Oh, side note on auto conquer- I experimented with using it, and it seems to go out of its way to pick the worst territories to grab (I think it goes for the highest possible instead of the lowest and it doesn't make any effort to take advantage of JS). You can still get some use out of it by taking territories until the highest territory it can take is less than whatever your hospitals are saving (so fill in a bunch of cheap territories once you've grabbed a few hospitals- just be ready to stop it if you auto conquer an army cache), an at the end you only need to grab enough territories so that all the territories left that are larger than your hospital value have at least two neighbors that you've taken so you get JS. You still have a lot of clicking to do at the end, but it will save you a chunk of it and it will help you fill in cheap stuff midgame.

Usually I turn on auto-conquer when the total amount of army left on the map is less than the amount of army I have. At that point it doesn't matter if they're joint striked or not.

In previous versions, the AP per hour was quite high on the earlier levels, and very low on the last 3. I could play some of the early levels 2-3 times per ascension and still get better AP returns per hour than I could get on Triskelion the first time. This makes it rewarding to play the more demanding early levels over and over again, increasing effort and reducing the "idle" aspect.

In the current version, this is no longer an issue. The later levels (and some hardened levels) now give as much and more AP per hour as the early ones do. There's now motivation to skip the early levels to go for the longer later ones, which is presumably better for an idle game. The markets have fixed the money problem in the late levels, but have probably sped them up way more than intended.

Has anyone else been tracking AP per hour on the old vs new levels, and seen this change?

I think before (v5.13) there was a clear trend where early level were better. Now (v5.14) I think it’s a sawtooth pattern based on the number of markets. The sweet spot are the levels which just barely have an extra market.

I think Triskelion is still a fairly slow level.

Any idea how well this will work for players who haven't ascended yet? I'm assuming there's a lot more waiting but how will the flow look like? More money spent on army camps and more focus on tech upgrades?

@jogar

functor's 8-hour run used a 10k AP setup.

Completing all regular levels give you 13k raw AP. So 10k AP is a pre-ascension setup.

This strategy also works pretty well as the backbone for newer players who haven't yet had the chance to invest a ton of AP in additional mercenaries (I can confirm since I am in the boat of such players). The main difference is that there there will be a substantial number of "missing" armies once you finish using up the mercs and caches, which must be mitigated. Here's what I've been doing to do so:

• Use a stack of 5 inspire mercenary superpowers on a mid-late game merc camp.
  
• Making sure to invest in the "medicine refinement", "tell your workers that it's cash" and "hire actual doctors" techs, before clearing most of the board (in addition to upgrading hospitals pretty far).
  
• Use 5 SAC + 5 FC (preferably superpowered) mid-way through the level. This will also require purchasing a decent portion of the IACP tech tree (which you'll want to do anyway to collect sliding drafts faster at the end).
  
• Fog-bust the level (again, best via a superpower) to avoid wasting armies exploring.
  
• Use legendary triple strike, possibly multiple times per level.
  

The "inspire mercenary superpower" strategy is particularly effective on Hardened Copper Creek Castle since the top two merc camps have almost enough mercs (when multiplied by 10) to clear the entire level, so you really just have to build up enough armies to take either of those camps via the most direct route. Then, you get solid AP to invest in more mercs as well as the legendary triple strike. With +40% additional mercs, I was able to beat Hardened CCC in 1 day (with 5 FC + a few SAC as well - note that the level gives you 5 FC to replace the ones you used) even though I used the superpower on the 3rd largest merc camp; just going directly to one of the top 2 would have been equally fast and provided of armies to make up the difference if you have lower + additional mercs.

Hardened Ursa: Luna should be easily beatable with a single fog-bust, careful planning of conquest routes and noting that the crafter gives effectively infinite money.

Edited 9/7/2021 03:58:16

Though completing all levels before Africa only gives you 5333 AP. So maybe you cannot go that fast when you're at pre-ascension Africa. However, this shall work in later levels before your first ascension when you have 10k AP in total and do an advancement setup similar to what functor did.

One thing to note for newer players trying this is that you can also run out of money since you'll have to spend a decent chunk of your market earnings on techs, hospital upgrades, and even army camp upgrades. If this becomes a problem, you can wait for late-game crafting (slow, but still much faster than waiting for army camps) or you can use the SM + MR combo after upgrading a few mines to cover what's missing.

Increased Alloy Sell Values is a very good 5.14 advancement for the players who run out of money.

Assume that every market has alloys. Below is a formula to estimate the profit from markets:
Market Profit ~ constant * (Alloy Value Modifier - 0.8) ^ 2,
where the default modifier is 1.

Assume that we get +30% alloy value tech. Then, +50% Increased Alloy Sell Values gives roughly 4 times the money from markets and +100% Increased Alloy Sell Values gives 9 times the money from markets.

trying to understand this. is this only far lands or all levels? Second ascension and old town is like 3 days... so slow.

and how do you know where hospitals are? fog bust everything or does someone have screen shots?

@MrP
A bit of both, we do some fogbusts, and we made notes from our 1st, 2nd & 3rd playthroughs. Sometimes b/c things change, the notes are useful, sometimes they're not. Plus with the FB superpower, large levels are easier to fogbust now.

After numerous playthroughs I just naturally remember where all the important things are lol

Give me a blank Europe Huge map and I can point out roughly where those 15 hospitals are, as well as the location of the biggest merc camp, the location of certain key recipes like nail, and the location of that one massive stack. The same holds for pretty much all maps, maybe not exactly remember the location of all hospitals but certainly I can remember where all the big ones are.

Edited 9/9/2021 02:46:54

lol same for europe huge. could probably play it blindfolded :p

please clarify, do we remove your sight or just make the territories invisible?

I think Market Visibility (150 AP for first three markets) is a great v5.14 investment as well

Interesting that there's no Hospital Visibility advancement.

I need a video or something to understand how the F you guys do this.

I'm on old town. finished first stage and took screen shots of all placements. even knowing this, how the heck on hardened levels am I supposed to get these hospitals in 2 and 3k territories?! To say nothing of the 8k big ones. it'll take months to save these armies up :(

@ Mr_Perfect

Money mainly comes from the markets as described in this thread. Go to the first market(s) as quick as possible and buy+sell items/alloys as long as sell prices are higher than costs - you need to invest AP in increased alloy sell values (later on also item sell values) to make this work (artifacts for higher alloy/item values and merc advancements/artifacts are also useful here).

Then you buy mercs with the money gained from markets. Take the nearest hospitals with the mercs. Repeat with (new) market cashing and merc buying in time before you run out of mercs to get all hospitals.

Get some techs when you can buy and/or produce the required amounts (particularly those of the last two branches, i.e. alloy/item sell values and merc discount). Depending on the level, also upgrade hospitals when you conquered most/all (useful on Europe huge but not necessary on early/medium levels).

It gets easier with more advancements but that's basically how it works.

Edited 9/11/2021 05:10:19