What artifact should I upgrade to epic next? I honestly have no idea.

This is what I have ATM
(I use those up to triple strike everything else is for upgrading, my SASC is still far far away real time wise since im doing something stupid that makes every level take forever to finish, been on this one for 5 days lol).

https://imgur.com/a/iXzf4lC

Additional info/thoughts:
What I have equiped is what I always use, I use the first line very often and the second line when there's a need to. Only TS in 2 or 3 levels. (trisk usa and EH).
-Army boost is cool, but only goes from 129k /s to 139 (though I didn't upgrade every camp on this level).
-Both money boosts are awesome early early but fall out very quick.
-Merc discount.. since they price is so low maybe doesn't do much? But since you buy billions maybe its good?
-money/res Cache boost: Would be cool to have, but maybe not a priority?
-Item Value: I don't sell much items anyway... still good I guess.
-ore value might be good, there's only 6 levels I don't have enough money and they have tons of ore. But only usefull in those.
- Army camp discount.... just nah. Its usefull but not early on.

So I'm left with hospital price, its usefull saves me money or hospital boost which is good, but not amazing and maybe army cache, not sure how good it is (working on increasing it atm with advancements) but im just not sure. What do you guys think? Been thinking for 3 days still cant decide on my own.

From what I've been reading, it's better to run actives than passives.
Personally, I'd go one passive [Army Camps] and swap it out until the swapping gets irksome.
From what I understand the following actives are better than passives
Army Camp 20X. Really good at the beginning and mid game with Free Cashe. If you want to have real fun, get some of those army camp boost powers and bump up all your camps to 20X and run free Cashe. Later it's still good, but it's nice to get a good start on a map and 20X all your army camp is a higher percentage than 20X one of 10 camps
Triple Strike/Quad Strike. Seems to be good mid to end game. Territories don't have them huge armies at the beginning of a map
Inspire Mercs. Best done of the last few camps, in particular the last one.
Let's do the time Warp again. Good any time, in particular if you just upped a hospital and don't want to wait around to use it.

That's 5 artifacts and 3 slots if you go one passive and they vary on ability depending on the stage you are at. Finding a spot worthy of a quad strike might be an issue early to mid game.
I suppose some would say 4 actives all the time. I don't really know what I am talking about, I am just a nerd noob who reads other people's thoughts and applies my economics background.
Actually once you really bump your army camps via AP, the army camp booster and much of the other passives tend to be a lot less impressive. So 4 slots for active once you are advances might be the thing

Edited 7/23/2022 07:27:33

Time Warp makes a fine epic. tho I don't see a TW Rare in your collection, so make one of those first?

TW really hits a sweet spot at Epic. It finally does enough to be worth the effort and a 2 hour jump matches real well with hospital upgrades.

Hi,

in all those discussions I see very seldom the Mine Discount. MD is by my opinion one of those artifacts, which really gets more and more efficient, as higher you upgrade it.

While most other artifacts are loosing their efficiency, the net efficiency of MD grows.

So lets compare some Artifacts:
An rare army camp boost of nominally 40% gives you just 6.5% more armies, after you have pushed your advancements to 500%, upgrading that to epic (80% sound great, or?) gives you just around 13% more armies.
That means, that the upgrade to epic would give you just a bit more than 6% armies, based on current income.

The Ore Values artifact sums finally up with 100% Ore Sell Advancement. So your current rare artifact gives you 236% of ore, instead 200% without. Upgrading that would result in 272%, so you would gain a net result of around 15% by upgrading that to rare [ (272/236)-1) = 0,152 ]

The rare MD gives you right now 10% on mine upgrades, the epic gives you 20%. Other than the those artifacts rising values, the discount artifacts interact different with advancements. Here the discount you see on the artifact, is the discount you get, no matter how much your discount in the advancements is.
So a mine upgrade worth 1B will cost you with a rare artifact 900M, with an epic artifact 800M.
That makes real savings of 12.5% by upgrading it. [ (900/800)-1 ]
So the step from 10% to 20% gives you not 10% but 12.5% more money for other upgrades or for armies.

This forum is slanted pretty heavily towards tryhard players who are min/maxing their build to beat levels as quickly as possible. For these players, the answer is almost certainly some combination of Alloy Values, Time Warp, Army Cache Boost. If you’re playing like this, Mine Discount doesn’t warrant consideration because you never ever upgrade a mine. You can get things like Merc Discount, Speedy Crafters and Hospital Boost to fill out a second tier of artifacts but these are essentially rounding errors if you have a Legendary+ Alloy Values and Phase 4 advancements.

In the ultra late game on Hex Earth it’s honestly hard to come up with an artifact that does anything at all. That’s why people are looking at things like Inspire Mercs - none of the artifacts do anything meaningful if you’re seriously grinding this level.

It really just comes down to your playstyle. If you have a more casual playstyle then just upgrade whatever you think would be fun to play with. Mines are cool!

What Graemes said: Alloy Values, Time Warp, Army Cache Boost.

Army Cache Boost is also very useful on Hex Earth (same as for all old and new levels), therefore I would upgrade this artifact to epic.

I would also upgrade three more to epic so that you can upgrade Alloy Value or Army Cache Boost to Legendary, i.e. just dump the other artifacts (keep SAC), but that's a matter of playstyle.

@graemes:
...because you never ever upgrade a mine...

Can you explain, how you finish the first two or three ascend cycles, without upgrading any mines?
Somehow you have to earn your epic and legendary artifacts.

Can you give me -and others- a short overview, how you reach a state, where you can finish levels like Triskelion, Huge Europe and their hardened counterparts, without any income through mines?

Right now mine income is the biggest part in my games, to earn all the money for mercenaries.

market strat, max alloy value advancement, have minimum epic alloy value artifact, and take advantage of buying low from the markets and selling high until the buy price is no longer much cheaper than the sell price.

Can you explain, how you finish the first two or three ascend cycles, without upgrading any mines?
Somehow you have to earn your epic and legendary artifacts.

See this guide:
https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1EHCM-n_4vq_Hv7V1wo9QSTcRP2ba4qRqBh8fOh5PiKk

What TR-8R said, but important to note that you also need 100% additional mercenaries (or more) and you simply avoid the “bad” levels.

Thank you all for the advices.

As for mine discount, the problem here is SASC... it made most artifacts useless because you cant keep them all. I would love to keep all my artifacts, but when I SASC I will only be able to keep some, so I will have to prioritize them by usefulness.
Mine discount is good at the start but after a few ascensions loses points.

Afro Eurasia, Hard Rise and Fall, Hard China, Trisk, USA, Europe Huge are the only levels I don't have enough money to buy all mercs. (I dont skip levels). So here, might be helpful, but I might simply upgrade everything up to platinum to keep smelters going forever, which is what I do and it just pays for itself, so its useful but not amazing even in this case. I dont go further with mines because it becomes too expansive (even this asks you for absurd amounts of iron).

Honestly SASC ruined artifacts for me, but I also don't have a better solution if you kept everything it would be too broken.