Learning Ludopolis
Ludopolis is several games layered together into one living world. Pace your learning and don't try to learn everything at once.
Tactical skills have to do with the here-and-now, whereas strategic skills are concerned with long-range plans. You can have plenty of fun and success at playing Ludopolis only tactically, since the tactical layers (the boardgame layer, time management layer, and city design layer) are very intricate.
An important strategic skill is the ability to act cooperatively with your neighbours. Competition between neighbours will drag them down and let players outside the conflict get ahead. Consciously setting a goal to learn how to craft cooperative strategies in your local part of the map will help you sharpen your communication and cooperative skills faster.
Playing for the first time
Mastering the Tutorial
- Once you've completed the tutorial once, read some of the explanations and tips on the Ludopolis site and keep playing the tutorial.
- Once you've finished the tutorial all the way, you can still use it to see if you can finish all of the tutorial challenges sooner. When you're ready for really difficult challenges, or just for free play, move on to Experimental games.
Experimental games
- Experimental games have a series of challenges — the "easiest" challenges will be difficult if you've just mastered the tutorial, and the hardest challenges will be difficult even for an experienced player. Be satisfied with mastering only the first couple challenges in a game.
- There are two buttons to start the challenges: one is on the welcome message when you first start the game, and the other is in the Ludopolis menu (the "?" in the lower right corner).
Tactical skills
Tactical skills refer to skills such as placing cities, designing and maintaining cities efficiently, learning to use green actions more than yellow actions, and how to make cities attractive to immigrants.Tactical skills have to do with the here-and-now, whereas strategic skills are concerned with long-range plans. You can have plenty of fun and success at playing Ludopolis only tactically, since the tactical layers (the boardgame layer, time management layer, and city design layer) are very intricate.
Strategic skills
Strategic skills include the ability to work with immigration patterns, economic systems, and other players. Strategic skills work best if you first build a solid foundation of tactical skills.An important strategic skill is the ability to act cooperatively with your neighbours. Competition between neighbours will drag them down and let players outside the conflict get ahead. Consciously setting a goal to learn how to craft cooperative strategies in your local part of the map will help you sharpen your communication and cooperative skills faster.
Tips
- It's more fun to learn with others. If you have a friend that plays Ludopolis, set up a time to learn from him or her. Or, chat with people in a game to find someone to help you with you skills, either by teaching, challenging, or playing cooperatively.
- You can try the Experimental challenges periodically and compare your game to previous Experimental challenges. Try to reach a challenge sooner, or to reach a higher challenge before the game is up. If you're keeping a journal of your challenge attempts, be sure to note the helpfulness of your neighbouring countries, as that will impact your results.