Has anyone else done an analysis like this?

I Calculate the AP earned per Hour of play per level. It is rough analysis, as does not account for how many powers were used that level. Some levels I used a lot of free powers.
**Edit: It does not account for sleep time or other long time away from game.

In case you were wondering which levels give the most AP earned per hour, it's generally Not the Hardened Levels.

Draw your conclusions.

Updated corrected Data. My AP is about 75,000.




Will update in the future as I complete all levels this go around.

My Faves of the ones taking more than an hour:

* Europe 1066
* Sengoku
* Copper Creek
* Australia
* Asia
* Breaking Green and
* Netherlands.

Edited 7/26/2022 06:13:14

I’m very a urprised to see Far Land and Hardened Far Land coming in so low, these seem like great levels. Are you playing the maps blind or do you know where markets/hospitals are before starting?

No i do not play blind. Use the maps. I do have about 75,000 AP.

I would ask, how do your times compare? My best is 19 hours for Far Land. Will do it tomorrow and see if i can improve.

Edited 7/25/2022 02:51:11

It's hard for me to do such analysis because I don't play the levels with the same AP. Once I unlocked phase 3 I start skipping levels. I recorded the time I use for each level since I super-ascended for the first time in December, so I can provide some data, but probably it doesn't mean much given that the levels aren't played with the same advancement setup.

Here's my pre-ascension level times for each level in each super-ascension. Most of these were done with a Phase 1/2 advancement setup (I typically unlock phase 3 at around the same time as I ascend for the first time). The early levels were done with basically 0 AP. The later levels were done with a higher AP setup using AP gained from earlier levels.

1st super-ascension: 28th Dec 2021

Tutorial 1m
Huruey 4h41m
Floating Rocks 12h
War of the Worlds 3h10m
Ursa 2h39m
Final Earth 19h
Drakemor 11h
Peloponnesian 10h
KPX 1d2h
Siege of Feldmere 2d6h
Japan 3d11h
CCC 1d13h
Geopolitics 1d7h
Breaking Green 2d5h
Hardened Ursa 9h
Hardened Peloponnesian 16h
Far Land 20h
Reconquest 1d13h
Fort Harbor 22h
Europe1066AD 14h
Hardened Siege of Feldmere 1d20h
AD1045 22h
Old Town 23h
Orbis 23h
Scandinavia 19h
Asia pop density 20h
Africa 1d2h
Rise and Fall 1d1h
Australia 13h
Hardened CCC 23h
Netherlands 1d1h
China 1d14h
Hardened Far Land 17h
Afro-Eurasia 1d13h
Hardened Old Town 20h
Europe Huge 1d9h
Hardened Scandinavia 1d3h

Ascended on 8th Feb 2022 and unlocked phase 3 at roughly the same time

2nd super-ascension: 7th Mar 2022

Tutorial 2m
Huruey 4h45m
Floating 11h
War of the Worlds 11h
UrsaLuna 2h7m
Final Earth 18h
Drakemor 14h
Peloponnesian 9h
KPX 22h
Siege of Feldmere 1d2h
Japan 1d9h
CCC 1d4h
Geopolitics 21h
Breaking Green 1d1h
Far Land 9h
Reconquest 23h
Hardened Ursa 6h
Hardened Peloponnesian 19h
Fort Harbor 20h
Europe1066AD 19h
AD1045 23h
Old Town 23h
Orbis 14h
Scandinavia 16h
Asia pop 19h
Africa 11h
Hardened Siege 17h
Rise and Fall 20h
Australia 10h
Hardened Far Land 14h
Hardened CCC 19h
Netherlands 11h
China 18h
Afroeurasia 15h
Hardened Old Town 11h
Hardened Scandinavia 18h
Europe Huge 12h

Ascended on 1st April 2022 and unlocked phase 3 at around the same time

3rd super-ascension: 15th April 2022

Tutorial 1m
Huruey 3h32m
Floating 5h6m
War of the World 13h
Ursa 47m
Final Earth 8h
Drakemor 13h
Peloponnesian 2h51m
KPX 19h
Siege 14h
Japan 19h
CCC 1d3h
Geopolitics 16h
Breaking Green 21h
Far Land 10h
Reconquest 14h
Fort 22h
Europe1066AD 7h
AD1045 20h
Old Town 1d17h
Orbis 22h
Scandinavia 1d7h
Hardened Ursa 2h44m
Hardened Peloponnesian 13h
Hardened Siege 13h
Asiapop 2d15h
Africa 1d9h
Rise and Fall 1d2h
Australia 20h
Hardened CCC 23h
Netherlands 1d1h
China 22h
Afroeuaria 19h
Hardened Far Land 8h
Hardened Old Town 20h
Hardened Scandinavia 20h
Europe Huge 22h

