That said, I was focused on levels #6-#10 in particular because I was interested in a “landing spot” between super-powered skip levels. Maybe one of the ones before or after?

I think you're right on in your analysis, graemes. I think all the new maps are pretty much garbage until Hex.

Especially the first few, offering a paltry 100-200 AP. But everything up to Medieval is still <1000, and for the time/powers it takes to clear them, I'd say minimum 4000 AP is where I'd draw the 'value' line, so only 7YW, 30YW & Hex are worth it from an AP earnings perspective.

And 7YW is just simply one of the most annoying maps ever, way too many super bonuses and odd bonus combinations, makes it super obnoxious to know what to clear to get certain buildings and caches, and even once you know, they're often so spread out that it's still obnoxious. 30YW is only somewhat better. So I cast them both out.

And that leaves just Hex. The only new post-EH map worth doing imho.

So one or two level per Asc just to reach HE then. About HE, is one IM power enough to clear it or need 5 with SP? I have legendary ACacheB, TS and AV.

@mobtrio
Depends how you play it. With Leg AcacheB & TS, you could certainly just play until you get to the big Merc Camp in Greenland, pop 1 IM, go East, get the big army cache & money cache in E Russia, use TS on the 737B territory, upgrade hospitals twice, clear the level easily.

But the opening of getting to Greenland might take a while ... so if you want to speed that up, you could also:
- get army cache on Parauapebas (need 64K, so may have to wait 10-15 mins depending on artis & Adv's, etc)
- use 1 IM on El Caura in Venezuela
- use 1 IM on Chipas in Mexico
- use 1 IM on Hebron in Labrador
- this will get you all the way to the big merc camp Snow in Greenland, use 1 IM there & follow above instructions

All of these "use 1 IM" iterations could be 1 IM power, or 1x IM arti activation + 1x TW to cool it down, wait 8 hrs (or 3.25 hrs if you have the CW 30% speed cooldown buff on) to move on to the next one, then wait 8 hrs for TW to cooldown again, repeat.

Or . . .
- follow above to get to Snow
- then pop SP IM on Snow merc camp, then you don't even need to use TS on the 737B territory or bother with hospital upgades; this is especially useful for 1st clear through Hex, when you don't yet have or 50% Better Hospitals and 100% Increased army caches; you need this to be around 50% BH and >=60% IAC before you can skip the TS/QS of 737B & hospital upgrades

And depending on your AP% bonuses (# of SAsc's), it may take you 3-5 Hex clears before you get 50% BH + 100% IAC, but as you SAsc it up, you can accomplish this is just 1 clear.

So based on these options, clearing Hex can take anywhere from multiple days to 15 mins, just depending on how many powers you're willing to use to clear it.

Last thing I'll mention, is ALWAYS have AQ or AAQ unlocked before playing Hex. It's >3700 territories, and you don't want to have to cap every territory manually, especially if you're going for multiple playthroughs per SAsc and doing multiple SAsc's (carpel tunnel much?). Once you have the E Russia army cache capped (and maybe the E Russia money cache depending on if you need to upgrade hospitals or not), and have given all the big territories 2 borders if you're using AQ and not AAQ (or just capture them), enable AQ/AAQ and let it fly. Yo do need to ensure that you have enough armies left to finish the central Russia superbonus army cache, and if you get below 1T armies, may need to disable AQ/AAQ and manually cap the rest to avoid not having enough to get that cache. Once you have that cache, reenable AQ/AAQ and let the game finish itself.

LOL, thank you very much for very detail info. So I will use 4 IMs for a while before can only use 1.

I waited to play hex earth until I had better hospitals, additional mercs, and all important money related Phase 1/2 advancements maxed. I was able to beat it using 1 inspire mercs power on the 911M Merc camp in Africa and a rare inspire mercs artifact on the big merc camp in Greenland. I also had a legendary army cache boost.

The thing that eats my powers is getting to hex earth.

@graemes, krinid,
Thanks

I am worried about the availability of skip level powers. My thoughts are as following:

- The total pool of skip level powers in pre-SA levels = ~160
-- Each pre-SA level seems to have 2 skip level powers. You can collect them twice.
-- There are ~40 pre-SA levels
-- ALso some of the skip level powers were used preSA and you also cannot hoard them past 5 (skip level is not present in raffles or wheel spins and the door is optimized to not give you that power, when you cannot use it)

- Every SAsc (within let's say 10 SAscs) requires 15-20 skip level powers to speed run
-- To get to HE you need either 5 skip level powers with advancement or 10 skip level powers without the advancement.
-- Let's say, you do 1 run to HE without the advancement + 2 runs with the advancement.

So, seems after 4 SAsc you will deplete half of the skip level powers on levels, and it might be an effort to find the levels, which still have them.

At ~8-10 SAscs all skip level powers in preSA levels will get depleted that way. If one is being more conservative with power usage, then that depletion moment will be delayed, but still at some quite near point there will be no skip level powers available.

