Advanced Market Strategies 201

[Swagger]

Well you have all been introduced to some basic defensive features of the market in my last guide. I must say, I have since learned that others have been using this tactic for some time now so I do not take credit for founding this tactic although I did happen upon it on my own and have made liberal use of it.

The basics of using the market as storage however has other far reaching applications that should be considered. Beware I have not tried the following so I am unaware of any drawbacks, but if the medal changes stay the same there is a good chance I will be leaving this game. I would like to think someone can expand on this potential strategy. I give you...

Smoke Housing

1. Breaking the rules

As you already know, there is no limit to the number of troops you can mass at any one village. There is only a limit to the number you can produce there based on your idle population. This does not stop one from being reinforced by other alliance members. Similarly there is no limit to the amount of resources one can store at a settlement!

Although there is a limit to the amount of storage that you can have in your resource fields and storage bins, these limits are not bright line markers. That is to say, there are loop holes. Once your storage is full the overrun stays in the resource field up to its maximum capacity. At this point the field stops producing. This is pretty straight forward. BUT... You can still have more items delivered and stored beyond that capacity!

Transports to your settlement will not be turned away because you are full. Likewise you can still have items delivered from the market. There is no limit to your final storage capacity!


2. The Long Siege


So, the settlement is a bottomless container for TROOPS AND RESOURCES. Now that you have that picture in mind, remember what some of us learned about the market in my last guide.

With one upgraded market, it is perhaps possible to stock one settlement with enough hidden resources to feed an entire alliances troops for an extended period! Simply have members transport mass resources to a single settlement. Food to feed the troops and other resources to construct or re-construct defensive structures as needed. Then reinforce the settlement with mass troops. Put all resources in the market until needed and teleport this monster to a front line.

During battle you run out of food? Cancel an order and---BING! More food! Loose some archer towers! Cancel another few orders and---BING! Lumber! Que the assembly line for more fortified units!

Well you get the picture. I hope some of you brave souls with medals and cities are ballsy enough to try this and write about it. I wish I could have been the first.

Just remember to call it......SMOKE HOUSING!

[UniqueName]

The technique is sound, however, the name doesn't seem to fit at all. Maybe root cellaring is more appropriate but neither of those names would stick. People will most likely just refer to it as storing stuff in the market.
Hopefully, at some later date that won't be a way to hide stuff, as its still technically located in your city. And in fact, even in process sales should be able to be interrupted. This may add risk to purchasing, but its far more realistic for the time period we are speaking of. Of course a true siege would engage any sort of reinforcements or resource transports. So it may be that in the future, you just won't even be able to ship out via the market while under siege.


Also I would just queue up the troops and sidestep the market altogether in most scenarios.

[Darwin]

I like it, very good plan. It makes level ten markets useful, you can store up 10 times your capacity or more.

[Bob Bickels]

The only problem with that is that alliance troops garrisoned in the town can be used for defence only. You can't command someone else's troops that are garrisoned in your town.

[Aeron]

Another problem is that when you store a massive amount of food in the market, it charges you a fee for the resource you're selling. The more resource you store in a market at a time, the higher the fee. I tried to store resources in the market and totally forgot about the fee. When you take them out of the market, you don't get any refund for your fees. I guess its like paying market to keep things for you.

[UnitG24]

I foresee another potential problem in this well thought out technique. When teleporting a city with full resources and allied troops, the allied troops can only defend or be recalled/kicked out of the teleported city crammed full of resources. As such, the only purpose of the allied army garrisoned in the relocated city is to either defend or retreat. My understanding is that an allied garrisoned army may not serve any other purpose thus defeating the need for it to be teleported to a new remote location for battle. All the allied garrisoned army will do is sit there as temporary fortifications that eat away at your valuable food stocks.

Also, to make the storing of surplus capacity storage resources effective, the city in question must have relatively low levels of off-town production buildings. With low-level off-town production buildings come both minimal capacity limit and production. When storing surplus resources in a town with already high-level off-town production buildings, you are "wasting" the increased production that those buildings offer as opposed to the lower production levels of low-level production buildings with lower production rates. Therefore, this technique will only be useful to cities with low level buildings and capacities. It would be quite ineffective for cities with high level buildings. Perhaps this is not a problem, but more of a concern that needs to be noted if one is to implement this technique efficiently.

That's just some of my thoughts based on my own understanding of this technique. Feel free to comment.

G

[Tweedy]

maybe with the fully stocked resources you would spen them on archers/ transport/ whatever you want, and farm to continually ship out food for those troops, and extra resources for you. when your wheat is hanging on by a thread and you have just enough to fill it to 0, send more and send your troops, all of them, to the warring alliance/ another village to farm. the allied troops should be enough to defend, and if you are retalliated against they also hit a wall.

bam, two problems solved- defense, and offense.

EDIT: im new, so this may not work, but wth, let it be. comment if needed.

[angelrobot13]

Yeah, this idea also makes it much easier to create an awesome war city, with almost unlimited troop numbers because of almost unlimited food storage. The only thing stopping you from all the food stored is fees, and market lvl....

[redux]

I don't know if this has been posted but I have used this strategy with success many times.

Get your market to at least lvl 5. When you are going offline post your resources for sale at at least 2 higher than the recommended selling price and and bid for iron or lumber at least 2 below asking price. It costs you gold to do this but if you get hit all they get is what you gather while you are away. When you come back on cancel posts and it is back. If you are on when an attack is coming do this and in TH change production to 0. Attacker gets nothing . Email attacker to rescout and they usually recall troops because resources are at a very low level.

[B-ob]

From what I got out of what I read that he posted was that you take a city and not use it as a warring city but as a storage city. Which therefore means everyone in the alliance build this city up with resources before war. Then when you get about 100K warriors or so and about 20K+ archers get the embassy to lv10 and reinforce to protect the resources from being taken. Use a city as a supply city. Build transporters and maybe 10K of every other troop to protect everything in the city. Get the walls up to at least lv9 and max the defenses out in this city also. Then if this city is ever scouted no one will attack it cause they wont see any resources really but a heck load of troops. so it wouldn't be worth the attack too lose troops. So then during a war if someone in the alliance is plundered really bad that they need resources, then take resources out of market and send to the person in need. Get your Relief Station to at least lv9 so the resources can get to the alliance members quickly. Now you have lots of transporters and lots of resources to supply to the alliance if needed. But when not at war everyone in the alliance everyday transports at least 50K of every resource they have and no less they can send more but not less. But this is what i got out of what i read.