0. Short Summary
Here you find all tips in a short form without any analyzes or justifications.
Crucial:
Stay adamant in placing tiles such that they fit perfectly. Limit the number of imperfections to the smallest possible number.
If you place a tile, avoid complicated edge patterns in the neighbourhood. Know which edge patterns are common (see section 1.d).
Stay compact and avoid too many holes.
Fulfil quests as good as you can. Important:
Stretch out at the beginning of the starting phase (you need asap a rich rim to deal with awkward tiles and to place each tile perfectly). Later on, build compactly.
Put awkward tiles to the rim if they don't fit (and try to generate only simple neighbourhoods).
Build different areas to put quests of the same type together (a housing area, a field area, a forest area, a railroad area, and a water area).
Use water stations to mitigate railroad problems and water tiles to mitigate canal problems.
Use indirect placements if direct placements would lead to imperfections or complicated edge patterns in the neighbourhood.
Stay cool and don't play too sloppy.
Close structures and collect tiles from flags. Further helpful:
Water edges fit grassland edges perfectly.
Because of the water stations it is possible to have a mixed water and railroad area.
Look also to fit in grassland edges, not only other game elements.
Use the undo button to gain information.
Define a course to scan the holes.
Make efficient use of tiles, for example by building "border arms".
1. Introduction
This guide is based on Dorfromatik version 1.5.1.1 23031302 and refers to the Classic mode of the game. And it is based on my experience with two games (and several games where I reached higher and higher scores before the game died):
My "flagship" game: The score is beyond 2 million points with more than 3,500 tiles in the stack (date: 06.07.2024).
My guide testing game: The score is almost 190,000 points with exactly 200 tiles in the stack (and I don't play it further since it has reached the "relaxing phase" (see section 2.c)). I played this game according to the principles of this guide to confirm that the tips of this guide can lead to potentially unlimited scores (and my "flagship" game is not just a case of great luck).
1.a Introduction - What Is Going On In The Dorfromantik Classic Mode?
In order to extend a game of Dorfromatik "infinitely", you need a regular income of further tiles (otherwise, your game inevitably dies, and your high score will be limited). There are two sources:
perfect tiles (tiles where all 6 edges are fittingly matched)
quests and flagsAs long as this income of tiles is greater than your need, your're fine.
Concerning the perfect tiles I find it instructive to assume the solid Dorfromantik area as an approximation to a perfect circle (which has the best circumference to area ratio of all 2-dimensional geometric figures). Of course, in a real game the situation is much worse - the rim is meandering, and the shape of your world of Dorfromantik may not at all resemble a circle. However, it still has one important thing in common with the ideal circle - if the radius of your shape grows, the area grows in a quadratic way (approximately: growing radius times growing radius times constant factor), whereas the length of the rim grows in a linear way (approximately: growing radius times constant factor). This means that if you double the radius of your Dorfromatik world, you need four times as many tiles to achieve that (for example, a solid circle of radius 10 consists of aprroximately 315 tiles, whereas a solid circle of radius 20 consists already of approximately 1260 tiles), whereas the rim would just approximately double its length. If you would triple the radius, the area would consist of approximately 9 times as many tiles, whereas the rim is only approximately thrice as long. And so on. All this holds only if your Dorfromantik world is built compactly enough.
Concerning the tiles from quests and flags I assume that the number of quests you get depends roughly on the number of tiles you have played (and based on my experience in my flagship game I''m quite sure about that). However, during the course of a game of Dorfromatik, the quests get more difficult (need more tiles to be achieved). At any rate, there is no quadratic growth of the tile income by quests with respect to the number of played tiles. It is probably linear, maybe even sublinear. However, it can be quadratic compared to the length of the rim of your Dorfromatik world (if your world is built compactly enough).
On the basis of this analysis the following can be stated:
If you place all tiles perfectly, you get back a tile for each placed tile (in the long run). Only the outer rim and the rim of the holes consists of tiles for which you didn't get back tiles so far.
You won't get back tiles for imperfect tiles - never ever.
Your need of tiles is defined by the length of the outer rim and the number of holes and imperfectly layed tiles.
The 40 starting tiles and all the tiles from fulfilled quests and flags give you excess tiles to feed this need. You absolutely need them to survive.
If your Dorfromantik world is compact enough: The length of the outer rim is growing linearly compared to the radius.
If your Dorfromantik world is compact enough: The number of placed tiles is growing in a quadratic way compared to the radius and thus also to the outer rim (so, with growing radius, this outperforms the growth of the rim more and more).
The number of quests and flags is growing in a nearly linear way with the number of placed tiles.
If your Dorfromantik world is compact enough: This translates to a quadratic growth of the number of quests and flags compared to the length of the rim.
If your Dorfromantik world is compact enough: This means that, with growing radius, the need caused by the outer rim is outperformed by far by the tiles you get from quests and flags.
