This settlement is for people who will only purchase three shard expansions at the start and no more for the duration of the season. All other expansions will be goods. It's simply how to get more out of less.
If you're in a guild and there are just some people that refuse to play or say they don't understand well here is a step by step, paint by numbers way to play QI and help your guild. If anyone has less than 5k progress when QI ends they really need to explain themselves.
If you see anyone donating in the first four QI maps they need a talking to. The only exception is the goods donation. We start with five types of goods. We're only using ropes so donating the rest are fine but don't do it in the first 4 maps. Wait until you can't win fights anymore then donate the goods while you start building decorations.
Everyone should have some type of fight boost even if it's only a forgotten temple. Once the garrisons are taken down you will then have a 150% fight boost. This should be good enough for the first 4-5 maps. Do not build decorations before you have to as that slows down your settlement building.
If you're in a guild that doesn't take garrisons down first or fast move to a good guild. Seriously. Strong fighters don't need garrisons down first but people with little fight boost do. If they don't take down garrisons they just don't care about the smaller players in the guild. They also hurt themselves by keeping small players on the sidelines. Seriously it's fine to change guilds.
Scenario:
The main city doesn't give any coin, supply, QA storage or QA generation. The main city gives 374 red attack and 354 red defense so we will be building decorations for this city because we fight!
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in QI, we shall fight on the garrisons and strongholds, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength against the bosses, we shall defend our settlement, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the side nodes, we shall fight on the infinite nodes, we shall fight in the mini-boss and all the nodes in-between; we shall never surrender.
Winston Churchill was a big QI fan apparently.
But we're also going to be smart. We're going to convert this settlement into a donation hub instead of fighter base.
QI start
Setting up our settlement just follow the picture here. We will focus on coin buildings as a way to generate coin that we need to "rotate the crops" but also for easy chrono alloy. It's better to just have 6-9 multistory houses and the rest estate houses but you won't start with enough coin to do that. Estate houses cost more.
1st collection
slowly remove houses and build churches with the space. Work in 6x6 tiles. 9 houses remove replace with 4 churches until happiness is 150%. Never collect anything if happiness is below 150%
That's what it looks like at 150% happiness.
collect coins
place breweries
combination of removing houses and churches so you keep happiness above 150% but also have enough population for the breweries.
This is what it looks like
You'll notice you have a lot more coin than supplies. We need more because we're "rotating the crops". That means the big empty field you see in the photo below is where we alternate houses, supply buildings and churches to maximize return using the same space for multiple resources.
Adding the breweries right before collecting supplies almost tripled the supply production of the tannery.
remove all the breweries and two of the tanneries. Remove all the churches as well.
You now have over 400 chrono alloy so we can build 2 alchemists
That's what it looks like after deleting all those buildings and adding two alchemists
Now we fill the rest of the space with houses. We're going to forgo getting some QA and try to max chrono in this build.
Here's the settlement after putting houses in
The rotation of buildings all require coins so we're focusing on that. The houses also will give us more chrono because they have a smaller footprint than the supply buildings that give the same chrono so it's just simply more.
Come back in one hour so the game recognizes the alchemists and the timer starts on them.
Second collection
I'll show the rotating crops again step by step one more time.
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
Remove all breweries and churches.
If you need more troops build a catapult camp and as many units you need then delete.
Delete two tanneries and build three alchemists.
Fill the rest of the space with estate houses.
From here on out we only build temporary tier 1 buildings like breweries and estate houses or tier 3 buildings like clapboard houses and bakeries. We're not wasting resources on tier 2 buildings like alchemists and apartments. If you use this method we're showing you there is no need and doing so will slow you down.
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Then collect coins.
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
Then collect supplies.
Remove all breweries and churches.
If you need more troops build a catapult camp and as many units you need then delete.
You now have a choice. We have generated over 1k chrono from that last collection so you can build a clapboard house or a bakery to go with our theme of maxing chrono production.
Instead I'm going to build two doctors. The reason is we will get better coin and supply return if we can reach 150% happiness faster when rotating crops.