Ascended on 13th May 2022 and unlocked phase 3 at around the same time

4th super-ascension: 7th June 2022

Tutorial 1m
Huruey 46m
Floating 10h
War of the Worlds 2h15m
Ursa 5h27m
Final Earth 3h30m
Drakemor 11h
Peloponnesian 2h40m
KPX 5h34m
Siege 15h
Japan 12h
CCC 13h
Geopolitics 22h
Breaking 18h
Far Land 17h
Reconquest 17h
Fort 8h
Europe1066AD 15h
AD1045 11h
Old Town 21h
Hardened Ursa 1h32m
Hardened Peloponnesian 13h
Hardened Siege 8h
Orbis 23h
Scandinavia 18h
Asiapop 20h
Africa 10h
Rise 15h
Australia 7h
Hardened CCC 13h
Netherlands 15h
China 22h
Afroeurasia 21h
Hardened Far Land 12h
Hardened Scandinavia 12h
Hardened Old Town 18h
Europe Huge 16h

Ascended on 27th June 2022 and unlocked phase 3 at around the same time

5th super-ascension: 17th July 2022

The hardened levels gave you a low AP/hour because for unknown reasons your hardened level times seem to be a lot higher than normal level times. Maybe that has something to do with your playstyle. Hardened levels shouldn't take that much more time than normal levels.

For example, with a high AP setup, Hardened Old Town should take less time than normal Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Even with a low AP setup those 2 level should take roughly the same amount of time. But somehow your Hardened Old Town time is more than 4 times of your normal Rise and Fall time.

Thanks for Sharing --

Quick glance @Mathematica's times, there is a large variation, for example, look at Far Land


1st - 20 Hours
2nd - 9 Hours
3rd - 10 Hours
4th - 17 Hours

Something like Powers usage or time and attention is responsible here.

For Me, I use my Multi-Levels to do a couple of Hardened levels at the same time. Gets the most bang out of the ML power.
Also with ML have to spread powers out.
It's hard to compare levels as play style has so much to do with times.

Will be interesting to see the AP/Hr generated with @mathematica's times. Will post later.

Dr. K

I suspect from my own similar variation in time for passes, that a major source of Mathematican's variation is because of nightime/sleep affecting different levels on different passes. My next bet would be variation in artifacts can lead to longer drafting times when the map is nearly finished. And the drafting phase is very suspectible to life interference/motivation levels.

Use of powers would be well down my list of reasons as I have found that powers have only a modest impact on completion speed of most mid-later levels.

@zinthos

Time and Attention are two important factors, as you say Sleep gets in the way.

Superpowers are game changers. For example,
If you 10x a Market Raid, or a 10x Inspire Mercs, those add up :D

@Graemes
I re-did Far Land. First time this ascend level (Legendary Alloy Values) and got my time down to 8 hrs. Didn't need to upgrade a mine past Zinc and did not need, or have time to upgrade the Hospitals much either. With the markets ran most if the tech tree anyways. Nice. Fun level.

Edited 7/26/2022 04:34:17

@DoctorK
So many things wrong with this assertion:

Note: The beginner levels give the best reward per hour :D

Then you're doing something wrong. (:

To be fair, maybe this is true for first ascension, while you're honing your playstyle and still learning the game, etc, and definitely true if you're playing levels beyond what you're ready to take on Advancements-wise.

But once you have all the "good" Advancements, the best AP/hr levels are definitely the hardened ones. And the reason is simply that for the most part, once you have "everything" (good Adv's, good Artis, have enough powers and know when to use them vs not), all levels really only take a few hours to finish. So you can spend those few hours on clearing (for example) Sengoku for 195 AP, Europe Huge for 1224 AP, HEH for 3664 AP or Hex Earth for 11053 AP. The choice is yours.

Also, going back to the issues with the assertion. You list Huruey @ 958.2 AP/hr. I defy you to achieve that. Ignore the 30% AP shrink per clearing, this means @ 17.3 AP per clear, you're clearing it 54 times in 1 hour, or roughly once per 1.08 seconds. Please capture this on video and post on YT. (;

Now add the 30% AP reduction per clear factor back in, and you see that you'd never even make it to 60 AP total even if you cleared it a billion times, b/c the 0.7 reduction factor brings the AP to infinitesimal levels quickly. After 8 clears, you're earning <1 AP per clear.

Imho, if you're AP farming (includes if you're preparing to Asc or SAsc), once you've got all the "Good" stuff, you really should only be using the non-Hardened+Hex levels as stepping stones to get to the non-Hardened+Hex levels, and your efforts should be focused on either (A) figuring out how to clear/bypass (Skip Levels) the early levels quickly to get back to the real AP earners, or (B) arranging your attack profile to best suit the real AP earners (and this differs depending on whether you're targeting HEH vs Hex, for example).

@Krinid

Please Post your example times for your example "good" hardened and un-hard levels.
What are your times and your number of ascensions? I have about 75,000 AP. These numbers are valid for me.

