whenever you convert one resource into another one, directly, it gives you result which is different than if you'd sell the first resource for gold coins and then used them to buy the second.

Or, in other words:

Always convert the resource you want into gold coins (I use that as a base). Then take that amount of gold coins and see how much of the second resource that corresponds. And use that value to make the trade.

I'll give you an example:

Let us say we're trying to swap 500 marble for bronze swords.

If I use the trade calculator directly, it tells me that:

500 marble corresponds (on average) to 704 bronze swords

But if I convert marble to gold coins, it says:

500 marble corresponds (on average) to 12 gold coins

and that

12 gold coins corresponds (on average) to 454 bronze swords

So here the Trade Calculator is giving us a result for direct trading which is higher than it should be, since gold coins are the basis of all trading within Settlers Online.

Of course, you are free to do as you will. But, more than anything, I just wanted to call your attention to the limitations of some of the tools that we have at our disposal.

Happy trading!

nim.

PS - Any questions, doubts or suggestions, please feel free to post or message me on game chat.