@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.

Thank you a lot for your quick responses .

I have stopped a second time Africa, because i don't want to wait to have 200 B with army camp (10 days). I am trying Reconquest 1065, to have +30% platine, with the market-based strategy.

My advice ... if you were far into Africa, just Skip it for now & clear it on your next playthrough. B/c all the AP you earned so far in Africa will NOT BE GRANTED on your next playthrough (but you'll still have to start from the beginning again), it's best to conserve time/AP to just skip now, complete it later.

@krinid: The game remembers that I haven't finished some level EVEN AFTER I ascended? Or have I misunderstood whatever you were saying here? Given that the game resets a lot of things when I ascend, I would have hoped that ascension resets such things as well. In fact I see no reason why this shouldn't be reset at this point in time. Otherwise the whole "all levels give their base AP again"-thing would not be true anymore.

Finally got enough ap and got used to the market strat. Able to complete AEG in 2 days with 11k ap.

Gonna get enough IM's to superpower the Kirovsky camp in EU huge and ascend

@Phoenix
Correct, all is reset post Ascension, so if what I wrote wasn't clear, let me restate:
- For aborted levels, SKIP them and play through to EH.
- Ascend, reset AP.
- Replay the skipped level, it will grant full AP for clearing it instead of partial AP minus the amount you already played on the level pre-ascension.

What is EH, krinid?

Europe Huge

@krinid: okay, then all is fine. Your statement made it sound (to me) that you would take over the partial AP-state of aborted levels.

B/c all the AP you earned so far in Africa will NOT BE GRANTED on your next playthrough

The tricky part here was, what "playthrough" means. Some players use it to mean ascension, that's why I came to my interpretation. But you just meant, if you play it again (within the same ascension). Thanks, for clearing this up.
I guess we should define more (and clear) terminology. I already accepted that (mostly new) players call artifacts "cards". But that doesn't help if everyone uses their own terms to describe something.

so , in Reconquest 1065 : after 23h, not enough mercenarys, not enough money to finish.
It stays 30B to conquer, 5 B mercenary
income 30k/s

join strike and hospital save about half army

@Lord Pal'horde.

If we do not want to draft or rely on army camps, revision 18 Reconquest 1065 might require +120% additional mercs for players who have not reached Phase 4 yet, regardless the strategies they employ.

I suspect that either you wasted too many armies before leveling up all hospitals and getting the hospital techs, or your additional mercs are too low. Since you said "30B to conquer", it might be the former case. You may want to refer to krinid's details. Another solution is to level up all army camps and draft. It we can deplete the sliding drafting pool, then +70% additional mercs might be enough.

I am pretty sure that early levels have more than enough money. With +100% Increased Alloy Sell Values and merc discount techs/advancements, the markets should give enough money to level up all hospitals and purchase all mercs. The only reason why I did not take it in my Africa run was that the scout run I did before showed that the money on revision 17 Africa is enough even without this advancement.

If you can share more information on your failed attempt, then it is more likely to pinpoint the issue that you encountered.

Edited 10/14/2021 17:41:48