Grand Ages: Medieval "For Dummies"

Hey guys and girls, or I should say future Emporers! This is a basic "How to" guide I wanted to make, as I found when I started playing this great Gem, there wasnt great explanation into certain aspects of the game.

Intro

Hi there, thanks for taking the time to stop by my guide. I decided to make this guide as I found when I started playing and needed help, or even had a few questions there wasnt much information available. Even youtube didnt offer much, which is my usual source of "Tips n Tricks"!

I managed to even stumble upon Developer tips on youtube, which offered some information, but was mainly about what had been improved since the games original release. I dont normally pick on other gamers as everyone has their own play style, but I have to say some youtuber videos ive seen.....Woweee!
The AI must literally r@pe you time and time again. Or your economy is so bad, you beat yourself for the AI.
Anyway enough banter, lets get stuck into Grand Ages Medieval!

Starting Your road to Emporer

When you start a new campaign you can choose to either play the scripted campaign, which will place you in Bulgaria. It will teach you how to play the game, then throw you into playing a standard campaign.

Or you can play a Free play campaign, which you can choose your starting region in Europe and even your starter town. Dont stress to much if you want to have a custom named capital like "Helms Deep" or "Kings Landing", you can decide on that later. Which I will discuss later in this guide.

You can even choose to take the tutorial in your free play campaign at the very start. After that if you need any basic info best to head to the tool tips just above the map in the bottom corner!

Set your goals!

So It took me atleast 3 games before I understood what I wanted to acheive from Grand Ages. At first I thought it would be sweet to control France, or even Britain. Maybe even both, that friends is what is known as thinking small. Its a big game and big map. So set yourself some goals for yourself on what you want to reap from your empire!

I found in my last campaign which I beat all Competitors, I started small and was so set in my ambitions that I was suprised that I had the largest city upon becoming Emporer. So how I start a campaign is.
You have one town, no settlers or traders or building squads. You do have the basic needs for trade
Wood,Brick,Wheat,Wool,Fruit
Get yourself a trader at your Inn and start trading, build up your towns buisness', then start settling new towns within your region

Starting small
Be the main trader between you and your neighbours
Establish new towns in your region and trade between them, a good trade route should only have around 4-5, 6 at the most towns within it.
Take control of your region eg. France. meaning eliminate all non Faction towns from it. If its a rebel town or Faction town take it!
Look for close by countrys with no Factions, just rebels, move in and repeat

Thinking Big
So by following above you should have somewhere around 20 towns, spread
over 2 countrys maybe 3.
You should even be an Emporer by now
Focus on building up your buisness' spread across you enitre empire
Build yourself a small army to maintain the wild life or invading neighbours
Once you hit 250,000 citizens or upwards you can get upgrades for your army
Build large army and start taking over Europe
Be sure to read on how to conquer later in guide! Good tip at "Capitals"

Trade

Beleive it or not trade is what this game is built around. The war and fighting is just a different aspect on taking control of the world.
So most guides ive read or videos ive watched have shown me, that a good trade route should have whats known as a "cluster"
Basically its 4 towns on 1 trade route, which each town has its own unique resource eg.
Town 1
Wood,Brick,Fruit,Wool,Wheat
Town2
Coal,Pottery,Wine,Metal,Beer
Town3
Cloth,Clothes,Pomp,Tools,Fish
Town4
Salt,Honey,Meat,Bread,Furs

Which works.....very slowly. To make things more efficient in your economy it would help to peice together the industrys that work together in 1 town, on 1 trade route eg
Town1
Wool,Cloth,Clothes,Furs,Wine
Now a town like this would manufacture goods like china does, and would require a warehouse to fix the excess production problems.
Does not mean its the best way, I found the best town setups to have consisted of 3 things, take note on this and you wont fail.......WOOD, BRICK,WHEAT.
Thats it! This will build your towns to stand the test of a strong economy. Then you want to have smart Resources added to your town. So if you have a town thats near the ocean and it can produce salt and fish. A smart build would be
Town1
Wood,Brick,Wheat,Fish,Beer
Town2
Wood,Brick,Wheat,Salt,Meat
Reason for these builds is all products made in this town are made locally, and not imported from other towns. It will be hard to get towns this perfect but you do the best you can.
Say you need fish, and only have one town on the ocean, you would make it like this
Wood,Brick,Wheat,Fish,Salt
Then the next town inland has Meat, for instance the Salt doesnt have far on the trade route to travel, before its turned into a new product.

Now reasons why I found the cluster to be bad.....eg. Wool,Cloth,Clothes,Furs,Wine
In this town it depends on Wood and Brick to build up local buisness, which needs to be imported, which if your roads arent top notch or your trader doesnt have enough carts this will take forever to acheive!
Secondly and most important FAMINE!!! There is no wheat here, which is being imported for people to survive. No food.....no Workers.....No Trade
Your basically begging for a Recession for your town, possibly Empire.

So best action, build your towns with wood, brick, wheat, then your special resources, and then cluster the special resources on the same trade route. So dont have wool on one trade route that meets another trade route at your capital, that takes the wool to become cloth. Unless your not in a hurry for cloth.

