Given only 3 passive artifact slots, it is sometimes confusing on how to equip artifacts.
1. When waiting to accumulate sufficient armies, I usually use territory $ boost, army camp boost and bonus $ boost.
2. When collecting a draft, I replace the territory $ boost with the draft boost.
3. When using the SAC power, I always use the army camp boost and wait for the 5 min to end before doing anything else except collect a draft (#2).
4. With the Super Mine power, I replace the territory $ boost with the mine boost and wait the 10 min before doing anything else except collect a draft by replacing the bonus $ boost with the draft boost (keeping the army camp boost).
5. With a money cache, I replace the territory $ boost with cache boost (ring), the army camp boost with the money cache boost and keep the bonus $ boost (but I wonder if replacing this with the hospital boost near the end is better.). I am assuming using the bonus $ boost increases the $$$ from the cache more so than the territory $ boost.
6. With a resource cache, I use cache boost, resource cache boost and hospital boost near the end of a map. Not sure if it's best to keep army camp boost or bonus $ boost but it's only a few seconds so it probably doesn't matter.
7. With an army cache I use cache boost, army cache boost and army camp boost but wonder about using the hospital boost near the end of a map
8. The most challenging to me is applying the free cache power. I generally use the army cache, money cache and resource cache boost but wonder if the army camp boost, bonus $ boost, or cache boost might give more.
9. Finally, I generally only use the efficient smelter card when I am short of an expensive ore (samarium, uranium, etc) and then only for a few seconds while I initially start the smelter.

My general question is "Is this a good strategy or is there something better?"

Hey,

a few quick thoughts from me:
- The Cache Boost is a neat thing, but unless you have upgraded it to rare or higher, I'm not sure if switching it in is really worth the hassle. I have a rare Cache Boost but usually I just use the specific cache booster (Army Cache Boost for army caches, etc)
- A similar argument is true for the Draft Boost. The problem here is that a) the effect is rather small and b) drafts are affected by a bunch of factors so that I would in general not advice any investment in draft boostings. Just take your off-times (if you don't have Auto-Draft). Each time you're not online you will have higher drafts afterwards. That to me still is an indication that any boosting effects weren't really worth it in the long run.
- not sure why you wanted to wait for super chargers to end. Because of the limited artifact slots? Just continue playing as normal, I'd say.
- if you collect caches from the map, the income boosting artifact won't increase the cache as far as I know. So, equiping Army Camp Boost for collecting an army cache shouldn't make a difference at all. These caches are predefined and should only be affected by cache boosters.
- For free cache, the largest effect probably would be super charging. Besides that, equiping the money cache boost but therefore unequiping any money income boosts might actually yield a lower cache, because both factor in.

PS: What just came to mind:
- It's all a question of how much clicks you are willing to do. For example, if I capture a large army cache (aka a territory with army cache that has a high number of armies to "defeat"), and assuming you only want to swap one artifact, then Army Cache Boost will definitely have a larger effect than Hospital Boost. How you want to do this in case of money and resource caches is more tricky. Again, if you only want to swap one artifact around, you can stick with Hospital Boost if armies are your priority (but: Hospital Boost really isn't THAT effective in general, unfortunately), or use the respective cache booster because that will have a larger impact than Hospital Boost (40% rare Resource Cache Boost vs 8% rare Hospital Boost). So, always keep that in mind. You can optimize a lot, but at times you just want to have fun and not worry about artifacts too much. I for example have three default passive artifacts equipped most of the time, and usually only exchange one for whatever I need in certain situations. Just because it's more convenient than to swap around all three for mundane actions like capturing a random territory.
- And: The efficiency artifacts are not really worth it. If you are willing to sacrifice even the last artifact of some type, Efficient Smelter/Crafter definitely are good fodder candidates. The percentage is just too low that they would really change the game in any way. Sure, you only need them for very short amounts of time (when the expensive recipe starts), but they only really work for "cheap" recipes. On uncommon they have an effect of 2%, so if any ingredient is less than 50 pieces, the artifact won't even do anything. And (crafting) recipes that require more than 50 pieces of something usually require cheaper ingredients, that aren't hard to make, so at least for crafters this isn't really worth it.
- While I have one of each type, I'm still convinced that other players are right when they advise, to upgrade a few artifacts rather than collecting them all. Because for most (good) artifacts the process of upgrading afterwards yields more benefits than the four artifacts you had to sacrifice did together. So, the best answer to your ending question probably is: "Select the three artifacts that do the most and upgrade them at the cost of all the others". But I don't follow this rule of thumb myself, so take this with a grain of salt.