The number of holes and imperfections grows linearly with the number of placed tiles. If you play too sloppy, the need of tiles caused by that can outperform the number of tiles you get from quests and flags.
This is THE reason for the supply of tiles being drained and for games coming to an end.
The more you minimize the number of holes and imperfections the greater is the probability that you can reach the zone of unlimited scores.
If you limit the number of holes and imperfections to a minimum and if your Dorfromantik world is compact enough, you will experience a growing stack as soon as the radius of your Dorfromantik world gets big enough. In my two games where I reached the relaxing phase, this critical radius was reached at 150,000 points.To sum it up, you need both sources (perfect tiles as wells as fulfilled quests and flags) to be successful. And: Your game will die inevitably if you play too sloppy with respect to the perfectness of the tiles.
1.b Introduction - Some Game Statistics
Let my flagship game (status 06.07.2024) serve as an example to illustrate things. I rely on the statistics the game provides.
Tiles placed: 23,501
Perfect placements: 21,259 (Rate: 99.3 %)
Note that, once in a while, I inadvertently misplace a tile (especially when I'm playing too long or too fast). Therefore, only 99.3% accuracy with respect to the perfect placements.
Note that the percentage 99.3% refers to the number of tiles that are completely surrounded, not the total number of placed tiles. 0.7 % are imperfectly placed (roughly 150 tiles).
Quests fulfilled: 1030 / Flag quests fulfilled: 98 / Total income from both: 1128 x 5 tiles = 5,640 tiles
Total income of tiles during the game: 21,259 + 5,640 + 41 (start) tiles = 26,940 tiles
The income from the perfect tiles outperformed the income from the quests and flags by far already.
Stack size: 3,528 tiles
My check: 26,940 tiles (total income) - 23,501 tiles (placed tiles) = 3,439 tiles (stack size as it should be - the real stack size is 3,528, so bigger by 89 - hmmm, bug(s) in the game statistics?! At least it is not a huge difference, though significant.)
Score: 2,066,820 points
Average score per tile: 2,066,820 / 19,445 = 87,95 (rounded up)
1.c Introduction - Theoretical Thoughts Concerning Actual Infinity
The global high score is already beyond 10 million points. This leads to the (academic) question: Could you, at least theoretically (in reality, of course, there are limits of the computer hardware and time constraints), really extend the game to infinity? This is not clear. Quests and flags may become more and more scarce. If this scarceness reaches a level so that the number of tiles you get through quests and flags becomes sublinear in comparison to the growing radius, an end of the game may become inevitable. Your rim grows only linearly, but it grows inevitably. You need more and more extra tiles to "feed" it. It could also well be that such a level of scarceness will never be reached.
As long as players keep achieving higher and higher high scores (and the authors of the game remain silent, and reverse game engineers don't find out) this question cannot be answered for sure. If, however, the living games with growing high scores would begin to die (for example, around 10 million points or around 100 million points or any other limit), the probability that you can't play to infinity would tremendously grow.
There are even more complications due to the fact that the game is a random process - this may have a decisive impact on answering the question whether you could play theoretically to actual infinity or not (leaving aside the time problem). However, I'm not going through this since this would probably need a lot of advanced maths.
1.d Introduction - Basics On Tiles And Edge Combinations
This section serves as a reference throughout the guide.
You may know the following already, but if not, this may help you to increase your Dorfromatik playing strength significantly:
Perfect placements: You get back a tile for each perfectly placed tile (that is, all 6 edges of the tile are fittingly matched).
Water edges (not canal edges!) fit greenland edges (and count in this case as valid for the "perfectness" of both tiles).
Railroad edges are generally less common than edges of any other kind.
Common tiles: pure grassland tiles, water stations, and tiles with only one other game element on them (trees, houses, fields,...)
Uncommon tiles: specific tiles with two of the elements of the game (with or without additional grassland)
Rare tiles: specific tiles with three or more of the elements of the game (with or without additional grassland)
Impossible tiles:
entity in the center which does not connect at least two separated islands of edges of the same entitiy
exactly one water edge or canal edge
exactly six canal edges or railroad edges (though the water station can be a substitute for the latter)
two or more separated areas of edges with water (these only exist with canals)
two or more railroad ends
water and canal on the same tile
tiles with 5 different entities (other than grassland) and additional grassland (since there are only 5 entities that can have single edges: trees, fields, houses, railroads, and grassland; water and canals are there only with at least 2 edges)
tiles with 6 different entities (other than grassland) (since there are only 4 entities other than grassland that can have single edges: trees, fields, houses, and railroads; water and canals are there only with at least 2 edges) If at least two sorts of non-grassland edges are part of it, the more non-grassland edges are combined and the more evenly these are distributed among the different elements the less the probability is that this combination occurs (for example, a tile with the edges field, house, grassland, field, field, house is quite rare, whereas a tile with the edges field, field, field, field, field, house is uncommon).
