I'm on my first ascent and playing Afro-Eurasia Gargantuan but I've run out of money despite a legendary Alloy Values (AV). I ran out of money on China (before that it was always the lack of mercs and I was swimming in money and I cleared levels in 1-2 days) so I upgraded my AV to legend. Now on the gargantuan I lack trillions to buy the mercs I need.

I think I have all the relevant upgrades. Am I missing something or is it normal that even a legend AV isn't good enough at this stage.

This is how I approach a level:
Get both increased sell price of alloys and the increase all caches by 50%. If possible also the two hospital discount, merc discounts and the two + 10% hospital increases.

Snipe hospitals and markets, upgrade them, snipe next etc. Take free territory. Only taking other territory when all (high value) hospitals are maxed.

When selling alloys I DO have my legend AV equipped.
When buying mercs I use my rare merc discount.
When taking (big-ish) army caches I equip army and cache boosts.
For huge stacks I use epic triple strike

Relevant AP:
Joint stike 25% maxed
Merc discount 50% maxed
Increased alloy value 100% maxed

Is there any way to increase or save money for the big maps?

Edit: I already sold all my ore, alloys and items.

Edited 5/7/2022 14:39:14

Mercs are quite expensive on that level. It’s gonna happen to you on hard triskelion, USA, and hard Europe huge too prob. Since this is your first run I recommend finding the biggest merc camp available (idk what it is on afroeuro or USA but for Europe huge it’s kirovsky and for triskelion it’s ypertinax6) and using super-inspire mercenaries. If you haven’t unlocked super powers just using regular inspire mercenaries combined with the approach you detailed above will get you pretty far

Definitely maximize the money cache advancement if you haven’t - it’s quite inexpensive

Beyond that I would say:
a) Increased merc advancement is sneaky helpful here by lowering the weighted average cost per mercenary
b) Avoid capturing caches until you have the +50% tech
c) If you are running out of money and *not* running out of mercs, spend less on hospital upgrades and army camps to hit the right balance. Some of the hospital upgrades are insanely expensive.

Edited 5/7/2022 20:08:39

Also, make sure you’re using the markets correctly! Best practice is to:

1. Check all alloys to see which has the best return (drag the bar all the way to the right to see which has the lowest %)

2. Purchase this alloy only

3. Purchase up to the point that the marginal cost is equal to the sale price with alloy values equipped

Using an SP IM sounds extreme but yes it will certainly eliminate insufficiency of armies.

Question, how many armies are you lacking at end of levels like Afro & China to clear them? And how long do you get delayed at the end of a level after you hit the wall, and how do you resolve it? (eg: craft items for 3 days to have enough money to buy mercs, do an additional 6 hrs of drafting, etc)

Tbh, I'm not clear on what you're lacking. Your strat seems legit, using the right artifacts at the right time, notably TS on the big stacks. Is it Leg TS? If so Leg TS on the right territories should be a massive help,

For example, these on China:
Xundian Hui and Yi, 1 NE of Fumin hospital, 3 NW of Xingyi mercs 20B territory (for Triple Strike)
Nanhua, 3W of Fumin hospital, 3NbNE of Jinggu Dai and Yi mercs 22B territory (for Triple Strike)
Lhasa, 3W of Nyingchi hospital, 4E of Bainang mercs 54B territory (biggest on map)

This on Afro:
Western Algeria Desert, W Algeria 101B territory!

These on Trisk/Hard Trisk (values will differ depending on Hard vs not):
YDomitian5, NW of L circle, 1 away from outer edge 222B territory
YOtho8, NW of L circle, 2 lines SE of YDomitian5 50B territory

These are EH/HEH:
Puchezhsky 1.1T territory! Egadz! Leg TS to the rescue
Danilov 246B territory

Also, what Adv's do you have? Do you have P1 Money Caches @ +100%? P2 Alloy Values @ +100%? P4 Army Caches @ +100%, Better Hospitals @ +50%? P2 Merc Discount @ 50%? And obviously Additional Mercs should be at least at +50% but +100% better, +150% ideal (not b/c you need that many mercs, but it increases the # of armies in the early and thus cheaper merc camps too = more of the cheaper mercs = less cost to clear the level, and you will have a surplus at the end of the level and can leave the expensive mercs in the camps at the end).

If you have all those Adv's upgraded then you should also get P4 Cache Visibility, and that will allow you to jump from Army Cache to Army Cache, and if you're adept at it, you can actually navigate across the map more easily to hit the key targets. On HEH for example, it's possible to start with SAC+FC, then zip from Army Cache to Army Cache all the way over to Puchezhsky, hit it with a Leg TS, and then the rest of the level is easy because you have 600B armies in order to get all the markets & hospitals. If you get stuck on the way to Puchezhsky, drop a TS on the biggest territories in sight and hopefully that gets you to the next Army Cache, and then once TS cooldown is reset, clear Puchezhsky and roll over the map. If you also have Leg QS @ Leg or Insane, even better opportunities to get Danilov (HEH) at the same time and really kill the level, or some of the 20-50B territories on the way to Puchezhsky.

