@Parsifal

Why don't you use mercs in the early and middle stage of a level? Ofc they are more expensive at this point than at the later stage because you haven't unlocked some (or all) techs yet.

But early use of mercs allows to expand faster, which pays off in terms of faster income generation (from bonuses/territories), getting earlier access to hospitals, camps and caches.

I do. But only occasionally.

I'm working now on a new forum topic. It will be ready when I finish Europe Huge for the second time. Probably in the beginning of August. I'm preparing an easier way to compare numbers and strategies.

It's fascinating how different our playstyles are, army camp centric vs merc centric perhaps is the best way to sum up the difference, b/c I think we both have high hospital use in common (we're both making use of hospitals and maxing them out on each map). It's fair to say that my play strat is something I developed to minimize the dependency on army camps b/c I got tired of waiting for armies to accumulate, so I found ways of getting armies quicker or reducing the # of armies needed (hospitals). Maybe our strats are equally effective. Not sure.

Regarding terminology of "army production" and counting mercs in them: I was actually trying to adjust to your system which I thought including mercs b/c of the stats you posted (# armies from camps, mercs, drafts, caches; you left out JS, hospitals, so assumed that what you posted was what you calculate against). If that's not how your method works, then my bad & my misunderstanding, and just ignore what I wrote above regarding your calcs.

The calculations I actually work with are "armies required to clear a level" which includes army camps, caches, drafts, mercs, JS, hospitals. It's the sum of all of these which make up the total # of armies required to clear a map, and that's what I measure against. And I find maximizing Hospitals is the biggest benefit, so I prioritize that. Buffing hospitals is essentially a reduction of the # of armies required from all the other contributing factors--and most importantly reduces the amount required from army camps, b/c that is the biggest limiter b/c you have to wait to get the armies. JS is the same but it's a fixed value, so other than actually doing joint strikes to get the value from it, there's nothing more need be said about it. I evaluate decisions in this context, not just maximizing value within "army production" from camps, but on "total armies required to finish the current map" and maximizing what brings the highest gains in that context.

So to actually answer your question...

Now about the SC being too pricey to upgrade:
https://imgur.com/a/DfDNXEQ

Upgrading Gislic for 6.48B to get a boost of 810 armies/sec
OR
Upgrading SCamp for 7.22B to get a boost of 4020 armies/sec

what would you chose?

Tbh I'd likely choose neither. I tend to not upgrade army camps much beyond 1B cost (not a fixed figure, depends on the map). In general, if I have that much money, I spend it on hospitals, mercs and sometimes mines if I need specific ores to work towards profitable crafting (to get money to buy more hospital upgrades & mercs). By the time the army camp prices get >1B, I'm typically far enough into a map that upgrading camps doesn't make sense anymore b/c there's not enough time left on that map to get the value from it.

I align with Olja's comment - I prioritize mercs early and mid to get more territory = more money & more buildings (camps, mercs, hospitals, crafters) & caches, etc.

When choosing how to spend money, I estimate the length of time I have left on the level, then calculate the benefit an army camp upgrade will get me in that time vs spending the same money on a hospital upgrade or buying mercs, etc, and almost every time the result is that the benefit of the army camp isn't enough to justify the cost vs the other options b/c there's not enough time left in the level, especially now on my 2nd playthrough and I haven't taken more then 4 days to finish a level yet.

Example:
- Situation: Playing a map, estimate total 4 days to clear, 2 days left, 500 territories remaining.
- Next Supercamp upgrade is your example above, upgrading to 12.5K from 8.48K for 7.22B, so that's 4.02K increase * 3600*48=695M benefit.
- I would prioritize a hospital upgrade that would give me >695M benefit, so a hospital that gave a 'far territory benefit' of >=1.39M.
- I have 2 options to implement this decision: upgrade a hospital upgrade I already have, or use mercs to conquer a hospital I don't have yet. Especially useful when I've used an FB to reveal where the hospitals are, and I can estimate the benefit of the hospitals will bring based on the ones I already have (they increase in value).
- And almost always, hospitals give the better benefit, especially if you count the 'near territory benefits' which buffs the captures near the hospitals, and the "freebee point" where you can capture all territories under the min benefit of all hospitals at 0 cost of armies, which again gets more money from bonuses.

@Krinid,

I'm up to the challenge!
Could you name me your last 5 levels you've beaten and tell me exactly (or approximately) how long did it take you to finish each and every one of them?
(I don't care if it is 2d13h or 2d12h57m - you can round those up)

HAHA, it wasn't a challenge, but sure, I'll roll with it. Not sure exactly what this will prove without also measuring pure idle time (not doing anything) vs active clicking/tapping time + power usage, total AP spend vs dead time (time beyond idle limit where the game stops but physical time since level start continues - actually not sure if this is counted in the level time count stats at the end?), 1st vs 2nd playthrough, artifact choice, how many digs you got done + if finished the level with another dig going, map revision levels, etc, but it's an interesting comparison as a starting point for some ballpark comparisons at least.