Tiles are generated randomly. However, not completely - there are some constraints, since otherwise grassland tiles and tiles with only one other entity on them (trees, houses, fields,...) wouldn't be so common. Nevertheless, this randomness means that you may have to wait quite a long time (thousands or even ten thousands of tiles) for some very specific tiles to occur.
2. Game Phases
It seems useful to me to distinguish different phases of the game:
a) starting phase
b) critical phase (phase where your stack is overall not growing, and where you may very well be down to a stack size of only 1 tile)
c) relaxing phase (phase of growing stack size)
2.a Starting Phase
The starting phase is characterized by insufficient possibilities to lay tiles perfectly. You may have to accept some imperfections - for example, if your first tile has 6 forest edges, you are forced to accept an imperfection since the starting tile has 6 green edges. You may very well consider restarting the game. On the other hand, such a game is not automatically lost - much more is depending on the further flow of tiles. If you constantly restart the game at the first real problem that occurs you will never get very far.
Tips for the starting phase:
Try to spread out the tiles as fast as possible in such a way that you can lay any further tile without having to accept imperfections (the bigger the outer rim is the more space you have to lay down problematic tiles). Of course, you shouldn't overdo this - keep an eye on your stack size. Find a balanced measure.
Try to lay the tiles in such a way that edge combinations with a low probability of occurrence are avoided (see section 1.d for some information about probabilities of edge combinations).
Try to achieve different areas for the different ingredients in the game: a housing area, a forest area, a field area, a water area and a railroad area. You may have also one or more smaller areas for placing some mixed tiles with only a few elements.
You can put fitting quests together into the same structure. This way, if you are placing a forest tile, for example, you are working on all forest quests at the same time.
For placing most of the tiles, you have to consider only a restricted area instead of the whole board. This saves you time and concentration.
During the starting phase, you may also consider to place a limited amount of nasty tiles imperfectly to avoid the necessity of too many crazy tiles that may very well come only after literally ten thousands of tiles. Your overall structure needs to stay promising, not convoluted.
The starting phase lasts until you reach your first real crisis in the game. In most cases, the end of the starting phase should occur somewhere after the first few hundreds of tiles.
2.b Critical Phase
The critical phase is characterized by repeated tile shortage and overall not growing stack size. You may be down even to 1 tile only. You may very well recover from that only to have the next crisis 50 or 100 tiles later.
I recommend you to become quite watchful when you have 10 tiles or less. You should start to consider to place imperfect tiles in the holes of your board, especially if you find tiles that are fitting 5 edges. You should be reluctant to do this with holes where frequently occuring tiles could be placed. For example, tiles with 5 green edges and one other edge are quite common. On the other hand, if you have some hole with a rather complicated edge pattern, it is a good idea to fill it with a 5-edge-fitting tile.
By all means, you should try to avoid to be down to 1 tile. In that case, you can't see the next tile. If it is an complicated tile it may not fit into any place to generate a further tile, and the game will be over.
Depending on the quality of your start (either by luck or by skill, or both), the critical phase may last until 100,000 to 200,000 points (in my own two games where I reached the relaxing phase, I had to struggle until around 150,000 points). After that, you should experience a growing stack of tiles and enter the relaxing phase.
There are a lot of tips that can help you to master the critical phase. You find them in further sections below. Most of these tips are also valid during the starting and even the relaxing phase. Nevertheless, they are most important until the end of the critical phase.
In my opinion, if you survive the critical phase, it ends inevitably due to at least 2 reasons:
First, the rim of your board and the number of holes in it become so large that you can place any tile perfectly.
Second, the number of fulfilled quests and flags becomes so large compared to the length of the rim and the number of holes that it tends more and more to overcompensate your problems (see section 1.a for a possible explanation).Be patient and persistent to overcome the critical phase. I needed several attempts to have a game where I reached the relaxing phase. There were even games where I barely survived the starting phase. Don't let you discourage by failures. Learn from them, and take into account that you also could have had some bad luck.
2.c Relaxing Phase
The relaxing phase is characterized by a growing stack of tiles.
You can play much sloppier than in the critical phase with respect to many of the tips in the following sections. You can afford it in this phase.
However, you should stay absolutely adamant in placing tiles perfectly (the sloppier you play with respect to this the higher is the risk that your game will die at some point) and (a little bit less important) in not wasting quests. The game may have a fourth "final phase" where new quests and flags are so scarce and/or so difficult to achieve that you can't support the growing rim anymore (though this it not sure yet). In that case, you should have saved as many excess tiles as possible to get the highest possible score.
3. Tips For Tile Placement
The tips in the follwing subsections may help you to improve your Dorfromantik playing strength. Pay attention to every detail. Every little improvement of your style of play counts and increases the probability of you one day reaching the relaxing phase.
