Moody's World of Fiction: January 2022

This is a post for my fellow Forge of Empire players who are struggling with the Mughal Settlement. There are several ways to get through it and this is one of them. I will include more ways to achieve the 1500 diplomacy simply because there's not a single "right way" to do it.

Mughal Settlement – a walk-through.

Move Embassy, build 2 Bhavan (smallest house), collect from quest, build 3 alleys, collect from quest.

Fill area with houses, build 1 Rice Paddy, produce 10 Basmati.

Delete Rice Paddy, build 3 Alleys, unlock Water Canals, build 3 Water Canals (>214 diplomacy) to complete the next quest. Alleys and Water Canals have to be connected to your Embassy in a specific spot, the game will highlight the correct spot in your settlement, if the outline is white, you can place the item, if the outline is red, there is something blocking you from placing the item. Remove (delete or move) what is blocking you and place your Alleys and Water Canals.

Delete Alleys and Canals, build as many Bhavan as you can, gather rupees to produce enough goods to unlock Saree Weaver (5 goods = 1000 rupees)

Your settlement will look a little like this, X marks the new expansion (try to buy an expansion that will allow you to build Water Canals or Alleys in the correct spot).

Once you have enough goods to unlock the Saree Weaver, remove houses, place enough Alleys and Canals to reach 214 diplomacy, unlock Saree Weaver in your Embassy.

Remove Alleys and Water Canals, build Saree Weaver(s), produce enough Sarees to unlock Shanti Ghar (medium size house). This round, I got lucky and got a x4 on an overnight production, giving me 40 goods instead of 10. It allowed me to place 3 extra expansions (5 Sarees each, marked with an x in the screenshot below).

Remove Saree Weaver(s), add Water Canals and Alleys to reach 307 diplomacy, unlock Shanti Ghar.

Keep enough Bhavan to build some production buildings (I need 80+ Basmatis, so I built 3 Rice Paddys). Shanti Ghar take 1h to build and produce 206 rupees every 8 hours.

Set productions depending on how many rupees you have left. Try not to build too many goods buildings if you don’t have enough rupees to pay for the productions. In that case you’re better off building more Bhavan that will give you rupees every 4 hours. I had enough to set 3 overnight productions, the rupees I will get when I collect should allow me to set at least 2 4h productions. Delete goods buildings if needed and replace with Bhavan to gather more rupees.

As you see in below screenshot from FoE Helper, I still need a ton of rupees to be able to produce enough Basmati to unlock the Chhatri.

Once you’ve gathered the goods required for the Chhatri, delete the Bhavan to clear enough space to build Canals and Alleys. You need 400 diplomacy to unlock the Chhatri, the setup below gives a total of 533 diplomacy (which is 7 short for the next building after the Chhatri), there are 7 Alleys and 5 Canals. I do move my Embassy up 1 spot in order to connect the Alleys in the correct position and get the extra diplomacy from “chaining” them.

First Alley:

Seventh Alley:

First Canal:

Fifth Canal:

Once you unlock the Chhatri, delete the Canals and Alleys and build Chhatri (takes 1 hour to build). You must connect it directly to your Embassy in order to get extra goods when you collect from your Embassy. This is what will happen when you build it: Your Embassy will turn green and show the Mughal icon and a +1. The building at the end of the arrow is a newly built Chhatri.

Your Chhatri does not need to be fully built for the bonus to appear:

When I collect from my Embassy (in 1h58’25”), I will get the bonus for having 1 of the Mughal Empire set buildings connected, ie 5 extra goods. In this case I will receive 5 extra Basmatis but it can be any of the 4 goods (first round I received Lotus, which allowed me to place my first Lotus expansion long before I unlocked the goods building itself)

Now you can build as many Chhatri as you can fit. Each will give you extra diplomacy and rupees depending on the production time you choose (62 in 1 hour).

Build 2 to complete the next quest and collect supplies (for your main city):

The amount will depend on your current era.

Having 6 Shanti Ghar will allow you to build 15 Chhatri.

The most cost-effective production is the shortest, but you need to babysit your productions in that case. Otherwise, set productions to a cycle you can collect easily.

When buying expansions, make sure you choose the ones with the best impediment placement, here, I just bought the 3 expansions on the left of my existing land and I have 2 free pickaxes left. The impediments on the bottom 2 expansions are placed far apart, which allows me to use them without spending my pickaxes on them immediately. I can keep them and decide where to use them later, when the larger buildings come into play. It’s likely I will use one on the impediment in the middle here.

When you’ve collected enough goods, remove goods buildings and add diplomacy buildings to reach 700 in order to unlock the next building. Here I have 8 Chhatri (16 diplomacy each), 7 chained Alleys + 2 unchained (top left, next to the Water Canals) and 5 chained Water Canals, together it gives me 709 diplomacy.

Build a Baldachin (Empire Set Building) and see the effect on your Embassy:

The Baldachin takes 1 hour to build and will add 63 diplomacy each but requires 51 population each.

Build 2 Baldachin to collect your next quest reward.

Your next quest is to collect 2000 rupees (you will need them!!) and have 870 diplomacy, the Baldachin will help with that.

