It does work, but there are exceptions where you’ll run out of money and mercs and as such will need to depend on drafts and army camps- the notable examples being Copper creek castle, Reconquest and Fort Harbor, since they have fewer markets and mercs as compared to the levels around them.

For any strategy, including the market/merc strategy, you need to generate 100% of armies to clear a level.

Of these:
15% come from base mercs
22.5% come from additional mercs
xx% comes from hospitals
25% comes from joint strike
xx% comes from army caches
The remainder have to come from army camps

Importantly, the army camp piece is the only part of this equation that is not instantaneous. Anything you do which decreases the percentage of the other bucket fills up army camps by necessity. Any cache you capture when you don’t have the +50% unlocked. Any territory you capture when you don’t have maxed hospitals. Any inefficiencies with joint strike. This is very bad.

In ideal world, there is no remainder. But some levels which are large require you to capture many territories before you get all the hospitals. Some levels which are awkward require you to capture many territories without joint strike.

This is true for any strategy, it’s just the other strategies are so slow that you don’t notice how close you need to cut things to keep army camps to zero since you give yourself wiggle room by taking longer.

Thanks a lot everyone, just cleared United States easily, with leftover money that I could use to upgrade lots of army camps after the mercs ran out and the hospitals were maxed, though I had to wait for a short time (several hours) collecting drafts. Now onto Europe Huge (for the second time)!

How on earth do mercenary-based strategies give you guys anywhere near enough armies to finish levels? I'm only at +37.5%, but mercenaries are usually a fairly small portion of my final army count when I finish levels - 20% of the total, maybe. And I've drained every merc camp dry by the end of most levels. The only time mercs ever got me to the end of a level was when I superpowered Inspire Mercs near the end of a mid-level map (Copper Creek?)

Mathematically, this doesn't make any sense to me. Additional Mercs caps out at +150%, so I'm getting over half the mercs it's possible to get (short of superpowered IM). And that's a heck of a lot less than half the armies I need to finish most levels.

What am I missing here?

@Alsadius

Joint Strike: 25%
Level 3 Hospitals (+20% tech + Rare Hospital Boost, excluding JS effect): 30%
Mercenaries (+100% advancement): 28%
Army Cache (+50% tech): 12%

These amount to 95% of the total territory cost. With drafting or better advancements/artifacts, it is not hard to reach 100%.

Edited 10/11/2021 16:06:21

All mercs combined used to give you 20% of what you needed to conquer a map. With the latest updates this percentage got reduced, but I don't know by how much exactly. But just for the sake of this argument, lets take 20% as a number. If you max out additional mercs, you get another 150% of 20%, meaning 30% more, meaning you get 50% of the armies needed from mercs alone (assuming you can afford them). But, you don't need 100% to conquer a map. If you play strategically you don't have to acquire 25% of the needed armies because of JS. And if you upgrade hospitals early and quickly you save another (varying) percentage of the 100% map cost in armies that you never have to come up with.

So, if we assume there are no hospitals and you have maxed out additional mercs, you only need 75% of the total army count (due to JS) and have 50% in mercs. Hence, you only need another 25%. They can come from different source: caches, army camps, clan request. And very important: drafts!! You will get another x% (I think the community were never able to pin-point the exact number) of all armies that you earned in form of drafts. So, if you buy mercs that cover 50% of a map's total cost in armies, and the draft percentage would be - say - 10%, then your merc income would actually be bumped up to 55% (over time, drafts need some time to reach the limit, so you have to draft a few times). If - say - 10% of a map's total cost is available in form of army caches, there are another 11% (with the assumed draft percentage) that you don't have to earn otherwise.

If you subtract all those factors, the number of armies that HAVE to come from army camps becomes really small. Then, the only problem is to get all the money necessary to buy all the mercs.

Disclaimer: I haven't mastered this strategy yet and I know that you don't have to max out additional mercs. I'm just repeating what others have said before. But to me, this sounds plausible. And with the new markets you can make money out of thin air by buying and selling something as long as the buy price is lower then the sell value.

I think the base merc is 15% of the map and max sliding draft is 15% of total armies earned

The remainder have to come from army camps

True but misleading. With good Advancements and Artifacts, the combined total of all the other categories can easily total >100%, thus meaning you don't actually need any armies from army camps at all.

However, this only applies to the point when you've proceeded enough in a level to have access to all the markets, hospitals, merc camps, have enough money to buy the mercs, have unlocked the Techs, etc. And to get to that point you need some armies from army camps. But not much, which ends up being <1% of total armies earned (and even less if we use total armies required to clear the level, including JS & hospital figures).

