A few months ago I read a post from someone quitting the game because he ran into an 87 billion army territory that took him 3 days to conquer. I didn't pay too much attention at the time as I'm still in my first pass through the maps. I just completed China and easily beat a 25B territory using a 44B merc camp. Assuming that 87B territory is in Europe Huge (is it?), I still have a few maps left to plan a strategy. My early thoughts are to use Advancement points to build up my draft size (at the end of China I was drafting over 2B armies every 6 minutes). Also, I figure that I should increase my triple strike, quad strike and damage territory attributes (currently at uncommon) up to rare. I have a few maps left to do this. Is this a good strategy? Or, is there a better one? I've been increasing my caches and mercenaries with AP and about half of my attributes are rare, the other half are all uncommon. Thanks.

If you beat Hardened Copper Creek Castle, you'll get an epic Triple Strike. use it for taking this and other similar territories.

Arcturus, While I have opened phase 2, I haven't spent a lot of AP there. I maxed out mercenary discount and I increased cache resources 80%. I'm still spending a lot of AP in phase 1. It took me 20 days to complete China. Is it worth it to tackle hardened CC Castle before Europe Huge?

Anyone gonna tell him about the 54B in HC, the 240B in EH, the 1.1T in HEH, the 783B in Hex, the 671B in HT, etc?

Krinid, 54B doesn't frighten me that much. The others appear to be in other hardened levels, which I didn't plan to go after until my second pass thru the normal maps (and presumably well into phase 3 with several epic attributes). Yes, I do expect the game to get more challenging. However, I think I can raise triple strike, quad damage and damage territory to rare by staying in normal maps before EH. At the rate I'm going, I expect to start it sometime around October of 2022. I'll try HCCC if it will only take 4-5 weeks at my current strength. I would like to ascend by the end of this year.

IN GENERAL (which might have exceptions, or course), Levels take time relative to the earned APs. So, if a Level grants you twice the APs upon completion, it USUALLY takes about twice the time. This includes the hardened levels. So, if you already feel comfortable with China (base APs 722.3), then HCCC (base APs 594.13) shouldn't be much of a problem as well. Plus, Hardened Levels give additional benefits, so you might as well deduce 10% of the APs or so, just for what the reward is worth (if it applies to you, if for example you don't have the supercamp, and supercamp boosts aren't worth anything, similarly the arena and battle boosts, and perhaps also others I forgot right now). I personally still haven't figured out, why Fizzer came up with those "not until in phase x" suggestions, because essentially they are the same as the non-hardened ones, except for the higher numbers on everything. Just look at the APs granted to decide whether you should start them or not, would be my suggestion.

Phoenix, is AP based on time or armies needed to conquer? If the latter, then HCCC will be a LOT harder than China (fewer army bases, fewer merc bases, fewer army caches, less money). To compensate for fewer armies, you will need to be deep in phase 2 to increase mercs and lower their cost. Perhaps this is why the note is there for hardened levels.

@Mark, I never bothered with researching this, and my statement was more a feeling than a proven fact. So, that, and that it's already a little while ago that I played HCCC, you might be right that different strategies result in different times of HCCC and China in comparison. And that my statement could be caused partially by rose-colored glasses.

That said, is there any advancement in phase 2 (or phase 3 or 4 for that matter) that you feel could actually help you beat these levels faster? I get if one would argue, that in order to beat the hardened levels you need more additional mercs or similar stuff (because sure, if the numbers are higher but you are stuck with fewer army camps, mercs need to compensate for that), but honestly I don't see a reason why anything that isn't in phase 1 will actually speed up the hardened levels. Or, speed up hardened levels more than it can speed up regular levels. Because that's what you essentially described. You fear that China values different advancements than HCCC, which - to my knowledge and experience - there plainly can't be such an advancement in later phases.
IACP helps for the early stages in a level (and so long as you don't have many more advancements) and additional Mercs helps with the market/merc-strat. Name a single advancement in phase 2 that might have a significant influence on your level speeds. That's the main reason why I argued that these recommendations are not worth much. All (or almost all) of the really impactful advancements are in phase 1. What does it therefore mean, if I'm in phase 3 or 4?!? Will the ML advancement make me beat some level faster? Clearly not.
And I give you that, increased Alloy/Item Sell Value are not in phase 1, but just because you reached phase 2 or 3 doesn't mean that you are forced to invest in any of them. So, sure, Increased Sell Values are very helpful, but this is one advancement each of two of the higher phases and they aren't mandatory. So the general statement "you should be deep in phase 3" says nothing, if it isn't bound to specific advancements that the game assumes you had at that point. Which it can't assume anything because you are free to invest in whatever you want.
And, does the game further assume that you upgraded phase 1 advancements when you already reached phase 2? Or does the game assume exactly 1k in phase 1. You see, the different strategies of different players differ too much as to make general recommendations that actually matter. If you want some hardened reward, then just play the level!