So build 2 doctors and fill the rest of the space with estate houses.
Fourth collection
Thanks to the doctors our settlement is a lot closer to being happy so we'll get more of a return as we begin.
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Then collect coins.
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
Then collect supplies.
Remove all breweries and churches.
If you need more troops build a catapult camp and as many units you need then delete.
By putting those doctors in early not only do we increase our QA per hour but our coin and supplies increased by at least 2x and we still generated over 1k chrono. So now we can build either a clapboard house or bakery. I prefer a clapboard house first because that will super boost our coins with all the 20% estate houses boosting it.
So place one clapboard house and fill the rest of the space with estate houses.
I would normally rush the first clapboard house and first bakery but for this playthrough the focus is on players that want to minimize shard use so they can open all boxes at the end of the incursion.
5th collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Then collect coins.
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
Then collect supplies.
Remove all breweries add a bakery. You'd really benefit from rushing this first bakery but for this run through we're not doing that.
Fill the rest of the space with estate houses as we're still maxing chrono.
We'll build another bakery next collection and both will be moved under the other supply buildings so we're going to rearrange a bit now to satisfy the OCD.
You should have plenty of coin and supplies and that will start to increase moving forward so next collection we'll build a goods building as well.
6th collection
For people not keeping track of collection numbers this should be late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Then collect coins.
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
Now we're going to collect the supplies a little differently.
Collect a tannery, delete it and build a brewery.
Repeat for the second tannery.
Now we collect the rest of the supplies.
Now we're going to clear the field of the extra breweries and some of the houses.
We generated almost 1500 chrono from the last collection so build another bakery and a ropery.
Then fill the rest of the field with estate houses.
Now just because you have 200+ chrono doesn't mean you should spend it on a tier 2 building. Just save it for the next collection. Remember after collection 2 we do not build tier 2 buildings.
After an hour get 3 goods expansions. You should have enough coin and supply to get four but make sure you have enough stock to work your settlement.
I put churches in the new space. Lets generate some QA while we wait for the next collection. If you're struggling to fight then this is where you can put your first decoration in as we have more than 200 chrono to spare.
7th collection
This would be mid to late Sunday for most people and either the end of map 4 to help you keep track of collections. Are you using all your actions? You should be around 1800-1900 actions. Some will be more if they start QI right on time. Some will be a lot more if they play every 10hrs instead of twice a day. You'll be able to get a few more collection but this is a lazy walkthrough for people with little QI boost from main city. If we can get the stragglers in the guild to follow this guide and play twice a day that's enough.
With the churches we built our settlement is at 150% happiness so just collect coins.
Remove houses and churches and place breweries until we can't place more without dropping bellow 150% happiness.
get two more goods expansions
remove all the breweries we just built.
build another bakery
build another doctor
Fill the rest of the settlement with estate houses.
Remember to build and delete catapult camp when you need more troops. If you need to build decorations we have over 400 chrono so you can build some now.
Your progress should be about 2k (a little more), on map 4, after using QA when collecting is over.
8th collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%
Then collect coins.
Now remove a combination of houses and churches and put as many breweries in as you can. Keep happiness at 150%
I also replaced 6 estate houses with multistory houses to have enough population for one extra brewery.
Remove all the breweries and the multistory houses we put in as temporary population. And remove 3 more multistory houses.
Build:
one bakery
one clapboard house
one doctor
Fill the rest of the field with estate houses.
Just to give a baseline your QI progress should be at about 2400 right.
As a reminder even though we have over 200 chrono to spend we are NOT putting in tier 2 buildings we're saving it for tier 3 buildings.
We have enough resources to get another goods expansion but we'll get that after collection 9. It's important to make sure we have enough working capital or in this case coins/supplies to do what we need to do as we rotate our crops.
For people not using this 20% exploit or rotating the crops I hope by now you see the value in playing QI this way. I still recommend rushing these supply buildings if you're not adverse to spending shards but you should see that even if you don't you can still put-up good QI numbers.