So yes, you need army camps, but only as (A) an early level tool to the first market, hospital & first few merc camps, and (B) to increase the size of your drafts. And optionally (C) to boost the benefit of the SAC+FC level start strategy. These 3 things are truly all army camps are good for.

Thus ... if you want to set yourself up for success, apply your Advancements to align with boosting your long term money income, as this will help you.

@Alsadius

Here's the data of where my armies came from from my late phase 4 market strategy demonstration video that I've posted above.

The percentages are the % of total territory cost on the map. So when you add the percentages together, it can be larger than 100%, which means that I have armies left over when the level is finished.

You may notice that my Joint Strike saving is much less than 25%. That's probably because hospitals reduce the amount of armies I need to spend, hence reducing the amount of armies saved by Joint Strike. The use of auto-conquer at the end and my habit of going straight towards important targets without caring about Joint Strike may be relevant as well.

Hardened Scandinavia:
army camp 0.00895%
merc 38.2%
army cache 22.6%
drafts 0.327%
joint strike 12.3%
lv2 hospitals 41.7%

Hardened Far Land:
army camp 0.0117%
merc 39.4%
army cache 20.9%
drafts 0.382%
joint strike 12.6%
lv2 hospitals 42.9%

Hardened Old Town:
army camp 0.00118%
merc 38.6%
army cache 19.7%
drafts 0.00190%
joint strike 14.2%
lv1 hospitals 28.6%

Hardened Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire:
army camp 0.00535%
merc 37.3%
army cache 25.0%
drafts 0.183%
joint strike 11.7%
lv2 hospitals 42.2%

normal Europe Huge:
army camp 0.00410%
merc 33.2%
army cache 20.3%
drafts 0.155%
joint strike 14.1%
lv2 hospitals 37.3%

Hardened Europe Huge:
army camp 0.00498%
merc 31.3%
army cache 17.9%
drafts 0.213%
joint strike 15.4%
lv2 hospitals 35.2%

normal Scandinavia:
army camp 0.0389%
merc 38.2%
army cache 24.4%
drafts 1.51%
joint strike 14.6%
lv1 hospitals 26.7%

That makes sense on paper, but it doesn't match my experiences in game.

I'll use my current United States run to illustrate. I'm at 855/3066 conquered(west coast to Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and about half of Texas), so not all that far through it, but hopefully it'll demonstrate.

Relevant advancements:
+100% army camp production
+40% cache money
+25% joint strike
+37.5% more mercenaries
-20% army camp cost
-30% mercenary cost
+80% draft size

Artifacts:
+40% bonus money
+40% army camp production
+80 minutes idle time

Session age 7 days 14 hours

I usually prioritize hospitals and army camps first, then army caches, then mines/smelters/crafters, then bonus incomes.

53.2 billion armies earned
- 30.2B from army camps
- 7.9B mercenaries
- 6.8B caches
- 8.3B drafted

- 17.5B saved with Joint Strike
- 8.4B saved with hospitals

And I have 9.1B mercenaries who are unpurchased as of yet.

---

So in total, I've gone through just over 79B worth of territories. 22% of that was saved by JS, and 11% by hospitals, and of the remaining 67%, drafting will do for (67*0.15/1.15) about 9%, so I have to earn 58% in actual army income. Of that 58%, about 9% has from caches. That leaves me 49% to earn with mercs and camps. Even if I'd bought all the mercs currently available to me, that'd only be about 21%, leaving 28% of the total army count to be earned from camps. For sake of argument, if I maxed out merc availability (which would probably take all the AP I've earned in the last year), I'd be at 38% of the total territory cost, leaving 11% for camps.

I can see some merit in this approach, generally speaking, and it's how I try to play - cost savings are really good (though I think Fizzer has really nerfed hospitals recently, because I'm not getting nearly as much from them as I used to). But I am nowhere near able to actually do the kinds of things you folks are talking about. And again, I'm about a year into playing Warzone Idle. What does it take to get there?

Mathematician, I skimmed your video and...what the heck am I watching? You seem to know exactly where every relevant building is, exactly how much of every resource you want, and have so much in the way of artifact and advancement power that you can basically just do anything trivially. I'm not even sure if this still counts as a game for you, because it's just going through (seemingly by rote) a long-established script.

It's dazzling, but I'm not sure I'd actually want to play that game.

Speed running and trying to beat personal records is probably the most fun I've had playing this.

