Hey, I feel like I am close to beat third world and get enough points for my first advancement, what is best to start upgrading earlier?
Joint strike looks interesting, should I buy those asap? Thanks for any help provided

The game is still in beta, so things might change around a lot. So far though, joint strike has definitely been worth it

Extra idle time is also something you should get, but DON'T upgrade your army camps, thats a waste of AP

Why is army a waste?

I had joint strike and I didn't like it. I eventually reset my AP.

After reset, I upgraded army camps to +130% and added an hour of idle time with my first ~1000 AP. If you can check it every 3 hours during the day this is a really nice combo.

The only thing I've purchased in Phase 2 is the Extra AP advancement. I'd rather get other stuff, but it seems like a must for long term playability due to the steep AP decay each time you complete a level.

Joint strike is cool when some big chunk is surrounded by low armies, saves 5% of used army on that big chunk.
For example 1.4 million chunk surrounded by 2 100k armies. Saves 70k army! :D Would take 10 minutes to get that number of armies though... Hmm, probably not all that good, but I found it useful already playing on "War of the worlds"

@Master Jz ... joint strike is good for this reason:



I'm 2 days into Afro-Eurasia Gargantuan, and you see I've produced 1.2B armies total, but I've saved 597M armies by using JS. Which means to capture the same # of territories as I have so far, I would have needed 1.8B armies.

And at my current production rate if 15K/sec, that'd take 11 hours. And this is just day 2 on a massive level. By the time the level ends, the savings will be in # of days.

Assuming the upgrade costs follow the pattern I'd expect, you can increase the armies from camps by 100% for slightly more AP (480 AP) than it costs to max out joint strike (459 AP) to 25%. I'd have to run the numbers to see when joint strike/additional mercenaries become more cost effective than upgrading army camps. It probably is more cost effective than army camps after a few upgrades, but I didn't like having to take territories in a specific order.

@Master Jz, it is extra work and sometimes inefficient to capture territories in a non-straight line to get the JS benefit, but for being able to save 25% armies it's worth it. The choice is essentially, capture differently or take longer to earn more armies. I choose capture differently. Saving armies = more efficient movement in the end.

Especially on the larger maps, 25% is a MASSIVE bonus. Some of the duration of the later levels are measured in 40-60 days, so using JS or not could end up being a different of 10-20 days on your completion time.

So at first it is best to get 25% on joint strike before everything else?

I would say Yes.

I recommend prioritizing as follows:
- JS to 25%
- Additional Mercs - as high as you can take it
- Statistics - as high as you can take it
- Increased idle time - as high as you need it (if you actual play every 2 hrs, you don't need this at all, but if you check in every 4 hrs like me, add 120 mins)

Then when you unlock phase 2:
- Increase draft sizes - as high as you can take it
- MAYBE auto-conquer to 20-25% if you like to walk away and come back and see progress; but if you prefer to play on your own, don't bother with this

That's really all that's worth getting in phase 2 imho unless you want to risk the massive investment in "Increased AP" but it really seems like it would be tough to earn back the AP you put into it.

I'm a bit confused as to why statistics and additional mercs are prioritized over army camps.

I'm only on the Drakemor's World level so I won't claim to be an expert of course, but to me it seems that the army camp upgrades should be really important. I'm focusing on that and JS (currently at 5% JS and 50% army camps), but you can basically do all the statistics yourself with a 10 seconds and a calculator, for example. JS seems to effectively bring down the cost of capturing a territory, but the army camp upgrades decrease the overall time needed to produce enough armies to capture these territories. And merc camps seem great, but at the end of the day, it's a fixed number of armies that can be purchased at any time.

It seems like the only AP purchases that actually reduce the time you have to spend playing are army camp improvements and JS, and frankly at the beginning it seems 10% more armies from your camps goes further than 2% more armies being saved when you attack territories, as far as time goes.

If there were 2 territories that I needed to conquer, and each had 60,000 armies and I had a base income of 100 armies/sec, for example, it would take about 20 minutes to get enough armies to conquer both, without any upgrades. ((60,000*2/100)/60). A 50% increase in army camp production costs (I believe) 130 AP, and assuming that JS also increases 10 AP for each upgrade after the initial one (I don't know if that's true or not, haven't upgraded a second time lol) should allow us to upgrade 4 times, giving us a JS of 11%.

With a 50% increase in camp production, I now have 150 armies/sec, and it takes 13.3 minutes to capture both territories.

With JS, it still takes 10 minutes to capture the first territory, but I have 6,600 armies left over, I only need 53,400 armies left to capture. This will take me another 8.9 minutes to produce at 100 armies/sec, with my total time being 18.9 minutes to conquer both territories. Now, I will have 6,600 armies left over again, and in the aim of being fair, it will take me .73 minutes more to produce these armies with my 150 income if I had invested my AP in army camp upgrades, so to get the same number of armies to conquer these territories, it will take 14.03 minutes with army camp upgrades and 18.9 minutes with JS.