3.a Avoid Imperfections
This has been explained already in section 1.a.
If you neglect the tile income from perfectly placed tiles it is impossible to reach the relaxing phase. Without this, your game will die inevitably. Thus it is absolutely crucial to take this tip into account.
Note that all fitting edges of a tile you place are highlighted in white. Pay attention to this to reduce your rate of unintentional imperfections.
If a tile becomes perfect (as soon as all 6 edges are fittingly matched) you get a bonus of 60 points and an extra tile. Not only does the extra tile keep the game going for you, but also do the extra 60 points help you to reach higher scores as well.
The most satisfying experience is to place a perfectly fitting tile in a hole where all the 6 surrounding tiles are also perfectly matched. Enjoy the rich sound, a net income of 7 - 1 = 6 tiles (one tile placed, 7 tiles bonus), and at least 480 points being added to your score (6 fitting edges yield 6 x 10 = 60 points, 7 perfect tiles yield 7 x 60 = 420 bonus point, and there may be more points and tiles if you also fulfilled one or more quests at the same time).
3.b Try To Build Compactly
Build your Dorfromantik world as compact as possible, especially during the critical phase. You need to get as many tiles back from perfect tiles as quickly as possible. Don't let your Dorfromatik world fray too much since this drains your stack of tiles.
This is not true at the very beginning of the starting phase when it is more important to stretch out.
Note that even during the relaxing phase you can't play too sloppy with respect to compactness. If you don't build compactly enough, you will see even very large stacks dwindle.
However, if your stack consists already of hundreds (if not thousands) of tiles you can afford to have your stack diminishing temporarily to build nice structures likes huge seas, or to put borders along areas to fill these with a certain type of tiles later.
To take this tip into account usually means to slow down and play very diligently. Search the best place to put a tile instead of putting it just to the first place where it seems to fit.
3.c Try To Generate "Simple" Neighbourhoods
The importance of this tip can barely be overestimated. This tip is absolutely crucial to reach the relaxing phase. And I believe that, apart from not placing tiles perfectly and/or playing too sloppy, the neglection of this tip is the main reason why many people don't reach higher scores. If you don't follow this tip, you either end up in having too many holes (and thus don't building your Dorfromantik world compactly enough) or too many imperfections (by filling those holes with tiles that aren't fitting perfectly).
Some tiles occur much more often than others (see also section 1.d). Examples:
The most frequent tiles seem to be those that have - apart from green edges - only one additional sort of edges. For example, tiles with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or even 6 forest edges are quite common (the same holds for housing, field, and water edges).
Furthermore, water stations are quite common.
Less frequent, but still quite common are tiles that have - apart from green edges - two additional sorts of edges. There are much more variations possible here (which is probably the reason for the fact that specific tiles of this class are less frequent than specific tiles with only one additional sort of edges).If you place tiles, you should pay attention to this. Try to place your tiles so that the neighbourhood only needs tiles that are quite common. Of course, this is not always possible, especially during the starting phase. Nevertheless, taking this aspect into account should increase your Dorfromantik playing strength tremendously.
The more experience you have in the game the better you can take this tip into account. You need a feeling, an intuition for the patterns which are common. You get this only by persistent game play and paying attention to this.
Examples:
This is my worst hole, sitting there for longer than 20,000 tiles now. Avoid such edge configurations.
The following hole is less problematic. Nevertheless, you should try to avoid even this (at least until the end of the critical phase). These holes tend to sit around for thousands of tiles.
3.d Indirect Placement
Sometimes it is better to place a tile indirectly (that is, not directly adjacent to the structure you want it to belong to, but in a way you expect it to be easily connected by another tile in the near future), namely if it does not fit perfectly, would produce a complicated pattern in the neighbourhood if placed directly, or fits a complicated edge pattern near your structure.
However, you should be very careful to place tiles in such a way with quests on them which demand you to hit a certain number precisely. Due to the randomness, sometimes even tiles that are quite common do not occur for a long, long time. If this happens, it could be that the quest fails when you finally connect the quest to the main body of your structure.
Using indirect placements when needed increases your flexibility significantly.
3.e Green Edges
Green edges appear to be "empty". Probably, your attention is drawn to the other edges, and you may only try to find patterns where these other edges fit. However, if this doesn't work, you should also look if you could fit in the green edges somewhere.
Doing so makes you slightly more flexible.
3.f Water Edges
Water edges fit with water edges, canal edges, water stations, and green edges. Green edges fit only with green edges, water stations, and water edges. Therefore, water edges are slightly better than green edges. If you have a tile with one or more water edges, and you have the choice, you should try to put as many water edges as possible (instead of green edges) to the outer space. Doing so may be of help in the future in the case you get problematic canal tiles.
Don't confuse water edges with canal edges. You can't place a tile at a canal edge unless it has a fitting water, canal, or water station edge. At a water edge, you can place any edge except a railroad edge.
