When your alliance is hard pressed by your enemies, then it is time to apply the mushroom principle. Every alliance, no matter how large it is, has a backyard in what they consider their ocean or their area of influence. That backyard is full of little ghost cities and empty landing points. Go for them and scatter cities like mushrooms. Your enemies' backyard suddenly isn't theirs anymore.
Mushroom
cities are best applied by an alliance or even several allied alliances
together to create general confusion. But even a single player
with many open slots can pull it off. It may not be the winning strategy if you are already losing the game, but it will seriously annoy the enemy.
This article is about how to get, start, run and not necessarily keep mushroom cities. Because your lost little city means the enemy alliance lost a slot on a minnow. It all works for you either way.
What do mushroom cities do?
Mushroom cities invade the private space of an alliance. The private space of an alliance is what they call our ocean or our islands. That usually includes islands for world wonders. Once cities start mushrooming, hey can ignore it and find growing cities in their backyard; they can farm them while handing battle points to your militia; or they can take them while losing slots at the same time without gaining battle points. For you, it's a win-win-win situation.
How to run a baby mushroom city
Deciding on building a baby mushroom city should be ruled by the principle of not handing any battle points to the enemy. The priority lies in building infrastructure, not units, though you need some of those to open some farming villages to get in additional resources. The second consideration is to get onto as many islands as possible to get maximum confusion.
Building priority in the city is focused on the walls (as high as the enemy lets you get them; having said that, this is a recurring priority), in farms up to level 25 (to make the most of your militia), and in the academy up to level 8 (for the research of militia, booty, and ceramic). Under the second priority heading falls building up the cave, warehouse, and resources. You'll have to build a bit as resources allow you, so be inventive. All other buildings should be kept to the minimum build up. You don't want to do the work for the enemy.
You don't need to research any units or build any. All they do is giving the enemy battle points. Denying them these points is part of the plot and must be adhered to religiously.
Maturing the mushroom city
If and once the enemy starts to ignore your cities, you can build up walls and eventually the tower. Once the walls have reached an adequate level of about 15, you can start to produce defensive troops galore. You have to play it by ear. Start building the rest of your city to a fully functional one bit by bit and see if there is a reaction from the enemy. Don't be afraid to start tearing down buildings if he gets interested again. Other than that, you can treat it like any other of your cities.
If you have a friendly large city on the island, send your units there while you are recruiting. Never leave units in the city while you're offline. Don't recruit units while you're offline. They are sitting ducks for the enemy to attack before you log on again to hide them away. If you don't have a large friendly city on the island, build transport ships and export whatever you build to the nearest large friendly city. Always build the ships first and the exact number of units to fill them after that. Make sure there is nothing left in the city when you log off.
Defending or not defending a mushroom city
During the baby phase of your mushroom city, you should not defend it with anything else than with militia. There should also be no trips on land, but birs or better fire ships will do if the enemy attacks you from the same island on a regular basis. The idea is to really deny the enemy any kind of battle points. You might even have to send ships home if he launches a sea attack to get those few points from you.
Your baby mushroom will probably be revolted time and again in a revolt world. (I once had a mushroom city that didn't come out of revolt for two weeks running, which tells you all about how reluctant the enemy is to lose the slot for a small city.) When revolted, ignore it and continue as before; don't post it in the forum or someone might send support and spoil the plan. In a conquest world, you'll just have loads of unwelcome visitors.
If the enemy takes the baby mushroom city, then that is just fine. Send your next colony ship to the next landing point and restart. It will drive the enemy crazy. You will have to decide when the mushroom city becomes worth defending. Without high walls, a tower, and a sizable home grown force, I wouldn't bother and stick to the no battle points policy. Depending on the distance to your real cities, the baby stage might be all you want to do.
What do mushroom cities do to the enemy?
Variant 1: The enemy might farm the city. As resource production is low, don't worry too much about those; they are of no import to a large city. He is looking for battle points, and running into your militia from time to time brings you battle points, but none to him. Eventually he'll stop helping you grow in that way.