Baldachin produces rupees at this rate:

This is what 881 diplomacy looks like:

I bought a new expansion (marked by the red x) and have 5 chained Water canals (yellow dot), 7 chained Alleys (green stripe), 2 unchained Alleys (green x), 3 Chhatri (blue x) and 4 Baldachin (blue circle).

Now I can collect my next reward 😊

Unlock your next building and start over. If you have the FoE Helper installed, you can double check to make sure you have enough rupees to produce the goods to unlock the next building. In this case, I do have enough rupees. If you don’t have the FoE Helper, you can calculate it yourself by dividing the number of goods you need to unlock the next building by 5 and multiply that number by 1000.

Here you can see I still need 164 Basmati and 23 Lotus, making a total amount of 187 goods, divided by 5 is 37,4 times 1000 (each 4h production costs 1000 rupees) = 37.400 rupees needed to produce all the goods required. This number will change because my Embassy will be giving me 15 Basmati when I collect from it later (no idea what I’ll get tomorrow, hopefully either Basmati or Lotus, but I still need Spices as well for the final building, so it might be either one of them).

The reason FoE Helper is indicating I need 38.000 rupees, is because 37.000 will be 1 production short. Two things will make that number drop: goods received from the Embassy and getting a x4 bonus along the way, so keep checking your numbers as you go.

Now that I have a clearer view of what my final “playing field” will look like, I can go ahead and remove the impediments that will hinder me the most. As you can see here, I still have one free pickaxe, so no diamonds have been used for anything so far. Not on an expansion, not on finishing a building, not on pickaxes:

One way to “cheat” a bit in order to speed things up, is by building a handful of Bhavan instead of waiting for your Shanti Gar to rebuild (coz I deleted 2 of them in order to be able to place all my diplomacy buildings, more will be scrapped next time because I will need more space for diplomacy buildings). Bhavan build in 10 seconds so it’s a quick and easy way to get your population back up in order to already build your new goods building (or whatever you need).

Here, by building 8 Bhavan (red x), I was able to build 2 Lotus farms (blue side to side stripe) and 2 Rice Paddy’s (blue top to bottom stripe). Those will be built at the same time as the 2 Shanti Gar (green x), at what point I can delete the Bhavan again if I want to. I could also keep them for the rupees they produce or replace them with Chhatri or Baldachin for better rupee production.

After you’ve collected 20 Lotus and 20 Sarees, you will need to get 1050 diplomacy to unlock the next building, which is the largest of the 3 Empire Set buildings, the Charbagh.

1050 diplomacy looks like this (and it gets pretty challenging to fit it all in at this point, I had to buy an extra expansion (where the unconnected Baldachin is located))

There are 7 chained Alleys and 3 unchained Alleys (yellow marker), 5 chained Water Canals and 5 unchained Water Canals (red marker), 5 Baldachin (blue marker) and 1 Chhatri (green marker, hidden by the Embassy). I did spend 10 Lotus on the expansion, which meant I was 3 short, which I made up for by using diamonds. Not sure I would’ve been able to fit it all in without the extra expansion, so make sure to check your stock of goods before you buy a new one and don’t end up either messing things up or spending diamonds to fix your mistake.

Once you build a Charbagh adjacent to your Embassy, you will now be getting 40 goods when you collect from it.

The Charbagh is 5x3, needs 84 people, takes 4 hours to build and gives 150 diplomacy each.

Your next quest is easy (the reward will vary depending on your era):

So is the next one:

One good thing is that I have gathered enough rupees (thanks to a few x4 bonuses meaning I need to produce less goods manually) to finish the settlement, so I can go ahead and delete all the non-essential Empire Set Buildings (keep one of each that is directly adjacent to your Embassy for the extra goods) and free up some population to build goods buildings.

My Embassy is not being helpful at this point, as this will be the 3^rd day in a row it is giving me Sarees, which I don’t need anymore ☹

After gathering 10 Lotus, the next quest is another easy one:

To unlock the final building, you have to have 1260 diplomacy. This is what it looks like:

There are 3 chained Water Canals (green mark), 5 chained Alleys (red stripe) and 2 unchained Alleys (red circle), 5 Charbagh (yellow stripe), 2 Baldachin (yellow circle) and 1 Chhatri (yellow X, hidden behind the Embassy). I had to use my last free pickaxe to clear away an impediment to move my buildings around.

Unlock and build 1 Haveli to complete the next quest.

Scrap everything you don’t need anymore (keep 1 Chhatri and 1 Baldachin, attached directly to your Embassy to ensure you get the extra goods when you collect) and build as many Haveli as you can fit. They build in 4 hours and provide 113 population each. The more you can build, the more Charbagh you will be able to build for the final quest.

And here is the final setup for 1500 diplomacy:

I have 8 Charbagh (yellow line) and 1 Baldachin (yellow circle), 8 unchained Alleys (red line) and 3 unchained Water Canals (red circle).

6 Haveli (green line) and 3 Bhavan (green circle) provide enough population to be able to build the Charbagh and Baldachin.

Due to RL circumstances, I only finished this settlement with hours to spare for Silver Time award. I did not spend any diamonds on pickaxes but used the goods collected for the final quest to buy 2 more expansions. This allowed me to fit everything I needed to get to the 1500 diplomacy.