Stellar Age Discovery (SAD)

 Testing ends July 22, 2026 tentative Beta release July 28, 2026 subject to final story line changes.

EDIT: July 25, 2026 we were told they will not meet the July 28 date and expect about a 2 week delay.

Units:

FGX-103 Shadow light melee unit

• HP 10
• Damage 1780
• Armor 1910
• Range 3
• Initiative 70 
• Move 30
• power 3000
• Has bonus against fast unit FGX-101 Skyrider attack and defense +12,500

Special skills:

• Stealth hides in plains AND rocks
• Contact always retaliates but still only had range of 3 in testing so it loses a lot of it's usefulness
• Frenzy deals splash damage to all enemy units within one tile of the targeted unit.  

Note: frenzy normally does 50% damage but in testing it did 100% damage in SAD.  Let's wait to see what makes it to beta.

FGX-104 Hammer artillery unit

• HP 10
• Damage 1910
• Armor 1720
• Range 24
• initiative 80
• Move 10
• Power 3000
• Bonus against heavy units FGX-102 Anvil and FGX-100 Champion attack and defense +7,500

Special skills:

• MIRV +2 targets unit and up to 3 additional units in the 2 tile range
• Recharge +1 fires every other turn.  So turn 1, 3, 5 etc.
• Only firing on odd turns makes this unit non-viable

 FGX-105 Assassin range unit

• HP 10
• Damage 1650
• Armor 1910
• Range 10
• initiative 60
• move 16
• power 3000 
• attack and defense bonuses against light unit +10,000

Special Skills:

• Power shot ignores most defensive skill and terrain
• Reactive Armor +4 cannot take more than 4 points of damage per attack.  Units with Keen Eye or Critical Hit can deal damage that surpasses the damage cap.  Also some units ignore reactive armor
• Stealth hides on rock terrain.  There is not a lot of rock terrain in testing so that limits the usefulness

FGX-101 Skyrider fast unit

• HP 10
• Damage 1600
• Armor 2100
• Range 4
• initiative 80
• move 30
• power 3000
• bonus against artillery units +12,500 attack and defense

Special Skills:

• Flying cannot be attacked by artillery units.  Ignores terrain cost.  If you use 8 flying units you can reach enemy units and make 8 hits unless enemy units also use flying units.
• Contact - always retaliates against attacks (range of 4)
• Force field absorbs up to 2 damage points but will allow a minimum of 1 damage point.  Critical hit and keen eye bonus are calculated first so unit can still be one-shot.  The damage reduction is applied after critical hit and keen eye calculations.  

FGX-102 Anvil heavy unit

• HP 10
• Damage 1650
• Armor 2290
• Range 8
• initiative 45
• move 20
• power 3000
• bonus against range units +7,500 attack and defense

Special Skills:

• Reactive Armor +5 cannot take more than 4 points of damage per attack.  Units with Keen Eye or Critical Hit can deal damage that surpasses the damage cap.  Also some units ignore reactive armor

• Force field absorbs up to 2 damage points but will allow a minimum of 1 damage point.  Critical hit and keen eye bonus are calculated first so unit can still be one-shot.  The damage reduction is applied after critical hit and keen eye calculations.  

• Stealth hides on hill terrain.  There is not a lot of rock terrain in testing so that limits the usefulness

Notes:  Artillery units have a bonus against heavy units and despite the defensive bonus they heavy units were routinely slaughtered

FGX-100 Champion -heavy

• HP 10
• damage 2040
• armor 2430
• range 8
• initiative 40
• move 20
• power 3300
• bonus against range units +8,000 attack and defense

Special Skills:

• Reactive Armor +5 cannot take more than 4 points of damage per attack.  Units with Keen Eye or Critical Hit can deal damage that surpasses the damage cap.  Also some units ignore reactive armor
• Blast - gain increased damage output for every tile closer to the target.  Some of the units in SAD have a very short range so this works to the advantage of players using blast units.  On auto-battle the AI will advance these champions as far forward as possible.  That can be a problem for players using rogues.  While the tool tip at this time doesn't state it champions ignore stealth and can hit stealth units at range regardless of what terrain they hide on.
• Morale - all your units start with 1 additional point of armor to your attack and defense boost.  This does not stack.

Inno went out of their way to rock/paper/scissors this new age so there isn't one dominant unit.

