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

@krinid

I finished all the challenges some time ago when I had a higher auto-conquer before I reset AP.

Yea I really want auto-dig, and maybe auto-activate-time-warp-artifact as well lol

Ok so EH/HEH, HO L1 possible w/o Leg TS or IM w/Epic Alloy Values, check, I'm ready to go. But what I'm really wondering is ... can we do HTrisk w/o running out of money if we upgrade Alloy Values from Epic to Leg? (: (: (:

That said ... Xeno has been able to finish all levels including HTrisk and still have tons of money left over. He's a weird beast!

So I seem to have kicked off a ton of discussion. (Which is hardly a bad thing!)

I think my path forward is to change my focus for advancements. Finding out that draft improvement is that weak is a bit disappointing, tbh - I thought it improved the ratio of the floating pool, not that it merely ground through it faster, which would have been worth investing in.

Mathematician: You ask about my AP total, and it's that low because I skipped a bunch of non-combat-relevant ones for brevity. Here's the complete list:

+100% army camp production
+40% cache money
+25% joint strike
-25% mine upgrade cost
12 mines visible
+25% smelter speed
+37.5% more mercenaries
Statistics 4
+330 minutes idle time
20% auto-conquer
-20% army camp cost
100 minute auto-smelt
-30% mercenary cost
+80% draft size
9 recipes visible
10% auto-upgrade army camps
+15% crafter speed
+9% AP

I don't have an exact total to hand, but I'm 1532 AP away from unlocking phase 3. I'd ballpark 10-12k total. (Which is depressing by comparison, given that I started a couple weeks before you, but I am clearly a lot less dedicated to this game than you.)

I've done all levels up to Netherlands, some of them multiple times, and the hardened versions of Ursa:Luna, Peloponnesian War, and Copper Creek Castle. I had a couple multi-levels saved up, and maxed out my level skips, so I'm currently doing a triple run on United States, Europe Huge, and Hardened Scandinavia and the Nordic Countries. That skipped me past three levels, but I wanted to get to ascension now that I know it exists, and to use those multi-levels on good levels.

@Alsadius
My recommendations . . . don't put anymore AP into AQ, SS (unless mining/smelting is one of your core income makers), ACD (discussed already in this thread), auto-smelt (unless similar to SS, smelting is one of your core income makers), draft size, AUAC.

And put more into: cache money, cache resources, merc discounts, +AP, additional mercs, alloy sell values, maybe crafter speed if you're still making money from crafting.

BUT know that if you max out Alloy Sell Values & Additional Mercs & Merc Discounts, you won't need to smelt or craft much anymore. Cache money & resources just get more money = more mercs. It's all about how you (A) get more mercs available, (B) make more money, (C) buy more mercs. That's it, as simple as that.

Btw, if you can finish USA & EH, then you're in good shape to execute on Operation Quick Ascension and generate a lot of AP quickly. Both those levels have a good Money-to-Merc ratio. USA has expensive mercs but also gives a lot of money; EH has cheap mercs. Compared to levels like Trisk which has low-ish money but super expensive mercs (and a nasty non-JS factor). Skip Trisk & Hard Trisk for now.

Edited 10/12/2021 07:00:04

The automatics were mostly for challenges and battles, and have probably earned me back roughly their AP cost. I wasn't going to go much higher with them for quite a while.

I'd like to finish phase 2 and get into phase 3 as soon as I finish one or two of these levels. I'll finish phase 2 with some combination of increased cache resources, reduced merc cost, increased alloy sell values, and crafter speed (because yes, crafters are still a major income source for me). In phase 3 I'd like increased item sell values, increased bonus money (likewise, still an important income source), one point of auto-sell and auto-upgrade mines (for challenges/convenience), and maybe a bit of tech discount/market visibility/merc visibility. Phase 4 is a long way off, but has loads of goodies. And of course, there'll be some circling back to phase 1 for idle time, mercenary numbers, and cache money.

And yeah, I'll probably ascend once I'm done this triple, try to get through a few more of the +30% ore speed runs (I'm up to aluminum so far, but could probably get silver or gold even now, and hopefully up to thorium or so by the time I get there), and generally work on advancing.

Thanks to all for the help.

Tried using the strategy on China Today. Ran out of Market money with +103% alloy values

So instead of being stuck there for a week i decided to Superpower a IM and finish it immediately.

I pushed my Alloy values to 100%+28% and my Ad mercs to 87.5%

@Shin
That's surprising. This is regular not Hard China? Where does 103% alloy values come from? Particularly the 3%?

100%+28% I get, 100% from Adv, 28% from Rare artifact. But it should be 100%+28%+15%+15% including the 2 Techs. And maybe even another +10% if you have the CW bonus.

I'm a bit confused as to what you spent all the money on tbh. Did you have all the Merc Discount techs? And you have Merc Discount @ 50%? Got both Alloy Value Techs?

When you're selling alloys, are you using the one that generates the most profit/increases the price the least?

I don't undestand at all.

on https://imgur.com/a/KkCLFY6 we see :
249B mercenary purchased


I reset AP, upgrade "additionnal mercenary" +90% and play on africa.

But I have about 150 B mercenarys after buy all them, not 249.

I have enough money.

When I did advancement "mercenary discount", the price decreased directly .
When i did advancement "additionnal mercenary", no more mercenary in camp.

I have supposed that i have to begin a new game to see more mercenarys. But it seems that no : no more mercenarys with the advancement.

@Lord Pal'horde.

The 8 hour Africa run I did was on revision 17 Africa, which has about 125B base mercenaries (19% total territory cost). Revision 18 Africa has about 90B base mercenaries (15% total territory cost). Moreover, as you have observed, changing Additional Mercenaries in the middle of a level does not change the amount of mercs in the conquered merc camps.

In general, revision 18 levels have less mercs. However, the same strategy works, except that we might need higher level hospitals and better artifacts/advancements.

@Lord
I've done that same thing before. I raised it as a bug, but the response is that the merc quantities are assigned at time of merc camp revealing. Once you've discovered the camp, its quantity is fixed. You have to reveal it AFTER doing the Adv upgrade.

That said, I'd recommend to do it before starting a new level to be sure. "Revealing" is kind of ambiguous - could be when you clear the fog whether by capturing neighbouring territory or using an FB. Or maybe it's the first time you click on the merc camp? Maybe other factors ... but doing it before starting a new level is guaranteed to work 100% of the time.