@Parsifal

The powers you have stay with you, and those you have already collected from the maps do not regenerate (eg: do not reset to being present again). You can collect each power on a given map twice ... and once they're gone, nothing brings them back. Ever. Not even Ascension. Sad face.

@ krinid

interesting information! Thanks
I will miss inspire mercenaries the most I recon... but on the other hand you invest in your AP, so at some point the effect from all your permanent upgrades should ease your loss, shouldn't it?

Edited 4/6/2021 21:46:58

Can anything truly make up for not getting anymore IMs? Those are super useful if used wisely. The best power imho.

maybe with an increased production of money and selling prices of items+alloys you won't even notice...
now I get it, why there are so many upgrades for revealing stuff on maps. If there are no more Fog Busters available...

btw, where did you read this information about Powers? just curious..

If you mean Powers being able to be collected twice and only twice, don't recall where it's documented but it's a well known fact.

That they don't regenerate on Ascension, we just heard from SubLunar about that in this thread. I'm not sure if his info is first hand experience or knowledge from others, but I learned it from him. And sad news it was.

But back to the topic at hand ... this level is depressing . . .



Look at how resource intensive these recipes are. It's insane. 51 welding rod, 329 twine, 324 struct ... and the sell price of the item is <20% of the cost of buying the ingredients. What's the point of even having these items on the level at all?

Haven't found the Relay or Microchip yet ... hopefully they will bring profit, but it looks bleak right now.

@krinid
First hand experience with powers not resetting.

Do you have any modifiers (advancements etc.) concerning the above listed recipes?

But back to the topic at hand ... this level is depressing . . .

Krinid, you don't really need any of them. Maybe the diode...
And I remember that all of those items needed was mostly Aluminum and Silicon and it's products Welding Rod and Twine, which doesn't take much time to produce.
At the middle of the game I let my mines harvest Aluminum and Silicon, but then I gave up. Didn't really need all of that.
You hardly need those complex items for any of your upgrades anyway.
I remember that I started to recruit my mercenaries after I entered Russia. After that is was a piece of cake. Most of all the Russian territories were 2-2.1 B.
Except of one gigantic territory which had 400B (somewhere in the middle-south). That was some surprise, but mercenaries helped me alot with that.

@Parsifal
400B! Assuming that wasn't a typo, WOW, that is shocking ... but interesting; that actually makes a case for the Active artifacts like Damage Territory, Triple Strike, Field Hospital, etc, which aren't terribly useful most of the time. The aluminum, silicon, etc, isn't a huge deal tbh, I can deal with the straight up alloy bar requirements, but these items need not only Welding Rods, Twine (not so ingredient intensive albeit it ends up being ingredient intensive b/c some require >100 welding rods or twine, so essentially the same thing) but also Rivets, Structs (which have high ingredient requirements), etc, and each of those in turn require hundreds of bars, and that gets problematic. This is the first map I've played where I just can't keep my crafters busy b/c I don't have enough rivets, bolts, twine, structs to build the more complex items with. Most of them aren't required for Techs, so I don't need them, but I need to build _something_ in order to sell to make profit to drive money for the level for upgrades, etc. So sure, having these recipes on the map that are unusable doesn't hurt me, but what's the point of having them at all? If they aren't required for Techs (thankfully, that'd be a nightmare!) and they aren't profitable either, why do they exist at all? Just white noise to cause confusion on the level? Presence of non-profitable recipes is quite confusing. This isn't new on this map by any stretch, but I've never seen this degree of non-profitable recipes. It would be better if they recipes were varying degrees of profit and maybe a few unprofitable ones so a keen eye and analysis & optimization is still required, but this is just varying degrees of profit loss. Why would anyone craft these at all? And if there's no reason to craft them, why even have them?

@SubLunar Unit
Do you mean Advancements for higher ore production? Are these actually helpful? I've always assumed that in-game money would be sufficient for upgrades rather than spending AP on it which would be more usefully spent on other advancements. If it were a straight up "Increase ore production" advancement, that'd be different, but seems far less useful being a specific copper/iron/nickel/aluminum/silver/gold/etc ore advancement. That's a lot of AP across all of those!

Side note ... do you have any other observations or recommendations regarding Ascending? Things to do/not do, how to better prepare? Anything you'd do differently? And how close are you to finishing all levels a 2nd time?

@krinid

Do you mean Advancements for higher ore production?

No, I mean advancements for higher prices of ores, alloys or items.

Yeah I might have one recommendation regarding Ascending: Unlock/upgrade expensive advancements while you still can.

@krinid
400B! Assuming that wasn't a typo
no typo. it's true. I think every big map has one territory with one gigantic stack in it

but what's the point of having them at all?
Some players (sadly not me) are really good with markets. Imagine crafting 50 antennas or a couple of TV screens and then selling them at once.... I can't - don't have the patience.

@SubLunar Unit
Unlock/upgrade expensive advancements while you still can
why? what else happens after ascension except that I won't get that many Powers?

