We keep getting asked if we have a QI guide or recommend one. There is a good guide available
here. Clicking on that picture takes you to that site as well. It's not ours or to be honest it's not what we do but it's good.
Look we all start QI with different bonus from main city. Some of us start QI with enough fight boost to defeat bosses on Map 12 and some start with nothing.
Some start QI generating enough QI goods to open two goods expansions immediately and most don't.
Some start with extra coin and supply and some don't have any any QI bonus in city.
I don't know how you can have one all encompassing guide that works for everyone. If there is a demand for it we'll make a guide for low-to-mid QI players (little to no boosts in main city) and one for advanced players with lots of boosts and willing to buy expansions using shards and diamonds.
So broad strokes. If you are not exploiting the 20% boost some buildings give right before collection then you're playing QI wrong.
So take a peek at the photo above. We have more expansions in our settlements but if using a small settlement then this works. That's how your settlement should look when QI starts.
Your settlement will be very unhappy but that's ok. You collect and delete houses until there is room to place a church. When there is room you place the church and continue collecting and deleting houses.
When looking at your settlement just look at 6x6 grids. Those grids can have 4 churches, or 4 breweries or 9 houses. So work with one 6x6 grid at a time until your happiness is 150% and now receiving a full bonus when collecting. When that happens collect the rest of your houses (coin collection).
Then you delete more houses and place breweries. Again work in a 6x6 grid. As you remove houses you'll see you no longer need as many churches so you can replace some (not all) with more breweries.
Once you can no longer add any breweries AND your happiness is 150% then you collect supplies.
Using this method you should have 500-600 chrono alloy. Usually less than 600 but more than 500. It really depends on your settlement size. Open at minimum of 4 expansions at start. The more expansions you open the better your settlement can be. Whatever shard expansions you plan to open do so immediately. Don't add as you go along. You do that with goods expansions not shards. If you're going to spend then do so immediately. On the flip side of that if you're going to buy extra actions then wait until map 12 if you donate or the latest map you can fight. So if you tap-out on map 10 then use the extra turns then.
We cannot emphasize this point enough. You are far better-off using your shards and diamonds buying additional expansions than you are buying extra turns. If you're going to spend then do it smart.
That allows you to place two alchemists. Remember to open settlement 1hr after placing alchemist. It takes 1hr to build and then 10hrs to collect but those 10hrs do not start until you login to your account after it's completed building. This simple mistake slows down settlement building.
So what will your settlement look like after you've made this one very important first collection?
2 alchemists, 6 multistorey houses (all in one 6x6 grid) then dealer's choice of 4-9 multistorey houses. What about all the rest of that space? You build churches. Fill all the rest of the space and if there is room then place more houses.
The rationale is the churches will generate QA for ten hours. Then when it's time to collect you do what we did before. This time we remove churches and place estate houses and stop before the happiness drops below 150%. Then collect coins.
Remove the extra houses you just built and place breweries. Like we did before replace churches with breweries until you can't place anymore without dropping happiness below 150%. Then collect supplies.
Essentially what we're doing is using settlement space to generate QA instead of letting houses and supply buildings mature to harvest in 10hrs. The 20% boost buildings (breweries and estate house) boost what we already have in city and generate more than just putting in some tannery or more multistorey houses.
Once you understand this concept you can play QI on easy mode. That's it, that's the secret sauce. Once you get used to a large portion of your settlement being a temporary canvas that you rotate churches, estate houses and breweries everything else is easier.
So after this second collection you build two or three more alchemists. Repeat the steps listed above.
Third collection you should have 1k+ chrono. Build a bakery and rush it. You're winning the race for chrono and have lots of coin and supply. If you have 1200 chrono then build a beekeeper. You're remembering to come back in an hour right? This time for the goods building. Make your goods and buy however many expansions as you can. Don't make more goods than you need. Then delete the beekeeper and put another church in there. Get another 9 hours of QA production in that space.