As already stated in section 1.d, a water edge placed at a green edge is considered as fitting, thus counting positively for the "perfectness" of both tiles.
Use water edges to mitigate canal problems. Try to save wate stations for the mitigation of railroad problems.
3.g Water Stations
Water stations are the best tiles in the game. They fit with green, water, canal, railroad and other water station edges.
Whenever you get a water station, you should think twice about its use. My recommendation is to use them exclusively to fix railroad problems (and only in an emergency to fix canal problems) since railroad problems are much more severe, tend to last much longer before fitting tiles occur, and canal problems can be fixed by water tiles which occur quite frequently. In the lucky case you don't have any railroad problems, you should place the water stations prophylactically to avoid future problems.
Proper use of water stations may increase your Dorfromatik playing strength considerably.
3.h Railroad Edges
Railroad edges fit only with other railroad edges and with water stations. Furthermore, railroad edges are considerably less common than housing, forest, field, water, canal, and green tiles. Hence, railroad tiles are the most awkward tiles in the game. Tips:
If you are still in the starting phase or the critical phase of the game, you should think twice about where to place them.
Use water stations to mitigate problems caused by railroad tiles.
3.i Making Use Of The Undo-Button
The undo button is there since you quite often may misplace a tile (for example, you just wanted to scroll the map but hit a point inadvertently where the tile could be placed).
It is your own decision whether or not you judge other uses of this button as cheating or not. I personally use it to gain information I otherwise wouldn't have, and I don't judge this as a cheat.
You can place the current tile testwise anywhere. In this way, you get to see another tile in the stack which helps planning. I don't do so regularly (this would be too cumbersome), especially not in the relaxing phase of the game. However, during the starting phase and even more during the critical phase this information can be of tremendous help.
You can place the current tile testwise adjacent to a fixed tile that is still shown in light grey. You can then see the exact tile (sometimes this cannot be seen for sure from the grey foreshadowing), and, even more important, you get to see which sort of quest is on the tile. After you undo the tile you have one space left to squeeze a structure through this bottleneck if needed (see section 4.c for more details).
3.j Define A "Course" To Scan The Holes
In the starting phase, it is no problem to oversee all holes in your Dorfromantik world. However, your Dorfromatik world grows bigger and bigger. After some time, you may lose the overview.
My method to deal with this is to define a course to go through the holes methodically. I search an area where the holes are scarce and start there. Then I go clockwise around my Dorfromantik world and check all the holes. If the tile doesn't fit, I then go clockwise around my Dorfromantik world a second time, scanning the rim for the best location to place the tile. This method should function at least till 1 million points.
With over 2 million points, my Dorfromantik world is actually already too large for this method. However, since I played very meticulously throughout the whole of the game there are next to no holes left in the middle of my world so that I can still use this method, sometimes checking a handful of holes near the center if needed.
3.k Stay Cool
Playing Dorfromantik you may get into a feverish flow. If this happens, try to stop playing (at least if you want to reach the relaxing phase) since you probably are going to make many mistakes. Continue playing when you have cooled down. Don't play too fast. And please don't get me wrong. It may be much fun to play in such a flow, I don't want to take this away from you. Nevertheless, it will probably dim your chances to reach the relaxing phase.
I have seen in the forums that there are some players who sometimes get the feeling that the game tries to sabotage them, The rest of this section is for those players.
Sometimes, you may become angry. The game seems to mock you. Tiles you need urgently don't occur. Instead, tiles that are only almost fitting occur quite frequently.
Note, however, that there are much more different tile types that are almost fitting than tile types that fit perfectly. Thus it is not the game mocking you, it is just the nature of the situation.
Note further that there are literally hundreds if not thousand of different tile types, and some of these are quite common. This means that other tile types are even more rare, and that, since the tiles are random (with some constraints, though), most of the tile types are rare anyway. Be prepared to wait thousands of tiles (if not ten thousands) for really rare tile types to occur. And be prepared that even quite common tile types may not occur for a long time once in a while. This is the nature of random processes. See section 1.d for information on the frequency of tile types.
The game probably does not use a true random number generator. It probably uses a pseudorandom number generator (there is a Wikipedia article on that). This may be the reason for the (for my taste too frequent) phenomenon that a rare tile type may occur several times in a relatively short interval of tiles. This phenomenon is probably just a byproduct of the used method. It is not programmed to annoy you intentionally, and is not aiming at something.
Note that some tile types that would be possible combinatorically are not existing in the game (for example, tiles with only one water or canal edge). Take this into account. See section 1.d for more information.
Hopefully, this section helps you to cool down. If not I recommend you to stop the game until you have cooled down and continue playing later. Playing in an angry state will probably end up in playing quite suboptimally.