9th collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%. But with four doctors your happiness should already be at 150% so just collect coins.
Remove houses and add breweries. Work in 6x6 sectors until you can't add any more. If you need to add multistory houses feel free as they provide more population. You should have lots of coins.
Once you can't get more breweries in collect supplies.
Then delete all the breweries we just built.
Get two goods expansions (the second one is 310).
Build two bakeries and then fill the space with houses.
Note: We have over 800 chrono we're not using. This is because we need the field, the space to rotate houses and breweries. If we start putting more doctors in then we're losing that space we need.
If you have really low fight boosts then you may want to put a cannon camp in instead of the second bakery.
If you need to add some decorations you can do that as well.
Your progress should be around 2700 ish to try to mark the pace. Once we have enough coin/supplies/chrono to transform settlement to all culture buildings that number will increase a lot but as it stands now. Less than half-way through QI and we're meeting our 5k minimum easy. Anyone can do this.
10th collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%. For this settlement removing one estate house was enough.
Collect coins.
Remove houses and add breweries. Work in 6x6 sectors until you can't add any more. If you need to add multistory houses feel free as they provide more population. You should have lots of coins.
Once you can't get more breweries in collect supplies.
Remove breweries.
Build cannon camp
Build two clapboard houses
Start building decorations with the extra chrono.
This is where it will get difficult to plan for a wide audience. I don't know how many decorations you personally need to be able to fight. Because this specific settlement has low fight boosts and I will build it to fight bosses on map 12 I will be building more decorations than you will likely need.
Just understand the less decorations you need the faster you can transition you settlement and the more progress you will get. So you dear reader will probably be able to get more progress than this settlement can produce and I sure hope so because this main city is not set-up for QI.
You should be at about 2900 progress now.
11th collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%.
Removing a couple of estate houses was enough.
Collect coins
Remove houses and add breweries. Work in 6x6 sectors until you can't add any more. If you need to add multistory houses feel free as they provide more population. You should have lots of coins.
buy one goods expansion (390 goods). Next expansion is 480 goods and will be our last expansion.
Delete all the breweries.
Now this is where you need to make a decision. Do you want to fight up to and through map 9 then switch to being a donator or do you want to fight map 12?
If you want to switch to being a donator then you can start to switch settlement into culture buildings after the next collection.
If you want to fight bosses on map 12 with small fight boosts like this city has then you're going to need to build a lot of decorations. That means delaying the conversion of your settlement for at least two to three days. So you can convert on Tuesday if you want to donate or Thursday if you want to fight. What I would suggest is if you have small fight boosts to continue fighting through map 9 then switch to donations. You will actually have more progress this way as building decorations really, really hurts you in terms of QI progress.
To open the next goods expansion we need 1.4M supplies.
To fill the settlement with doctors we'll need an additional 4.5M more supplies which takes into account the refunds from selling other buildings.
The conversion requires 14k chrono alloy and you get over 4k per collection. If you're a bit short then leave the clapboard houses in for a collection or two just from the chrono. If you become a donator than just plain leave the clapboards in so you keep generating coin to donate.
So keep that in mind as a baseline and then build all the troops you need and all the decorations you need. When you have 6 million supplies switch-over to doctors.
For now place your decorations and fill the rest of the space with estate houses again.
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%.
Collect coins
Remove houses and the one church we just built and add breweries. Work in 6x6 sectors until you can't add any more. If you need to add multistory houses feel free as they provide more population. You should have lots of coins.
Collect supplies
Now it's decision time. Do you want to be a fighter or donator?
Being a fighter with low QI fight boosts means building a lot of decorations.
That means extending your settlement (not converting to doctors) so you will get less actions and thus less progress overall.
The smaller your settlement the longer it will take to convert it because our field where we're rotating crops is smaller. Your overall maximum QA production is also limited to the size of the settlement.
So unless your guild really NEEDS you to be a fighter for later maps then be a donator for later maps. Still fight as you save resources you'll need later but by Map 10 you should probably be donating.
So buy the last goods expansion.