By fourth collection (Saturday morning) people that do not have strong fight boosts may want to consider buying decorations. One or two group of trees or tower ruins depending on if you fight red or blue should be enough right now. Don't build the 1x1 decorations at this stage. It's too costly and you need that chrono, coin and supplies elsewhere.
*Just a note about fighting in QI. When your guild takes down the garrisons you get a fight bonus. So even if you personally have zero QI fight bonus from city you will have 100. On the first 4 maps that's more than enough. Everyone should have a Forgotten Temple which gives another 50%. There is no reason anyone should be donating coins and/or supplies in the first 4 maps. Those nodes should have zero contributions. If you have zero fight boosts and have to wait for garrisons to be taken that's fine. As long as your QA bar isn't full you are generating actions. You have lots of time. That means guilds that freak-out when players are at zero a few hours into the game need to understand that some players have no choice but to wait. With all the buildings in the game now that have QI boosts it's hard to imagine an active player starting QI with zero.
Building troops? If you have decent fight boosts you can get to map 8-9 only using 20-30 catapults. If you have the coin and supply when QI starts and want to make it easy then build catapult camp then delete when you feel you have enough. You probably will not have enough coin and supply to build-out your original settlement though. If you don't get enough chrono alloy in that first collection you will be behind. The better strategy is use the troops you get at incursion start to just make sure your QA bar won't be full by your first collection. After your first collection then build camp, make troops and delete. After that first collection you should have enough coin and supplies to function.
Once you understand the concept of using those 20% boosts right before collection and using the space to generate QA between collections this gets very easy. Just try to balance coin/supply (clapboard house/bakery) as you build-out your settlement.
To make it very clear. QI is a settlement resource management mechanic. It's not a fighting mini-game. That's just incidental because it's more efficient to reuse troops than it is to donate. Donating your settlement (coins and supply) hurts you and your guild in later maps because you don't generate QA and you don't have the ability to use all your QA.
The goal of QA is thus.
Generate chrono alloy early.
Use space to generate QA in-between collections.
Generate enough chrono, coin and supplies to finish my settlement.
A finished settlement is all culture buildings. So settlement is filled with doctors and then cartographers and pillory when a doctor can't fit. That also means you have enough cannons to take you to the end. I like to keep 1k chrono as a reserve in case my 400 troops get depleted. I haven't had to do that yet.
The faster you can convert your settlement the more QA you generate. The more QA you generate the more progress you can make.
Target the 13th to 14th collection as the time to remove all supply, military camp and houses and convert to culture buildings. That's Wednesday night or Thursday morning. That means instead of generating 12-14k QA/hr you're generating 17-22k.
Keep in mind that people who do not have strong QA fight boosts will need to have a lot of decorations in their settlement. Every tile used on a decoration means less culture buildings and less QA generated.
If you're in a QI focused guild there are plenty of avenues to get QI fight bonus. If you're a newer player or prefer to focus on GbG and/or GE then you are foregoing progress in QI because your city prioritizes other mechanics. Just know that going into it.
Lastly a few notes about QI buildings in main city. If you want to have one goods expansion available to you when QI starts you need 30 goods of that type. You start with 20 of each type so that means 10 more. So if you have a building that provides 10 goods at incursion start that is 2 of each good so you'd need five of these buildings. Having 50 extra goods at incursion start allows you to use the 4th good type and is an advantage. Now to use the 5th good type you need to unlock a goods expansion with 60 goods. Many people do this by having 200 extra goods at incursion start. We don't support this. That is a waste of city space and a poor choice of QI boost. We also don't like the buildings that give a % boost to coin and supply. Consider all the brewery and estate houses we will build before collection. The tiny amount from the QI building is city is nothing. Instead focus on coins at incursion start and/or coins and supply. Ascended snowdrop gardens are great. The ascended kits are in every event. It doesn't cost population or happiness and it gives FP and fight boost for main city as well as fight boost, coin and supply for QI. They're easy to get and are a wonderful option for all these junky events.
So that's the concept. If people really need it we can do screen caps but it's a pain in the butt so if it's not needed we won't bother.
