Croplock tutorial

Croplock (which always makes me think of kreplach) is when you destroy an enemy's croplands to put him into negative crop production. A true croplock involves destroying the warehouse or the granary so that croplands may no longer be built.

If you're not interested in farming someone, this is easy. Destroy the warehouse and croplands. Without a warehouse, they can only store 800 of each resource other than crop, so they cannot upgrade croplands above level 5 (level 6 costs 1170 clay). If you do want to farm them, destroy the granary. Without a granary, they cannot upgrade croplands above level 8 (level 9 costs 1210 crop). The main building is often destroyed, to restrict building processes.

An experienced player can get out of croplock with the help of other villages (his own or alliance friends) sending resources. First, upgrade croplands as much as possible, then upgrade the granary or warehouse as needed.

I have been told that the marketplace should also be destroyed to keep the target from trading for the Res they need. It seems that that would be necessary if you destroy only the granary or warehouse, but if you destroy both it would not make too much difference. What do you think?

In a Perfect crop lock you should destroy all the crop fields, granary, marketplace and the main building. Grain Mill and Bakery are optional.

Marketplace keeps them from trading, but allies and other villages of the same player can still send resources, so it's not too important.

Main Building below 10 keeps them from demolishing to get out of croplock. Warehouse is the easier way to make a croplock, but on large villages, you can get a true croplock by only destroying the granary.

got it. and ideally the consumption of the buildings they have would be what puts them in negative. I crop locked a neighbor on s7 just to practice but never saw any real effects because he deleted. it would have been interesting to see him get out of it.

Yeah...if it's troops that puts you in the negatives, you can still buid, as long as you have the resources. The idea of a croplock is that you can't build anything at all because you can only build croplands when your crop production is below population, and if your croplands require more resources than you can store in warehouse or granary, you can't build croplands.