So I know.  Blah, blah blah what's the best?

For high attrition fighting I enjoyed 8 champions.  Just plant a champion retreat in city, age up and collect on stellar warship.

Manual fighters will have a better time than auto-battle players.  The short range of some of the units get exploited by blast ability

Stealth didn't seem all that powerful in testing but frenzy did.

Light units weren't useless.

Artillery would be awesome if it didn't take every other turn off.  Because of that artillery isn't the best or even a good choice in SAD

Range units killed easily and had a lot of survivability.  Manual fighters will love it.  (One of us used range+rogue and thought it to be the best combination)

I used 8 fast units more than anything.  You always hit first.  Even if the enemy troops have 4 fast units you still get the first 6 hits.  With crit and keen eye you should be able to take-out half their troops on that first wave.  It has a bonus against range which is what tipped the scale ahead of range units for me.  Fast unit abilities are really useful and the short range works to your advantage as enemy units hitting it triggers contact.  Not trying to spoil anything but getting fast units early is pretty easy.

Heavy unit was ok and better than the heavy units of previous years but it pales in comparison to the champions.

Early testing had units with range of 1 so improvement I guess.

So the simple answer is try it, play it, see what works best for you.  Unlike recent ages there are no bad units.  Even the light unit is ok but I enjoyed fast units best and only switched to champions for unlimited attrition fighting on trial 12.  Another tester used range and rogues.  4 champions + rogue did really well for full attrition on simulation.

Any or all of this can change before it goes live but this is where we're at right now.

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Master Spreadsheet and settlement conversion tool updated

 

The master spreadsheet has been updated to include the reward buildings from the Care for Tomorrow Event currently on Beta.

All the events have their own tab to make it easy.

The QI settlement conversion tool has also been updated by request to include troop cost and decoration costs.

All you need to do is download it, allow editing and then fill-in the green highlighted squares for your personal settlement.

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A short update on the new age (SAD)

 

From what we're told the official announcement may come before the embargo is lifted so we can't hit publish until they announce or the embargo lifts.

The reason for this post is simple.  While the age is pretty much a copy/paste there are a few changes.  The biggest change is to the tech tree and in our view it is not a positive change.

Does anyone remember when QI first came out and you needed to chose a path?  Well it looks like that failed experiment has made it's way into the tech tree and that's a problem.  With QI the map changes daily so any regret about taking the wrong path only lasts one day.  Well if the tech tree we saw makes it into the game there will be problems.  Players will be asked to go down one research path or another.  The choice is final and the implications of that choice may not be realizable when that choice is made.  In other words it's possible that players will be making a forever choice with incomplete information about what's coming next which will surely lead to a flood of requests to in-game mods to reverse that choice.

I know they want to try new things but this is a mistake.  They've been warned and they're plowing ahead it seems so buckle up.  You may not think it's a big deal at the time but it is.  In a game where we're fine-tuning every tile to maximize efficiency every tiny bit matters.

My hope is they introduce an "unlearn" tech to compensate for this preventable error.

Speaking of which a memory spell to age-down would be awesome.

The second issue is because the GB revamp isn't out yet one of the GB's will be held back leaving only one GB for the new age.  After a long delay this new age just feels incomplete.

The colony looks gorgeous by the way but maybe introduce the GB changes and the new age all at once and just rip the band aid off?

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QI guide for large settlements (will require diamond spend)

 By request we are providing a guide for people that buy a lot of expansions and want to know if they're doing it right.  This will be a scaled up version of the 3 shard 1 goods expansion guide.  All the principles are the same.  The crop rotations are the same.  The concept of using a large field to rotate crops is the same.

So if you're new to the concepts and principles of using the 20% exploit then please visit this guide first as it takes you through it one step at a time.  How to begin a settlement, how to collect and what to build.

This guide is taking all those concepts and showing what that can look like with a much, much larger settlement.

All the times are based on EST so East coast USA.  If you're in the UK just add 5hrs and when we start messing with daylight savings adjust instead of complain because we change the clocks at different times.

Once again this is submitted by a guest contributor and I'm doing the write-up so any spelling and grammatical errors are mine.   All they submitted is the screen caps and the milestones reached when it was captured.