@Noshaque

Below I will show the estimated ratio of the money a level has to the money the player needs. The numbers are obtained assuming one has Legendary Alloy Values, related (phase 1 and 2) advancements, and techs.

* Levels up to Netherlands (except the early levels): about 10.
* China: 2.5.
* Afro-Eurasia Gargantuan: 2.
* Triskelion: 0.3.
* United States: 0.9.
* Europe Huge: 1.2.

We can see that the ratio suddenly drops starting from China. That is why you no longer felt "I was swimming in money".

Since you have troubles with China and Afro-Eurasia Gargantuan, I think you might have made some mistakes. You may want to check graemes' post. If you have the powers and artifacts, refer to ChillHouzVanHoutn's and krinid's posts.

We can also see that, even with Legendary Alloy Values, one may have troubles dealing with Triskelion. So, skip that level if possible.

I just recently came from the same map and experienced the exact same thing (although I only had a rare AV at that time).

I think my mistake was basically that I upgraded all hospitals to max. I know for sure that I paid at least 4x more than 1T money for the last hospital levels. With that 4-6T money I could have bought the remaining mercs that I unfortunately could not afford due to hospital upgrades, saving me at least 8-10 hours waiting time (my guess).

Now that I am playing the US map, I put myself a limit: I will only upgrade hospitals to a given ratio (currently my working theory is 1k; i.e. from 100M to 200M hospital upgrade (second value), I am willing to invest max 100B money). I will experiment with it to finetune that ratio...

Edited 5/8/2022 10:44:14

@ChillHouzVanHoutn: Good tip, although I play without using powerups but I might use them on my second ascent.

@graemes: my money cache advan is at 50%. As you said it's cheap so I might as well max it.

Increased merc advancement is sneaky helpful here by lowering the weighted average cost per mercenary

Yup, thought of this. I'm currently lacking AP but this is certainly my next AP sink. My Additional Mercenaries is at 110%. Still a long way to the 150%.

Avoid capturing caches until you have the +50% tech

I always try to do this yes.

If you are running out of money and *not* running out of mercs, spend less on hospital upgrades and army camps to hit the right balance. Some of the hospital upgrades are insanely expensive.

I haven't ever thought of this. I don't bother with the lower ones since they save so little and cost so much. However I might look into if the bigger hospitals are worth it or not. @Otto: Interesting, I might do the same thing on Triskelion. I try and upgrade my expensive hospitals after I get my +20% cheaper hospital upgrades from the Techs.

1. Check all alloys to see which has the best return (drag the bar all the way to the right to see which has the lowest %)
2. Purchase this alloy only
3. Purchase up to the point that the marginal cost is equal to the sale price with alloy values equipped

I do this, however I don't think it matters if you switch alloys. As long as you keep the marginal cost below the sell price it should be fine.

@krinid:

Question, how many armies are you lacking at end of levels like Afro & China to clear them? And how long do you get delayed at the end of a level after you hit the wall, and how do you resolve it? (eg: craft items for 3 days to have enough money to buy mercs, do an additional 6 hrs of drafting, etc)

I don't know how many armies I'm lacking since I don't have any statistics upgrades. I just started playing Triskelion but I think it was around 250B, give or take 50B (rough guess). I get delayed for around a day or so. When I'm out of either armies or money I resort to clicking drafts. I don't craft/smelt since the items and alloys that are actually worth money are complex. You need either multiple ores, alloys or items. Not worth upgrading mines IMO. I do check if I can smelt some alloys. Some caches give a lot of ore.

Tbh, I'm not clear on what you're lacking. Your strat seems legit, using the right artifacts at the right time, notably TS on the big stacks. Is it Leg TS? If so Leg TS on the right territories should be a massive help,

Despite the reward name "The Legend" I only got an Epic one.

Also, what Adv's do you have? Do you have P1 Money Caches @ +100%? P2 Alloy Values @ +100%? P4 Army Caches @ +100%, Better Hospitals @ +50%? P2 Merc Discount @ 50%? And obviously Additional Mercs should be at least at +50% but +100% better, +150% ideal (not b/c you need that many mercs, but it increases the # of armies in the early and thus cheaper merc camps too = more of the cheaper mercs = less cost to clear the level, and you will have a surplus at the end of the level and can leave the expensive mercs in the camps at the end).

Money cash 50%, Alloy values 100% MAX, Merc discount 50% MAX, Additional mercs 110%. Ive unlocked P3 but I haven't put any AP in it yet. Used my Gargantuan AP to max out Increased AP to 25%.

@functor: Very interesting stats. How on earth did you figure this out? Also, I did start Triskelion, last time it took me 35 days. It won't be that bad this time since I'm using markets now. Yes I did my first playtrough without the market exploit.
"* Triskelion: 0.3." This is rough. On top of that you also loose so many armies because of the lack of Joint strike in the circles. Double rough.

Edited 5/8/2022 12:18:56