Okay, sure, hoax was way to harsh, for me in my current level caches and drafts are almost on par and together make up a third of all earned armies, so each one a sixth roughly. I'm grateful for every army I don't have to produce myself. But as I said, after the first day or so, each territory with an army cache is a net loss even with a rare Army Cache Boost artifact. Only bonuses that reward with army caches are really useful because they give significant amounts.

It's just that for territories I'd probably prefer if the territory cost would be reduced by the amount of cache the territory rewards me with and have no cache at all. In the long run, when we have invested in advancements this would be a disadvantage, but hoping for a nice boost nowadays (having more armies then before after I conquered an army cache) but seeing the balance of armies decreasing isn't exactly satisfying. Because this means that they have definitely less than three quarters of the territory cost in them (I have Joint Strike maxed and use it as good as I can, so one quarter (or more with the hospitals) is always saved). So, if I conquer a 1B territory and end up with less than 1B of armies afterwards, then the cache had less than 700M of armies everything considered. Sometimes the caches are closer to 400-500M in such cases. Does that justify the high territory costs???

You also need to remember that caches boost your drafts so it's not just what you get from the cache.

Is there a way to check in stats how long a level took you the second time around? or did people just note down the times.

@lol Phoenix,

imagine you just paid 5$ for a slice of pizza, after that you walk on the street and find 1$ bill.
Are you going to be happy and think "great, my pizza cost me only 4$!", or are you going to be disappointed that you didn't find the whole 5 to cover your costs?

@megaol

there is no way. I'm screenshooting the victory statistics every time I finish a level.
I wish I was doing it from the beginning. It would be really interesting to compare my current progress to the pre-ascension run

@megaol
Nope, you have to note it down yourself. Many of us take screenshots of the end message so we can refer back to it to check all the stats at a later time.

@Phoenix
I'm confused as to how army caches are so unprofitable for you. Granted that some of them certainly are unprofitable, but I find many of them give a bit more than the territory requires to capture it of varying degrees, notably of course as you say once you have high hospital benefits in effect. I also use the rare Army Cache Boost artifact +8% + a rare Cache Boost +3.2% = total +11.2% boost, so in the ballpark of what you're doing, and I find particularly the ones on territories >1B give somewhere between 300M-2B additional armies. I'm talking in the range of Feldmere through Fort Harbor. The later levels of course have the +50% cache bonus Tech, so you must decide whether to take the caches early or leave them until you get that Tech (which can take a while as it's near the bottom of one of the trees and usually requires a few luxury bars). When I unlock Phase 4, the army cache boost will be the first thing I put AP into, as I think that will have massive value. But I'm still 18248 AP away from that, so a long time yet. Who knows if I'll still even be interested in WZI at that time, lol.

I hope your advice to nerf the army caches and just subtract from the territory army count isn't implemented, b/c eventually when (if) we unlock that phase 4 AP advancement, the army cache needs to be big to get the bonus, so if it were reduced or eliminated in order to lower the territory count, it means there's less benefit it getting this expensive and high-end AP Adv.

Take my recent AD 1045: Roads of Silk and Iron playthrough:
- 8.9B from army camps
- 61.8B mercs purchased
- 24.1B armies from caches
- 12.0B armies from drafts
- 34.0B armies saved from joint strike
- 47.3B armies saved from hospitals

So I got more armies from caches than I did from drafts which was more than army camps. Overall the 4th largest contributor, beaten only by the big 3 (mercs, hospitals, JS).

@Krinid, Phoenix

I want to correct you on one logical phallacy:

nowhere does it say that a cache should/must return you the spent armies, nor that it is in anyway connected to the territory it resides in.

territories are territories and caches give you bonuses that eventially add up to a significant percentage of your income.

some caches will award you with a bigger bonus, sometimes with a lesser one. If you expect to get a "return for your investment" you are making the wrong expectation

Edited 6/28/2021 06:35:06

aren't draft amounts based on your current army per second production? this means that you should include drafts when calculating the usefulness of army camps as increased army production also increases draft amounts.