All these are from my post Ascension 2nd playthroughs. I didn't track anything from Tutorial through KP-X, only started tracking from Feldmere; the early levels aren't likely worth comparing anyhow, they were all between ~2 mins (tutorial) & ~20 hrs or so (KP-X). I would have had one for Reconquest but I accidentally fat fingered a level ABORT on my mobile when I was half way through it.

Roads of Silk and Iron 3d20h
Far Land 1d21h
Breaking Green 2d6h
Geopolitics 1d4h
Copper Creek 1d17h
Sengoku 24h
Feldmere 23h

Would be interested in Master Jz's & Phoenix's times as well.

Edited 6/24/2021 20:29:22

I'd be up for the task but I don't know whether this would prove anything. Remember, I'm still on my first play through, I haven't ascended yet once. So, if you want the numbers, I could calculate them from my level statistics, but they won't be comparable to any of your numbers at all. Still, I feel honored that you thought of me.

I thought you had Ascended already ... so yes, won't prove anything yet (I could post my 1st playthrough stats ... but tbh lots of my 1st playthroughs were early early beta so the game was changing too much to be a worthwhile comparison, like finishing USA in 32 hours or something).

So track your stats post Ascension and we'll check back later. (:

All for the study of optimal strategies! lol

My times were similar to krinid's after my first ascension. Some were faster, some were slower. I don't think I picked up any powers during my second run. I used the powers from daily doors and that was about it.

Edit: I stop upgrading army camps about 10%-20% into the levels and focus on hospitals/mercs/crafters for the rest.

Edited 6/24/2021 22:16:38

@Krinid

of course you can't compare 1 to 1, but you can get some rough ideas.

the first 11 maps (tutorial excluded) are for me the early levels - my guess is that all strategies should work pretty much the same with them.
Were you skipping levels?

anyway here is the comparison


--------------------------- Krinid ---Parsifal
Roads of Silk and Iron---3d20h---- 3d23h
Far Land------------------1d21h----1d14h
Breaking Green------------2d6h-------13h
Geopolitics-----------------1d4h-----1d8h
Copper Creek-------------1d17h-----1d6h
Sengoku----------------------24h------17h
Feldmere---------------------23h------ 16h


I must admit it looks similar (I think differences within 10 hours are insignificant - those are probably our sleep times, or like you named it "dead time") - only exception is Breaking Green - I'm intrigued what could result those time differences....
What I do find interesting, is that I managed to catch you up (I'm not racing you) - you ascended a couple of weeks before me and now I'm in the middle of Orbis and played all the maps without skipping.


I don't think it's fair to compare pre-ascension playthroughs - the AP investment is not sufficient to imply any strategy to its full benefit.

Edited 6/25/2021 10:06:02

Agree, they're similar enough that we can say they're on par.

As for Breaking Green, not sure but this might be one of a bunch of days when I was busy and didn't play much, had some dead time (not sure if that factors into the clear time stats though) and if I did return within my idle time limit, all I did was reset idle time (no army camp upgrades, no hospital purchases, no smelting/crafting changes, no sales, no merc purchases, no techs, etc). Not sure if that aligns to when I was doing BG or not.

On my 2nd playthrough, I'm focusing on being more idle (go figure) so when I start a level, I put ACB, TMB, BMB on, activate auto-conquer and then just leave the game & check back every 4-6 hrs to buy camp upgrades (I buy them in early game), change up my smelting/crafting, buy mercs, hospital upgrades, etc ... until somewhere between 30-60% level progress (depends on sleep timing, other daily schedules, etc), then play more actively from that point on. No idea if this will help or hurt my level speed progress tbh ... but it definitely reduces my active WZI time. (Yea, active Idle time, lol). I find that WZI actually takes a lot of active time to play optimally, and I'm trying to reduce that.

Yes, I did skip a bunch of levels after ascending and finished a bunch of the later levels before coming back to do the earlier levels. Come to think of it, I did that on my first playthrough too.

