OpenFront Team Economy: Reserve Space Before You Build

Direct answer: agree on space before the first expensive structure

In a Team game, do not ask “which building is best?” in isolation. Ask which piece of geography the team must keep usable, who owns the next structure, and what event ends the investment. A teammate is friendly, but friendly does not mean that Gold, tiles, buildings, or railway stations become a common pool. If one player fills the only interior corridor with a City and then expands across the coast, the other player may be unable to connect a Factory or place a Port even though nobody can attack the blocker.

Use the SPACE check before every shared-economy purchase. Survey the spawn, the safe interior, the coast, and the likely enemy approach. Place the node on land that its owner can defend rather than on the first tile that is affordable. Assign one payer and one route owner; do not make “the team” responsible for a bill that only one player’s Gold can pay. Connect the node only after checking station range, railroad path, water connectivity, relation state, and the route’s protection. Exit when the corridor is blocked, the route no longer settles Gold, the next Port or Factory step costs more than the team can justify, or a border threat changes the job.

The current v0.33.14 boundary makes the order concrete. A City adds 250,000 troop capacity per level. For each player, that player’s Port and Factory constructions use one combined ladder: the first costs 125,000, then that same player’s next level costs 250,000, then 500,000, then 1,000,000. A teammate’s Port does not automatically raise your Factory price. A Factory can create a station for nearby City, Port, and Factory structures, but “nearby” means the tagged 110-tile station range and a rail path below about 155.6 tiles; a visible line on the map is not enough. Train income also depends on the relationship at each stop: a Team stop pays 25,000 base Gold to the train owner, while an ally stop pays 35,000 and a self stop pays 10,000 before penalties and multipliers.

This page therefore does not replace the building timing guide, the Port versus Factory comparison, or the train network guide. Those pages explain the individual mechanics. This page answers the Team question that comes first: how two or more players leave enough space and protection for those mechanics to work together. In FFA, use the same logic privately; there is no partner to reserve a corridor for you.

Survey: draw the team map before spending Gold

The survey is a short map annotation, not a permanent claim. During the spawn phase and after every major border change, identify four kinds of space. First mark the core: land deep enough that a sudden attack cannot capture a City or Factory while it is under construction. Second mark the corridor: a strip where a Factory can reach one or more City or Port stations without crossing an exposed border or exceeding the rail path limit. Third mark the coast: a tile and surrounding land that can hold a Port, launch or receive the intended ships, and remain connected to a defensible core. Fourth mark the pressure edge: the border that will consume troops, Defense Posts, donations, or attention during the next minute. A structure is only an economic asset if the team can keep these four spaces compatible.

Do this survey for each teammate, not just for the player with the largest territory. A Team map can look spacious while a single river, island neck, or enemy-owned tile removes the only usable station line. Leave a visible lane between a partner’s protected City and the coast they need for a Port. Do not expand through a partner’s future corridor merely because the tile is neutral. If the corridor is no longer needed, release it explicitly in chat or voice; silence is not a routing plan.

Use the following table as a review card. The “owner” column is a player, not the whole team, because construction and Gold remain player-specific.

Space question	Evidence to check	Decision if false
Is the core safe?	Interior depth, enemy direction, reserve troops	Build defense or delay the income node
Is the corridor open?	110-tile station range and a path under about 155.6 tiles	Move the proposed Factory, do not buy it yet
Is the coast useful?	Connected water, a live destination, land behind the shore	Keep Gold for City, defense, or a safer route
Is the payer ready?	Player Gold, shared Port/Factory count, construction timing	Name another payer or postpone the node
Is the team reserve intact?	Troop cap headroom, active fronts, donation switches	Protect the border before compounding

Treat ownership and friendliness as separate facts. isFriendly prevents ordinary attacks between teammates, but it does not let one player spend another player’s Gold or automatically make a foreign structure a shared station. A teammate may be able to build a Factory near your City while still owning a separate tile and receiving the Train settlement. Confirm the live owner and relationship before promising a payout.