No correction required, I agree with you, just saying that despite that I find that the majority caches do exceed the requirements to capture the territory (JS, hospital, artifact benefits inclusive). So once Phase 4 gets here, it'll be even better.

That said, I understand Phoenix's perspective. It's like you have a bunch of envelopes with money in them, but it costs you $100 to open each one. Inside them in order are $120, $150, $55, $99. You're going to be somewhat happy with the $120, very happy with the $155, nonplussed about the $99, and totally disappointed with the $55. Sure, there was never a promise that you would make money, but if there's not additional money, why not just lower the cost of the $100 fee for 3rd envelope to $45 and forget the envelope and money altogether?

The answer is of course ... b/c that's the way the game works, and you have the ability to change that with JS, hospitals, Tech & artifacts & AP Adv albeit the last one is quite out of reach for most. But there are means available to improve the value received, and that's part of the game.

But even if the army cache is only 50% of the territory amount ... it's still better than 0, right?

Here are some hard numbers from my recent run on Orbis. My supercamp produced 15% of the armies from my camps and 2.37% of my total armies earned. I do think that undersells it slightly as it also slightly bumped draft amounts, free caches and other army sources. Plus having those armies earlier meant I was building my engine more quickly. Overall I feel like it gave ~5% bump to my speed which equals ~4 hours in a level that took 3 days 17 hours.




Edited 6/30/2021 06:09:13

I generally upgraded my supercamp when the total cost would have been about double to get the same army increase from normal camp upgrades so I do think the upgrades were a worthwhile investment.

Date	        A/sec    Armies Produced
6/25/2021 10:20	231	      138,600
6/25/2021 10:30	423	    8,375,400
6/25/2021 16:00	436	   24,328,800
6/26/2021 7:30	4,25       84,150,000
6/26/2021 13:00	7,810	  421,740,000
6/27/2021 4:00	11,800	  577,020,000
6/27/2021 17:35	12,100	  159,720,000
6/27/2021 21:15	12,500	  191,250,000
6/28/2021 1:30	17,600	1,805,760,000
6/29/2021 6:00		
		          Total Armies
	       	          3,272,482,800

Edited 6/30/2021 06:19:56

@krinid

you are keeping connecting the territories to the caches....
let me propose a new metaphor:

every envelope costs 100$ to open. You must open them all, because that's your duty in this world.
An old catholic nun passes next to your place of work and from time to time gives you some charity money out of pity.
Are you going to be disappointed if it's less than a 100$ bill?

Are you going to be disappointed if it's less than a 100$ bill?

Damn right I will be disappointed!

Now put some context to this. The old catholic nun is also part of the committee which assigns the missions that makes it my duty in this world to open all the envelopes, and also assigns the cost of opening all the envelopes. She could just as easily make it so I still have to open this envelope, but only make the cost of opening a particular envelope $75 but have no money inside (instead of leaving it as $100 but putting $25 inside), but instead she makes a point of telling me that she's putting money into 1 of the envelopes and even draws a decal on it so I know exactly which one it is, leaves the opening cost at $100, but only puts $25 inside.

Simple solution: just write $25 on the front of the envelope next to the decal (ie: instead of just "Army Cache" write "250M Army Cache" when inspecting the territory [must already be visible or fog busted) so I can see that in advance of opening the envelope, and all problems solved.

It's like asking if people will be disappointed if they don't win the raffle in Global Chat despite knowing that (assume 10 entrants & a 5 coin raffle with no WZI power) that you only ever had a 10% chance to win, and it's only 5 cents anyhow. You shouldn't expect to win often, so you shouldn't be disappointed when you don't, and you definitely shouldn't be disappointed about not winning 5 cents, right? But people get disappointed ALL THE TIME. It's all about false expectations and getting hopes up for what could be. At least with the raffle, you know the prize & your chances. The army cache, you don't know until you capture. (Let's put it a different way. If I say I'll give you somewhere between $20 and $20,000,000, and then give you $35, would you be disappointed? Most people in the world be.)