Edited 7/14/2022 11:53:53

I have some poor and common artifacts as I am just starting. I swap them in and out depending on what I am doing but for that 1 or 2 percent boost I wonder why I bother. Worse, last night I kept hospital on instead of switching back to my uncommon mine boost... then I ran a time warp again forgetting to switch back. As Shakespeare Homer would say... Doohith!

If they are a bit more powered, rare, epic, Barney Stinson*, Chuck Norris, I can see the worth but at the level I got them.


* Known for saying Legen... wait for it... dary!

I totally agree, the idea to upgrade few artifacts and sacrifice the rest doesn't really work when the most you can get out of it is uncommon. I have most of the important ones at rare at least but even if I upgraded more, I couldn't make a second legendary yet (the first being the gifted TS). And in my early days in idle I switched artifacts a lot, too. But you will get bored/annoyed of all the micro-management at some time probably. And, everyone who switches at some point had instances where the wrong artifacts were equipped, and so had I. That's nothing to be frustrated about, that happens to everyone.

With these low numbers you really have to check twice if they do anything at all. Tech Discount is another example of an artifact with relatively low percentages that often doesn't do anything. At rare it's 6%, meaning any tech that requires less than 17 pieces (per type) won't be affected by the artifact. At that point all the micro-management is pointless.

Hi Brian, we've all been there. Forgetting to switch out Draft Boost or Mine Discount. I try to remember to check my artifacts before leaving but I only do this about 90% of the time.

All my passive artifacts are Rare except Army Camp Discount is Epic. All my active artifacts are uncommon except Epic Triple Strike (from completing HCCC last week).

Once I complete Hardened Scandinavia and get the 4th active-only slot, I plan to upgrade SAC to Epic as well as a few others (hospital discount epic is 48% off an upgrade!).

I agree with most of what Phoenix said but my rare cache boost is an extra 3.2% and that's not something to just throw away for a loss of 30 seconds of extra territory money. And, at epic, that will double to 6.4%.

Phoenix, true but when the tech costs 15k tin, the 6% savings is well worth taking. I've gotten so used to applying TS that it becomes second nature. And when I don't pay attention to what I'm doing, I find draft boost loaded into a slot. Muscle memory?

I used to micromanage artifact swaps, but it just isn't worth it. And now that I have high level active artis TS, QS, TW, IM, SAC, I rarely have enough open slots to do much swapping with -- and this is good for 2 reasons.

Once they're at high levels (Legendary or Insane; they're pretty useful from Rare or lower, mediocre benefit at Epic [SAC is good at any level though]), Active artis give better value over the Passives.

Second, it actually trains you to stop micromanage swapping your artis. It's a bad habit, wastes so much time and gets tiring with so many clicks. I used to do the same thing: AcampB, BMB, TMB, then capture a territory so swap in HB, capture a cache so swap in CB + A/R/M-CB appropriately, then back to ACB/BMB/TMB, etc, but it gets tedious quickly. Having actives taking up 2-3 of those slots means you only have 1 open slot. Sometimes I have 0 open slots, typically when I've done a QS, an IM, a SAC or TS and a TW. If something isn't cooling down, I'm probably not playing efficiently enough. (:

@Mark: I'm not saying that it is useless ALL THE TIME. But a) a few more tin barely take any time (with smelters) or cost any money (with markets) and b) the techs that require expensive and time-intensive ingredients usually only need a few of each, so no benefits from using the artifact. I have a rare Tech Discount and I use it. But as I said, those artifacts that start with very little percentages CAN be pointless.

