Fix the “late game” problem, where people report they’re out of upgrades and just have to wait to finish the last empty territories on the map.

Happy to hear this ... assuming it will even out the "slog" to carry through the whole map evenly rather than be so heavily weighted to the end game.

That said ... imho ... one big problem with the way levels play out now is that army camps (and consequently any related AP advancements of them) are almost useless.

What I mean is that at the end of every level beyond the first few where my +100% army camp AP advancement seemed useful (can't tell without going back and redoing those levels to be sure), every level thereafter, army camps were a VERY VERY low % contributor to final level clearing army counts.

Take that to the later levels like Scandinavia and Australia, the % armies works something like this:

47.5% armies from caches
39.6% mercenaries purchased
12.0% armies from drafting
0.9% from army camps

All the way down at the bottom is army camps at <1.0% of total army production. So the ~500 AP I invested in that advancement and all the "Increase armies given from army camps by 15%" tech upgrades (7 on Australia), and the multiple trillions of ￦ money invested in upgrading army camps still only amounts to <1.0% of total armies required to beat the level. So beyond getting the level started until you can get to the material contributors of caches, mercs & drafts, they serve no purpose.

Even with all the advancements/upgrades/tech I mentioned above, on a level like Australia with 420B armies required to clear it yet only generates ~₳28K/sec army production, 1% (rounding up) only contributes <4.2B of the required 420B. So really does not warrant spending AP or army upgrades or even the tech -- but we will likely complete those to get the tech achievements.

That said ... I think mercs work well, I think the draft works well, I think the caches even work well ... but the 4th leg of army camps sadly falls behind.

So getting back to imho ... make army camps more useful. Make them a higher % of the total army production. make army production relevant. MAKE ARMY CAMPS GREAT AGAIN. (sorry, I had to)

I agree with this, in that the army production does not seem to make sense for end game. I am about 94% done on Scandinavia. I have 8/15 army camps maxed with the last 7 needing 1 or 2 upgrades max, while taking around 1.5-3.5 trillion per upgrade. Making 31.4k/sec, out of mercs and the drafts have gone from 400-500 million each to now less than 20 million each. The average territory left is around 150 million each. I have approx 12 billion neutrals to take assuming maxed out camps get me to about 33k/s thats till 101 hours of building. factor in drafts and maybe it cuts it to half. So basically 3-4 days of clicking buttons. and techs were done around 30-40% complete.

Fizzer suggested to buy mercs late in the game. Upgrading army camps asap and using mercs sparingly until all camps are maxed. This seems good on the surface, but would then make everything else take longer such as having all the needed crafters/mines/recipes to both finish the techs but more importantly build the high end items/bars that pay the most. ( I spent 3 days with upgraded and maxed out mines to build one of the most valuable items so thanks that I wont need 14 million of two types of higher end resources)Last game I had all army camps maxed by 60% complete and the game still took days to finish with just clicking buttons and waiting.

Also want to add that the best to make item takes 2 hours 55min to make and sells for 70 billion with all techs complete. So to make an army camp upgrade at this point takes 5-10 hours including generating income.

I basically suggest making the army camps produce more and or have drafts stay high. If I was still receiving 400-500 mil armies each draft I could finish the game in a day or two or 3-5 hours of active play. If the drafts climbed to the 300 range and stayed there the rest of the game it would seem more balanced or if army camps could get to 60-90k/sec. This will happen with enough AP spent on it, but obviously that takes earning it, and thus when I have spent there, I will be in a higher level experiencing the same issue. This also means spending little to no AP on anything else. I have only spent AP on army camps and idle time increase and unlocking joint strike only. 6.5 hours of idle time and 90% army camp production (max 500%).

drafts are now 8 mil.

Just finished level 30 United States, and same theme repeats itself.

Low armies from camps (22.2B)
Medium armies from drafting (370B)
High mercs (88.1T)
High Armies from caches (187.5T)

Certainly could have drafted more but had sufficient with those from caches & mercs so didn't bother (though I was getting drafts of sizes 12-24B throughout the game, but on a map where you have multiple 21T territories, this isn't actually that impressive).

Yes, I'm experiencing something similar. After the last update, even though Fizzer wrote playing times should stay the same after the levels were regenerated, my playing times dropped to about slightly over one day/level. Before that, it was about 7 (Fort Harbor).
And yes, army camps are useful only in the beginnings of levels and to pump up the drafted bunch.

So what happened? I doubt this is intentional because we could finish (whatever it means) the game in no-time, as krinid did.

You're right, caches are giving too many armies in big levels. This is going to be addressed in the next update (will be level revision 6). The goal is for mercenaries to be about 25% of your armies, caches to be 20-25%, and army camps the rest.

Edited 9/11/2020 14:26:40

Don't put too much focus on the time it took me to clear it - I used a number of powerups between Free Caches (not very useful tbh, gave me 100-300M armies when in an area mixed in with 1B+ armies), Time Warps, and the 2 most useful ones Inspire Mercs and Market Raid which I used in the early and midgame.

I used ~8 FCs, ~5 TWs, 4-5 IMs, 3-4 MRs. These were from my own inventory that I brought into the level with intent to improve time to completion & enhance progress through the level. Any power ups on the map itself are extra to what I used here. Though the ones on the map are all in the final stages in the east, and you start in the northwest, so these power ups I used were a great help in the early and mid game.

I also had all the Techs completed, and I have the follow AP advancements:

• +100% Army Camps (not very use tbh as per the purpose of this thread)
  
• +25% Joint Strike
  
• +40% Merc availability
  
• +100% Draft sizes

+100% Army helps get the level started - but not to the level of usefulness that the AP to get there demands.

+25% Joint Strike is a huge benefit, save 25% almost all the way through the entire map since there are almost no choke points to prevent efficient JS use.

+100% Draft was useful in the mid-game.

+40% Mercs is a massive, massive benefit. Even early game, having more of the cheap mercs means more bonuses = more money = more upgrades = more armies. Late game when typically you're money heavy and merc short = still have mercs to go around. If not for this being a phase 1 advancement which does nothing to help unlock phase 3, I'd have put all my available AP into this instead of applying some to increase draft size. Having Mercs at +100% would be a huge advantage (but again, does nothing to unlock phase 3).

But don't underestimate the power of the IMs + MRs on my quick completion time. (Worded differently, don't nerf the caches, etc, so much that the only way to solve the level is use an entire inventory of powerups).

Edited 9/11/2020 18:04:11

Yes krinid, the way the levels are built now, all one has to do is power up the perpetu mobile (inspire mercs, market raid if needed, find a self-profitable recipe). A skilful operator (joint strike chest capture) can then keep it running for a long time. Pump up army camp production, not to make them produce armies, but to increase draft sizes, also helps to keep the PM up should it slow down.

My point is that even though this whole setup takes less session time to finish a level, it actually takes much more real life time. It's not an idling game anymore. At least in my experience.

Yes, it's still in beta so this game, I'm sure, will be fine tuned eventually.

Agree with you that the current level design results in that strategy.

Also agree that the game really isn't Idle - and not just when using that strategy. Particularly in the later levels which have imho waaaaaaaay too many ores/alloy bars/items. In order to make the next useful item, it takes a high level of micromanagement and clock-watching to (A) ensure you're building the right thing, (B) build the right quantity, (C) not using up resources that you should be using for other things. In the earlier levels (C) wasn't really a factor - if you had ore, make bars. If you had bars, you either use them for Techs or craft items. In later levels there is a lot of overlap in what is required to produce various items, so you can't just haphazardly smelt bars, craft items and walk away ("Be Idle").

(C) in particular I've ran into some trouble when trying to play in a more idle fashion. I set my smelters and crafters and walk away (I have 4 hrs idle time) and when I come back realize I now have (just throwing out an example) 1600 barbed wire when I only needed 500, have 500 copper and tin bars but have 0 copper and tin ore, which I suddenly require to make the rarer metal bars.

Despite having lots of resources available, I find myself disabling my smelters and crafters while I'm actually idle to avoid (C) because once you've made those items, those resources are irrevocably gone, and a number of them (silver/gold/titanium/uranium/thorium ore, etc) take a long time to replenish and can't be bought at the markets, so crafting an unneeded item is very costly. And because the Techs are hidden, you don't know what items you're going to need. And because there are >30 items, it's difficult to even guess which items are going to be required.

So by making us (1) need ore for bars, then (2) then bars for items, then (3) need items to build other items, then (4) need the ore from other metals to make bars (eg: need copper/tin/silver to make platinum/titanium/uranium), it forces me to be active not idle in managing this. Accidentally creating 1 too many titanium bars means you wreck your tin/silver/gold ore supply, and conversely making a few too many tin/silver/gold bars means you now have insufficient ore to make the rare bars. And lastly (5) in having so much variation in this, it means you really have to pay attention and micromanage the production (ie: not Idle).

So the game is Idle in name ... but the most effective strategies require you to actually be Active.

after 1h i deactivated all smelters, as they were basically useless. just buy the bars you need for tech/crafting.

Screenshot is cut off, can't actually see any of your stats.

Use the scroll bar :P

Currently smelters are only good to prepare all the bars needed to purchase drafts in the beginnings.

Personally I liked the second to last levels version the most. Smelters useful, crafters useful, no recipes that allowed us to make money out of thin air. I think it was well balanced. It actually allowed us to be idle.

Yes, the endgames were dull and one just had to wait until one had enough armies. It could be taken care of by auto-conquer, but that is not the best idea, I tried it under current level design and it was a huge mistake.

Suggestion: to partially eliminate the dull endgames there could be a tool (possibly only for members) to allow under certain conditions - percentage of territories captured, all non-empty territories captured, army and money generation rate or any other or any combination of these - cut the necessary waiting and dullness. I understand there already are such tools - auto-conquer, idle time, time warp. But even if this was not possible or allowable the endgame dullness is a price I'm prepared to pay.

Please turn back time one level regeneration and make the game idle again.

I've only played as far as Ursa:Luna but I don't think we should be putting caches on the same scale as the other three army sources because caches aren't a pure source. At least in my experience so far, they appear to be huge army drains that give back a number of armies that may be somewhat larger or smaller than the ones you expended to get them. You could conquer multiple caches in succession and it would appear as though you had gained a huge amount of armies, but at the end you'd end up with about as many as you started with.

What caches do best (again, in my limited experience) is synergise with drafting. You may end up with no more armies than you started with in the above example, but all that income will, I think, count when calculating how many armies you can draft, and that's what makes the latter pull ahead of camps by such a wide margin.

@SubLunar

The problem is actually worse than smelters not being "useful", they are actually detrimental. Agree, it's best to disable them once you get the first few techs because you need ore for the later, rarer metals. So using the smelters directly hurts your ability to make those more valuable bars later. Imho, ore from other metals should only be required to make those native metals themselves. Use bars from other metals if you must, but not ore. This directly forces us to disable smelters to not hamper our mid to late game abilities, which is in direct conflict with the task of making bars to build things with.

Markets somewhat fix this problem by letting you save your ore and buy alloy bars ... but it seems like a (bad) bolted on solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist.

@krinid

Agreed. I understand it's just a game but it would be nice if it tried to resemble real life at least in some aspects. As you said, mixing ores together to produce alloys is weird. Especially if mixing the rarest ones there are. Plus it would be nice to see some basic real life alloys such as bronze or brass....

@SubLunar, you mean it feels weird making twine out of silver, or glass out of gold? LOL

100% agree, the ingredients to make things makes no sense, the most flagrant are the two above in addition to 99% tin + 1% platinum = platinum bar - wouldn't it be a platinum plated tin bar as best?

And several other odd variations.

It just feels like random item X + random item Y = random item Z, where it seems precedence is given to combinations where X, Y and Z have no natural connections in real life. (I'm exaggerating on this last point and being a bit facetious to make the point).

There are a few items like requiring LEDs for digital clocks that do make sense.

Would be neat if they all flowed logically (at least roughly mapping back to real life or minimally not defying the laws of physics) and if the items on a given level made sense. So on for maps with Canada, maple syrup bottles and hockey sticks. For France, add wine bottles and wine racks. For Swiss maps, add wristwatches and cheese slicers. For Dutch ones, add clogs and windmills.