But you seem to be hung up on whether it's disappointing or not as opposed to whether there's any value in it or if it logically makes sense. Yes, it's disappointing. Yes, it's still advantageous compared to 0 bonus army units. These two facets aren't mutually exclusive. It feels like you skipped past the "I agree with you" part at the beginning, focused on the part where I said "I understand Phoenix's perspective", and then skipped the summary ending as well, which these 2 skipped parts clearly carried the theme of (A) actually more often than not, they do give more units than is required to cap the territory with all benefits factored in, and (B) even if they don't, >0 is still better than =0.

It's not necessarily advantageous compared to 0 bonus armies, because territories with army caches cost more to conquer and don't provide income. If you're in an area where most territories cost 5 million armies to conquer and you run across an army cache that costs 30 million, you're being penalized if the cache provides 25 million armies. You had to save up longer to conquer the territory than you would for a normal one, your hospitals will save a lower percentage than they would for a normal one, and you won't get any territory income from it. Joint strike and army cache boosting artifacts/tech/advancements will help, but it would be nice if no army caches started out as a penalty before you started using resources to cancel that penalty out.

At the very least it'd be good to implement krinid's suggestion of showing how many armies you'll get from it (and for that matter it'd be nice to see the same info for other caches, the value of hospitals and army camps, and the ore from mines without having to look up the name in the wiki) so you know if you're going to get boosted or penalized by the camp and can plan around it.

Sefer is wise.

The time needed to complete a level could be roughly approximated by the following formula.
Total time = (total cost of all territories - total saving from joint strike - total draft size - total army caches - total savings from hospitals - total amount of mercenary) / average armies per sec
Among these variables:
* Total cost of all territories is fixed;
* Total saving from joint strike is about 25% of total cost of all territories, hence fixed;
* Total draft size is around some percentage of total army earned, hence fixed;
* Total army caches is fixed;
* Total savings from hospitals is around some number times the number of territories, and upgrading hospitals helps;
* Total amount of mercenary is fixed;
* Average armies per sec depends on army camp levels, and whether we have supercamp.

We can see from above that, there are only three things we can do to accelerate a level (put economy and visibility aside):
(1) Upgrade hospitals;
(2) Upgrade army camps;
(3) Purchase supercamp.
Once we choose certain strategies, (1) and (2) are fixed. Then,
total time without supercamp / Total time with supercamp = Average armies per sec with supercamp / Average armies per sec without supercamp.

So, if supercamp provide 10% more armies, then it accelerate the level by about 10%.

I see what you mean but think you've missed points.

* Total cost of all territories is fixed;
* Total saving from joint strike is about 25% of total cost of all territories, hence fixed;
* Total army caches is fixed;
* Average armies per sec depends on army camp levels, and whether we have supercamp.

Agree on these.

* Total savings from hospitals is around some number times the number of territories, and upgrading hospitals helps;

Over simplifying, but yes. Hospitals depend on upgrade levels of the hospitals and how many territories you had left when the upgrades finished. This makes total armies required to be produced to finish a level not fixed. Do you max out every hospital on every level?

* Total amount of mercenary is fixed;

Disagree. Some merc camps are too expensive to bother with, so it can vary. It can depend on whether your strategy has been money heavy (buy all the mercs) or money tight (can't afford all the mercs), so this isn't fixed either as it depends on how you've played so far. This factor might vary for you vs me, as I have +75% additional mercs, so I have a big merc pool, which also means more return on Drafts, and I have a higher quantity of cheaper mercs available to me at early stages of the game, and don't always need to drain the camps of the expensive mercs to finish a level. Do you always completely empty every merc camp on every level? Additional mercs is upgradeable to +150%, so perhaps maxing this out would even moreso change the formula (but that would require 12750 more AP so not going to do that, at least not yet).