@krinid: I totally agree. But that strategy relies on artifacts at least of stage rare, if not epic. Below that, actives are in general not worth blocking a slot for 16h. SAC might be the exception here, perhaps even TW. But if all you got was uncommon at best, micro-managing passives should give you more benefits (All caches +~10%, all upgrades -~4%, +45% money income, etc). So, yes, as soon as you've collected enough artifacts to be able to upgrade a few to epic or higher, actives are the way to go. Until then, I would prefer passives most of the time if you are fine with micro-managing.

@Phoenix..that was my point about using efficient smelter. When making tin (every 15 sec), using this artifact would take up a slot permanently. But making a uranium bar would only take a few seconds out of the many hours needed to smelt the bar so the slot is available for a more useful artifact 99% of the time. Particularly if you don't have enough mining capability and can use the card to save 10% of the needed ore. (By the time I'm mining uranium for a tech, money is usually tight and mine upgrades are very expensive.)

@krinid..Do you still use draft boost? That can be worth a lot of armies after collecting an army cache or buying mercs. I see your point about using more actives but I haven't completed my first tour of the maps yet so that is something for next year.

Draft boost, does it work if you equip it only when selecting the draft or do you need it equipped the entire time from the last draft.

@Mark: I would never want to tell you what to do, I'm just reporting my experiences, so make of it what you want. But, instead of Efficient Smelter, wouldn't Mine Boost be better? Yes, Mine Boost had be be equipped all the time, but (a) the percentage on the same stage is significanly higher, (b) it boosts all ores not only the one you need more of, (c) all the excess ores can later on be sold for money. All of this could simply be my convenience that I don't want to bother with too many artifacts. But Mine Boost is sortof a money income booster as well, while at the same time being more effective than Efficient Smelter. So, in case you are short of ores, why not use ACB, BMB, and MB (instead of TMB)?

@Draft Boost: We have discussed this a bunch of times in this forum, so just look around. The gist of drafts is - at least this is my understanding - that they add a few armies to your mix, but they are highly dependent on your attention. First of, the artifact should only be necessary at the exact time you click the draft, not all the time. But boosting your drafts only is useful for the short run, in the long run draft boosting effects barely should make a difference (except you have auto-draft). Each time your drafts are higher than before (longer off-times, after buying mercs, after a cache) that means that the sliding portion contained armies, and that in turm means that the percentage of armies you got from drafts is below the percentage that the game targets. As long as you dip under the game's draft-percentage at some point(s) you will have less than the game wants you to have, but the only way to actually boost your draft income is by never dipping under the draft-percentage (I believe it's around 15% or so), but immediately draft when they appear and therefore "push" your own draft-percentage to some significantly higher value (like 20% for example). But that is almost impossible in the long run. You can't be offline (or need maxed out auto-draft), you effectively can't upgrade army camps, buy mercs, or collect caches. Because all of these actions decrease your draft-percentage again.
The only possitive aspect of draft boosting (but that's a limited effect), is that you can collect the bigger drafts after large merc-purchases faster (say within four drafts instead of six or eight), but that really doesn't make a huge difference.
But that's only my interpretation of the information we got about drafts. I could be wrong.

Brian, I think the draft boost only needs to be active while you are collecting it, and not all the time. At least, according to the modifiers (which you can see on the Armies page when you get your statistics high enough; level 2, I think.)

Phoenix, you may be right about mine boost being better than territory $ boost, at least when you start collecting zinc and beyond. Copper is basically worthless and tin is little better. Still, it would be useful to do the math before deciding between the two. I do remember using it on the map with almost no territory bonuses (0.02, if I remember correctly.)

I don't recommend upgrading Draft Boost for the reasons others have stated but also because as you progress (post SAsc), you'll get increasingly less benefit from Drafts, and will probably fodder it for something else.

So maybe it's fine if you get it to Epic if you're good with swapping it in, and then fodder it to make a Leg, but if you get it to Leg, it will likely be a long time of not much benefit from it before you fodder it to make an Insane (if you evn ever make one).