3.l Efficient Use Of Tiles
At least until the end of the critical phase, it may be helpful to make efficient use of tiles. That means that you want to put as many elements on tiles as possible to your structures where the quests are.
However, there are many tiles with 2 different elements on them (apart from grassland). Especially if the tile is heavily laden with both elements you may want to use both of them for your quests.
I use a border defining technique to use such tiles efficiently. In the follwoing example, there is a water system next to a housing area.
This "border arm" consist mainly of tiles with both houses and water/canals on them. I try to let the arm meander in a such way that it does not stretch out too far (often making use of indirect placements). The meandering style helps to keep the gaps smaller so that I can fill them faster later.
This example stems from my flagship game where I am deep in the relaxing phase. During the critical phase, you may use this technique as well, but not as massively since you can't afford such a long "border arm". Keep an eye on your stack size if you use this technique, at least until the end of the critical phase.
I have many such arms between different adjacent areas (most of them much shorter than this extremely long one). The advantage is that the elements on the tiles are going to be connected to the respective systems so that they're going to count for the respective quests. Overall, this may help to fulfil quests faster.
To judge where to put a tile the following question is helpful: What is the main element on the tile? Which structure would probably profit most from it (relatively)? Note that 2 fields are worth more than 2 houses, and that 4 houses are worth far more than 4 trees (since you can have at most 3 fields or 7 houses on a tile, whereas you can have a whole bunch of trees). Of course, there are other factors to weigh in. If, for example, the tile fills a hole perfectly or allows to make a long planned connection it is probably much more important to place it there instead of just adding it to some structure.
3.n Improving The Rim
Especially during the starting phase and the critical phase, it is important to have a rich rim to deal with awkward tiles. Here is one tip how to improve your rim:
If you have a railroad or a canal that is "sunken in" into the rim (see the following example), it is a good idea to place a railroad or canal tile there to bring it out. Afterwards, the variety of tiles you could place there is so much enlarged. This holds also for other elements of the game like trees, houses, fields, but it is most important for canals and especially railroads.
4. Quests And Flags
Quests and Flags give you excess tiles if you fulfil them, namely 5 extra tiles per fulfilled quest. As explained in section 1.a, the 40 starting tiles and the reward tiles from quests and flags form a pool to meet the need of the outer rim, of the rim of holes, and of any imperfections you accepted (or were forced to accept).
It is useful to distinguish the following sorts of quests (each of these quest types is discussed in an own section):
"number+" quests
precise quests
crown quests from built-in tiles
flag quests
Despite the fact that my flagship game gives me a lot of experience with quests, I have still open questions concerning quests. I would appreciate well-founded answers.
Q1: Do quests occur just depending on the number of tiles you have played? Or do they come faster if you fulfil them asap?
Q2: If you "kill" a quest (either by succeeding the exact number or, in the case of "number+" quests, by sealing them into a structure that is too small and close it), does a new substitute quest occur soon?
Q3: In which way does the distance grow between the number of a game element (e.g. trees, houses, fields, etc.) and the number a quest of that sort demands?
Is it percentage based (percentage of the size of the structure the quests belongs too, e.g. percentage of the number of trees)? Then it would be good to close structures that grow too big since you would need less tiles to fulfil the quests in smaller structures.
Is it a fixed number with respect to the size of the structure the quests belongs too (that just grows with the number of tiles you have played)? If so, closing structures or leaving them open would not have an impact.
Or is it even something else?
So far, I have based my own game play on the assumption that quests occur just depending on the number of tiles you have played (and my experience from my flagship game strongly supports that). This means that I try to accomplish every single quest, and that I don't kill any quests intentionally. I even save the quests that occur on the built-in tiles - I try to connect them to the nearest fitting structure, or, if this is not quite possible, I start a new structure.
This means that I have more than one open structure of any sort (in my "flagship" game, I have currently 4 open forests, 4 open cities, 4 open field areas, 4 open water systems and 3 open railroad systems, and some of those structures need only a few tiles to become closed). All my structures have quite different sizes. Because of that, I know the following:
Quests demanding to hit a precise number occur for structures of all sizes.
However, quests which demand you to reach or exceed a certain number are always targeting a number bigger than your biggest open structure of that sort (otherwise, you could most likely fulfil them immediately).I have not checked in detail, but it seems to me that the distance between the actual size and the size the quest demands seems not to depend on the size of the structure. Currently, I'm not really sure about that (see Q3) - I could note the actual sizes and the sizes demanded by the quests and put them into a table to find out for sure. I'm going let you know if I find out something.
4.a "Number+" Quests
"Number+" quests always have numbers bigger than your biggest open structure of the respective sort. Otherwise, you could probably fulfil the quest tile immediately by just connecting it to your biggest structure.
I have the following tips:
Add a tile with a "number+" quest to the biggest structure of the fitting type unless you want to close this structure. In the latter case, put the tile to the second biggest structure of the fitting type (or start a new structure in case you had only one structure so far).
