Whether you’re building empires, managing armies, or developing civilizations resource management is a big part of many strategy games. These games make a difference between survival and dominance in the amount of farming resources they’re able to farm efficiently. Regardless if it’s doing with real time strategy (RTS) or turn based strategy games, you must optimize resource gathering to be ahead of the competition. It’s time to put less thought into it and learn how to farm resources faster in strategy games in this guide, so you’re always five steps ahead of the competition.
1. Resource Farming in Strategy Games: What it means, and how you can use it.
Resource farming is when you collect materials such as food, hardwood, gold or minerals to support your base, construct structures, recruit units and advance through the game. You’ll be able to expand, dominate your opponents and research at a much faster rate the more efficiently you gather resources. Resource farming isn’t just about gathering resources; collecting it is only one aspect of resource farming, the purpose is maximizing the output and keeping downtime to a minimum.
2. Stop listing everything and go by resource type priority
Knowing which resources are the most valuable for what you’re trying to achieve in your current game is the first step in efficient resource farming. Games have different priorities in what they want to use. For example:
Food and Wood: It’s often crucial in RTS games like Age of Empires or Stronghold, for example, in the resource side of things for early game.
Gold and Iron: And crucial in games like Civilization or Crusader Kings for building up your economic development and unit building up.
Mana or Energy: Mana; or more specifically Energy, is a critical commodity in fantasy games such as Heroes of Might & Magic or Star Craft II where you have magic based units and/or abilities.
Find out what your biggest resources will be and get them as quickly and effectively as possible.
3. Develop Techniques for Build Efficient Resource Gathering Structures
Almost all strategy games require players to be building resource gathering buildings. The right choice of structures can significantly boost your resource collection rates:
Farms and Lumber Mills: Make sure you have steady flow of food and wood for these structures. Early on build many farms and lumber mills to increase output.
Quarries and Mines: Set up mining facilities close to minerals involved (ie iron and gold), wherever there is a resource rich area.
Marketplaces and Trade Outposts: In Civilization for example, Anno or other marketplaces, trade routes increase resource efficiency and allow you to exchange surplus resources.
Barracks and Sawmills: Reduce downtime from units or worker, to increase efficiency of resources collected.
Moreover, placing these structures can ensure that workers need to gather resources faster.
4. Assign Workers Strategically
In many strategy games workers are vital resources to gather. An effective assignment of your workers will help you speed up resource farming.
Automate Resource Gathering: In many games, automation features such as worker collecting of resources are possible without permanent player input. Use these tools to save time.
Efficient Resource Distribution: Make sure your workers aren’t spread thin. Give multiple workers the task of mining, woodcutting or farming.
Optimize Worker Movement: It places workers near resource rich areas in order to minimize travel time while increasing collection efficiency.
Don’t tie your workers down with work that won’t ultimately help you reach your long-term ambitions.
5. Resource (efficiency) Research and Upgrades.
Like many strategy games, some games have a research system or upgrades that will improve your gathering of resources. Investing in these upgrades can significantly boost your output:
Resource Upgrades: Things like more efficient resource extraction; faster movement of workers; or better harvesting skills, all speed up collection.
Automation Upgrades: Research in some games can make automation of tasks and increase efficiency, reducing the need to continuously check player input.
Infrastructure Upgrades: Upgrades for gathering buildings such as granaries, marketplaces, resource hubs tend to build as well.
These upgrades should be prioritized according to what few resource you where in need of then.
Conclusion
One of most important things in strategy games is to use the farming resources efficiently. You will quickly boost your resource collection speed by prioritizing which resource types, building and upgrading resource-gathering structures, strategically assigning workers and using resource boosting items. Instead, focus on cutting down travel distances, upgrading some key mechanics and balancing your resource accordingly, to be ahead of the game. With these strategies you’ll be prepared to manage your resource pool to avoid getting stomped by your favorite strategy games.