Just realized there may be a weakness in my strat which makes some levels long. Maybe that's what happened with Breaking Green. Not sure ... but right now I'm on Fort Harbor, and it's going like this:

Fort Harbor:
- Territories taken: 570
- Territories left: 210 (192 visible, so I can see almost everything)
- Income: 348K/sec money, 22K/sec armies
- Current assets: 7.18B money, 760M armies
- The only recipes that are profitable to buy/craft is Tin Can worth 13M, so need to smelt to make Welding Rods & Twine, but don't have enough ore output to keep them constantly.
- 4 smelters, 4 crafters
- ~32B armies left on map (28B on visible territories, guessing that 4B are on the 18 territories still fogged)
- 57M left in 1 merc camp, 4 merc camps left to cap, estimated 8-10B armies across all merc camps
- Duration: 3d10h
- I started as per usual, throw on ACB, TMB, BMB, auto-conquer, and just upgraded army camps, changed smelting, buy some mercs, etc, for ~2 days ... was trying to see if I could clear the whole level just by doing this.
- After 2 days, I expected to see that I had good recipes & a bunch of hospitals, and then I could then start making the real money which would then spawn rapid advancement. But I had copper & barbed wire only, only 2 hospitals (the weakest ones that aren't even worth upgrading), crap income for both armies and money, and the barbed wire wasn't making me much profit.
- So I turned off auto-conquer and tried to salvage things, so got the Tin Can and started making those, and didn't really have enough money or armies to do anything else.
- 12h later ... I have ~80 some odd tins cans to sell, but nothing material.
- Used an IM to make my way to snag the Welding Rod & Twine recipes... and sadly neither is profitable by buying ingredients.
- So upgraded my Silicon mines, used an SM artifact to boost the highest one for 30 mins, and started the Twine crafting.
- 12h later ... just not profitable enough. Even with 73% merc discount (AP adv, artifact, Tech), the mercs are just too expensive relative to the bonus income despite +100 from AP Adv & crafting income despite +31% buff (AP Adv + artfifact).
- So I guess I just have to wait, craft more, upgrade these hospitals as high as they go, and use SACs & FCs to get past the end game.

These levels are annoying, because they of the small money income, and my strat relies on high money to upgrade the hospitals and keep the mercs flowing.

How do these levels after your army camp central strat?

@Krinid

Fort Harbor? Finished in 1d13h

I find that concentrating on army camps divides my levels into 3 phases:
1st phase - conquering ~25% of the territories within a couple of hours
2nd phase - boring phase. Game hardly moves. Upgrading army camps and mines. Conquering ~50% of the territories may take anywhere between 1-3 days
3rd phase - selling all the resources and purchasing all the mercs - conquering the last ~25% of the territories within 1-2 hours

1d13h wow... my default tactic is if something isn't working, come back in 12h and see if it fixed itself. lol

I didn't even realize things weren't working until almost 2d.

Now it's 4d3h and looks I could have finished last night if I took to time to play the moves, but now I have 5h until the dig finishes ... so questioning if I should just finish and move on and wait until it finishes and start another dig to have more time on the next level before it finishes.

Naw, just moving on to Europe 1066 AD...

Edited 6/27/2021 15:22:16

Based on your numbers - that differ a lot - I would conclude that both strategies work equally well with sufficient money income but one beats the other for less money situations. I don't know if there are such levels, but given more than average money income, I could see krinid taking the lead, but that's pure speculation.

But in general, all strategies will rely on money to a larger or lesser extend. After all, it's money that buys you mercs or upgrades. In this particular scenario it probably comes down to krinid's Merc discount vs Parsifal's camp discount. Or one of you has significantly more general money boosts (better sell value, better territory/bonus boosts). OR, krinid's strategy is simply not money-efficient (enough) and only works when there is a plethora of wealth, while Parsifal has a stronger basis that doesn't rely on upgrades that much. (if the latter, I should also be able to finish quite quickly when I am on your AP level.)

For me, the gist of this is, that it is advisable to check my strategy regularly. I can only speculate whether this would have changed anything, but apparently, you can check and re-evaluate your progress too rarely. ;) sorry, krinid. ;)

My last run on Fort Harbor was 1d14h (session age). The prior run was 2d6h. Parsifal, are you using powers? I used 1-3 max each time (daily doors).

I sometimes replay an early level if my dig is in the 1-5 hour range to completion.

@Master Jz

I sometimes replay an early level if my dig is in the 1-5 hour range to completion.

An obvious as that is, it's a great idea. Just so focused on doing the next level to Ascend again that I forget that that's an option. lol. I redid soooo many levels my 1st playthrough b/c I didn't know about Ascension. #timeWasted

@Phoenix
What you say is true, Phoenix. Part of problem is not knowing what kind of level you're playing.