* Total draft size is around some percentage of total army earned, hence fixed;

Disagree. Total # of armies earned is not fixed, thus draft size is not fixed. Depending on your play strategy, you can finish a level with varying Total army production required (see below).

So, if supercamp provide 10% more armies, then it accelerate the level by about 10%.

Not sure if I agree with this or not ... depends on what you mean.

Let's adjust your formula ever so slightly to these:
(same formula, just broke into 2 steps)

Total army production required = (total cost of all territories - total saving from joint strike - total draft size - total army caches - total savings from hospitals - total amount of mercenaries)

Total time = Total army production required / average armies per sec

I agree with your statement if you reword it to this: if Supercamp results in 10% reduction in Total army production required, then it accelerates the level by about 10%.

BUT I think what you actually meant when writing is (I've added text in bold to clarify my interpretation of your statement): if Supercamp provides 10% more armies than produced by regular army camps alone, then it accelerates the level by about 10%.

What the 2nd version here overlooks is that upgrading Supercamps to get that extra 10% armies from army camps will take away from upgrading hospitals, buying mercs, etc, which increases the time to clear unless the # of armies gained from Supercamp compensates for the net loss from those army income methods above and beyond increasing 10% more armies from army camps. I suppose the question is - do we actually think the Supercamp upgrades provide a means to be 10% more effective than any of regular army camps, hospitals or mercs?

To increase level clear speed by 10%, the money you spend on upgrading the Supercamp has to be 10% more effective that it would have been had you spent it on hospitals or mercs. Short example: if you spent 200B upgrading hospitals so the benefit is 500M for 1000 territories=500B army benefit, you'd need to be able to spend 200B on the Supercamp but generate 500B*1.1=550B. Let's say it earned 500B. Then, you also need to consider that if you had no Supercamp, how much benefit would investing that same 200B money into regular army camps provide? 50%, only 250B? If so, the benefit compared to not having a Supercampis actually only 250B.

Apparently, I have neglected this thread for too long. Now, there is a lot to process:

• While my observation with the army caches definitely was true at some point, in my current level (or previous level, I just finished the one I was talking about) and with my current level of advancements/artifacts the problem was way smaller than I had remembered it. Since the time I posted my "complaint" I think not a single cache was a net loss. But, there must have been at least one army cache in this level that triggered me to write the post. I must have fallen victim to the one or two (in comparison to the territory costs) smaller caches this time. Good to see a trend of more caches with a net plus.
  
• @megaol, if you: a) play each level exactly once before ascending, b) never play two levels in parallel, c) have Level 4 Statistics, then you can see all timestamps of when you "First played" each level in the level stats (on the Artifact/Advancement-tab) if you screenshot/copy them all before ascending, you can do the math and figure out how long each level took. Although apparently, this information gets lost when you ascend. So, if you have ascended before, you won't get the information back as far as I know (I haven't ascended myself yet)
  
• @Sefer, I'd very much love to have this. Then I could try my best to make each cache profitable (increase hospital savings, upgrade artifacts, unlock techs) before collecting it.
  
• @functor and @krinid, if you are an active drafter and draft as much that the sliding/varying portion is always empty, you can draft more than the percentage that make up the sliding draft portion. Then, longer level times mean more draft armies. But as the sliding portion always gets a boost when you claim caches or buy mercs, I'm pretty confident that the drafts again are (sort of) fixed with the active army income.
  

@Phoenix
Hmmm ... send me some of your Drafting #'s from levels you've completed, and we'll see if they're in the ballpark of mine. Parsisal/Master Jz, feel free to provide yours as well.

I'm way too lazy to be such an active drafter. Just saying, technically it is (or at least should be) possible to get a decent drafting income when you never miss a single draft when it pops up. Especially with draft enhancements.

And, besides, until now I never have screenshotted a level finishing screen so far. Perhaps I should start to do so for various reasons.