After ascending you start again with the low levels which give little AP. So you won't be able to afford the expensive advancements until you reach the high levels again - which takes a while. Skip level powers are finally useful here...

@Parsifal

why? what else happens after ascension except that I won't get that many Powers?

Oh nothing happens, really. Just the AP rewards will be smallish again.

@Parsifal
Wow, well a 400B territory is kind of exciting actually! Looking forward to it. Did you just attack it straight on normally, or use some of the active artifacts to take it down?

@SubLunar

No, I mean advancements for higher prices of ores, alloys or items.

OHHH so this one:

Increased Item Sell Values
Items sell for 10% more money. Upgradable to 100% in 5% increments.

I've got my eye on it but with 1745 AP buy in, it's a tough start, and as it's phase 3, only recently even became available to me. Do you know what the upgrade prices are after the 1st one?

And that ties right into:

Yeah I might have one recommendation regarding Ascending: Unlock/upgrade expensive advancements while you still can.

And this makes total sense hearing it now but I didn't consider it previously. Having to slog through the low levels again with low AP returns, unable to unlock the useful high initial AP advancements. I suppose it's kind of too late for me now as I'm now on my last level and will ascend as soon as I finish with 1563 AP for Europe Huge + the 24.65 AP I have now for a grand total of 1587 AP. There's a few I won't have enough to unlock, including Increased Item Sell Values. Which sucks as that's probably one of the nicest ones to unlock given the problems like I'm seeing here ... but I'm not sure it'd be enough to help on this map right now, even @ 100% with the +30% Techs and +16% Artifact, that's only +146% and I think it's more like +500% needed to profit off these recipes.

Thanks for the tips ... even I can't leverage it right here right now, it's good insight. I'll be close enough that after 5-6 of the early levels that I could likely unlock it.

@krinid

Did you just attack it straight on normally, or use some of the active artifacts to take it down?
No artifacts, just mercenaries (I had maybe 300-400B worth of them)
And my Drafting was giving me 11B per draft (that's about 100B per hour!)
Wasn't a problem at all.

Edited 4/7/2021 20:01:38

11B per draft !! whoa. How big are the merc camps? To get 11B in a single draft, the camps must be >100B ?? Or maybe just you captured a whole bunch of 10-50B ones in one big spree?

I purchased the super camp. It helps a lot. A LOT!

then I had the following composition:
- all the upgrades from the tech tree (except from the very last army camp upgrade. couldn't bother getting the last three Dysprosiums):
+ 150%
- army camps AP: +240%
- army camp boost artifact on epic + 80%
- draft boost artifact on rare + 16% to all drafts
- also while idle I had both money generating artifacts equipped. both on rare (+40% from bonuses and +100% from territories)
PLUS I was playing Europe Huge simultaneously with the US map and used all the Powers from both levels only on Europe (that was a nice boost, but not a game changer)

I think at the end my army camps production rate was at 1M+/sec

1M/sec sounds about right for the huge levels. I did buy a SuperCamp as well ... just b/c I wanted to support the game in some capacity and that seemed better than buying a colour I don't really want. I'm already a lifetime member.

It does help, notably in the early game.

Now you've got me thinking, while paying Europe Huge, should I ML on USA one more time before ascending? And if I'm still playing USA when I finish Europe, what happens then ... ?? I wonder if I ascend and it counts towards clearing USA pre or post ascension.

It'd only be 1000 AP instead of 1300 AP b/c it's m 2nd playthrough.

Though artifact digs will be a bummer ... b/c can't dig in both simultaneously.

i just stopped bothering about smelters and crafters. get the first few upgrades and be done with that section. too many resources needed and buying to keep them producing is not worth.

so why waste any time on them.

@Timi
Agree ... I avoid them whenever possibly. Too much micro messing around with them ... but this level forces their use, since there is a massive lack of money b/c EVERY SINGLE CRAFTED ITEM costs about 5x+ more to buy the ingredients than you can sell it for. So if you want an item, it is either very costly in money (which you severely lack as aforementioned) or very costly in terms of time & resources b/c you must smelt them (and craft them as well in some cases, as some have crafted items as ingredients). Severe PITA!

I mean just look at these two items ...


Air Compressor requires 30 Uranium bars, 7 Lanthanum bars, 255 Welding Rods, 855 Twine (insane!) ... so you can smelt and craft those in some suuuuuper long period of tedious time, or buy them all for an egregious price (the twine alone would cost 164B) and sell 1 crafted item for 116B (a loss even just from the twine, never mind the more expensive items).

Or the Robotic Arm ... sells for 493B. Sounds great, right? But requires 119 Uranium, 101 Lanthanum, 54 Erbium, 18 Unobtanium. Seriously, why bother? The uranium alone costs 550B, and don't think anyone will make 119 uranium in total across completing an entire level! Makes the 18 uranium requires for Techs on this level seem insignificant. But why even scatter these unnecessary recipes around the map? They're just distractions, no harm, no gain, just distractions (I suppose you could say distractions are slight negatives).