Don't waste any quest unless it is absolutely necessary. If you do, you throw at least 5 tiles out the window, or even 10 tiles if it is a quest with an arrow in the upper right corner (which means that by fulfilling the quest you will get a flag).
Put quests together into one structure in order to work on several quests at the same time.
It can be worth throwing away a few quests in the early stages of the game to avoid the necessity of complicated tiles to fix holes. However, you should be quite parsimonious in doing so.
4.b Precise Quests
Precise quests are quests where you need to meet a certain number precisely. These quests can be a little bit awkward since you may not be able to add more tiles to the structure the quest is connected to until you get a tile with the correct number of elements on it (at least not if you want ot fulfil the quest). In the meanwhile, you have to put the other tiles elsewhere. During the starting phase and the critical phase this can be quite annoying.
Note that there are no precise quests for forests. The trees on forest tiles are usually too numerous - in many cases, precise quests for forests could probably not be fulfilled (if they existed).
Precise quests occur for structures of all sizes. They can have a number on them which is bigger than the biggest structure of that sort you have already. They can also have smaller numbers. Consider the following: You have several cities with approximately 1,000, 500, and 100 houses. Then you may encounter precise quests with target numbers in the vicinity of 1,100, 600, or 200 houses. The target numbers will always be bigger by a certain amount compared to one of your structures.
Since "number+" quests occur only for the biggest structure of each sort, smaller structures tend to collect only precise quests. The only exception would be if you voluntarily connected "number+" quests to your smaller structures and not to your biggest structure.
My tips are:
Add a tile with a precise quest to the structure with the nearest smaller number of elements.
Try to fulfil precise quests as best as you can. There will be many of them, and I think your loss would be big if you just dumped them.
It could be worth to dump a few precise quests in the early game stages, namely if the fulfilment of the quests would force you to accept too many imperfections and/or complicated edge patterns. The loss coming from the latter may be bigger than the loss of 5 tiles.
Accepting precise quests means that you're going to have more than one structure of any sort. That's ok. I think the loss coming from dumping quests to just stay to one structure of any sort only is much bigger than the loss from having more than one structure of any sort (so that you can't work on all quests of the same sort simultaneously). You may object that you would have to invest too many tiles per quest in this case. However, this math is incorrect since it does not take into account the fact that you get back all of your invested tiles if you place them perfectly. The correct question is: Do the tiles you have to invest for the quest enlarge the radius of your Dorfromatik world to such an extent that the 5 extra tiles from the quest wouldn't compensate it anymore? In my experience, you can spend a huge amount of tiles without any problems (as long as you place your tiles perfectly).
4.c Crown Quests From The Fixed Tiles
In Dorfromatik, if your world grows, from time to time some fixed tiles occur. These tiles always have a quest marked by a crown. Quite often, this crown vanishes before I am able to fulfil the quest. Can there be only one crown quest at a time in the game?
I have read in the forums that crown quests are there to unlock achievements. I have not verified this. Since the Steam achievements do not interfere with the game mechanics I don't discuss this further.
At first, you can only see the position where the fixed tile will occur. If your world draws quite near (only 2 tiles away), you get a light grey preview of the tile. If you connect the tile, it is shown like all the other tiles, and you get to see which sort of quest is on the tile.
I can't say whether it is better to dump these quests if they don't fit into your pattern or to save them as good as you can. Based on my own assumptions, I try to save them as best as I can. Most of the time, I connect them to the nearest fitting structure (sometimes going over a distance of 50 tiles or more), sometimes squeezing other structures through a bottleneck in order to not close them, sometimes planning to close sealed-in structures. In the relaxing phase I can afford to do so. Sometimes, I just start a new structure of the sort of the tile. At least, this keeps my game much spicier.
4.d Flags
If your structures grow bigger and bigger, they inevitably harbor a growing number of flags. Tips:
During the critical phase, it is of tremendous help to close some structures to harvest the flags (you get 5 tiles per flag). You should plan to do so quite in advance since in most cases it takes many tiles to close a structure, more often than not also some extremely special tiles in holes left behind.
If there is a considerable number of flags in the structure, you may even "invest" some imperfect tiles to get a high return on investment. In my "flagship" game, I could afford to wait for perfect tiles, but maybe my life would have been a bit easier if I hadn't been so picky. On the other hand, since I stayed adamant concerning the perfect tiles, I have now more tiles in my stack overall. I closed 2 early groups and harvested 7 flags for each. The first one I could close relatively fast, the second one lasted a long time (and was the reason for my struggling until 150,000 points). In the meantime, I have closed a forest with a dozen flags or so - but this lasted several thousand tiles. Since I was already in the relaxing phase of the game I had absolutely no problem in waiting so long. In fact, I didn't really needed these extra tiles so far. However, they added considerably to the size of my stack (currently more than 3,500 tiles).