Just my two cents here, as I said, I still use a different (slower) strategy for other/personal reasons:

• idle time artifact is good for when you not actively play, but you really should have a 3rd artifact for the rest of the time. A good artifact will even outperform idle time even if you are idle for more than 2h. Don't know if you play in browser or on mobile (which is slightly different, in browser you can just have the game open in one tab and somewhat regularly bring it into foreground to restart idle time, on mobile you will likely want to close the app when you don't play), but as long as you can at least log into once every two hours, idle time does not give you any benefits. That said, I too use an idle time artifact at night because I don't have enough APs left to also spend on idle time right now.
  
• The community might differ on this point, but based on how Fizzer explained Draft boosts, I would still argue that draft boost is the last adv you should invest in. Again, this is my interpretation on second hand information, but draft boost can't give you more armies, it will just catch up with the x% faster in case you had a longer idle period or were buying mercs recently. Over time draft boost will not make you more armies.
  
• rather then spending APs in army camp discount, the consensus is to first spend in mine discount. Upgrading mines makes you direct money because you can sell the ores and if you do the math you will quickly find out which mine to upgrade for a good ROI. A clean merc-based strategy doesn't rely on army camps (mostly) and hence upgrading them is only ever necessary at the very beginning of each map and those upgrades are rather cheap.
  
• 37.5% additional mercs is a fine start but with the latest updates I have read some players argue that you need around 100% or more (search the forum for exact numbers). With that said, all the other comments assume that you can pull off this strategy! If you doubt that this works for you right now (which you said you couldn't), I would not reset the advs to reinvest the army camp discount points, because I personally like this adv.
  
• Yes, to efficiently clear the levels you have to exactly know every relevant facility and come up with a directed conquering plan. The usual advise is, ask in global chat where to find the points of interest. Hard to pull off on your own unless you fog bust the whole map before hand.
  
• EDIT: Another point: based on your total APs (which I quickly estimated based on the list you gave), I'd argue you are not at the point where this strategy can really work. I know that this might sound disappointing, but the time for which you already play idle isn't really the limiting factor but the APs you can invest. Regarding "What does it take to get there?" ... The sad truth: Have a good strategy right from the start, earn more APs than the average player, invest wisely, repeat. I know that I just said, to come up and use a good strategy, you need a good strategy, but that's what I get from the several posts discussing merc-based strategies. Play optimally, or fall behind. (I hope that doesn't discourage you)

Edited 10/12/2021 01:32:21

@Phoenix
Correct, Draft Boost is really just to speed up the draining of the sliding pool. Technically it does increase the # of fixed component drafts you get, but as we all know, this is negligible, so can't really call it an "increase", when it's an increase of 0.2%. It might make a slight difference at the start of the map (questionable) if you have Start with Techs & Auto-Drafts, but certainly not enough to outweigh TMB, BMB, ACB, etc. And totally agree about not investing in Army Camp Discounts - shouldn't be spending much money on army camp upgrades anyhow to save enough money to warrant AP investment.

@Alsadius
Not sure what were you expecting? First, his name is MATHEMATICIAN, of course he knows how many of each thing he needs. He's used MATH to calculate it. Ok, I'm being facetious, he's simply recorded it all and summed it.

Second, several of us have finished Europe Huge and the Hardened version over 10 times each now, so yea, we pretty much have the map memorized, and we can finish the entire thing without even referencing our notes anymore. I can tell you right now from memory that the hospitals are Montpelier in S France, San-J-something in mid-Austria, Ferrera in NE Italy, Varaz-something in E Croatia, Belgrade in Serbia, Serres in E Greece, Constanza in NE Romania, Chonormorske in S Uktraine, Racha-something near Syria and another Bothilski a bit E of it, Mtsensk in mid-west Russia, Wejhoro-something in NE Poland, Bronnoy in mid-west Norway. That said, I have never bothered writing down the exact # of every item that I need, just the names of the ones I need to craft myself b/c they aren't in markets. The quantities I can see from the Advancements tab (requires Stats level 4) and buy/craft accordingly. He's taken it one step farther to really streamline his play and go for super speed runs. Just having the Visibility of Markets & Merc camps is a MASSIVE help to navigating the maps. It means you don't have a flail around looking for money (markets) or armies (merc camps), you always know where you need to get yourself. So that just leaves you to remember the hospital locations, or to find them anew each time if you so prefer. If there were an Advancement of Hospital visibility, I'd investment in that too. But I see that Math gone 1 step further than me and even invested in the Cache Visibility. Oh actually I think he has Mine Visibility as well - so 2 steps beyond me. And Smelter/Crafter Visibility, too! So 3 steps ahead, then. lol. Anyhow, these structures essentially become "landmarks" to help you better navigate the map by.