You don't know:
- Total # of armies required to clear the levels.
- How many **market-profitable recipes it has.
- How many mercs all the camps together will provide.
- What the cost of the mercs will be. Some levels have a number of camps that have lots of mercs in the 0.01 cost range. Others have lots of merc camps with low army counts & high costs.
- How much benefit the hospitals will give & how long it will take to upgrade them to useful levels. This is more a factor of the recipes - if there are enough market-profitable recipes, this factor isn't material.
- What the army camp upgrade costs will be. Some levels start off with tons of really cheap army camp upgrades for a large number of camps beyond the first 2-3. Others get expensive beyond the first 2-3. This applies even more to the Supercamp, which sometimes is upgraded almost as soon as the level starts, other times shortly afterward, but other times it already starts at upgrade cost of >100M. Sometimes the 2nd upgrade is "midrange" in price (can upgrade it again somewhere still in the early game), sometimes it immediately jumps up to the "Expensive" range (mid-game or later).
- What caches (armies, money, resources) will give you.

All these factors combined (and more) define what the optimal strategies (plural, there's never only just 1) are for a given level. Some levels have lots of resource caches with highly valuable items (I seem to recall USA & Europe Huge giving lots of Lanthanum & Terbium bars - but I think this was my 1st playthrough of each, and I think it was nerfed later so it's just a much lesser amount of ore now), some levels have high money caches, others high army caches. My strategy relies on lots of money, so I maxed out Increased Cache Money, Increase Ore Sell Values, Discounted Mine Upgrades, Merc Discount, Increased Money from Bonuses, use the TMB Epic & BMB Epic artifacts, and swap out Army Cache Bonus Rare, Resource Cache Uncommon, Money Cache Boost Uncommon & Cache Boost Rare artifacts when I suspect the result is significant enough to bother with the artifact fiddling. If there is a market-profitable recipe or good bonuses income or lots of good caches in the first 25% of the map, I'm set up for a good map clearing and things go exactly according to plan. Otherwise, I have to find that in the mid-game. And if it's not there either ... wait longer. It just drags on. Had I known all that from the start of the map however, I could have perhaps made another plan, but I don't actually know that the strategy I chose to clear the map won't work until I don't find what I need to make it work. :(

Anyhow, this run through of Europe 1066 AD, I'm going to try putting all money to army camps until 1/2 way or so through the mid-game and see what difference that makes.

**
Market-profitable recipe: recipes which profit when buying ingredients from markets, assumption is "significantly profitable", eg: having screws as a market-profitable recipe doesn't help b/c these don't generate enough profit beyond the the first few levels. Typically the only recipes that matter for the later levels are Twine, Glass, Rivets, Bolts, Struct, Ceramics, Boiling Flasks, Explosive Bolts, Magnets, Circuits, Relays. All the other recipes have a wild list of ingredients that typically aren't profitable. Even among all these listed, only a handful end up being market-profitable, so you have to find the right one, or amp up your smelting of the ingredients required. Some levels have had 0 market-profitable recipes, which is a stark contrast from early days where all levels had several market-profitable recipes.

Edited 6/27/2021 17:27:36

@Master Jz

I do use powers - SAC in combination with FC - trying to combine at least 4 of each. I still have some lying around (it's still my first ascension)
Of course using SACa to it's full potential.
Never replaying maps! Never waiting on artifacts!
Getting AP as fast as possible is my first priority.

Speaking of caches (slightly off-topic): Is it only me, or are army caches not much more than a hoax?!? I mean, sure, if you had maxed a significant portion of the advancements then they might be useful, but except for the first say four levels, there are always army caches that require a fortune to claim, but grant me almost nothing. Definitely less then the territory costed. Starting from day two of each map, territories with army caches are most of the time a net loss of armies. And I already make use of a rare Army Cache Boost artifact, a maxed out Joint Strike and a good portion of hospital savings.

I understand that money caches won't give you enough money to buy mercs to compensate the territory costs and that resource caches are even more of a gamble and not meant to make up for the army investment. But when you start idle, you get the impression that caches give you a great boost, but shortly after, army caches are a hindrance and not a boost anymore. And the advancement that improves army caches is only in phase 4, so ...

@Phoenix

a 'hoax' is a little bit too harsh...

Total armies earned: 196B
Armies from army camps: 29B
Armies from caches: 44B

so every 5th soldier in this level came from a cache.

Do you have the Army Cache Boost artifact? It gives a small boost, but it adds up eventually.

Also, the caches from lesser territories give lesser boosts,
The caches from a big bonus can give you a couple of B armies on the spot.

Edited 6/27/2021 21:44:42

@Phoenix

also from the same level:

total money generated: 531B
money from caches: 277B

so 50%!

and I'm not even counting the items from resource caches.
I estimate that only about 15%-20% of my items are crafted