One last tip for trade and why wood, brick, wheat, idea is great is, these resources are so common. On the market they will be a lower price to buy an sell, but the point is to never have to worry about trading those. Because resources like meat and metal tools wouldnt be on every trade route, they will fetch higher prices at the markets, which your traders can bring in from other trade routes, and make more money!!

Recession

A recession is a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced. You will find whilst playing, certain towns may fall into recession. Just means that industries in that town are on the slow end of productivity.

Many factors come into play which you can view in the overview tab of that town. One of the minor factors is that the trader doesnt bring enough goods to the market. Which people then leave jobs.

If there is missing materials and work comes to a hault, workers wont leave. Your still paying there wages. The low prosperity of that industry in that specific town, will make them leave.

So it keeps coming back to materials at the market, no materials, people leave. That triggers low prosperity and hense you have a Recession!

Warehouses

So what is a warehouse, you can use these to store goods from your markets. Most of the time you will be using them to store goods from your town. So if you have alot brick buisness' and not much is getting constructed stocks will grow to a point where your producing more than the populace is consuming.
When your overstocked, work stops, yet you still pay wages and because your markets are so overstocked the price crashes. So basic price for brick would be 50-55, high value at 68 and low at 37. If it crashes you could easly be looking around 30.
So you have lost money on your product, and still paying wages for no production!!!

So build warehouses where needed!

Problems within the Empire

Here we will discuss issues with your towns and ways to fix them before your economy boils over!

Famine
Obviously there is no wheat inside your local market. WIth no wheat workers will leave and you will enter a recession in that town. Depending on whats in the town will affect other factors eg. metal tools, you now have nothing to build with.
So place wheat inside market and check your trader has wheat on his trade route or go one better and build wheat farms at all towns.

Missing materials
This is straight forward, materials you need to build new buisness' or manufacture products in the town are not available at the market.
So check trade routes and ofcourse trader.

Excess Production
I discussed this just before in warehouses, but basically your making more goods than the towns specific market is buying, your overstocked and soon in that town the price will crash.
Buy stock, move it around your empire or build warehouses to store it!

No labour
This will come about when there is more jobs then workers. It will come around when you have plagues, or famine and definetly when there is a recession!
All production drops in a recession, as there is no labour. Your workers are spread across all 5 buisness' in the town. So production comes through slower.
How to fix no labour best of times, if you have jobs people will eventually return. Make sure you have a good mix of goods at the market to lure people to your town and there are no other effects draining on your town.

Natural Disasters
This consists of problems that happen and cannot be avoided, just handled. They will have affect on local buisness' and even wars that rage across the land. I had a massive army that wouldnt leave a town because they had low morale from Frost!
Best way to deal with disasters is churches or statues, they wont rid you of these problems just aid you in overcoming them sooner.

Diplomacy

So mostly your going to be diplomatic with your neighbours ofcourse, you wont really be having to communicate with say empires from across the world. So you wouldnt be in Britain trying to contact Africa.

You can be dragged into wars that are across the world, which you wont be fighting and I can explain that in wars and combat.

With diplomacy most people arent sure how to negotiate, what ive noticed is negotiations works on about 10% of your kingdoms current purse. So you could have eg
30 Towns and 4 million in the bank, you should need about 400,000 to settle agreement
15 Towns and 50 million in the bank, you should need 5 million to settle agreement

Dont stress to much, once your making decent money you wont care on how much your paying other nations.
So I was trapped in a war i didnt want to be in. I paid for a peace, that cost 4 million dollars. Only crap part was, 1 week later they went to war with my ally. So I was redragged back into War.
How I got out of that was firstly broke my alliance, and then repaid another 4 million dollars to the enemy for peace.

If your not wanting to be in wars, best to not have freinds. Ive had many allys and found that most of the wars started, because they dragged me in.

With diplomacy, your really going to be using it to try to get the rebel towns to join your faction. By getting your sympathy and happiness high enough, and completing tasks they will join your nation.......for a price!!
Thats right, after all the work you have done, they still want money. I always just go to war with them and take towns by conquest, as it works out cheaper.
Be warned that picking on rebel towns, may drag large nations to war against you.

Only thing to take note with diplomacy, you cant just Auto attack your Ally or neighbours. You have a relationship "Bar" with every faction or rebel town you meet. For you to declare war it must be Neutral, absolutley no treaties. If you have, these will need to be downgraded until you are eventually neutral.

War and Combat

Wars will last aslong as you let them. Some 1 week, maybe even 500 weeks. With war if your not interested in fighting, your best to have troops stationed at your borders, this will aid with trade routes getting raided.

Before I said that you wouldnt be able to fight wars across the globe. Thats right people, this is not Total War, or Age of Empires. You have whats known as a "Supply Range". This is how far your nation can supply your troops with food and goods.

Your troops will consume goods just like your populace does, so if you find your in a fight and morale breaks like a twig, you can guarantee the local market has no goods, or you have passed the supply lines.
To check supply lines, select a troop and hold down ALT, you will see a orange line. This will be chained to where that troop is getting goods from. Also this same method, will show you how far your supply lines go to by zooming out. You should see orange lines bordering your country.