If you plan to close a structure you should stay adamant in not adding further quest tiles to the structure you want to close (except in the rare case that the number in the quest is so low above the structures number that you can fulfil it during the closing process). You need to start a new structure of the same sort and collect the quests there. Since the numbers of the quests can be based on the biggest size of an open structure you have to bite into the bullet - if you keep adding quests to your largest structure of a certain sort, you probably would never close it and in turn would never get the tiles from the flags. Note further that the numbers on the quests won't grow much while you build up a smaller structure until this smaller structure reaches the size of biggest earlier structure. This means that you may not fulfil many quests for quite some time, but then suddenly you're going to fulfil a whole bunch of quests within a few tiles. In the long run, your loss is much smaller than the profit from the flags.
Here is an example for piled up quests in a forest.
This forest needs about 37,000 trees in total and has collected a tremendous amount of quests during its build-up. At the moment, most of the quests demand between 2000+ and 3000+ additional trees, which means that the quests didn't grow much during that period. Soon, this forest is going to have that much trees and there will be a quest fulfilling feast. As soon as the last quests is harvested, this forest is going to be closed to harvest the flags and to build another forest elsewhere (there are already 3 such forests started (originating from some fixed, built-in tiles), one of which has already several thousand trees). This way, the biggest open forest is not much bigger than the previously biggest forest, which in turn limits the growth of the quest size (which is already a bit high since I didn't use this technique consequently enough in the early stages of the game).
5. Achievements
Steam achievements don't help your gameplay - they just unlock skins and special tiles that give your Dorfromantik world more flair, but they don't change any game mechanics. That's why this guide does not contain any tips concerning achievements.
Fun fact: Despite playing this game now literally for hundreds of hours I'm probably not going to gain one of the "Treuer Fan"-achievements ever (German; "Loyal Fan"?). I have just finished 4 games where I reached more than 5,000 points. The other two games that I'm playing are still unfinished since I reached the relaxing phase. And my flagship game is consuming all my playing time... I have no time to start new games, and even if I did, I would probably most of the time reach the relaxing phase so that the game just wouldn't end...
6. Conclusion And Final Remarks
In my eyes, the crucial tips for reaching the relaxing phase of the game are:
Stay adamant in placing tiles perfectly. Limit imperfections to the smallest possible number.
Try to generate "simple" neighbourhoods. Your holes should have edge patterns that occur quite often so you can close them soon. Implementing this tip may be quite difficult and be a field of learning and for improvement for a long time.
Build compactly,
There are many specialties that can help you. Try to take into account as many as possible.
Don't play too sloppy. If you do, your game will die inevitably. You need to be patient and diligent. Even during the relaxing phase you can't afford to play too sloppy (perfect placements are always a must if you want to continue the game unlimitedly).
Ok, folks, that's it for the time being. I would appreciate sound answers to my questions and any justified corrections. I hope that my guide is going to help you. I wish you good luck!
Change History
17.07.2024:
added some text to section 3.c "Try to Generate 'Simple' Neighbourhoods"15.07.2024:
added section 3.n "Improving the Rim"13.07.2024:
added section 3.l "Efficient Use of Tiles"12.07.2024:
added impossible tiles with water and canals in section 1.d
added some text to sections 3.a and 3.f10.07.2024:
added some impossible tile patterns in section 1.d (which can be derived from other rules)09.07.2024:
added some tips to sections 4.a and 4.b
added some examples to section "3.c Try to Generate Simple Neighbourhoods"07.07.2024:
added section "5. Achievements" and renumbered the section with conclusions and final remarks.
overworked section "4. Quests and Flags" and its subsections; added a new subsection to distinguish "number+" quests and precise quests06.07.2024:
broke down section "0.a Main Analysis" into several sections (now called "Introduction ..."
renumbering of the guide (0. is short summary, 1. is Introduction, incremented the numbers of all other sections)
strongly overhauled the section "1.a What is going on in the Dorfromatik Classic Mode?" (hopefully, much clearer and more concise argumentation)
game statistics now from 06.07.2024 (instead of 10.06.2024)
changed order of the subsections of section "3. Tips for Tile Placement" such that the most crucial ones are now at the beginning
Put this change history from the comments into an own section since it grew too massive fot the comments.05.07.2024:
added section "0. Short Summary"
renamed sections "0.Main Analysis" and "0.a Basics on Tiles and Edge Combinations")24.06.2024:
added sections 2.i and 2.j (now 3.b and 3.k)
added impossible tiles in the section "0.a Basics on Tiles and Edge Combinations"
clarified the likely cause for a growing stack after 150,000 points and thus the possibility of the relaxing phase in section "0. Main Analysis"11.06.2024:
improved structure of section "0. Main Analysis"
added example (analysis of my flagship game)
some minor formatting improvements10.06.2024:
initial version
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3264929352
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