Variant 2: The enemy ignores you. He'll find a fully functional city in his backyard sooner or later. Or you might still have a baby on one of his world wonder islands. Either way it is annoying. Nobody wants to enter the world wonder stage of the game with a minnow on a strategic island.
Variant 3: The enemy goes for your city and takes it from you. As you have not given away any battle points, that just will slow his growth by taking away a city slot from him. All you have to do is send the next colony ship to the same or next island and start again.
If the enemy goes for variant 3, he'll only take a mushroom city once. He will see that you have built mainly walls (which he probably knocked down) and nothing much else. As a result of that, some alliances 'give' such small cities to their small players to take. If this is done often enough, it becomes a pattern of 'big players always get big cities, us small players get handed crap'. This destabilizes the enemy alliance and leads to a leadership crisis. If big players have to take small cities too often, on the other hand, their growth starts to stall, stalling the alliance growth at the same time.
Maturing the mushroom city
If and once the enemy starts to ignore your cities, you can build up walls and eventually the tower. Once the walls have reached an adequate level of about 15, you can start to produce defensive troops galore. You have to play it by ear. Start building the rest of your city to a fully functional one bit by bit and see if there is a reaction from the enemy. Don't be afraid to start tearing down buildings if he gets interested again. Other than that, you can treat it like any other of your cities.
If you have a friendly large city on the island, send your units there while you are recruiting. Never leave units in the city while you're offline. Don't recruit units while you're offline. They are sitting ducks for the enemy to attack before you log on again to hide them away. If you don't have a large friendly city on the island, build transport ships and export whatever you build to the nearest large friendly city. Always build the ships first and the exact number of units to fill them after that. Make sure there is nothing left in the city when you log off.
Defending or not defending a mushroom city
During the baby phase of your mushroom city, you should not defend it with anything else than with militia. There should also be no trips on land, but birs or better fire ships will do if the enemy attacks you from the same island on a regular basis. The idea is to really deny the enemy any kind of battle points. You might even have to send ships home if he launches a sea attack to get those few points from you.
Your baby mushroom will probably be revolted time and again in a revolt world. (I once had a mushroom city that didn't come out of revolt for two weeks running, which tells you all about how reluctant the enemy is to lose the slot for a small city.) When revolted, ignore it and continue as before; don't post it in the forum or someone might send support and spoil the plan. In a conquest world, you'll just have loads of unwelcome visitors.
If the enemy takes the baby mushroom city, then that is just fine. Send your next colony ship to the next landing point and restart. It will drive the enemy crazy. You will have to decide when the mushroom city becomes worth defending. Without high walls, a tower, and a sizable home grown force, I wouldn't bother and stick to the no battle points policy. Depending on the distance to your real cities, the baby stage might be all you want to do.
What do mushroom cities do to the enemy?
Variant 1: The enemy might farm the city. As resource production is low, don't worry too much about those; they are of no import to a large city. He is looking for battle points, and running into your militia from time to time brings you battle points, but none to him. Eventually he'll stop helping you grow in that way.
Variant 2: The enemy ignores you. He'll find a fully functional city in his backyard sooner or later. Or you might still have a baby on one of his world wonder islands. Either way it is annoying. Nobody wants to enter the world wonder stage of the game with a minnow on a strategic island.
Variant 3: The enemy goes for your city and takes it from you. As you have not given away any battle points, that just will slow his growth by taking away a city slot from him. All you have to do is send the next colony ship to the same or next island and start again.
If the enemy goes for variant 3, he'll only take a mushroom city once. He will see that you have built mainly walls (which he probably knocked down) and nothing much else. As a result of that, some alliances 'give' such small cities to their small players to take. If this is done often enough, it becomes a pattern of 'big players always get big cities, us small players get handed crap'. This destabilizes the enemy alliance and leads to a leadership crisis. If big players have to take small cities too often, on the other hand, their growth starts to stall, stalling the alliance growth at the same time.
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