Third, yes we have a lot of AP, and from the video you can see that even if we hadn't memorized the maps as much as we have, we unlocked a number of the 'Visibility' advancements, so from the very start of the map he has a lot but not all of the 'relevant buildings' already visible, so it's not even a matter of knowing where they are, they're actually visible in plain sight, this includes Markets & Merc camps, and the only other key buildings are really Hospitals, and you can either just remember approximately where they in relation to the buildings you can already see or just remember approximately where on the map they are, or you can write them down, or you can just wing it every time.

Fourth, as regards "I'm not sure I'd actually want to play that game", I have good news for you - you don't have to play that game. Don't write stuff down, don't unlock the Visibility advancements, don't get the Stats advancements, just play each level once, don't repeat them, declare Victory when you finish all the levels, optionally Ascend & then stop playing. Whatever works for you. Different folks have different goals in playing the game ... some just to clear the levels once, others to clear them as fast as possible, others to clear them all as many times as they can, others (most people is my guess) are just winging it, playing it until they get bored of it. I'm in the last category, and I'm finished each level 3-5 times, and select levels 10+ times, Ascended about 9 times (lost count) and tbh there's not much left to do for me. I could go through "the script" another time, but there's really not much point b/c I have little left to gain and I know the full story and ending. So ... I'm really just digging for artifacts now. Maybe I'll just dig until I have everything at Epic or Legendary, then see if I can just enable all my Auto-advancements and clear levels that way just for fun. Just play until you decide your done.

Last ... adding to Phoenix's response on "what does it take to get there" -> actually with the 5.14 Market change & the new Ascension rules, it's never been easier. It goes like this ... play all levels until you can finish Europe Huge, then restart EH, Ascend, play the highest AP levels you can reasonably do, Ascend again & repeat. B/c of the new Ascension rule all you have to be able to do is keep beating Europe Huge and earning whatever other AP you want in between, and you can rack up AP quite quickly. Using the techniques here, this is in fact your strategy. But this is in fact at least to some degree 'playing by script', so perhaps not the type of game you want to play. There are tons of Advancements & Artifact recommendations we can make but the main key is that you have to keep on playing the same levels over and over in order to get the amount of AP required in order to play at the level we're talking about here. But if you play ALL THE LEVELS in order each time instead of focusing on just the high AP ROI ones, and don't take any notes and don't get the Visibility Adv's, you can probably still avoid the 'playing by script' factor for at least a few Ascensions.

Edited 10/12/2021 02:21:54

Answering the question "What does it take to get there?":

I started playing Idle on 8th Oct 2020, almost exactly a year ago. Here's some rough data of the total amount of AP I have:

8th Oct 2020: 0 AP
end-Oct 2020: 500 AP
mid-Nov 2020: 900 AP
end-Nov 2020: 1,200 AP
mid-Dec 2020: 1,800 AP
end-Dec 2020: 6,500 AP
mid-Jan 2021: 7,600 AP
end-Jan 2021: 8,800 AP
mid-Feb 2021: 11,800 AP
end-Feb 2021: 11,800 AP
mid-Mar 2021: 17,000 AP
end-Mar 2021: 18,500 AP
mid-Apr 2021: 20,000 AP
end-Apr 2021: 21,500 AP
mid-May 2021: 23,000 AP
end-May 2021: 25,500 AP
mid-Jun 2021: 28,500 AP
end-Jun 2021: 34,000 AP
mid-Jul 2021: 39,000 AP
end-Jul 2021: 45,000 AP
mid-Aug 2021: 55,000 AP
end-Aug 2021: 90,000 AP
mid-Sep 2021: 200,000 AP
end-Sep 2021: 500,000 AP

The answer is time. Time is what it takes to get there.

functor's Africa speedrun used a 10k AP setup. Probably that's around the point where you can start powering through some levels with market strategy. Despite me having more than half a million AP now, if you look at the progress table, it actually took me 4 months to reach 10k AP.

i just hit 10k a few days ago. still slogging through china.

75% Alloy value and 85% mercs

@Alsadius

According to the advancement setup you've posted here, your total AP now is 4177. But you're at USA already. Did you skip a lot of levels?

If you didn't skip any levels, you shall have a bit more than 10k AP by the time you arrive USA. (or 13k AP if you purchased those +30% AP)

In this post, you can see that functor did a 8-hour speedrun on Africa using a 10k AP setup. So, we know that 10k AP is enough to power through some levels with a pure market strategy.