Place two doctors.
Remove ropery and cannon camp (after you're done making cannons) this frees up some needed population.
Now fill-out your settlement but this time we're leaving some breweries in. The last goods expansion was costly so now we're pushing breweries and supplies for the next collection.
So to check-in we're still on map 6, soon to be map 7 so Tuesday night. Progress is 3500-3600
Use this as a milestone marker. If your main city gives boosts or you have a larger settlement you should be above those numbers.
*Note if you intend to fight bosses on map 12 continue settlement using collection 11 as a template.
Add decorations, make more cannons. Keep rotating crops until you have enough coin, supplies and chrono to convert settlement. You will be able to get 1500+ fight boosts if you want in a settlement this small but you give up QA and most importantly progress which is the only thing that matters.
So if you have a tiny QI boost and you're in a guild that needs you to fight map 12 then I'd suggest it's time to move to a better guild. Good QI guilds open the infinite nodes 2-4hrs after reset so donating is easy. You can help your guild more by increasing progress. If you have decent fight boosts (500 or more) then be a fighter. Low fight boosts then fight to maps 7-9 then donate.
13th Collection
Collect and remove houses one at a time working on 6x6 tiles at a time. When there's room add a church. One 6x6 section holds 9 houses or 4 churches. Keep doing this until your happiness is 150%.
We should be well over 150% so just collect coins.
Remove houses and build breweries. I removed 9 estate houses and built 4 breweries.
Delete all the breweries and alchemists.
add 16 doctors.
To check progress this should be Wed morning for you and progress about 3700+
With all the doctors we just placed we will see that number climb a lot faster.
It's only map 7 so we'll be fighting the next few days and just stacking those coins. Our only limitation will be supplies and we're going to keep the bakeries for the next few collections.
This is where it would be helpful to visualize what the settlement will look like when you're completely done.
So the bottom two bakeries will be replaced with two doctors and move the decorations under that.
The cluster of 4 bakeries will be replaced with 4 doctors and 6 pillories.
Now you can see where we have 4 estate houses and at the top of those columns we have 4 clapboard houses (which we will keep) so we'll use 4 of the houses on the side
14th Collection
Make sure happiness is over 150% then collect coins.
Remove some houses and place as many breweries as you can. I removed 6 estate houses and placed 2 breweries.
Remove the two breweries we just built and the rest of the multistory houses.
Place 2 doctors and 2 cartographers
For the rest of the settlement we are no longer rotating crops. Our field is now full and there's no room to rotate.
So if we plan to completely change the settlement and remove the clapboard houses we would need
But since we're donating coins later on we will keep those 4 clapboard houses so that changes our conversion costs.
So here's the plan for the rest of the QI season.
There's no more rotating crops so at collection we just collect. Simple and easy.
We are only on map 8 so we can still fight and generate more resources.
We already have enough chrono and coin so it's only supplies where we're short.
Next collection we will remove the estate houses and build a cartographer and two pillories.
If you want you can remove bakery and replace it with a doctor and repeat until you can't anymore that's fine but it will slow the conversion process. That's fine by the way because you're generating more QA.
Conversely you can wait until you have enough supplies to take out ALL the bakeries and replace with doctors then that's fine too. Just pick what's best for you.
To check progress we're Wednesday evening. Map just changed from 7 to 8. Progress is 4150. Hopefully your progress is higher.
15th collection
Milestone check. Thursday morning. Map 8. Progress 4570
If happiness is above 150% just collect all coin and supplies.
Remove 4 bakeries
place 4 doctors and 2 pillory
build 1 estate house because we have room and it boosts the clapboard houses so why not
Remember your overall QA is limited by settlement space and this is a tiny settlement so it's limited. But we're maximizing what space we have and if you're following a guide and keeping up then congratulations you're better than half the QI players. The mere fact that you care enough to try is the biggest obstacle. Using this guide, or another guide on this site or a guide from another site just find something that works for you. You're doing great. After the 13th collection you're on easy mode so I hope you can see the value in this method.
