With the help of some post our friend wrote at http://www.lordofultimastrategies.com, we are doing a quick guide on Lord of ultima.

I’m just going to outline the basic, everything you need to know is at http://www.lordofultimastrategies.com.

First step: choosing the location of the city (Full article)

If you just started you can go to the next point, if you are building your next city here what you need to know.

The natural resources available to your city all depend on where you place your city. There are four different map elements that effect each square where you can place a city.

You can check what extra resources will be available by preplacing your city. Check the full how to in the article : Choosing a Location for Your City

Second Step: Building placement (Full article)

Unlike other Travian, TKO or Tribal War, where you place your building is very important in Lord of Ultima.

Natural resource influence the output of your resource producing building and you can add cottage and efficiency building to even increase the output more (example: forest increase the output of the Woodcutter building and the sawmill increase the output has well)

Cottage increase the construction speed of the city, a bit like the builder guild of Travian, Three Kingdom Online. Cottage also increase the output of your city.

If you want to optimize your economy building you need to be touching as many natural resources as possible and connected to the appropriate efficiency building too. The economy building should also touch a cottage also. This sounds simple, but it can get really complex to create the perfect resources output. On way of having to best layout is to use city planners so you can review the placement of these buildings before you commit building them.  One of my favorite is http://louopt.com/ if you are using another one feel free to tell me in the comment below.

The same apply for military building, you can checkout this article that cover everything you need to know about building placement

I’ve been very busy recently, but I got something funny for you. I’ve made a quick tutorial with the comic of Peng Guo about dodging, hope you like it.

"In battles, as verbal communication cannot be heard clearly, cymbals and drums are used as commands" As visual communication and eye contact are hampered, banners and flags are used as signals. Now the purpose of using cymbals, drums, flags and banners is to draw attention of the troops and focus them for combat under the direction of the commander. Once the troops are united as one body, the courageous ones will not advance forward by themselves and the cowardly ones will not retreat by themselves. This is the art of directing larges forces in battles. – Chapter Seven, Sun Tzu Art of War

In war good, communication with your troops, allies and even enemies his the key.

In most games MMO browser-based strategy game (like Three kingdom online, tribal war and travian) they have these feature built in.

If your a veteran player you can probably skips that part for other the advantage and disadvantage of each method will be explained.

In game feature

In game message

All these game have in game message, the quickest way to got a player whatever he his online or the next time he login.

It help you to find out if the user is still active, if he doesn’t answer after a few days or week you can presume he’s out.

The main advantage of this is that it’s quick and you’re almost sure the other player will read it next time he play.

The disadvantage is that entrusted player may read your message.

League message

Same thing has above but use by leadership and elite members of a league or tribes to send a message to the mass.

While it’s great to reach all your members, if there a spy in your league he might be able to read it and like normal message entrusted member can read it to.

Chat

Some of these game have in game chat, it’s great to talk directly to your peer, but you must be aware of the issues each room have.

From TKO chat here are the different room and how to use them.

World

Everybody on the server see it, so don’t tell sensitive info or information about what time it is or if it’s day or night, because other player might use this to attack you when your asleep or working.

League

Like the league message all your league member see this, beware of spy.

Private

Standard – One on one chat, note that you might be speaking to an entrust not the real player.

Internal forum

They work differently depending on the game, but like the league message, all league member see it (accept officer sub-forum). That some of them (like tribal war tribe forum) someone with an entrust can see it.

External to the game communication that might be useful.

External forum

The external forum solves most of the issues player with an entrust, only the player who registered can access it.

It can be useful to coordinate with ally too, an ally can have is own section of a forum and each tribes/leagues can share a section forum.

The main disadvantage is that you lose most of the feature of the in game forum, like writing the coordinate wills create a link directly to the in game location, this don’t work with an external forum.

IRC

You can always set up a IRC channel for you league. The advantage is that user can access it even if they’re not logged to the game and you can have control over who can be in the channel with a bot.

IM

Instant massaging can be useful specially the conference or group chat, you can talk to your buddy evens if they are not online (which can be annoying too if they are always poking you when the see you online).

Collaboration systems

like google wave, wiziq

I honestly haven’t planned anything with google wave but I did with wiziq and it really cool, you can have a draw  board and put the map on it and plan the attack and have a visual representation of the situation. It takes some effort to setup though but it might worth it.

Does any of you have use other method of communication to plan an attack or to plot something with your allies ?

A Interview on gamasutra really caught my attention it’s about The Rise of Free-To-Play At EA

EA have a brand new game that inspired from game like tribal war and travian but set in the world of ultima (Lord of Ultima) and gamasutra interviwing Ben Cousins general manager of Electronic Arts’ new free-to-play team

I really like that it takes on game I’ve played like tribal war, travian (TKO is kind of a travian asian style), why people play and don’t play evony (one of the reason he says Is actually why I don’t play). The part I liked the most is when he talk about how the small shops are scared that EA is entering the free to play with a somewhat big development team (5-6 peoples 10 month).

I think I will give a shot to there game, I just hope It’s not another time sink like TKO, Tirbal war and countless others… Here the complete article called : Interview: The Rise of Free-To-Play At EA