Aging strategy in Forge of Empires

Yes, I know it's over a year old and you may already have all the answers you need, but, like me, others may be finding this later, and I'm writing for them, too :)

That first answer is an excellent overview of "how" but not "when" or "why".

But I'll start with the last part of your question first.

If you get stuck in a higher age you don't like, move on to the next, then the next, until you get to one you like again. If you can't find one, start a fresh world (or delete and start again on your current world), knowing that you're never going to advance beyond the age you've decided is yours.

More generally, the "Why" is much harder to answer. Some of the more experienced players in my guild(s) say they age up when they're near the top of their neighbourhood, or are bored with their current age. Yes, they'll prepare for the move by stockpiling goods and fp's for the tech tree, but having sufficient prep isn't the "reason why" they move when they do.

As for "When", the exact timing, there are different opinions as to whether it's better to age up before, during or after the next Event/GBG/GE season. Ask within your guild, you'll get lots of different answers and can then choose the approach that fits your style of play.

Finally here's a little insight into my own thinking when I am trying to decide when/why to move up an age:

I enjoy "camping" in an age. After 3 years and 6 worlds, I find I really like EMA. Battle quests (for events) are easy because you still have "small" players at the lower end of your neighbourhood, who are easy to beat. By Colonial, most of those have dropped out of the game.

None of my cities is higher than Industrial. On some worlds I've aged up because my guild required it. On one I aged up to Colonial because I dislike the appearance of the buildings in LMA. On another I got as far as Industrial because I wanted to see what it was like, and am nearly ready to move beyond that. I've also decided that on one world I'll race ahead about 3 or 4 eras to something well advanced of my other worlds, just to see how it feels, but I don't know which of my six worlds I'll use for that experiment - probably the one that's already at Industrial. But I've been reluctant as I don't want to deal with 2-lane roads and "refined" goods once I hit whatever age it is that those kick in. I might get there, and find that I really love those features, and wonder why I've deprived myself of them for so long. Who knows? It's a game, the idea is to enjoy it.

My main goal in the game was to see all the ages so I could see the different technologies, buildings and mini-games (like the Oceanic Terminal).

I have played for over a year now and have made it to Oceanic Future. Here are my tips for aging:

(1) In general, if you want to maximize your progression in seeing content, you should age up as soon as your city has the stability to do so (see below for what I mean by stability).

(2) The main risk in aging up is that your military will be underpowered, so the two things you want to make sure of is to be able to immediately research all the key military technologies, and to have a high enough Attacker boost level.

(3) First things first, you should actively add new tiles to your city, so if there are bunch of tiles available by doing straightforward things, you should do that immediately and exploit those tiles before anything else. You should maximize all the tiles in the city. I aim at having buildings generating at least 1 FP per tile or 1% attacker boost per tile.

(4) Save up resources and FP so that when you age up you can get all the military unit types that you need. In general, each age has a preferred one or two military units (usually the heavy unit). You just use that one unit + ghosts when you fight. You can find the list of units elsewhere on the internet. For example, in Future, Arctic Future and Oceanic Future, Hover Tank is the key unit. In Contemporary, Anti-Aircraft Vehicle is the key unit, etc.

(5) You can tell if you have enough attack boost by how you are doing in GE. If you can complete all 64 encounters in GE comfortably, then you are strong enough to age up. If you are struggling to finish GE, then you should work on your Attacker boosts more. Note that it is more important to develop Attacker Defense than Attacker Attack. The reason for this is that attack boost power scales asymptotically, so that means it is very difficult to one-shot units, so you only need enough attack to two-shot units, since you will never get enough boost to one-shot units in most cases. However if you work on your Attacker Defense, you can easily get to a point where the enemy can only three-shot or four-shot you. This is why Attacker Defense is much more important than Attacker Attack.

(6) Never waste tiles on City defense. The value of the tiles for FP and Attacker bonus is much much more important than the trivial amount you might lose to plundering. Also, City defense will not really stop most plunderers. I easily plunder even the strongest people in my neighborhood, so all their defense is basically wasted tiles.

(7) Getting in good guilds will greatly help your progression.

I have some different opinions about the comment above.

2. Do not research all military technologies, nor any other technologies too fast after aging up. If you need units of next era ASAP, just wait for a GBG opening day (Thursday morning) to age up and fight enemies of lower ages to earn as many units as you can.

In some ages you can have higher era units, researching technologies before having a main quest asking you to do so will make you miss some most advantages (like having Hover Tanks in CE or PME).

See this tutorial for more informations:

https://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/index.php?threads/higher-age-units-guide-v1-22.37109/

5. No, it's always more important to have more attack bonus for attacker than defense one, especially after having Arctic Orangery. You dont need to one shot directly, but you shall at least have 7 damage points each shot. Why? Because with Arctic Orangery, having more than 7 base damage means one-shot-kill each critical strike. (7 X 1.5 > 10).

In the late game, all space-age units have the skill "keen eye", allowing an extra chance of critical strike with double damage. In the beginning of each round, the player always move first before AI enemy for the same type of units, having higher attack bonus means you can one shot kill enemy before they even have chance to attack you (let alone they have to waste one more shot to transform your rogue first), defense bonus wont make a lot of change in this case.

The only exception is when you are in an age where the heavy unit has the skill "reactuve armor"(CE, AF, OF etc), without critical strick you cannot deal more than 4 damage (3 for AF heavy unit) no matter your attack bonus, only in this case your defense bonus matters since you cannot fast kill the enemies before getting attacked.

6. If you play PvP, city defense bonus now matters a bit, especially when you have higher-era units as defense, or when you are in some ages like SAM where your units are much more powerful that those in previous age. Yes, you can never truly stop your neighbour of the same age, but you can at least "discourage" a lot of lower age attackers in PvP from attacking you, which will make you loose your PvP points more slowly. Most players are not hardcore fighters like me to be ready to crush anyone of higher era, some of them will just click "refresh" to seek an easier opponent after seeing your defense bonus .

As my own example, here is a video of how I repelled a TE attacker with 600% bonus (auto fight) when I was in CE. Even I have only a little defense bonus, but with AF and OF units and around 150 city defense, it's still possible to win an auto combat. So do not rush the conclusion that "city defense is useless", having kind of 150-200 city defense bonus does not take bunch of space (some are included in event buildings), but in some specific cases it will make alot of difference.

For the topic, my own suggestion is, besides enough attacker boost and FP/goods production, it's better to learn abit the age you want to move in, the combat mecanism, how to get higher era units if possible, etc. Especially after AF the gameplay is changed and you wont be allowed to rush several ages in a time. So dont get surprised by your new age and end up hating it, that's the most important thing.