I agree with the people above that Increased Draft Size is not a good investment because it doesn't increase your sliding draft cap. But you only wasted 820 AP on it. A more important question is, where did those 6k AP go? Or did you skip a lot of levels? Level time can get ridiculously slow if you skipped too many levels early on when you're still low on AP. Playing USA with 4k AP is going to be a huge pain.

@Math
Zipped through your video a bit ... is that actually a full vid on clearing 5 levels at once? lol ... pretty sure I saw EH, HEH, HRoman, HFL, HOT, maybe even Scand ... can't be sure. wow

Your EH/HEH clear technique looked pretty similar to mine but with 1 key difference ... your use of AQ directly after all HO upgrades finish, before buying all the mercs (while microchips were still crafting) but obviously after getting the +50% cache Tech. This is interesting ... so you're relying on the caches on the map to replenish your units to capture the bulk of the "low territories" on the map (for the most part under your hospital min cap level or close enough to it to not be anything to worry about) and then stopping AQ before getting into the "high territory" zones of the map and then microing the captures from that point on, where it's important to ensure you get the JS benefits else serious losses could be incurred (different for the 'low' areas, where making a mistake is either not possible or insignificant). I panned through the video to witness the capture of Puchezhsky 1.1T, and you paused just ever so slightly (likely making sure you had the proper borders to get the JS benefit) before steamrolling it. You never have any concern of hitting the huge territories with non-JS captures b/c you only ever accumulate ~100B and only have AQ @ 5%.

This is a fascinating concept actually... I typically go the other way around, get all hospitals, +50% Cache & all merc upgrades, buy all the mercs, micro through all the big territories that could cause grief if they aren't properly JS'd, and when I'm confident I have enough to finish the level (typically ~1/2 what's left on the map), I slap on AQ on and watch the dominoes fall. Your technique is probably better for streamlining purposes b/c you're clearing out the low level territories while crafting the microchips, and saves a bit of time. Not sure how much, but probably a bit. Perhaps not significant, hard to say. Don't think I could employ the same pre-High territory AQ strat, though, as I have AQ @ 50% in order to finish the Challenges, so I'd be at risk of actually putting a bad non-JS attack on the 10-50B territories and quickly depleting the armies.

I didn't catch how many hospital upgrade cycles you did, but looks like you lost about ~2.xB units for capturing 6.xB territories, so likely benefit of 3.53B-ish (which I think is all HOs to L2?), which makes sense for a finish time of 3h43m.

And wow, you have it nailed down to the wire ... ending with 42B money, 7B armies ... lol. Good job.

I've been wondering if L2 HOs is sufficient to clear this while also capturing Puchezhsky normally without using the Leg TS or using an IM on Kirovsky. lol. So you've answered my question now, thanks. I usually do a 2nd round a HO upgrades just to be sure. But now I see I don't need to. (:

[The universe hereby grants Mathematician +11 points]

JUST SAW THAT YOU HAVE 500K AP! HOLY FRAK.

I have ~180K ... insane! lol. And I'm already thinking I'm at the end of the game's lifespan, and you're about 2.5x beyond me. WOW.

Are there any Adv's you don't have unlocked yet?

Edited 10/12/2021 03:09:57

@krinid

I've been wondering if L2 HOs is sufficient to clear this while also capturing Puchezhsky normally without using the Leg TS or using an IM on Kirovsky

When my Alloy Sell Value artifact was still Rare, the answer was actually no. I had to rely on the Leg TS. Even after using Leg TS I still had to wait for a bit to collect some sliding drafts.
After I upgraded the Alloy Sell Value to Epic, the answer became yes. No Leg TS needed and no draft waiting needed.

Are there any Adv's you don't have unlocked yet?

I haven't unlocked/upgraded those auto-advancements that may mess up my Idle Battle play. And I'm keeping my auto-conquer at 5% for the reason you've observed. But yea I've maxed out all advancements except the auto ones (and obviously Increased Idle Time).

So you're at 180k AP now. From the chart, you can see that the difference between 200k AP and 500k AP is only 2 weeks, so we're at a pretty similar position lol.

So you're at 180k AP now. From the chart, you can see that the difference between 200k AP and 500k AP is only 2 weeks, so we're at a pretty similar position lol.

LOL ... if it's 2 weeks of playing like you showed in that video every day, then that is a BIG GAP between us. (;

Have you finished all the challenges with AQ 5%?

Too bad there's no Auto-dig advancement, hey?

Edited 10/12/2021 03:39:22