Finally, survey the opponent’s counter-route. A team corridor that is perfect on an empty map can be a trap if an enemy can land behind it, cut the narrow rail segment, or force the coastal owner to move the Warship screen. The survey is complete only when you can name the next useful building, the route it needs, and the tile or border that would make you cancel it.

Place: give each building a protected job and a clear owner

Placement is a contract between geography and timing. A City is the team’s capacity anchor, a Factory is a train source, and a Port is a sea and naval gateway. None should be placed merely because its button is affordable. The owner should be the teammate whose territory, Gold, and defensive job can keep the structure alive. If the team wants a Factory to connect to a partner’s City, decide whether the Factory owner or the City owner is responsible for protecting the rail approach. Otherwise both players may spend on the network while neither saves enough to hold it.

Place Cities in the interior of the owner’s safe area, with enough distance from the active border that a single enemy push cannot turn the team’s planned station into enemy income. The City adds 250,000 troop capacity per level, but it does not immediately heal the army. If the owner is already under pressure, a Defense Post or a troop reserve can be more valuable than a capacity node. In Team mode, a partner should not expand across the City’s only route while saying the City is “safe”; safe means the land, station link, and next purchase remain available.

Place a Factory where its station search can see the intended City or Port. The v0.33.14 execution looks for nearby structures within 110 tiles and creates station behavior for the connected cluster. A Factory at the edge of a stretched border can fail economically even when the visual distance looks short, because the railroad path must remain below about 155.6 tiles and the route can be blocked by ownership, terrain, or diplomacy. A teammate can reserve a station tile beside a City without building on it, then expand around the reserved line instead of through it.

Place a Port only when the team can name the water component, a useful foreign Port or naval objective, and the land route that protects the shore. A Port does not need to be on the most exposed coastal tile. A slightly inland shore with a short land approach can be more valuable than a dramatic forward harbor that a Transport or land push can capture. In a Team, assign one player to be the Port owner and another to be the land or naval support owner; do not assume that the person who first touches water should pay for every upgrade and every Warship.

Use a simple ownership note: “A owns the City and interior corridor; B owns the Port and sea screen; C keeps the border reserve.” This is not bureaucracy. It prevents a teammate from buying the second Port or Factory at the 250,000 step without realizing that the same combined counter makes the partner’s planned Factory more expensive. It also clarifies whose loss ends the plan. If A’s City is captured, B should not keep upgrading a rail network that no longer has a profitable stop. If B’s Port becomes isolated or embargoed, A should pivot to land income instead of defending a historical route.

When a structure changes owner after conquest, re-run the contract. Friendly ownership can end through a team defeat, a disconnected player, or a map state that changes the route. A team economy is not a shared building inventory; it is a set of individually owned nodes whose value depends on adjacency and protection.

Assign: price the shared ladder, the payer, and the reserve

Port and Factory are a team planning trap because their costs look individual in the build menu but are counted together for the same payer. Under the v0.33.14 configuration, if one player has constructed no Port or Factory levels, that player’s first node costs 125,000 Gold. That player’s next combined node costs 250,000, the next 500,000, and later levels reach the 1,000,000 cap. A teammate’s construction does not change this payer’s counter. The game does not care that one teammate paid for a Port and another teammate wants a Factory: each player’s own constructed count is what the cost wrapper reads, so the article’s Team plan must record the actual payer and that player’s count rather than a team’s imaginary balance.

Before the first node, write four numbers in the team channel: current Gold, next shared level, minimum reserve after construction, and the expected payment that will make the node useful. A player with 300,000 Gold who spends 125,000 may still need enough to defend the tile, build a City, or start a Warship. A partner with 500,000 Gold may be the better payer for a Port if the partner owns the coast, but only when the Port is not consuming the corridor that the first player’s Factory needs. “Who has more Gold?” is not enough; ask “whose next Gold can be converted into a protected team outcome?”

