Growing your population quickly!

Hey all,

So I found an interesting way to boost your towns population... quickly.

To keep it simple let's assume Player1 has 3 established towns and 1 town which is still building up it's population, we'll call this town #4.

At this point Player1 likely has units hanging around that he or she doesn't need too much since as they have built up a technologically advanced force...

so here is what you can do.


Player1 can then send his crappy units (ram ships, ballistas, slingers, swordsmen, whatever) to town #4.


Once they arrive at town #4 player1 then fires/dismisses the units and those fired units return to the general population, no people are lost. So if a ship cost you ten people to build, you receive 10 units in town #4.




This is an amazingly fast way to fully populate out new towns and is honestly something that I've done in small amount in the past, but only recently began doing in large scale amounts.

More people means more gold per hour, and in turn greater flexibility on the field, be it your ability to buy cargo ships or waging a war, this shouldn't be underestimated.

The only thing you need to remember is that you *must* be able to support your new residents. Make sure your happiness in your town doesn't drop below 50, do this by pre-building museums and leveling your tavern and having the wine on hand to keep your new unemployed soldiers happy.




I hope this little tip helps out others and allows them to grow more quickly, just remember not to leave yourself open for attack by spreading your military too thin. You should be able to do this with just old units you no longer need.

Ram Ships and Ballistas make the most sense since by the time you've expanded to 4 or more islands you should have access to paddle wheel rams and at least catapult ships for the defensive side.

If you like to keep the best of the best (even at the cost of gold per hour) you can do this with swordsmen (once you have gunsmen), flamethrower ships (once you have paddlewheel rams) catapult ships (once you have mortar ships) and so on.

You can also replace your rams and catapults once you have mortars. It's all up to you, but keep this tactic in mind and make it work for you!


Remember that not only does this give you more gold, it also gives you more points!









Flip

Another take on this strategy might be to pre-build units with the sole purpose of them becoming your population in the new town.


Based on my initial gathering of data here is your best investment people:gold per/hour if you want to follow this idea.


Best units for pre-loading.


Steam Giants 12 people at the cost of 15 gold p/hour. this is as close to a 1:1 ratio you will find in ikariam. The downside is they take ages to build as well as taking a lot of resources. While they're the best unit in terms of stats, they're likely the worst choice in terms of direct turnaround. Unless you already had a bunch you didn't need I would not use these units.


Ram Ships ~2.1 gold p/person p/hour.

Swordsmen/Gunsmen tied at 2.5 gold per hour per person. (technically gyrocopters fit in at the same cost, but due to the build times and resources I would not use them.)

Phalanx/Archers tied at ~2.7 gold p/hour p/person

Slingers 3 gold p/hour p/person.



given the above your best bet is likely ramships (keep in mind the travel time, this might be a deal breaker for you if you need instant gratification) followed by either gunsmen or Swordsmen. I'd choose swordsmen as they build fast and are disposible anyhow.