I noticed that wars would start and stop all the time, with countrys picking off small amounts of towns at a time. To naturally beat your opponent, and claim his kingdom is take his capital. If its not in reach of your Empire, your best to take a town that is close to your enemys capital. Use this as a post to hold your supplys for the troops.

With combat you wont have to do any fighting yourself, you can set stances for the battle. Agressive or defencive etc, if you wish to. One key to having a succesfully army, is Variation.

Have a good mix of troops, blade and blunt. Cavalry or archers, seige units you will mainly need just for taking towns. So if your just fighting battles, best to keep your seige units well hidden until needed.

One thing I did discover with this game is, your going to need to study your geography on where your battles are taking place. Use choke points on your map to block the enemy from moving past your defencive lines.

Even when Im holding a seige, I will have my main army attacking the town. With 3 other smaller armies, posted at choke points close to where the seige is. With little interuptions, your enemys towns wont stand a chance.

Capitals

How to get a capital is to become an Emporer. How to become an emporer is to expand your empire. So settle new towns like crazy, and you will punch out Emporer status in no time.

Bonuses in doing so, will allow you to full access of the tech tree's. The main cause behind become emporer, is it will grant you a capital. With this you can select any town within your empire. It doesnt need to be your starting one.

Your best to pick a town that has a great defencive position, geographicly. Make your enemys earn your kingdom, if they want it they will have to take numerous towns before taking your capital.

As I said before in wars and combat, to fully defeat your enemy, and take claim to their whole kingdom, all you need to do is take there capital.
So place yours well!

Tips N Tricks

Here im just going to make notes on things ive found to be helpfull whilst playing.

With traders, if you need new carts, select a trader and hold down ALT. Left click on a town on his trade route, and it will auto build carts, if there is a Inn at the town.

Same goes for troops, but this works a litte different. By selecting any troop, hold down ALT and left click any town that has a barracks. It will have blue highlighted tabs underneath the town name. Why its different is it will only recruit the last troop made at that barracks. If nothing builds then obviously there hasnt been any troops recruited at that barracks.

Wild animals and rebels cant be eliminated, just managed. So have troops, or towers with troops stationed at them along important trade routes to stop plundering.

Ever notice that factions build towns in your lands, what there aim is, your region has a unique unit type. The more towns, the more claim they have. Each region has its own percentage required to claim. Aslong as you hold the major claim of the region, dont worry to much on a few stray towns.

Your traders at any point in the game can trade on exterior trade routes, "towns that arent apart of your empire". Its still making money for you by doing so. The reason I dont do this is, your helping rebel towns or other factions towns become more succesfull.

Not every trade route needs every recourse, in the local towns. You can for example make tools in spain, and ship them to britain. What I do is make local trade lines, Nation trade lines, then international trade lines. As I said before i dont really do exterior trade.(Trade with other factions)

Aim of the game is to create jobs, this will bring people. People consume goods. With consumtion you will make more money. Money rules the world.

If you have nothing selected, hold down ALT and it will show you what each towns buisness' manufacture.

Dont be in a hurry to spend your tech tree points, some will hinder your industrys. If you say have alot wheat, and study 1st tier wheat tech, it will double your production. Which you will be overproducing like a mad man. Best to build warehouses or more jobs in other industries which will bring workers to eat the wheat stores.

Each town has a production tab, it will tell you how much that towns buisness' produce. eg. if you had a town that made 60% wheat for your empire, it would be a town worth defending!

You can tell a towns population by how big its diameter is. Compare the size of a enemy town to one of your own and you should be able to guage its population size. The number underneath the town name represents how many citizens are in the town, eg 7 = 7,000
Keep a eye on your building squads, you will nominate roads to be upgraded. If there is no materials in their closest market, they will sit and wait until there is.

One thing ive always done is, I have a spare Trader at my capital with 10-15 carts. Whenever a town runs short of a supply, or roads are waiting on tools. You may even want to speed build certain things eg meatworks! You can race large quantaties of materials you need straight to where there needed.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading through, hopefully this guide gave you abit more info on what your game plan was missing. If you have any questions just drop a comment and I should be able to get back to you.

Also just keep in mind that situations might not go your way sometimes, just keep on going. Running a country isnt always easy.

[Sober_Bender]

im not to sure if it is coop, would love to help but quite busy with university latley. Only tips i can give is, trade with the ai to get yourself going, then only trade with yourself after that. Once youve set up yourself an empire, go forth an conquer. Dont give up, the game is well worth every cent. But if your still not keen, you can refund it prior 200 hours gameplay

[Just a can of Dr. Pepper]

If you don't mind and if you got time you can help me or is the game not coop? if you don't want to i'm fine with that

[Just a can of Dr. Pepper]

Ah okay I was just thinking I just spent my money for nothing on a game I don't know how to play >: but I get good at games that I has no skill in It takes me like 2+ houres but dis game is hard

[Sober_Bender]

it takes time mate, took me around 30 hours just to get to grips with it. Its a whole new game, not like Total war, or age of empires. So will take some adjusting but its worth it!

[Just a can of Dr. Pepper]

I still suck at the game and I read this >: