I played single player a long time before giving Idle a shot, and I think I got advanced too far too fast in Idle as a result. I find myself in late game situations where army camp upgrades are multiple billions for relatively tiny increases in production. The late game surge toward billions of income an hour has no equivalent in army production. Late game caches of cash or resources become meaningless when there are so many smelters working heavier metals continuously, so target cash bonuses territories early makes some sense, but the one-time hit is rarely as valuable as aiming for smelters and mines which produce ongoing cash. Bite the bullet and go for cash bonuses and caches early, before it becomes meaningless, is that the smarter approach ultimately? I'm sure I am misusing artifacts too, Market Raid is the most powerful one I have figure out, and it too contributes to the issue: late game, swimming in cash, but oh so desperate for armies.

you need better planning. also, some maps are very money heavy but low armies. the best bet for early on is go for hospitals and army camps afaik, then build income with mines and crafters, then upgrade army camps and hospitals and keep the pattern going until you've completed.

I'm no idle master, just my 2cents, I'm sure others will have good info

And max "Additional Mercenaries".

Thanks for the tips. I do aim hard for hospitals and army camps as the most valuable territories to acquire and upgrade, but maybe I have not leaned into that hard enough (mines and smelters are also tempting targets). That still leaves cash caches and resource caches as the "red-headed step-children"--the least valuable bonuses to target, which puts me in this late game situation of buying very expensive territories with effectively useless bonuses. What good $200 million cash cache for 250 million armies when an hour of smelting produces $1 Billion plus of income but only 100 million armies? That $200 million cash cache doesn't move the needle on the army shortage issue one bit when the cheapest army camp upgrade is $5 billion at that stage.

Joint strike (up to 25% available) will be your best friend until you can earn enough AP to play by "farm markets" to buy mercs.

Spending AP to gain army production seems logical and works for the first few maps, but very soon real army numbers come from mercs and caches and from savings from joint strike (12 to 15% except for Trisc.) and hospitals.

And thank you also for the simple tip to max mercenaries. I am far from maxed at anything, which is why I began the thread wondering if I am playing levels above my head--I need more permanent advancement points than I have for these levels, lots more. I haven't done a SINGLE upgrade to available mercenaries, that's how far I am from being maxed. I am also accumulating "Skip Level" bonuses (3 on hand and rising) because I don't want to be even more swamped by levels too demanding for my current AP levels.

IN China and garg Afroeuroasia I have the exact opposite problem. So many mercs, no cash to buy them.
I have AV at elite and AV AP maxed out so I was swimming in cash before hand but not now.

My additional mercs is bought up to 75%. I guess some discount mercs is in order if it's a phase 1 or 2 [I forget]

Problems ebb and flow in the game as you go through the maps.

Looks like you might benefit from reading Jz's idle guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EHCM-n_4vq_Hv7V1wo9QSTcRP2ba4qRqBh8fOh5PiKk/edit

It gives the key advancements you should hit for each phase, as well as some common tips and tricks (and a bunch of other stuff). It might look like a lot of text, but it will definitely improve your idle efficiency!

JK_3, thank you for the link. I should have read that information awhile ago, very helpful.

Better late than never. Thanks to Jz for creating the doc.

Edited 10/9/2022 23:17:09

JDB - think of each level as having “100%” of armies at the start.

From this:
- 25% can be saved through Joint Strike
- ~15% can be saved with hospitals
- 15% can be addressed with base mercs
- 15% can be addressed with army caches
- 22.5% can be addressed by additional mercs

This will leave a very small amount (~5-10%) where you need to use army camps and drafts - this is what you are referring to and it is very very slow.

In the early game, your only recourse is to capture as few territories as possible until hospitals are maxed and collect as few army caches as possible until you have the +50% bonus. Make sure you have maxed Joint Strike and are putting as much AP into Increased Mercs if you aren’t already.

In the late game, this fraction can be eliminated completely with late stage advancements (improved hospitals, increased army caches, auto-draft). With these advancements you can even get to the point where you don’t need hospital upgrades and can beat levels in literally minutes.

Thanks very much for these basic, foundational strategies. Looking at spreadsheet from JN, and your tips, I can see I have sadly misallocated my AP's, just shooting from the hip without bothering to read guides. My instinct that joint strike was important was about the only thing I guessed correctly, I have been wasting AP's on ore upgrades and other idiocy. Again, thanks.

Ohh my name is on the list of contributors of the guide! I feel honored. Probably it's because of some old discussion forum posts that I participated in haha.

Anyway, my usual advice is that:
If you find yourself running out of mercs before running out of money (which is your situation now), upgrade Additional Mercs.
If you find yourself running out of money before running out of mercs, upgrade Mercs Discount and Increased Alloy Value (for generating more cash from buying and selling in markets).

Army camp production is slow. For people who want to speedrun Idle, switching to relying more on mercs is important.

Very sound advice, gang. I reset my AP, have joint strike at 25%, 8 upgrades to Army camp, and as many mercs as possible, 30% boost is what I could afford. More mercs and beginning to boost Idle Time seem like sensible goals for my next AP. I bought the Autumn package so have all the artifacts, mostly at Common, a few upgraded to Uncommon, and one beastly Epic I bought, Alloy Values (I thought I would get to pick which Epic artifact when I made the buy, planning on Triple Strike, but I guess Alloy Values is a good, lucky one to have gotten from that unexpectedly randomized purchase.
I love my Market Raid artifact for the massive resources it generates, but am still figuring out which artifacts are most effective. Time Warp and Triple Strike are two that are very worthy of upgrading, I assume, but other suggestions welcome.
Actually a ranking of most useless artifacts would be helpful. Knowing which ones to sacrifice to the upgrading process is easy at the beginning, you can spot a few real dogs, but it gets murkier after the first half dozen 'bad' ones. Or murkier to me. Tips welcomed.

Edited 10/10/2022 10:05:06

That you got Allow Value as the bought artifact was lucky indeed. Because it is considered one of the best and there are a lot of artifacts that are plain useless, even at Epic. So, I'd never buy artifacts of this rarity. Rather buy a bunch of poors/commons, select the best one and use the rest to upgrade the selected one.

The usefullness of artifacts depends partially on their rarity and your strategy. But here are some general tips that should apply most of the time:
- If your artifacts aren't upgraded much (everything below rare I'd say), then most of the active artifacts aren't worth the 16h. Instead use passives and switch them around depending on the actions you take.
- There are a few actives though, that are quite decent. Particularly: Supercharge Army Camp, Time Warp, Triple Strike, and to a lesser degree Quadruple Strike and Damage Territory. Everything else usually doesn't do much for blocking one slot for 16h (Market Raid included). And even those only REALLY do much at Epic or higher.
- From the passives the most reliable ones probably are Army Camp Boost, Bonus Money Boost, Territory Money Boost, and Mine Boost. These surely are "equip and forget" artifacts, in the way that they give a nice passive boost all the time.
- All the cache boosts are good, but at low rarity not doing much.
- The Value artifacts are really good for either the market strategy or smelting/crafting yourself
- The Discount artifacts aren't bad either, especially the Merc Discount
- The two speedy can be useful, the other smelter/crafter artifacts have a way too low percentage to do anything useful for you.
- DON'T invest in Drafts, whether advancement or artifact. Really bad ROI.

I hope that helps.

PS: You will get an epic Triple Strike as the reward for beating Hardened Copper Creek Castle, so no need to buy one / upgrade your common TS right now.

Edited 10/10/2022 10:55:23

The list of best passive artifacts is particularly useful. The 16 hour penalty is painful with those juicy actives, so having a solid crew of passive artifacts appeals to me as a simpler, more effective approach. Equip and forget indeed!
But you do alot of defending of various artifacts, few make the clear "stinkers to dump at Common/Uncommon, unworthy of retention in the ruthless need to upgrade." Fog buster and Craft Double stink, Draft Boost a waste, the others that must GO in the winnowing process might be....? Assume a full cache.

If you join a clan and play Clan Wars, one of the rewards you will get is a reduction of artifact cooldown (16 down to 11 hours)

As I said, strategy dependent. I think I remember some player mentioning that he didn't use ANY passives at all anymore, and instead running Time Warp, Supercharge Army Camp, and some third active. (Still, probably using Alloy Value, but only for quickly emptying a market and then going back to the actives.) But the requirment here clearly is to have them all on epic at least. I know no-one who would advocate for an uncommon Supercharge Army Camp in favor to any set of uncommon passives.

The mentioned "equip and forget" passives are definitely good, but if you don't mind to activate them once every 16h some actives will out-perform them, at least at some point in their upgrading path. Then there are other passives like Idle Time that definitely are performing quite well, but that don't REALLY are useful in the broader perspective. If you only have the default 2h idle time, then a common Idle Time artifact only gives you 20 minutes more. And by the time that you had enough fodder artifacts to upgrade this one, you will be able to access more idle time with the advancement. If you got an epic Idle Time artifact by chance, great! If you have to upgrade it yourself, rather invest in the advancement. And other passives got nerved to a point that using them as commons/uncommons works quite well for their level, but upgrading them is a waste of resources (Hospital Boost is the perfect example for that, the two speedy's, too, but to a much lesser degree).

Similarly, most artifacts (passives and actives) are situational. Have you spent a lot of APs in Increased Army Camp Production? Then, Army Camp Boost doesn't do as much anymore, so you might as well transition to Supercharge Army Camp entirely. The same is true if you unlock techs in a level. They can outperform the artifact and make you try different strategies.

There are these artifacts that do stuff that neither a tech nor an advancement or power can do. For example Triple Strike or Field Hospital. Keeping them can give you a leg up, but some are still too weak to be relevant. In the end if you say that you make heavy use of smelters and crafters, then stick with everything that offers reasonable percentages and benefit these processes. Notably: Alloy Value, Item Value, perhaps even Ore Value, Mine Boost (in case you under-produce or want to Raid again), Speedy Smelter/Crafter, Mine Discount. And put less value on the two Money Income Booster, the (active) cache artifacts, and probably even Market Raid.

But - as you said yourself - money isn't everything, so even if these artifacts boost your money situation, you should have at least one slot boosting something army-related.

If you're more the "set and forget" type of player, find one or two artifacts eachs for (a) Money, (b) Armies, (c) others. And for those probably prefer the passive ones. For a more flexible/demanding playstyle, you might need more and rather active ones as they have a higher ROI (return on investment).

The Golden Triple that almost no-one will argue with is: Time Warp, Supercharge Army Camp, and Alloy Value. Other than that, find out for yourself what works for you.

Edited 10/10/2022 15:58:49

Phoenix, thanks again for your detailed assistance. I am currently upgrading numerous artifacts; it looks like I will end up a solid mix of active and passive options to toggle between/among. I am leaning toward a Market-based strategy, which I kind of understand already, but there is also a crafters/smelting emphasis that can be effective as well? Grinding away, the mines are a fun distraction with upgrades and running different metals, but I guess there is more to it than that as a coherent winning strategy? I am not sure what other features are emphasized with that approach, and if it works in hybrid fashion with exploiting Markets.

JK3 thanks for the tip about joining a Clan, and the reward that comes with that. I am shaky at best at multiplayer--more than once I have been booted for time. What I've run into is opponents who dilly dally and delay at some point, but short of the boot timeframe, I get impatient, and ten minutes later I'm the one who forfeits for time. I don't do it this way intentionally, but that seems to be the pattern, so I am not sure if any 'clan' would have me.

Endless fine-tuning. This game's fun. I find the advice to locate and max hospitals first, right up there with Markets as a priority, good and helpful, but a little impractical. I'm at a point where hospital upgrades are very expensive--several mines could be upgraded for the same amount. So it isn't quite literally true that you defer all other acquisitions until hospitals are maxed, is it? Or is the discipline the key, ignoring army camp and mine upgrades relentlessly? It seems some balancing of these competing investments opportunities is best but maybe that's naive newbie talk.