FoEhints: High Middle Ages in Forge of Empires

We reached the High Middle Ages! Our city still looks like being in the Early Middle Ages. Only the Town Hall changed to the High Middle Ages already. What do we have to expect in the High Middle Ages?

Great Buildings

The two Great Buildings of the High Middle Ages are Notre Dame and St. Mark's Basilica. I advise everybody against building Notre Dame. On a floor space of 24 tiles you receive a great building providing happiness and some support for your supply production. In later ages these benefits are extremely small compared to the high investment. Better invest your Forge Points in other great buildings or your technologies.

St. Mark's Basilica is much more popular among players. But I am not happy with it's properties: daily goods and a coin production bonus.

Those who motivated and polished guild mates and friends every day until reaching the High Middle Ages will be able to construct one of the great building of the previous ages now. With diamonds you can buy a possibly missing blueprint or better follow my advice given in the video 'printing your own blueprints'. Regarding fights on the province map, in gvg and the guild expedition I highly recommend to prioritize great buildings with fighting bonus. These are the Statue of Zeus and the Cathedral of Aachen. Those who advance a bit slower now to be able to use more forge points for leveling the great buildings will generate a good stock of coins and supplies in this age with the result that you will never have a problem with these in the future again. At the same time these bonuses make your battles so much easier. Both make the gameplay much more attractive.

For your city development I recommend this strategy: In the Early Middle Ages the Clapboard House was the best residential building. You will still use these long in the High Middle Ages. Wait until you research the Town House. Then start to replace all residential houses of the Early Middle Ages by these Town Houses one after another. This will increase your population by 50%.

As soon as you have researched Granary you should build as many of these big farms as possible. Their advantage is not primarily that they deliver 730 supplies per hour. Each motivation such a building receives from other players doubles the output. A motivation for such a big building is much more effective than a motivation for a tiny building. These farms speed up your supply production significantly.

Replace all cultural buildings from previous ages by churches.

As soon as you have a stock of 300 goods each, you can demolish all goods production buildings of that previous age.

Battles

In the High Middle Ages the Mounted Archers were the dominant unit. But they quickly reach their limits in the High Middle Ages. As a compensation for their great movement abilities InnoGames gave them less attack power.

The first two sectors of the province Canturia can easily be conquered by everybody with Early Middle Age units. The third sector already requires fighting bonuses. The High Middle Ages heavy units are simply too strong for the Early Middle Ages Mounted Archers. Using the High Middle Ages Crossbowmen makes the same battle a simple task. Therefore you will want to replace Early Middle Ages military buildings by High Middle Ages military buildings as soon as possible.

Players develop extremely different from now on as they have different great buildings. The basic battle system is the same for all players. Therefore I simply demonstrate some fights without fighting bonus. The following examples are taken from the province Veletrites.

Against 3 trebuchets and 5 heavy infantry we use the related counter units which are 3 knights and 5 crossbowmen.

In the second battle we use 4 knights and 4 berserks which again are the perfect counters to the computer's team. If your opponent has many crossbowmen, don't use heavy infantry. In all other cases of the High Middle Ages use heavy infantry if you don't have a better concept.

Exactly this is demonstrated in the 3rd example of the province Veletrites. Fighting this way should already be something you are very familiar in after all these battles of the previous ages.

Generally most sectors can be taken easily with either 4 heavy infantry an 4 trebuchets or 8 heavy units using the automatic fighting feature. A team with the perfect counter units will have less lost units of course.

Against crossbowmen and trebuchets you best use knights. Against each heavy unit a crossbowman is the best answer. Against each berserk you send a heavy infantry. Heavy infantry can also be used against knights and the opponent's heavy infantry. This will not work as good as the perfect counter units, but it helps if you don't have the required units.

Generally I again want to emphasize that from now on it is very important for fighting players to have great buildings with fighting bonus. Then you also can be successful against your neighbors.