Walkthroughs

Beginners' guide to Trade Nations for iPhone and iPad

Get the coins rolling in the social freemium title with a trading twist

Beginners' guide to Trade Nations for iPhone and iPad
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Trade Nationsis a freemium game with the emphasis more on long harvest times and build times than some of its more established contemporaries.

What that means in practical terms is that if you’ve not been planning out your buildings and tactics, you may find yourself with some fairly hefty waiting times later on in the game.

Never fear, because Pocket Gamer is here with a beginners' guide to turning your nation into a thriving hub of commerce in no time at all.

(Please note: The information provided in this guide is accurate as of version 2.2.0. Some elements may have changed since it was published)

Make friends, make money

As with all social freemium games, Trade Nations is as much about grabbing as many of your friends as possible and roping them into playing the game as it is about avoiding paying real money for anything (that last part may just be me, though).

The benefits of having friends on the same ‘trading map’ as you aren't quite as obvious as in other titles, though. There's no apparent guidance on how to get gold.

If you stop making cupcakes for a second and leave one of your bakeries (and you really should have more than one) empty, another player can visit your town and order an item from your inactive shop.

Accept the request, make the item (or cupcake), and both players get gold and XP to add to their collection. Hooray!

If none of your IRL friends wants to start yet another social game, there's always the option of searching for friends via the handy email/username locator, found in the Juju play menu (tap your username).

Home is where the heart is

You can’t get any resources without workers, and you can’t get workers without housing.

Always try to keep your supply of happy labourers (the rarest breed) high by maxing out the number of houses that your land can take, and ensure they’re always the very best quality housing (you get one extra worker per ‘level’ of house).

As long as you put aside upgrading these buildings as a priority, you shouldn’t run into too many situations where your production grinds to a halt through lack of haulers.

Double or nothing

Just having one of every production building isn’t enough if you want to build a Keep or larger fortification (unless you want to wait weeks for everything to be ready, of course).

To get the really interesting buildings flowing, you’re going to need at least two, and ideally more, of each of the key production buildings – Farm, Woodcutter, and Quarry.

If your piece of land is tiny, and therefore you have only a few workers to spare, remember that moving haulers away from the very slow producing resources like rock will help ramp up production without requiring you to check back on the game every hour.

Be a canny trader

You don’t necessarily need all production buildings staffed at all times, mind - especially if it’s gold you’re after.

The prices in the market alter every 24 hours dependent (apparently) on other players’ buying/selling habits. What this means in practice is that 100 wood may be selling at 70 gold one day, and 34 the next (as everyone flogs their wood for a ridiculously good price).

If you tend to check your town in the morning, you can usually get a good impression as to what’s looking hot. Pop down 50 gold on the Wizards Tower to boost production of the resource that’s expensive, re-assign all your workers to your many production buildings, and start mining/chopping/harvesting to get as much as you can before the evening.

Sell for masses of gold (more than you’ll get the next day, that’s for sure), rinse, and repeat. You should be hitting 5,000 gold – and that annoyingly hard-to-get Keep – in no time at all.

If all else fails, build two bakers and spend the entire time making cupcakes for friends.

Will Wilson
Will Wilson
Will's obsession with gaming started off with sketching Laser Squad levels on pads of paper, but recently grew into violently shouting "Tango Down!" at random strangers on the street. He now directs that positive energy into his writing (due in no small part to a binding court order).