You should know this was not a perfect run and the guest contributor made errors which they have documented.  If anyone wants to use this guide they can follow it as it was submitted or recognize the edits made in red and compensate for the errors that were made.  The edits start at collection six.

QI starts

QI starts at 3am.  Remember you don't begin to generate QA until you enter QI the first time so make a point of doing that ASAP on Thursday morning.

Buying expansions and setting-up the initial buildings.  Keep in mind that you will not have enough coin to fill it at first.  Buy all the expansions you plan to buy right away anyways.

This settlement has 11 shard expansions and 1 goods expansion.

This is from the wiki if you want to keep track of what this would cost.

It costs 3850 shards plus I removed 3 impediments costing 85 shards because I like my settlements clean.  Total shard cost is 3935

First Collection

Thursday afternoon.  

Progress 400+ This number will vary depending on how much QA you produce in your main city so we will give a baseline of where your minimum should be.  You should be higher than that.

Hey where did the church come from?  We have a % chance to gain coin and supplies when fighting nodes and we gained enough to build one church.  We didn't build another house because it wouldn't have finished cooking before it was harvest time so we placed a church to gain a tiny bit of QA and we need to build culture buildings anyways to make our settlement euphoric.

Next we collect from the town hall.  You can collect from town hall when your settlement is not happy and it doesn't matter.  The amount is the same but it did give enough coins for 3 more churches.

Now we're going to delete some multistory houses and place churches until our settlement is euphoric.

When harvesting don't remove all the houses, place a bunch of churches all at once.  Do it one at a time.  Wait the 5 seconds for the church to build before deleting the next house.  Take advantage of the euphoric plateaus.  Repeat until you have a happy settlement.

Settlement is now euphoric.

Collect coin only.

For this next step we will be protecting estate houses and deleting multistory houses so feel free to reposition as needed.

Make room and place breweries.  As you delete multistory houses you will have additional euphoria so you can delete churches and place breweries in their place.

This is rotating the crops.  Houses --> churches -->breweries

The concept is we're using the exact same settlement space as a field to rotate the crops and take advantage of the 20% boost of the estate houses and breweries.

We're now ready to collect supplies.

We have over 700 chrono, 1.9M coins and 580k supplies

Delete all breweries, tanneries and churches

Build 3 alchemists 

Behold our large field!

Fill the space with estate houses.

If you need to build catapults then do so now and delete the catapult camp.

I built 20 catapults then replanted the harvest.

We have 123 chrono, 738k coins and 339k supplies remaining.

Why plant houses when we need supplies?

We built supply when we set-up the settlement initially so we'll have enough to build alchemists and make some catapults.  Now we're trying to maximize chrono.  Yes we will have a lot of extra coin after the next collection but we can plant 9 houses in the same space as 4 breweries.  Each of those giving the same chrono so we picked the houses for this round.  

Second collection

Early Friday morning

Delete houses and place churches until settlement is euphoric.

Then collect coins.

Remove houses and churches to place breweries.  Make sure to keep settlement euphoric.

Then collect supplies.

Remove all churches and breweries.

Build bakery and rush it.

Build ropery.

Fill rest of the field with estate houses

I put one brewery back in to help fill the space.

We now have 2.4M coins, 532k supplies and 96 chrono Progress 1,220

When goods building is finished start buying goods expansions.

If you are going to collect in exactly 10 hours then put churches in that space.  If you come back in an hour and will collect 10 hours from there then build more estate houses but only do this if you can collect your settlement at the same time.  Some players set timers and play every 10 hours.  The rest of us just play it twice a day.  If you're a twice a day player then you can build the houses and squeeze more chrono out of your next harvest.

3rd collection Friday afternoon

Just an FYI if you time this correctly you can get an extra collection.  Some people, I may be one of those people won't bother but if YOU want to then YOU can set an alarm and get an additional harvest in 10 hours from now.  Me, I'm going to be getting beauty sleep and just harvest in the morning.

OK you will see that we did buy two goods expansions and placed churches there because if we placed anything else it wouldn't have had time to cook so churches it is!

So we're on our third collection and you should know the routine by now.  Delete houses and place churches until settlement is euphoric.

This is what it looks like when it's euphoric.

You'll notice we have a huge field to rotate crops in but a lot of that field is take up with churches so we're going to fix that.

First collect coins.

