Players,

What is the best Artifact Configuration (the three artifacts) for IDLE -"Challenge maps" ?

usually ACB, BMB, TMB

The main three I used were Army Camp Boost, Bonus Money Boost, and Territory Money Boost. When those didn't work, sometimes it worked to swap out one or both of the money boosts for Army Camp Discount, Army Cache Boost, or Draft Boost (requires auto-draft).

I just managed to clear them all this week.

Adv's I used:
- Max upgrades: JS 25%, IACP 500%, AQ 50%, ACD 30%, IDS 300%, Money Bonuses 100%, Better Hospitals 50%, Auto-draft 0 delay, Cache armies 100%, Money caches 100%
- Partial upgrades: AUAC 10%, Start with Techs 4 (needed for Auto-draft)

Before doing all of the above, I started with a bunch of Adv upgrades, and cleared out everything up to but not including Drakemore. Then added AUAC, and Drakemore fell, and could clear all levels through Europe Huge EXCEPT KP-X, Roman Empire & NL, and after finally after really raging forward aggressively to get everything as specified above, finally cleared Roman & NL but KP-X still eluded me.

But just today, I cleared it . . . using ARTIFACT swaps! Read on for details.

RELATES TO CLEARING KP-X ONLY - with all the above stated Adv's:

ACB Rare + TMB Epic + BMB Epic = fail

ACB Rare + TD Rare + IV Rare = Success

(Army Camp Boost, Territory Money Boost, Bonus Money Boost, Tech Discount, Item Values)

Anyone else confused as to why TMB + BMB (having more money) would cause _loss_ as opposed to using TD & IV which have ABSOLUTELY no benefit at all and thus lower money = fail? #confused

I guess somehow having more money caused my army camps to upgrade more, which somehow led to non-strategic captures? Perhaps capturing along a different path that leads to failure, whereas having less armies led to a different path which somehow led to a different path.

Ok just unsurprisingly confirmed that:

ACB Rare + Empty + Empty = Success

but that (also unsurprisingly)

Empty + Empty + Empty = Failure

And another interesting result:

ACB Rare + ACD Uncommon + HD Rare = Failure

(Army Camp Discount, Hospital Discount)

So bizarre that I can create 2 scenarios (ACB+TMB+BMB, ACB+ACD+HD) where having MORE MONEY = MORE Army camp upgrades (the only Auto-Adv I have that uses money) brings a previously Winning condition to lead to Failure.

I read in a prev thread somewhere that someone spent AP on Auto-Adv's and then couldn't finish Challenge levels that he could clear before. Probably related to something like this.

Edited 10/6/2021 18:21:11

Given that it is (usually) highly unlikely that you beat a challenge that you previously couldn't beat just by trying it again, I rarely do challenges. But I'm pretty sure that I observed at least once, that Auto-Conquer can neglect territories that it could theoretically capture in favor of others. I just checked it and had this result on floating rocks, though, given a different set of advs and artifacts that may play out differently for others: the Auto-Conquer captured a 200k territory from the opponent instead of taking a neutral 30k territory. This strategy might be beneficial for the player. But it also means that you won't complete bonuses as soon as you face your opponent in challenges. That is clearly a drawback as more bonuses means more constant money income and more one-time benefits. I guess that Auto-Conquer can always only capture one territory per "cycle" (per activation, whatever clock rate the algorithm is started) and from all territories that fulfill the condition (at most x% of current army balance) selects the biggest one. If that is true so far, more money can mean more army income, can mean different territories captured, can mean different outcome. Perhaps money income artifacts mean that AQ will not complete bonuses that would otherwise get you more money in the end game and cause you to change the outcome.

But that's only a theory. But that AQ can apparently freely decide which territories to claim seems quite proven to me (given my observation).

Anyone else confused as to why TMB + BMB (having more money) would cause _loss_ as opposed to using TD & IV which have ABSOLUTELY no benefit at all and thus lower money = fail? #confused

I guess somehow having more money caused my army camps to upgrade more, which somehow led to non-strategic captures? Perhaps capturing along a different path that leads to failure, whereas having less armies led to a different path which somehow led to a different path.

It makes sense to me that if it's no clear victory / defeat, there is some randomness when swapping details. The extra money is probably not a game changer. Maybe in your game with the higher money, your bot was taking over unimportant territories, while the other bot was eating your valuable bonuses for free.

ligma artifact