So the challenge looks like to me as:
1) Collect +25% SAsc bonuses, so that you get the skip level advancement faster (within 1st ascencion)
2) Collect a pool of artifacts, which will allow to quickly complete any of those mid-SA levels, so that you will not need skip level powers
As I have have neither of those yet (currently only 2 legendaries and low SA AP bonus), I seek for advice to optimize the routing strategy towards HE.

The thing that eats my powers is getting to hex earth.

I am worried about that too. Dumping IMs in HE seems to me a lesser issue, than lack of skip level powers.

Edited 8/1/2022 12:14:55

You should be able to do it in 3 IMs (either artifact or power)

The route looks like this:
Money cache in Suriname
Army cache in Espirinto Santo
Inspire Mercs in El Caura
Inspire Mercs in Central Newfoundland
Inspire Mercs in Snow (Greenland)
Get three hospitals and upgrade to L2
- Snow (Greenland)
- Xinjiang
- Mortka (Central Urals)
Money cache in Pakistan
Four crafters
- Buenos Aires
- Gharyan (Libya)
- Michigan
- Quebec City
Complete Hospital upgrade path
Money cache (Bonus, Eastern Russia)
Army cache (Bonus, Eastern Russia)
Upgrade hospitals to L3
Auto conquer the map

Tips and tricks:
1. You should be able to beat it comfortably within 16 hours of game time, most time is spent crafting
2. Time Warp should be used once you have all four crafters - set these up to have two on Barbed Wire, one on Tin Can, one on Metal Sheet. There’s still a little extra Barbed Wire remaining to be done at the end but it’s close.
3. Don’t bother with any techs other than Hospital / 50% cache path
4. Don’t bother with Joint Strike
5. Triple/Quad Strike should be used in Brazil, not the 737B territory. Armies are not limiting at the end, they are limiting at the start.

Funny how Hex is played differently. I never crafted anything nor used markets on it and still was able to beat it in less than 1 day with 1 IM. Army cache artifact is very useful here. And you only need to upgrade the 3 large hospitals, the other ones are not helpful.

I’m thinking of doing a tech run on the 17 post-SAsc levels once for the achievements, so I don’t have to do them again. I’ve figured it only makes sense to do so once I’m sufficiently deep into phase 4 advancements…

Just an insight from today AMA:
Fizzer said that "1 army camp"-balance in post-SA levels was initally a bug in level generation, and he decided to leave it as a feature for challenging end-game play :)

Edited 8/1/2022 20:21:08

69 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

https://i.imgur.com/uLtBObu.png

1075% AP
16 artifacts
+1200 AP

43 +14 +12 = 69 goal reached

I'm going to be busy from now on so I doubt I can play much. I can actually start the 70th but not a nice stopping point.

nice

With what resources/advancements do you think Triskelion (both normal and hardened) is decently playable? In my opinion I think both hardened China and HEH are more difficult than normal Triskelion, though HT is still harder than both.

The thing that eats my powers is getting to hex earth.

Yeah, I don't even try it without a decent skip level researched. (I burn the cards on Scandinavia to get to hard Europe faster)

@Olja
I'm with you on not crafting or using markets, but how do you get to the Greenland Snow merc camp without using any IMs? Presumably SAC+FC to start, get the army cache in Espirinto Santo and money caches at Suriname and Eastern Paraguay? Another FC ... then what? Just wait for armies to accumulate, slowly advance, buy mercs? Not sure how that gets you to Snow, doesn't seem like it's enough unless you leverage some TS or QS to help out. Using only 1 IM is good but don't quite follow how you achieve that. The benefit of using the 4 IM method is simply speed. By doing this, you can finish Hex is about 30 mins (~10-15 if you really rush) if you already have enough investment in +Army caches that you can skip the hospital upgrades.

Funny how Hex is played differently. I never crafted anything nor used markets on it and still was able to beat it in less than 1 day with 1 IM. Army cache artifact is very useful here. And you only need to upgrade the 3 large hospitals, the other ones are not helpful.

@graemes

The route looks like this:
Money cache in Suriname
Army cache in Espirinto Santo
Inspire Mercs in El Caura
Inspire Mercs in Central Newfoundland
Inspire Mercs in Snow (Greenland)
Get three hospitals and upgrade to L2
- Snow (Greenland)
- Xinjiang
- Mortka (Central Urals)

I'm with you in general here, but the order confuses me. Going to Suriname is easy enough, wait to get about 75k armies (5-15 mins depending on artis & Adv's), then take army cache @ Paraupebas, this gets you to Suriname & El Caura. But you have Espirinto Santo listed before that - are you popping SAC+FC to get to there?

Next, you go straight from El Caura to Central Newfoundland - how are crossing this gap? SAC+FC? And if you are doing SAC+FC, do you go to Eastern Paraguay first to get that money cache (the money from it invested into Army Camps helps make the FCs a lot higher. SAC+FC aside, after getting the caches mentioned & popping an IM on El Caura and then heading to Central Newfoundland, you should run out of units around Northern New Brunswick if you go through NA (still 5 territories & ~7.2B units shy of target), or around Galicia if you go through Africa (still 2 territories, 2.9B units short of target). Once you get to Central Newfoundland, then you get enough units to get to Snow, then you're 1 IM away from an easy ride through the rest of the level, but I don't understand your path to Newfoundland.