Then we rotate the crops to get breweries in.  Delete houses and churches to place breweries but keep settlement euphoric.  It looks like this.

Now collect supplies.

We're going to rush the bakery for 90 shards and bring our chrono harvest over 2k.

Now we're going to build another bakery and two doctors.  Adding doctors in early will allow us to use more of our field for coin and supply buildings instead of churches.  It will also increase our collections of coin/supply/chrono.

We're going to make sure not to delete doctors (and clapboard houses when we build them) by placing them far away from other like items.  Then fill space with estate houses.

Build 130 goods expansion.  Place estate houses in it.

Progress is around 1490.

For those waking up in 10hrs (about 2am my time) bless your heart you'll be one collection ahead but our next collection will be in about 16hrs.

Fourth collection

early Saturday morning, map 3, progress 1,970

Remove houses in a 6x6 grid but one at a time and place churches until euphoric.

Collect coins.

Now remove houses and churches to place breweries while keeping euphoric.

Now collect supplies.

Feel free to skip this next step but we're going to spend shards on rushing bakery 3x 95 shards each.

Remove the churches and all but one of the breweries.  We're gong to remodel the settlement a little.

Build two more bakeries (4 total)

Build two more doctors (4 total)

Buy 180, 240 and 310 goods expansion

Now fill with estate houses.

Now you need to decide if you're going to continue getting goods expansions or not.  The next good expansion is 390 and we will be getting that but may stop there so we can convert settlement faster.

Fifth collection

Saturday afternoon/evening, Map 3 or 4 depending on when you collect

progress 2,310

Remove houses in a 6x6 grid but one at a time and place churches until euphoric.

Collect coins

Now remove houses and churches to place breweries while keeping euphoric.

Now collect supplies.

Remove all the churches and all the breweries

Build 2 doctors (6 total) and 2 clapboard houses

get 390 and 480 goods expansion.  Delete goods building.  And fill with estate houses.

I included the above screen shot to show the two clapboard houses beside the townhall and away from the estate buildings so they don't get deleted by accident.

I'm reshaping the settlement a little in anticipation of transforming it to a culture settlement that produces a lot of QA.

If you want to rush the clapboards you can but there's little reason to do so.

6th collection

map 4, early Sunday morning, progress 2,680

Remove houses in a 6x6 grid but one at a time and place churches until euphoric.

Collect coins

Now remove houses and churches to place breweries while keeping euphoric.

Collect supplies

We're going to rush bakery production 4x at 90 shards each which mimics one collection of supplies (almost we're not rushing alchemists).  Why do this?  Because one bakery rush gives us enough supplies for four doctors.  

Delete all breweries.  Don't be like me and accidentally delete an alchemist.  We all make mistakes.  Not that big of a deal and we're not building another one.

We're going to build one more clapboard houses and a cannon camp

You may be curious as to why we will only have 3 clapboard houses and 4 bakeries in this huge settlement.  The answer is we're going to start the conversion process now instead of on Tuesday. 

Note from future me.  Instead of building 5 doctors, 1 clapboard house and 1 cannon camp build.......

one doctor, 4 clapboard houses and delay building the cannon camp until next collection if you need them to fight or whatever collection you want if  you're just building units for later maps.

Build five doctors.

Our field will be smaller.  We will no longer need to build any churches so our crop rotations will be simpler and smaller.

Fill the space with estate houses but just an FYI after this collection if you find you are short on supplies but have excess chrono (coins are not an issue) then you can leave breweries in after collection and fill the space with breweries instead of estate houses.  When it's done cooking you'll have more supplies but less chrono because 4 supply buildings take up the same space as 9 houses.  Maybe we'll do that for the next collection just to show how it's done.  It's an inverse rotation.  

If you have strong fight boosts and can fight with catapults in later maps then build catapult camp and make as many as you feel you need to fight to whatever map you think you can fight with.  I built 100 as they're cheaper than cannons and I can fight past map 10 with minimal loss using catapults.

We have just under 500 chrono and 5.5M coin and 3.1M supplies.  We'll need that to build cannons when it's done cooking.

If you don't have strong fight boosts then wait until the cannon camp is done and use those.

7th collection

Sunday afternoon.  Map 4, progress 3,270

Your settlement is already euphoric so collect coins

Make all the cannons you will need for the rest of the QI season.  You may want to also build catapults and use them until you need the cannons because they are cheaper.  Once you no longer need to build any more units then delete all barracks.