City has a separate ladder and adds 250,000 troop capacity per level. Compare the City against the active bottleneck. If an owner’s Troops keep hitting the cap, the City may unlock the next expansion. If the owner is far below cap because the border is unsafe, extra capacity is not the immediate answer. If the team needs a Factory to turn a partner’s City and Port into rail stops, the Factory can be worth more than a second City, but only after the corridor test passes.

Donations do not erase the payer rule. In current code, a troop request defaults to one third of the sender’s current troops and is capped by the recipient’s remaining maximum troop capacity. Gold and troop donations also use the configured donation switch and a 100-tick cooldown model. A teammate who requests 100,000 troops with only 20,000 headroom cannot receive the full request. Sending a token transfer can still consume the window that the team needed for Gold. The payer should therefore state the purpose and reserve: “I will fund the 250,000 Factory, keep 150,000 Gold for defense, and need B to hold the coast until the station is active.”

Use a reserve floor, not a percentage slogan. A 20% reserve can be enormous for one player and useless for another. The floor should cover the next visible loss: a Defense Post, a Warship, a counterattack, or the troops needed to stop a third-party cut. Recalculate after a teammate reaches cap, a route changes relation, or the first train or ship fails to settle. The assignment is complete when every planned purchase has one owner, one reason, one reserve floor, and one switch signal.

Connect: prove the route before scaling it

A Team economy compounds only when the route settles. A Factory can be physically close to a City and still fail to earn if the rail cluster cannot form, if the route exceeds the path limit, or if the station is not an eligible stop. The v0.33.14 Factory execution searches for City, Port, and Factory structures within 110 tiles, then builds station behavior for the connected group. The railroad maximum is about 110 × 1.4142, or 155.562 tiles. Treat those figures as geometry checks, not as permission to draw a line through an enemy border.

For a rail plan, test the nearest useful station first. A self stop pays 10,000 base Gold to the train owner; a teammate or other-player stop pays 25,000; an active ally stop pays 35,000. The first ten city visits avoid the 5,000-per-extra-stop penalty, after which each additional visit reduces the base amount until the floor. These values make a teammate’s City valuable, but they do not make every long loop good. A route that adds three exposed stops may be worse than a short protected route with one reliable stop. Record the stations, relation, path, and cut point before buying another Factory level.

For a Port plan, check the connected water component and a foreign Port or naval objective. The team can be friendly without sharing a water route. An embargo can remove a destination, a Warship can make a lane unsafe, and a captured shore can change the owner of the Port. The partner responsible for the sea screen should report whether the route is still open; the Port owner should not keep paying because a ship once succeeded.

Make a route diagram in words: “A City at the core, B Factory within 110 tiles, C Port on the same protected water, enemy border outside the rail corridor.” Then test the first completed payment. If the Train reaches only self-owned stations, use the 10,000 number. If it reaches a teammate, use 25,000. If the route’s relation is actually an alliance, use 35,000, but remember that an alliance can expire or be broken. For sea trade, use actual water distance and survival rather than a promised average; the Port versus Factory guide has the payout formula.

Stop scaling when the first route has not proven itself. The next shared level may cost 250,000 or 500,000 while the team still has no evidence that the network can pay or move troops. Upgrade a proven node for throughput. Add a second node only when its location creates a new connected water, station cluster, or redundancy. A teammate who says “we need more trains” should name the missing station or the current spawn bottleneck. A teammate who says “we need more Ports” should name the route and the protection that makes the next Port survive.

Two numeric scenarios with explicit assumptions

The scenarios below are deliberately longer than a build order because the useful decision is the contract around a number. Read each number as an input with an owner, a map shape, a relationship, a reserve, and a stop condition. The first scenario tests whether two players can make a City, Factory, and Port coexist without treating another player’s construction counter as their own. The second tests whether a donation request actually fits the recipient’s capacity and whether a cooldown should be spent on troops or Gold. In both cases, the arithmetic is only the beginning. Measure the path after borders move, record the settlement that really happened, and tell the team which player owns the next risk. If the observed route cannot meet the written assumptions, cancel the planned upgrade even when the button remains affordable. That habit turns a persuasive spreadsheet into a repeatable Team decision: name the payer, protect the corridor, prove the first result, and keep an exit.