Yes, that was sort of a rant (towards the game), but not meant as a personal attack. And if you feel like you aren't ready for any of the hardened levels yet, I respect that. And if someone can prove me wrong, I'm fine with that either. It just bothers me every time when I feel the game gives you freedoms that Fizzer isn't respecting when coming up with new features. Because, you could be "deep into phase 2" by only investing in increased ore productions. And yet, the hardened levels that have this phrase as their recommendation really wouldn't be fun to play.

Adding to Phoenix's notes, your Adv selections depend on:
- your artifacts, both type & levels
- your knowledge of the maps & playstyle
- your goal in playing
- Are you trying to become stronger and clear the maps more efficiently, picking the best Adv's to be more effective?
- If so, as Phoenix indicated, you're going to want to pick more than the min requirements in each phase, notably P1 & P2
- If not, there other factors at play. Are you playing the old levels Tutorial through EH? Or the new levels? Different strategies apply to each, so adjusting Adv's can make sense.
- Are you just doing the bare minimum just to be able to SAsc again?

If you said Yes to the last question, then you may well want to ignore some items that could lead to slightly quicker map clear times on an individual basis, but increase SAsc time overall b/c you end up spending more AP in each phase beyond the minimum reqs, and instead zip through the phases like this:

P1:
IACP 100%
JS 25%
Add Mercs 25-50%
Stats 4

P2:
AQ 20%
IAP 25%

P3:
SL 2
SWT 10
Tech Discount 30%

P4:
BHosp 50%
Cache Vis 200
Inc Cache Armies 100%
AAQ, keep upgrading until you get through 100K

Why dump so much AP into AAQ? B/c you're just earning AP in order to SAsc, gotta spend it somewhere in P4, and there's nothing else in P4 that will help you clear the New Levels quicker.

Clan Reqs, Auto-Draft are useless b/c Army Camps are so weak. Faster Digging, Auto-Dig, Simul Levels, and all the other Auto-Adv's are minor playstyle tweaks, but are mostly just QoL items.

Faster Digging might be a good choice depending on what artifacts you have and what you're planning to pick for the SAsc benefit. If you're planning on choosing +AP and you already have the max # artifacts and sufficient artifacts to support your playstyle, then Faster Digging is totally useless. Conversely, if you need Artifacts still, it could be good, but by the time you upgrade it, you're likely already 50% of the way through P4 (assuming you'll minimally upgrade Inc Army Caches & Better Hospitals first b/c these absolutely do increase your clear speed through both the Old & New levels), so the amount of time you'll get benefit from it is limited and thus once again not terribly useful.

Edited 5/24/2022 12:46:53

I did HCCC right after finishing Orbis on my first run. (H)CCC are very generous with the amount of mercenaries so if you have been upgrading additional mercenaries & discount you will be fine.

My playstyle religiously followed the market/mercenary strategy since the beginning and made my first ascension in about 100 days. I did all regular levels except the USA, all hardened levels up to hardened far land plus hardened Scandinavia. The longest levels were actually the middle ones around 200-400 AP that took me 6-8 days to clear as I didn't have enough advancements at that time. The latter levels may be harder but by that time I already had close to 100% additional mercenaries and a few IM/MR power usually solve any money issue that pop up.