Put in as many breweries as you can.  Remove barracks first as that clears space and give you population back so you can remove more houses.

Collect supplies

We're going to do an inverse crop rotation as described at the end of collection 7.  We don't have to do this and we probably shouldn't as we'll get less chrono this way.  Remember 4 breweries take up the same space as 9 estate houses.  But we want people to see what it looks like.

Place 8 more doctors.  You make the space by removing houses and breweries.  When doing this you want to keep the population as low as possible and only remove a brewery when you have to.

Keep in mind it's Sunday afternoon and we are half-way though converting our settlement.  Our QA/hr is around 15,000
We don't need to build any more troops.

We don't even need to rotate crops if we don't want to.  

We have 214 chrono, 11.1M coins, 2.9M supplies.

I hope it's clear why we built the settlement to look the way it does.  If we were going to make it a perfect doctor settlement we'd get three more expansions on the bottom right and one more expansion to the right of the town hall.  But again the goal is to convert this settlement early not to make it pretty.

8th / 9th collection

8th collection is Sunday night but I missed a harvest due to work so for me it's Monday morning and effectively the 9th collection.  If you don't miss a harvest then expect to exceed my progress on this build which is 3940 right now.

We're starting with our inverse rotation

Because our settlement is already euphoric and this is an inverse harvest we collect supplies first.

Now what we should do to maximize coins is delete all the breweries (except 2 we need those as they fit the space better) and fill the settlement with estate houses.  If you don't want to bother with this because we have more coins than we need that's ok.

We're not adding the estate houses/completing that crop rotation either as we have more coins than we'll ever need.

So delete all breweries and place 10 more doctors (29 total).  Then fill the space with estate houses.  We have lots of coin and supplies so we just need some more chrono to complete the settlement conversion.

QA production is 17,240 /hr.  Coins 11.5M, supplies 5M, chrono 75

Missing a collection did not cost us progress in the sense of using actions.  The QA bar was never full.

What it did cost us is the actions generated from those additional 10 doctors which equates to 26,000 QA's generated over 10 hours.

It also cost us chrono which is all that's holding us back at this point.

In retrospect we should have showed the inverse crop rotation on another build as this one didn't need it and we shorted ourselves chrono by doing it.

Now would be a good time to plan for the final settlement conversion by using the conversion tool.

Settlement Conversion Tool

All you do is fill-in the green highlighted parts.  Put-in what you have and then what the goal is.

The bottom gold highlights show exactly what you'll need in total to fully convert the settlement.  Keep in mind that this is AFTER deleting all the coin and supply buildings.

While this QI isn't even half-way over it's not too late to reflect and see what we're do differently.  QI is a constant revision and refinement.  Here's what I would do differently on the next build.

1. Don't do an inverse rotation
2. Don't miss a collection
3. Build 2-3 more clapboard houses
4. Don't accidentally delete an alchemist

Why the additional clapboard houses?  We don't need coin (or supplies) but we do need more chrono.  Points 1 and 2 above cost us chrono.  Having more clapboard houses will allow us to remove the supply buildings faster.  

9TH HARVEST (could be your 10th as I missed one)

Monday late afternoon, Map 5 still soon to be map 6.  Progress 4,480.  17,240 QA/hr

Starting with this.

Settlement is euphoric so collect coins.

We already have more supplies than we'll need but for kicks and giggles we're going to rotate the crops.

Delete houses in a 6x6 grid and replace those 9 houses with breweries.  Then repeat.  Move the alchemists to make a neat grid.

Now collect supplies.

Delete ALL the breweries and place 6 more doctors.  Total of 35.

Fill the rest of the space with estate houses.

We're up to 18,800 QA but still have a lot to go.

Coin 14.2M, Supplies 5.3M, chrono 406

We have room for 11 more doctors and 14 pillories.

11 doctors 2,860 QA

14 pillories 1,680 QA
So this settlement will top-out at 23,340 QA/hr unless I ascend some buildings I was saving for later.

Using the conversion tool again to update the numbers.

Now I really regret not putting in the extra clapboard houses for the extra chrono as we have more than enough of the other resources.