Use the same record in a replay or a live match: map name, mode, construction owner, station owner, relationship at payment, path estimate, reserve floor, and the tick when the result was observed. This makes a disagreement testable. A teammate may remember a successful train while another remembers the later embargo that removed its destination. The record separates those moments and keeps the guide from turning a lucky route into a promise.

The record should also name the next checkpoint and the player who reports it. A transfer without a checkpoint is only a request, and a route without a report is only a drawing. Keep received amount, remaining capacity, sender reserve, and the next visible threat together so the team can change jobs without arguing from stale memory. That small discipline lets the two scenarios generalize to a different map, a different number of teammates, or a later relationship change while keeping the same decision boundary.

Do not hide uncertainty in the table. Mark whether a value is a formal rule, a measured map distance, a current lobby setting, or a deliberate team assumption. A 25,000 Team stop is a tagged rule, but the number of stops a train will complete is a live observation. A 100-tick cooldown is a code boundary, but the choice to reserve it for Gold is a response to the current front. Separating those categories makes the examples useful without turning them into promises.

Scenario A: two teammates reserve one rail corridor

Assume a two-player Team on a broad continental map. Player A starts with 300,000 Gold and a protected inland core. Player B starts with 300,000 Gold and owns a safe coast 90 tiles from A’s planned City. The team has one narrow interior corridor that is 100 tiles wide. The lobby enables Factory and Team donations, and there is no immediate enemy attack. These are assumptions, not a promise about public matchmaking.

The team first reserves A’s City site and B’s Port shore. A builds the first City for 125,000, leaving 175,000. The City adds 250,000 troop capacity, but A still keeps the reserve because construction does not heal current Troops. B builds the first Port for 125,000, leaving 175,000. A Factory would be the next Port/Factory level for B’s account only if B owns the previous Port; it would cost 250,000, not 125,000. If the intended Factory belongs to A, the team must price A’s own Port/Factory count separately and verify that the City-to-Factory station path remains below the range and railroad limits.

The better Team move is to have A place the Factory only after measuring the 90-tile City-to-coast line and confirming that the route can reach B’s Port through the corridor. If the Factory owner has no 250,000 reserve after the build, the plan pauses. B can keep the Port route open, but B’s Gold cannot silently pay A’s construction. If the first Train settles at B’s teammate station, the base payout to the train owner is 25,000 before multipliers and stop penalties. Four such clean stops equal 100,000, not a guarantee of full payback, because travel, spawn timing, and route loss still matter.

The switch signal is clear: if B’s coast is captured, if the path crosses a new enemy border, or if the Factory cannot find an eligible stop, A stops upgrading and keeps Gold for defense. The City remains useful as capacity, but the failed rail plan is not a reason to claim more Team land. This scenario demonstrates the space contract: A owns the interior capacity and rail engine; B owns the coast and sea risk; both players leave the corridor open until the first settlement is verified.

The measurement should be repeated after a capture, alliance change, or embargo. A 90-tile estimate can become an illegal path when the only open route bends around a new border, and a teammate stop can become an other or unavailable stop when diplomacy changes. Record the payer’s own Port/Factory count separately from the teammate’s count, because the next price is not a team-wide counter. Also record the Gold that actually arrived on each stop rather than multiplying 25,000 by an imagined number of trains. The point of the scenario is not to promise a 100,000 return; it is to show when the team has enough evidence to keep the corridor and when the same land should be converted into defense or a City reserve.

Scenario B: a donation request meets the reserve floor

Assume Player C has 200,000 maximum Troop capacity and currently holds 180,000, leaving 20,000 headroom. Player D has 300,000 current Troops and asks to donate one third, the current default request of 100,000. The lobby allows troop donations. Under the tagged execution, the recipient headroom caps the transfer at 20,000. The team must not plan a 100,000 reinforcement from this request.

