I’m genuinely having trouble wrapping my head around why ACacheB (ACB from now on) is so revered/popular. I currently have a rare ACB, but it feels so underwhelming compared to either my SAC or TW (maybe due to level differences, they’re legendary).

Can someone explain the math behind it? I think part of my issue is being unable to visualize why an (8% increase for me) is so beneficial and worth prioritizing above other artis. Why does an extra 80k troops for every 1 million army cache make that big of a difference?

Thanks! Hope this doesn’t sound to silly, and I don’t wish to go against conventional wisdom on this either, just want to understand a bit more.

SAC is good. AcacheB is good. They draw armies from different pools. Thus together they are better.

SAC draws additional armies from army camps. As you progress, this benefit will decrease b/c your clear speed increases, and thus you get less armies from army camps. More time = more benefit from army camps. Less time = less benefit. You will end up getting more armies from merc camps, and investing more in Phase 1 Additional Mercs. The benefit from merc camps these stays constant even if you clear levels quickly.

AcacheB draws armies from caches on the map. Also stays constant as you clear maps more quickly.

While 8% buff may not be a massive increase, 16% Epic is better, 32% Leg is great, 64% Insane is phenomenal. Imagine a level like HEH where there are 21T armies on the map, and (not sure of the exact count) there are 2T of army caches on the map. With Rare, you can get 160B free armies. With Insane, 1.28T free armies. Starting to see the attraction?

To put it into perspective, here's one of my clears of HEH (a long time ago):


Total armies from army camps: 250B
Total armies from caches: 3.1T (3100B)

SAC helps boost that value for army camps up to 250B, which is pitiful in the grand scheme - but still useful for getting a good start on the level.

AcacheB helps bring that figure for army caches up to 3.1T (from likely something closer to 2T).

Without that extra ~1T armies, you'd either have to get more money to buy more mercs (if you have them available - depends on your Add Mercs level), upgrade hospitals more (also requires money), or if you're out of options, just wait a looooooooooooooong looooooooooooooong time to get them from army camps. Not even SAC+FC will finish off a level when your loaded FCs give you 10-20B but you have 1T+ more armies left to kill.

So SAC will never help you finish any of the big levels, only get started on them. AcacheB can help you finish the level much much quicker.

Make sense?

In your case, post your level end stats and we can look at your #'s specifically. How many armies are you getting from each of army camps, caches, draft, hospitals, merc camps?

Edited 7/10/2023 04:21:10

Thank you Krinid, this is certainly what I was looking for and has helped me understand better. Two follow ups;

First, when does it become negative expected value to invest money into upgrading army camps as opposed to just buying the mercs? I doubt there is any clear calculation anywhere, and it is likely an art rather than a science, but still curious.

Second, the “sliding scale” of drafts - I often hear this. Is it just the big drafts I will occasionally get, but sometimes they revert to smaller numbers (typically when my SAC is up). How does it specifically work/is there a way to maximize it?

Thanks again a lot!!

1) Army camp turning point
I'd suggest you calculate it yourself from your own stats at the end of the level. When you first start playing idle, you have reduced ability to earn money, buy mercs, etc, b/c Adv's & Artis are low/missing. So army camps are a massive source of income - b/c you have no other option other than waiting for them to produce armies. Then you can get SAC, and it increases even more. Army camps in early stages of Idle could be 30% of the armies required to clear a level. But as you progress, it'll shrink.

So at the end of the level, add up all the armies (or just grab the value from some of the Idle sources ... HEH is ~21T for example) and calculate how % of armies were contributed from army camps. As you progress, it'll drop from ~30% down to <1%. The turning point? Imho, around 10-15% is the turning point. At that point, your getting more armies from hospitals, mercs, caches & drafts, and it's wiser to invest in those, and leave army camps/SAC to just kicking off levels speedily.

2) Drafts
Invest in stats and you'll see "Sliding portion" and "Fixed portion" of the drafts. Each draft is FIXED+SLIDING portion together.

Fixed portion is small, always a small % of your army camp income.

Sliding portion is a % of all the armies you've earned on the level so far, including mercs and caches. So get a bunch of caches, buy a bunch of mercs, and the sliding portion gets large until it runs out, then you're back to just essentially the fixed portion (small).

Early Idle is painful tbh, but trust that later game Idle is really good

It's also worth noting that, I believe the AcacheB's reputation was really established with the introduction of Super-Ascension because the last level - Hex Earth - has only one army camp, but lots of army caches.

So advancements and artifacts that focus on Army Camps are noticeably less effective on certain higher level maps.

Krinid wrote:

Fixed portion is small, always a small % of your army camp income.

I wouldn't have called it small. It's 90 seconds' worth of armies at your current rate (affected by modifiers), draftable every 6 minutes. So if drafting as soon as possible that's a quarter of the army camp income. Of course, if you draft infrequently then that relative percentage drops. In practice, I found that the steady state (for swift drafting, nothing massive in the sliding pool) is that a draft returns about half as much as the standard army income for those six minutes. i.e., the steady state sliding draft was also around 90s worth of armies, for 180s total gain in the drafting period.

Of course, this is going to be affected by other things as well. I'm just quibbling that I don't feel that "25%" is "a small %".

(In your screenshot above, army camp income was 250B and fixed draft component was 176B, which I admit I don't understand... but it doesn't seem a small percentage either. :) )

As Tog pointed out, the post SAsc levels sway even further from army camp towards towards army caches b/c less army camps and huuuuuuge army caches. It's not that the caches are numerous, just that they are a few massive ones on each level

@FTWW
I see what you mean. My point was that the benefit from drafts comes largely (85%-95% depending on how quickly you clear the level; faster = more weighted towards sliding) from the sliding component

In the HEH example I posted, total armies for map = ~21T, the fixed component of 250B = 0.8% of the total armies, and the sliding component of 1.26T = 6%. Neither are remarkable, but 6% >> 0.8%. 0.8% is essentially negligible, where at best it's useful in the early map if you kick off SAC+FC - Drafts in that stage can be quite useful to help you get to the 1st market, etc. More importantly, it's annoying to actually draft every 6 mins for an entire level, especially when the drafts get so small after the sliding portion is consumed that it's only giving you <5% of the armies needed to capture a territory when you're past the halfway point in a map. It's different if you have Auto-Draft though - it becomes easy drafts and if you slam a TW, you instantly receive numerous drafts worth of armies

The main point I'm trying to make though, is that the more you play, the less you rely on Army Camps & Drafts, and the more you will rely on Mercs, Caches & Hospitals (and being able to generate the money to make use of them), and eventually you get a point where you can just rely heavily on Mercs, Caches & Artifacts, clearing levels without even upgrading hospitals, quite often leaving even the sliding portion of Drafts unconsumed b/c you finished the level so quickly that you didn't need to wait to draw down on it

ACacheB is more powerfull the later you get in the game. Most SAsc levels work mostly on ACaches and boosting those as much as possible is the key to beating them. My last Hex Earth run got ~8t armies, 7.9t of those from caches