This is how you'll want to start:

You'll have 1 mine to start, 2 houses (with 4 more waiting in the wings), 1 research lab (RESEARCH IS VITALLY IMPORTANT) 10 farms (build 2 at first, then 1-2 more each day until you have 10), build 1 storage barn immediately after building the mine and 2 houses and another 1 after building 2 farms. Build and plant trees in the tree nurserys to the left of the gate once the tutorial tells you to start worrying about defenses (6 in total in that spot). You can also build a few in the area near the research lab if you'd like, but it's not strictly necessary at this point.

By year 10, you'll want it to look like this:

About half of your houses should be upgraded to (Nice) at this point.
You'll need 5 greater mines, 2 dedicated to gems (one fire and one water), 2 dedicated to stone, and 1 dedicated to ore.
1 charcoal cut, 1 mortar mill, and 1 smeltery. (add and remove someone as necessary from the mortar mill).
You'll want at least 1 school (with a teacher), 1 healing hut (with a healer), 1 cook house (with a cook), and 1 textile mill (add and remove someone as necessary from the textile hut). You should also be making a Greater Research Lab at this point in the game.

The maze is made up of small arrow towers, pulse towers, blast towers, and boost towers. The small arrow towers will eventually be upgraded to bombardment towers, but don't worry about that for now.

Now, GEMS. Gems are a problem. The game seems to delight in giving you the ones you don't want. Luckily, the game has also given you a way of fixing this. STATUES. Build lots of statues. You probably can't seem them in this photo, but I have 7 statues at the moment. Just put all the gems that aren't Fire/Water/Lightning in the statues. Most of the time the statues will also give you a gem you don't want (because of course), don't worry, just repeat the process until you either get a prismatic gem or a fire/water/lightning gem.

Also, assuming your maze looks like mine, you can stop lengthening it for now, you'll resume that when you get to year 15.

By year 15, you'll want it to look like this:
NB: Ignore the fact that the beginning of my maze in this screenshot has Sun/Wind/Life gems in the towers, at this point I was still experimenting with other gem combinations (that how I discovered that the Sun gem doesn't do what it's supposed to). You'll want that part of the maze to be fire/water/lightning like the rest of it.

Okay, year 15 is the point when things really start to heat up. You'll need 8 greater mines (3 for gems (1 for fire, 1 for water, 1 for lightning), 3 for stone, and 2 for ore. You'll want to have at least 20 houses, at least 8-10 of which are (Nice). You'll want another charcoal hut and another smeltery in the locations pictured. At this point you should have built a brewery, great hall, and 2 cook houses (note that the cook house you built earlier has been moved for logistical reasons). Feasts provide a huge boost to the citizens, which is very helpful at this point. You'll also want to have built a temple of time. Just below the temple of time and to the right of the school and healing hut, you'll want to have at least 4 farms and to the right of those, about 8 tree nurserys. The population doesn't really start to kick off here, but the extra houses are nice as decoys for when waves get through.

As far as the maze is concerned, wave 15 is when you should start upgrading the small arrow towers to bombardment towers and put fire gems in them. Also, start lengthening the maze again.

By year 20, you'll want it to look something like this:
NB: A couple of caveats here, as there are some mistakes I made that you definitely shouldn't. The first is the same as on wave 15 (I was still experimenting with sun/wind/life). Fire/water/lighting all the way. The second is that I lengthened the maze waaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too much. Don't lengthening the maze unless you have the fire gems to maintain the fire damage status effect. That's what's doing all your damage. Maintaining that damage over time is paramount to defeating the monsters.

Not much else has changed, I added 1 more smeltery, some more farms, some more tree nurserys, nothing major. Oh, and you should have finished all the research at this point in the game.

By year 25, you'll want it to look like this:

Nothing has really changed from year 20 as far as the buildings are concerned.
The maze has been upgraded a bit, but nothing major.

By year 50 or so you'll want it to look like this:

You'll have 30 houses, at least half of which are (Grand) and the other half of which are (Nice), 16 greater mines, 4 for fire gems, 2 for water gems, 2 for lightning gems, the rest for stone/ore, 4 smelterys, 4 charcoal huts, 2 mortar mills, 2 textile mills, 2 healing huts, 3 schools, 2 great halls, 2 brewerys, 4 cook houses, 1 temple of time, and 19 storage barns. You'll also have about 40-50 statues to facilitate gem exchanges.

By year 75 or so you'll want it to look like this:

You'll have 30 houses, all of which are (Grand), 6 greater mines, 3 for fire gems, 2 for water gems, 1 for lightning gems (though you'll actually have them set to mine stone/ore in an even split), 3 smelterys, 2 charcoal huts, 1 mortar mill, 1 textile mill, 2 healing huts, 2 schools, 2 great halls, 4 brewerys, 4 cook houses, 2 temples of time (the extra one doesn't do anything, i just felt like putting another one lol), and 21 storage barns. You'll have 60 statues to facilitate gem exchanges (you won't actually need to do that anymore at this point). You'll have 9 farms producing San Fruit, 1 producing Fiberaleaf, and 1 producing Liferesha Mushroom. Basically every other spot on the map that isn't taken up by either the maze or the stone paths is a tree nursery.

How:


Why: If you don't set production limits you run into problems storing all your resources. There's also no point in having more than 2,000 of any resource at a time. You're better off having those citizens be general workers at that point. Which I believe is what they do if they hit their production limit (until the supply drops below it again).

You have to click on a citizen to see how their attributes are effecting them. (See below)

Fire, Lightning, Water, and Prismatic. The rest of the gems are useless for one reason or another.

Sun should be an amazing gem, but it doesn't seem to work correctly, and both doesn't appear to work on armor and doesn't appear to properly apply its listed effect.


As you can see in the above image, with a maze full of fire/lightning/water/prismatic towers, not even a wave filled with level 60 dragons each with 1.3 million armor and 3.9 million health can make it all the way through the maze (and the full maze wasn't even up when I took that screenshot).

With the full maze going, even dragons that have been bolstered by Golems "Bolster" ability to the point that their armor is 3-4 million, can't make it through. (See below)


Note that the Damage over Time effect from the fire is doing ~10-12k damage per second, and the damage increase from the water effect means that an additive +500-600% is applying at that point in the maze. So, every second those dragons are taking ~60k+ damage.

The game doesn't like it when the waves get stuck at the beginning and will occasionally randomly teleport the mobs to random locations on the map if this happens for too long. If your waves are getting stuck and this will happen. (See below)


Just remove the four towers that make up the start of the maze and then remove 3 towers that make up the "teeth" of the maze. (See below)


Doing this appears to let the enemies trickle through at a fast enough pace that the game won't teleport them anymore. (See below)

Make the settings like this:


It won't completely fix the problem, but it does help.

By year 1 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 2 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 3 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 4 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 5 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 10 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 15 you'll want to have these research projects completed:

By year 20 you'll want to have completed all the research projects.

They make your citizens move considerably faster.