How it all works
The farm
Your farm is a hexagon with side length 5, that is 61 hexagonal fields, each with up to six neighbours: 42 meadow, 6 forest, 5 rock and 8 brook. Every farm gets exactly the same mix – even the number of riverside fields is the same, only the layout differs. You choose the layout yourself when founding your farm and reroll until you like it; after that it is fixed. Nobody starts with better land. Lumberjacks stand only in the forest, quarries only on rock. Fields marked lie by the brook: hay meadows, carrot fields and apple orchards yield 20 % more there. The Manor is the centre: every upgrade unlocks new buildings and brings another craftsman who can build at the same time. Build times start at minutes and double with each level – later you wait hours to days.
Storage: without a warehouse at most 500 per resource, each warehouse level adds 500. Gold is unlimited.
Stables hold 4 / 8 / 14 / 22 / 32 donkeys per level. Upgrading meadows, fields and orchards costs manure.
The donkeys
Donkeys eat every hour and yield gold and manure in return. Hungry donkeys get stubborn: they yield proportionally less gold – manure still comes.
| Tier | eats / h | Gold / h | Promotion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grey donkey | 1 | 2 | Start |
| Bronze donkey | 1 1 | 6 | 80 80 · 2 h 0 m · Well |
| Silver donkey | 2 1 1 | 15 | 300 150 1,200 · 12 h 0 m · Petting Shed |
| Gold donkeys | 2 2 2 | 50 | 800 600 20,000 50 · 4 d 0 h · research ‘Bricklebrit’ |
Offspring arise in the Breeding Station: base time 1 h 30 m plus 3 minutes per donkey you already own; costs rise with the herd too. Higher breeding stations and Donkey Whispering make it faster. Stable places limit the herd. Promotions run on training slots: one without a breeding station, otherwise one per level.
Too many mouths, say after a successful donkey raid? On the donkey page you can set free single donkeys or several of one tier. They then eat nothing more, but no longer count for points either. They do not come back.
Research
The Donkey Academy researches one thing at a time. Higher academy levels unlock dearer research – up to Bricklebrit (6 d 0 h), the secret of the gold donkey. Whoever does well hears ‘Bricklebrit’ for the first time after about a month.
Gold Donkey Monument
From Manor level 4. Each of the 10 levels costs considerably more gold, brings 25 points of renown and raises the yield of the six adjacent works by 5 %. So place it right between your best meadows and fields.
Trade
With a marketplace and a caravanserai you post offers: ‘I give X, I want Y’, optionally for one particular breeder only. If someone accepts, two donkey caravans set off – 150 seconds per field of distance each. The Donkey Drivers’ Guild collects its fee on the way: 14 % minus 2 per marketplace level, at least 3 %.
The guild trading post buys at any time at rock-bottom prices and sells at usurious ones, delivered in 30 m 0 s. You may buy 300 units per marketplace level per day (half as much again with Guild Connections).
War
In the Cudgel Room you train troops. Every unit costs ongoing pay; watch geese and riding donkeys eat hay as well. If the fodder runs short, these guards defend only in part – a hungry goose no longer honks properly. A troop travels as fast as its slowest member (cudgel bearers 180 s per field, donkey riders 90 s), fights, and returns with loot. Attack against defence – whoever has more wins. The losers lose almost everything, the winners proportionally.
Fortune of battle: No battle goes as it looks on paper. Each side fights with 85 to 115 % of its strength, rolled anew for every fight; luck also decides the losses. Close fights are therefore open; only from about 1,35 times the strength is victory certain. Before a raid, the campaign window tells you the chance of victory, calculated with the defence value from your latest scout report.
Loot: 20 % of the storage capacity lies hidden under the straw, gold included. From the rest a troop takes up to 40 % per resource, limited by carrying capacity. On top, donkeys are stolen, at most 10 % of the herd per raid. Which ones depends on the superiority: with less than threefold superiority the troop only catches the lower tiers and the gold donkeys stay in the stable. From threefold superiority it calmly picks the most valuable animals first – then the gold donkeys are gone too.
Guard posts: your farm has only limited room for defenders – 100 to begin with, plus 150 per Cudgel Room level and 50 per watchtower level. They are manned by your strongest defenders. You may have more troops, but they are then only useful in attack – and they survive a lost battle unharmed because they do not fight at all. At the next raid they move up to the vacated posts. So mere hoarding no longer protects anyone, and no farm becomes invincible.
Defence: farmhands and maids always fight back (25 points). Pitchfork militia and watch geese stay at home and defend. The enclosure (donkey fence to castle wall) itself brings 20 points per level and multiplies the whole defence; every watchtower adds a fixed amount. With at least one watch goose you are warned when a troop is only 1 hour away – without geese you only notice when it is there.
Grace period: whoever loses a fight for their own farm is under a grace period for 24 hours afterwards. For that long the guild lets no troop near the farm, not even one already on its way: it returns home without a fight. Scouts may still come. If you attack yourself during your grace period, it ends at once.
Cowardly behaviour: whoever raids a much weaker farm loses the respect of their own people. From a 1,5-fold gap in points they fight listlessly: for every further multiple, 20 % more of those heading home go missing. If the attacker also comes with more than 3 times the combat strength, the penalty rises up to double, at most 60 %. You can still win, it just hardly pays. Against equal farms there is no penalty, not even for the gold donkey raid with threefold superiority. The Cudgel Room tells you the rate before the attack.
Scouts (40 gold, from the Cudgel Room) travel faster than troops and report troops, wall, defence value and reachable stores – and bring back a map of the farm. Each watch goose of the target catches them with 12 % probability (at most 75 %) – then the target knows, and the scout brings home only the piece of map he had paced out until then.
The world is a hexagonal grid of 100 × 100 fields; distances are counted in fields, that is in hex steps. On the world map you see your own troops, scouts and caravans as arrows – and foreign ones as soon as your geese have spotted them. New farms have 3 days of foal protection.
Computer opponent
Besides real breeders, computer opponents live in the world, marked in the rankings. They come in three levels: Farmhand (drops by 2–3 times a day, builds only meadows and stables, does not trade, never attacks.), Farmer (plays like a casual player: 4–6 logins, trade, defence, silver donkeys.), Squire (plays a lot and cunningly: scouts, raids, trades, breeds gold donkeys.). They trade on the market, reply to dispatches and only raid farms that have at least 40 % of their own points – never foals.
Donkey Mail
Dispatches consist of a ready-made sentence and up to 3 pictures. There is deliberately no free text – that keeps the tone decent and nobody can abuse the mail. On offer are sentences for greetings, trade, alliance, war, and farm and breeding.
Dispatches and reports are cleared away after 7 game days.
Points
Grey donkey 1, bronze donkey 3, silver donkey 8, gold donkey 20 points; each building level 2, each research 10, each monument level 25.