@Xeno
69 SAsc's! Jeepers ... which artifacts did you keep and what levels are they at? 16 artifacts is too many, lol, just don't need that many, you must have a bunch of fodder among them, just holders for Rares/Epics/Legendaries until you can upgrade something better to Insane. But I guess once you have +1200 starting AP (gets you AQ), +1075% AP (can finish with just 1 pass through Hex, maybe even earlier?) ... what else do you invest in, right?

3rd super Ascension today.

@krinid Sure, it involves using other artifacts, this was my setting the last time I played it

https://www.warzone.com/Forum/590438-super-ascension-know?Offset=20

I can't give you the exact locations on Hex Earth now as I am back in phase 2 after super ascending, but it's mainly using SAC+FC to start with, get the caches in Sth America, buy mercs from the MCs in Sth America, go to the MC in Mexico (use IM power or IM artifact), go to the MC in Newfoundland (use IM power or IM artifact) and from there you can reach the caches in Greenland and the large merc camp - no need to use IM on this one, buying armies from the available money is enough to get to the next large army cache in Russia (?) and from there to the hospitals, upgrade the 3 hospitals and then go to the army caches in the west.

So technically it involves 2 IM depending how advanced the IM artifact is. I will recheck the exact route when I am back on Hex.

I guess everyone really does Hex Earth different. My most optimized pathing uses 1 IM arti and 0 powers it takes ~15-20m to finish w/o clan requests. I use markets and don't go to Greenland unless I need the hospital over there (rare). The level can be done with 0 AP if you have an insane army cache boost in 4 hours for hospitals + however long it takes you to click all those hexagons lol. My 1st run I had 4051AP spent and used 3IM because I got semi lost but could have done it with only 2 IM. I probably spent too much time analyzing this level since then >.>.

@Krinid

I sort of explained it on discord but as a general rule of thumb to upgrade artifacts w/o digging:
- you need 3 "feeder" spots if you want to upgrade a rare to epic (unless you do WZIB till 3200BP then only need 2 spots).
- you need 2 "feeder" spots if you want to upgrade an epic to legendary.
- you need 6 "feeder" spots if you want to upgrade a legendary to insane.

I will explain the legendary case since I have 10 main artifacts spots + 6 feeders spots. It takes 10 super (20 epics) to make 1 insane assuming your base is already legendary as shown below by getting the 1st place battle epic + epic Triple strike.

X => Empty
E => Epic
L => Legendary
XXXXXX=> EEXXXX => EEEEXX => LEXXXX => LEEEXX => LLXXXX=> LLEEXX => LLEEEE=> LLLEXX => LLLEEE => LLLLXX => make insane

Takes 5 days for the last legendary to upgrade + 10 days for the insane to be born so it takes 10 super + 15 days to get an insane.

Old picture but it basically looks like this:
https://i.imgur.com/Rw47YKC.png

Think most of my 10 main artis are in the picture but all 10 are either legendary or insane no rare or epic left (even the hospital boost is legendary because why not lol). Well the 4 I had equipped are not shown since they got appended at the end but it should be evident that they are SAC + TW + AV + Army Camp Boost.

Edit: Was in a rush so many typos lol.

Edited 8/11/2022 00:08:08

@Olja
What do you mean by the 'Greenland caches'? There's only 1 money cache, no army caches. I never really considered the money cache there significant, only 10T, which on this map doesn't buy many mercs, only about 25B mercs? That won't get you to Russia for the army caches. Actually it might - it probably gets you to Ustuansky, which gives enough to get to the Russia caches.

@Xeno
Don't go to Greenland? That's a lot of mercs you're foregoing, and the hospital, too ... so you just go straight through Africa to Russia?

I use markets and don't go to Greenland unless I need the hospital over there (rare).

Of course no clan reqs, they're entirely useless on the new levels, but 1 IM arti & 0 powers, how do you even get to the markets at all? Assuming the first market you hit is Borkou 2, and that only gives about 100B profit, so with 0 AP (or even 1200 AP, you've still got 0 invested in Merc Disc Adv) and even with MD arti, this would only get you a couple billion armies, not enough to get to the next market @ Bonjurd.

My most optimized pathing uses 1 IM arti and 0 powers it takes ~15-20m to finish w/o clan requests.

LOL, "can" be done, yes, but "should" not be. I value my fingers, and that's about 3300 clicks more than I'm willing to do.

The level can be done with 0 AP if you have an insane army cache boost in 4 hours for hospitals + however long it takes you to click all those hexagons lol.

Also see you're still using TS - have you not graduated to QS yet? Given that you spend most of your time on Hex, would assume you either use QS or don't need TS/QS at all.

Edited 8/11/2022 06:07:29