8/10/2011 Update: Unfortunately the game has changed significantly enough now where the below is no longer useful. You may want to check out How should our town decide what to build next? for advice on how to make the best decisions based on your situation.
OK, I'll start by taking a shot, and then we'll see what optimizations other people can make. This is roughly the order used in my current town, with corrections made where we think we made a mistake.
Assumptions:
- At the beginning, some materials are assumed to be found intact. But after about day 3, I assume that all constructed materials are being refined from the lowest level in the workshop (with the corresponding AP cost)
- Total AP used: 1,090 (so roughly 5 days given the OP assumptions)
- Total builder water usage: 55 (15 builders
for 5 days, plus 20 for moat, minus
40 for drilling rig)
- Total builder food usage: 28 (15 builders every other day for 5 days, minus 10 for the vegetable plot)
- Special materials used: I tried to limit these as much as possible. This build uses only 3 nuts & bolts, 3 pipes, 5 cement blocks, 1 electronics, and 1 pharmaceuticals
Final Defense on day 5: 382 plus defensive objects.
Day 1
- Build Workshop
- Convert 10 logs into 5 planks
- Convert 10 scrap metal into 5 iron
- Convert 10 planks into 5 beams
- Convert 10 iron into 5 supports
- Build watchtower
- Build factory
- Make 30 tents
Project of the day: Watchtower
Total AP Used: 137
Defense: 5+3+(30 tents) = 38 (plus defensive items)
Required: 18 Planks, 15 Wrought Iron, 1 Concrete block, 10 Rotten logs, 10 Scrap metal and 3 Nuts& Bolts
Day 2
- Convert 34 logs into 17 planks
- Convert 8 metal into 4 iron
- Build portal lock
- Build great wall strengthening
- Build great pit
- Build spiked pit
Project of the day: Watchtower
Total AP Used: 227
Defense: 38 + 109 = 147 (plus defensive items)
Required: 8 Scrap metal, 17 Planks, 34 rotten logs, 2 wrought iron
Day 3
- Convert 30 logs to 15 planks
- Convert 12 metal to 6 iron
- Convert 20 planks to 10 beams
- Build pump
- Build water purifier
- Build vegetable plot
- Build moat
Project of the day: Pit
Total AP Used: 247
Defense: 147 + 45 + 13 = 205 (plus defensive items)
Required: 2 Copper pipe, 1 wrought iron, 10 planks, 30 rotten logs, 12 scrap metal
Day 4
- Convert 58 logs to 29 planks
- Convert 14 planks to 7 beams
- Convert 8 metal to 4 iron
- Convert 4 iron to 2 supports
- Build well-drilling rig
- Build old school traps
Project of the day: Pit
Total AP Used: 209
Defense: 205 + 30 + 21 = 256 (plus defensive items)
Required: 8 scrap metal, 28 rotten logs
Day 5
Note that by this day, you have to start building to what materials you have. For example, if you don't have cement, but you have nuts & bolts, you might want to go for ramparts instead.
- Convert 62 logs to 31 planks
- Convert 28 planks to 14 beams
- Convert 28 metal to 14 iron
- Convert 14 iron to 7 supports
- Build armour plating
- Build cannon mounds
- Build stone cannon
- Build breaker
Upgrade: Pit
Total AP Used: 214
Defense: 256 + 94 + 32 = 382 (plus defensive items)
Required: 62 rotten logs, 28 scrap metal
Other thoughts:
- After the pump is built, getting the
water for the moat is easy. I'm not
sure how to account for the long-term
effect of using that water in this
way though. Added the well-drilling rig to make up for this. Even together they're better Defense/AP than most things out there.
- Portal lock is mainly just to prevent stupidity/griefing
- A hacksaw would significantly reduce the cost of all the conversions and allow you to get further ahead
Best Answer
Our strategy certainly involves plumbing, the most reliable source of zombie clearing within the game. A hero with the shopping cart and a utility belt has 8 free slots available. For very short range clearing, you can have 8 pistols (24 zombies), for medium range clearing you can have 7 pistols (21 zombies) and for longer range clearing you can have 6 pistols (18 zombies). This is under the assumptions of 6 AP, 12 AP and 18 AP. The range increases with the copletion of Watchtower lvl 5.
The above number can increase with the finding of the Aqausplash gun (5 zombies). The plumbing also allows for scavangers going even further out to take water bombs with them, allowing for zombie kills without using a valuable bag space as the water bomb vanishes upon use.
Next comes how many zombies to clear. You need to have a good understanding of how zombie propogation works to do this efficiently, which you can find here How does zombie spawning in Die2Nite work?
So, depending on how many zombies are killed in each zone relates directly to how many you should kill to have the square clear the following day. Example a square with 2 zombies , you would need to kill both for it to have 0 zombies the next day if it was not surrounded by other zombie filled tiles. However, for a square with 8 zombies, if you kill 6 of them the 2 left will die during the nights attack.
Finally, is how many to clear across the whole map. There are two different strategies you can use for this. You can either keep a low number of zombies across the board, with the occasional high zombie square to keep the minimum number of zombies on the map up, however this can be a very tricky situation to judge and the zombies would re-spawn very quickly as every zone has zombies in it still.
The strategy I feel is best is to leave your smallest replenishment area with no useful buildings in it full of zombies. You can then clear the rest of the map completely, as long as the total number of zombies in the one area is high enough to avoid the mass respawn scenario. So if you have a very small zone with no buildings in it, that is an ideal area to leave as a zombie "zoo". Each time this one area replenishes it requires you to arrange a very large group to travel together and deplete each zone as you pass through it. Eevery other zone that replenishes every person who goes out can do so safely alone! It also means each day you only need to clear a small number of zones sarrounding your "zoo", and not the whole area that has just replenished.
This game has many different strategies for a lot of things that do work, but its all about opinions and effeciency. And certainly in my opinion, this is the most effecient strategy by far.