Now add a Gold decision. D can either spend a 100-tick donation window on the 20,000 troop top-up or preserve it for Gold that lets C complete a 125,000 City, Defense Post, or route repair. If C’s border is about to fall, troops may be the immediate answer. If C is already at cap and the actual bottleneck is a structure, the Gold transfer can be more valuable. Another donor may have a separate cooldown record, but that does not make a small transfer free: C still needs headroom and D still needs a reserve for D’s own border.

The SPACE interpretation is to assign C the protected structure, D the reserve and payer role, and a third teammate the pressure edge. If C’s headroom falls to zero, the donation plan switches from Troops to Gold or stops. If the teammate’s border opens, D may become the frontline and cannot keep funding every structure. The completion check is the actual received amount and the next successful action, not the request text.

This is also a test of role rotation. C may be the protected structure owner now, but a new attack can make D the frontline and remove D’s ability to donate. The team should write the next action beside the transfer: spend the received 20,000 to hold a named border, finish a named structure, or do nothing until the headroom changes. If no action can use the resource before the next review, preserving the cooldown and reserve is correct. A donation is successful only when it changes the next decision without making the sender’s own position collapse.

That review should name the next checkpoint and the player who will report it. A transfer without a checkpoint is only a request; a route without a report is only a drawing. Keep the amount received, the remaining capacity, the sender’s reserve, and the next visible threat together so the team can switch jobs without arguing from stale memory.

These scenarios are deliberately numeric because team arguments often hide a missing assumption. They do not prove that 125,000, 20%, 25,000, or one-third is always the right decision. They show how to calculate from current state, label what is assumed, and retain an exit when the map invalidates the plan.

Failure, counterplay, modes, and next reading

The most common failure is FFA expansion inside a Team border. A player takes every neutral tile, closes the only City-to-Port lane, and then says the teammate should build elsewhere. Counter it by naming the corridor during spawn and using the shortest route that still leaves each player an interior core. If the corridor is already closed, stop defending the original plan and choose a separate protected node; do not keep buying a Factory that cannot connect.

The second failure is counting friendliness as shared ownership. Teammates cannot normally attack one another, but they still own separate tiles, pay separate construction costs, and can lose a route independently. Counter it with an owner and payer note. When a structure is captured, disconnected, embargoed, or abandoned, re-run the note rather than assuming the team still has the same economy.

The third failure is scaling before proof. Port and Factory levels share a rising cost ladder, and more nodes do not repair a bad route. An opponent can cut a rail, patrol a coast, or force the team to spend on defense. Counter it by requiring one successful settlement, one protected passage, or one verified station cluster before the next level. The train network guide explains route limits; the team roles guide explains how to switch logistics and donor jobs.

Mode changes alter the contract. In Team, donation switches and the 100-tick cooldown must be checked in the lobby; do not assume every custom room uses public defaults. In FFA, there is no partner reservation, so replace the corridor conversation with a private reserve and a shorter exposed border. In a no-Factory lobby, remove rail promises and invest in City, Port, or land defense. In a no-Port lobby, remove coast reservation from the first survey. On strait maps, leave a second land route because one coast can be watched by every player. On island maps, separate the Port payer from the land anchor and make the Warship screen’s terminal lane explicit. On continental maps, a short rail corridor is often easier to defend than a long coast, but an enemy can still cut the one bridge that settles every stop.

Before the next build, ask five questions: Is the corridor still open? Who owns and protects the node? What is the payer’s actual shared count? Which station or shore will settle the next payment? What visible event cancels the plan? If a teammate cannot answer one of them, keep Gold liquid for one review cycle. Then continue with Four Islands team coordination for the special separated-map problem, Island Defense for the defensive coast, and Population Growth when capacity rather than income is the bottleneck.

The final rule is simple: a Team economy is not “everyone builds.” It is a set of individually owned, deliberately spaced nodes that create a shared result. Reserve the geography, price the payer, prove the route, protect the bottleneck, and stop when the map no longer pays for the next click.