Regarding your first comment, there are some errors in my math, recalculated and reposted. There was an extra factor of 60 in the spreadsheet as I was converting minutes to hours.

Third, the AP/hour number calculated is for the first completion.
Subsequent attempts are reduced by 30% each time.
Still, the lower levels are worth doing, and in some cases, worth repeating between ascensions, over other levels. For example, I would repeat Australia for 26.2 the second go, before I did Hardened Copper Creek a first time.

I would not do the Triple Nipple again though, its much too long and boring. I have never done Hardened Tripple Nipple. Maybe when I have a 3rd legendary it will be worth it.
Time will tell.

See the updated table above.

Edited 7/26/2022 06:00:50

@DoctorK

The AP/hour number calculated is for a single try.

That's kind of my point. It doesn't make sense to measure something in AP/hour if it isn't something you can actual repeat. Unless you're just writing a summary of how you spent your time, in which case it's fine, but my interpretation of your post was that you're building a strategy to repeat levels to maximize AP gain, in which case the results you put forth support an erroneous and unachievable strategy that will actually cripple your AP gain if you try to implement it, and likely waste powers as well.

I've lost count of the # of Ascensions and Super Ascensions I've done tbh, but if I had to guess, I'd say about 70 Ascensions and about 15 Super Ascensions.

My times:
- EH 4h28m
- HEH 4h35m

These are times from earlier clears when I had ~5-6 Ascensions, and didn't have all the "Good" stuff yet, but only some of it. Notably, both clear times are just over 4 hrs, which is enough for 2x hospital upgrades. You mentioned the use of powers, so if you use 4 powers here, clear times would be 28m & 35m respectively. It is also possible to go faster if you don't need to upgrade hospitals at all, which can be the case if you have 100% Increased Army Caches Adv + good Army Cache Boost arti + use SAC+FC powers, if you use QS & TS artis, etc.

The key is knowing where the markets, hospitals & merc camps are, and how to efficiently get them all and maximize the benefits of each. Once you get 100% Increased Cache Armies & TS or QS, the strat changes (or can change) again, and you can further your clear speed by riding the army caches to the big territories, then popping TS & QS. Clear times for these levels now can be less than 1 hr. Another variation that Parsifal did was actually clear HEH in ~5 mins - but I don't recommend this, as it uses a buttload of powers to get started, culminating in an SP IM on Kirovsky merc camp and just enabling Auto-Conquer to finish the level. But obviously that would be massive AP/hr if you can afford those powers.

I would not repeat the Triple Nipple though, its much too long and boring.

Uhhh, what? lol

See, Krinid, we are playing different games. I have only 2 ascendings.

The Table lets me see where to invest my time for the biggest AP return per hour.

For example, I would repeat anything over 15 AP/Hr before i did a single level below 10 AP/Hr

Your mileage may vary.


Triple Nipple = Triskelion

Then I am currently in a comparable position to you, dr. K, as I also have 2 asc so far only.

And I am tracking all my times, too. But since there are a lot of influencing things (sleep, work, arti cooldowns, waiting when a dig is about to finish in only 1-2h), I will not post all of them here. Sometimes, the hardened version of a map took me even less than the non-hardened one due to those factors...

The following times are without using any powers and while my artifact cooldown was at 16h:

HUrsa: 05h 32.2 AP/h
HPelep: 10h 20.0 AP/h
HOldTown: 20h 95.7 AP/h
Australia: 06h 129.7 AP/h

(My numbers include the 25% AP bonus from the advancement)

Until now, I was always doing every map, but I will change that. Only starting from ~HFeldmere, the AP/h is above 50, which is the minimum I set for myself after my 3rd asc.

A major source of my variation of level time comes from sleeping and real life schedule. For example, I'm not going to play idle while dating my girlfriend.

I didn't use much powers. Only a few IM on Reconquest which is very short on money, and obviously Kirovsky in Europe Huge. I also use Skip Levels on Triskelion and USA. I never use superpowers. I use a lot of active artifacts though. Supercharge Army Camp is useful for reaching the first market quicker, and Time Warp is useful for pretty much everything.

For the hardened levels, I love Hardened Old Town and Hardened Scandinavia the most. I grind these 2 levels a lot for super-ascensions. With like a 60k AP early phase 4 setup, it shouldn't be hard to complete these 2 levels within 7 hours even without using powers or active artifacts (let's say 4 hours for reaching the first market, and 3 hours to clear the rest of the map).

Earlier hardened levels give too few AP, while the later hardened levels take too long to complete unless I'm super deep in phase 4, but I would've just super-ascended if I'm in deep phase 4 anyway.

@Mathematica

I produced a graphic of your times from your four runs.

It illustrates the point made here by Krinid and others, that the times for the higher levels are about the same.
All between 10-20 hours.

Interesting result.

Shown are the first time along with the best time.

Thanks for the Data.

Dr. K



Edited 7/30/2022 00:08:56