I put in an edit for collection 6

10th collection

early Tuesday morning, progress  5,120

starting with this

Now we don't have to rotate crops.  Settlement is euphoric and we have more than enough coins and supplies so if you just want to harvest all of it that's fine.

But we are going to rotate crops because it's best practice.

collect coins

Remove some coins and place breweries.

collect supplies

delete breweries and alchemists

place 7 doctors (total 42)

We have 15.9M coins, 5.2M supplies, 172 chrono

We are producing 20,620 QA/hr

11th collection

Tuesday afternoon.  Map 6. 5,770 progress

Our settlement is euphoric and we no longer have a field to work so no more crop rotations just collect.

Now it's decision time.  Do you keep the bakeries until you have enough chrono to convert the remaining settlement OR do you delete the bakeries and count on the three clapboard houses to produce chrono and slowly replace houses with pillories?

We're deleting the bakeries.

Place the last 4 doctors (46 total) and place 3 pillory

Again we have more than enough happiness, coins and supply so the only limiting factor is chrono.  

Every collection from now is just collect and when you have enough chrono to make a pillory replace one of the houses.

So we have 16.4M coins, 4.9M supplies and 432 chrono.  We're producing 22,020 QA/hr

12TH COLLECTION

Wednesday early morning.  Map 7.  Progress 6,590

Settlement is euphoric so just collect.

Place pillory.  Delete estate houses to make room.  For us that's 3 pillory.

We're in easy mode from here on out.  Just repeat until we no longer have houses.

QA 22,380 per hour

17.7M coins, 4.6M supplies, 192 chrono

13TH COLLECTION

Wed evening.  Map 7 still.  Progress  7,350

As we did in the last collection.  Collect all.  

Delete 2 estate houses build 2 pillory.  If you have enough chrono do 3.

18.7M coins, 4.4M supplies, 407 chrono

22,620 QA/hr

13th collection (remember I missed one)

Thursday morning.  Map 8.  Progress 8,010

Same as last collection.

Collect all.

Delete three estate houses, build three pillories.

All that's left to convert is the three clapboard houses.

19.4M coins, 4.1M supplies, 92 chrono
23,180 QA/hr

14th collection

Thursday afternoon Map 8 Progress 8730

Same as last collection.

Collect all

Remove the last three clapboard houses and place three pillories.

20M coin, 4M supplies, 482 chrono

23,540 QA/hr

Our settlement is done.  From here on out just collect when you can but be sure to use all your actions.

15th collection 

Early hours Friday map 9 

only thing to collect is town hall so use your QA

My QA bar was full.  Don't ever let your QA bar get full

Progress 9720

16th collection

late Friday evening still map 9

progress 10,460

17th collection

early Saturday morning, map 10

progress 11,340

18th collection

Saturday evening, map 10

progress 11,940

19th collection

early Sunday morning, map 11

progress 13,010

20th collection

late Sunday evening still map 11

progress 13,740

This next part was written by the guest contributor.

Reflection:

QI ends in about 10hrs so that's another 670 progress available if you're online to get it.  I won't be so I will end this here.

This was not a perfect run and it's always good to reflect back on a season and see what can be improved.

I deleted an alchemist by accident.  Not a huge issue but a chrono setback.

I missed a collection.

I let my QA bar get full once for hours.

I built cannon camp too early.  When people build cannon camp will depend on their combat strength.  I built 250 cannons and only use catapults for this season.  Even so I should have delayed building the cannon camp and built at least one more clapboard house.  I could have converted my settlement faster with just that one move.

I should have gotten two less expansions or two more expansions.  It would have cost less chrono to build doctors instead of pillory but given the shape of my settlement I did maximize QA.  Two less or two more expansions would have reduced chrono cost allowing a faster conversion to just culture buildings.

In terms of spending shards and diamonds it would have been much more efficient to get two less shard expansions and then use more shards on rushing bakeries.

Lastly I should not have done an inverse crop rotation as I didn't need the supplies but I did need the chrono.  I am glad that it was captured so people that need to do in inverse rotation have something that shows them how.

Thanks to my old and new friends at FoE addicts for hosting these guides and helping the people who play this game play better.  Now please adjust the settlement conversion tool to include cost of decorations and building troops.

Happy Forging!

Yuri

A commenter asked for the final progress so we asked our guest contributor and here is the result.

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