Build queue

What it does

Ikariam has one construction site per town: when an upgrade finishes, the site stays idle until you come back and click. The oBot queue starts the next job as soon as the site is free and resources are enough, so you never lose building hours. With automatic development the bot also picks by itself what to build.

Free and premium

• Free: the bot works on the first 2 upgrades in the queue of every town. The panel does not let you add more («Without premium the queue holds 2 items per town»): when one is done, you add another.
• Premium: unlimited queue, new buildings on free plots, automatic development with goals and jobs started meanwhile while the first one waits for resources.

Preparing the queue

1. Open the oBot panel and the Buildings tab.
2. In Add to queue choose the town: its buildings appear with their current level.
3. Next to the building write the level to reach and press Add. Repeat for the other buildings.
4. In Queue put the items in the order you want with Up and Down; Remove deletes one, Empty queue removes them all (after a confirmation).
5. Switch on Build queue active and press Save.

New buildings (premium)

Below the town buildings there is a Free plot row for each kind of empty plot (with how many there are): its menu lists the buildings the game allows there, with their cost. Pick one and press Add: it shows up in the queue tagged new. Once built it becomes an upgrade like the others.

If the game does not allow that building yet (a research or a requirement is missing) the bot says so in What it is doing and retries after 10 minutes.

Automatic development (premium)

In colonies the bot also looks at the town hall corruption: a newly founded colony starts at 50%, which cuts production and satisfaction. Until corruption is back to zero the bot builds the Governor's Residence (or raises it one level) right after the walls.

With Automatic development on (and Build queue active on), when a town queue is empty the bot picks the next job by itself, queues it tagged auto and starts it as soon as resources are enough. It works for every town, including those where you never queued anything. Each choice goes into the log and can be removed from the queue like the others; jobs you add by hand always come first. A building waiting for a resource the town does not produce (for example marble without a mine), or one the game will not let you upgrade, is skipped and the bot picks another; it comes back as soon as the resource arrives. If the goal is stuck, it builds and upgrades carpenter, forester and architect, which cut costs. With any goal the town wall comes first (before the goal buildings and before troops on wood) and then stays at most two levels below the town hall: without a wall a town loses all its troops at the first attack by another player. After a lost battle the bot raises the town wall of the attacked town up to the town hall level, for 7 days, before the goal buildings.

With no goal (none) the bot follows these rules, in this order:

1. Slow growth: if the town gains less than 1 inhabitant per hour and is still below 85% of its maximum population, it lacks satisfaction, not space: first the tavern (built or raised), then the museum.
2. Missing basic buildings: warehouse, tavern, port, museum, as soon as a free plot offers them.
3. Town hall when the population is at 85% of the maximum.
4. Warehouse when a resource goes over 70% of the capacity.
5. Otherwise the lowest building among town hall, academy, warehouse, tavern, port and museum.

The goals

The Goal tells the bot what you are aiming at. With automatic development on it decides buildings, research order and citizens together: in that case the manual choices of the Research and Citizens tabs stay saved but apply only when you go back to «none». The Research and Citizens tabs must still be switched on.

When the colony is founded (by the bot or by you) the goal switches to Population by itself: the bot stops keeping gold, wood and citizens aside, and the new town enters the bot's list as soon as the game shows it, without reloading the page. For the next colony set the New colony goal again: the bot prepares it with the new costs.

With the New colony goal the bot also prepares the founding: it looks at the map around the capital and picks a free plot on a nearby island producing a good that none of your towns produces, starting from the one that stops the works (marble, for example); only if there is no free plot there it uses the islands of your towns (the capital’s first). Once an hour it checks what is still missing (Palace, gold, wood, free citizens, ships). You find it in the New colony box of the Buildings tab and on Home. When everything is ready it tells you in the log, on the page and, with the economy warnings, on Telegram: founding stays one click of yours with the Open the colony page button, or the bot does it with the Found the colony by itself option. If there is no free plot at all, the colony goes to another island and you choose it on the world map.

Options

What the bot does

• Every 2 minutes it looks, for each town, at the first item of its queue. Towns are independent: each one has its own queue.
• If the building has already reached the wanted level, it removes it from the queue and moves to the next one.
• If the construction site is busy, it comes back when the works end.
• If resources are missing, it waits and checks again when they should be enough (in 5 to 30 minutes); the What it is doing box says which resources are missing and how much.
• Meanwhile (premium): if the first job would wait for resources more than half an hour, the bot looks at the next 3 upgrades of the same town and starts the first one it can pay right now. The first job stays at the top and starts when resources arrive; the log says «Started … meanwhile».
• If the game does not allow the upgrade (for example because of missing requirements) it retries after 10 minutes; a job chosen by automatic development is skipped for 6 hours instead and the bot picks another one.
• When it starts a job it writes it in the log and in the page (and on Telegram, if you asked for it) with the time the works end.

Video