Now, I understand that camps aren't the only source of armies, and JS also applies to attacks using mercenaries and armies from caches, but at the end of the day it seems like focusing on army camp upgrades is an equally (if not more) valid way to spend AP at the beginning, but the best strategy would seem like one that uses both of these advancements, whereas other things like statistics just seem totally useless.

Just my two cents though, I'm not an expert of course, and looking forward to being proved wrong lol

@Tribe11

And merc camps seem great, but at the end of the day, it's a fixed number of armies that can be purchased at any time.

The difference this makes is that it is an increased fixed #. And that fixed >> army camps.

When it comes down it, the contribution of army camps is soooooo small, then double it (+100% like I have) is still very small. Then adding +45% mercs (like I have) of a big number = an even bigger #.

Look at these stats:


So of the 419B armies required to clear the clear, only 5B came army camps (~1% contribution). And that's already with the +100% upgrade. B/c when I started playing, I thought that upgrade sounded awesome, so I put all my AP on that.

But it's the smallest stat! Now compare the contribution of the mercs. Now subtract 45% from that ... all that would have had to have been earned by camps, and at the end of a level you have a bunch of money and few armies, so buying mercs helps a lot. At some point even when the mercs run out, you're stuck with army camps, and they're slow slow slow, so you want this "end game" to be the smallest # of armies left to cap as possible -- and this can be done by having more mercs available to conquer with.

Why is Statistics useful? B/c it authoritatively tells you where all your money and army income is coming from, in addition to (when maxed out) showing you all the Techs and requirements for the map, which helps you plan what you needed to build/keep/sell/etc. But if you can live without the Tech reveal and are happy calculating on the your calculator, go for it, keep calc'ing and skip Stats.

To sum up ... I have +100% army camps and am not happy with it. For the AP I invested it, I expect more than a total of 1% contribution (which means all the AP I invested in it amounts to +0.5%).

THAT SAID ... it's a game in Beta, so last week is different than this week is different than next week. Anything can change. Maybe army camps will become powerful next week...? Then all that AP I invested will suddenly come back with a vengeance and be useful. I'd like that very much tbh. I'd even put more AP on it if so.

Once my current level is complete I'll post the stats. If I'm not mistaken, the 25% Joint Strike bonus can be worth up to about 33% because you save 25% again on the 25% you already saved, and so on. I was assuming for my numbers that army camps played a much larger role in the outcome. If that's wrong, then joint strike is much better than I realized, and worth maxing out in Phase 1.

No, then that definitely makes sense if at later levels the amount of armies acquired come principally from merc camps/caches.

At the levels I'm doing now, mercs and caches probably make up collectively about 30-40% of the armies used (I'll check after this level though, to see for sure, but I know that army camps are my principal source of army income). And obviously JS is helpful because it saves armies that come from all sources. Obviously if 80% of your armies are coming from camps, it's more worthwhile to invest in these than in JS, but if only 5% of your armies are coming from camps, then there's no point in investing in them, better to save 25% off attacks from all armies than produce 10% of your armies from camps instead of 5%

Thanks for the insight! I'll leave camps at 50% and start investing 100% in JS and then mercs, otherwise it looks like I'll be hurting in the later levels lol

Edited 9/28/2020 15:33:35

i would like to ask if someone could explain me the "joint strike" thing and how it works a si dont really understand it.
i am considering my english is quite ok but here i dont see what i would win in using it.
that would be kind from you.
thanks a lot

Joint Strike rewards you with some % of armies you spend when conquering a new territory. For it to work you have to have 2 conquered territories which touch a territory you are going to attack.
Here is a screenshot to show you the principle of Joint Strike work. https://i.imgur.com/XLiOrD2.png
Basically, if you have only 1 territory connected to the one you attack - no Joint Strike, no armies returned. When you have 2 or more - you gain that return bonus.
It is always good to look for connection arrows and see whether you are connected or not with 2 or more territories before attacking. Sometimes to go for a big chunk in a small corridor it is better to outflank it with another territories, just to get that JS (Joint Strike) bonus. Other times the bonus from that territory may be better than going for joint strike. Depends on situation, here is just an example! :D I am a bad teacher and my english is clumsy, but I hope you got it!

About what you win - that's obvious - you win additional free armies! :D Like, I have 19% bonus on JS. When I conquer a 10M territory with it, I get back 1.9M for free! That's an awesome cashback bonus if you ask me! :D
Because the army camps are giving such a little amount of armies, that to grind 10M you have to wait for 3 hours, that's an awesome bonus which gives you additional troops without additional wait time ;D

Edited 10/10/2020 11:25:12

thanks for that explanation now it is clear to me

Hey, I am almost done with JS and trying to make a plan for next purchases. Can anyone tell me, please, how much AP will be needed for upgrading statistics to max? And how much AP is needed for mercs upgrades after initial 110 AP to unlock them?

i don't really think statistics is worth it at all, unless you want to theory craft on what's the best way to get the most armies (like upgrading army camps advancement or merc advancement). I would suggest you upgrade additional mercenaries.

Edited 10/25/2020 03:36:48