somehow I still have some doubts. And those are mainly the hight cost of 5 levels of cave, especialy the huge silver cost and also the fear that Thargoran did that while other people were older in the game and needed stone. This time, everybody will sell stone. not good. I still say the cave-market positions shuld be swiched or at least the cave levels requested for market reduced.
Actually, a lot of that high silver cost is easily attainable. Most buildings with the exception of the cave cost much more wood and clay than silver, and your swords cost marginally more wood than silver.
I found myself with a huge silver surplus, before the beta reset, and on the german version trying the route you are proposing Gicusan. I ended up needing the cave just so I would have a place to stash excess silver.
If you go the slinger --> archer route early you will find that you quickly reduce all of your farming villages morale to a point that forces you to
idle your farmers anyway. No reason to waste resources on better farmers, when you can't farm the villages anyway. Morale reduction seems to be directly correlated to how much booty you haul away from a farm.
You can get rid of most of your excess stone via the market to the farming villages, you don't really need to worry about what other players are putting on the market.
Finally take a closer look at each unit's strength's and weaknesses. We know all the players are going to have a stash of swords, and probably some archers at the end of BP on defense. Slingers are almost worthless against these units, and hoplites are only marginally better than slingers at attacking those defensive units.
Thargoran, how close to a temple are you at the point you research LC?
