The established path for midgame forward (around 45+ supers) is as follows:
Tutorial → Far Land (no hard levels), Hard Far Land, Old Town, Hard Levels for AP (HOT/HS/HR+F), Netherlands, Plateau, Hex, HCCC(optional).
From this point on, collecting+25% AP is the fastest strategy since it helps skipping more and more hard levels in the path, until none are played, with the exception of HCCC at the end to collect the extra Epic.
Up until this super (#95), my path was reduced to:
Tutorial → Far Land (no hard levels), Old Town, Netherlands, Plateau, Hex, HCCC(optional). However, there is a better way, unfortunately I was a little bit late to discover it, so I hope this helps other players.
(Please note that this thread is about optimizing the game past artifacts: if you lack the core Insanes and Legendaries, this might not apply to you. Players who have access to instant hospital upgrades will see a smaller improvement compared to players without)
Left side: Tutorial → Far Land (no hard levels)
Right side: Old Town, Netherlands, Plateau, Hex
If we separate the path into a left and a right side, then it's pretty much clear that the left side (early levels) can be easily optimized by chain-picking +100 AP, the right side (late levels) by picking +25% AP. But which one of the two option is best/fastest at this point in the game?
The right side remains pretty much stable up until end-game and can't be
easily optimized any longer. By saying that it can't be optimized any longer, I mean that you are always forced to play at least 4 more levels, unless you're willing to pick an enormous amount of +25% AP.
The left side, by contrast, can be optimized far quicker by picking +100 AP: speeding up the early levels and unlocking SL-advancement sooner. Thus, it makes sense that once reached this point, it's worth to exclusively optimize the left side by picking only +100 AP. However, there is a way to keep optimizing the right side too.
→ Since no more levels can be easily shaved off the right side, then it becomes a matter of finding a way to play the 4 fastest levels available, while avoiding the slowest one.
This is relevant because the established path for the right side always includes playing either Old Town or Scandinavia, both relatively slow levels (around 30 minutes) that force you to complete most of the tech tree even with maxed advancements and all Insanes. Old Town is especially annoying because you are also forced to finish the level manually due to the lack of mercs and pick one or two drafts while clearing.
→ By contrast, Netherlands also forces you to finish the level manually, but it requires minimal tech tree and it is actually faster than Old Town (Netherlands is the only level requiring 1 hospital upgrade though, either via artifact or x2 TW). Plateau and Hex are incredibly fast and both level can be easily completed in less than 10 minutes, Plateau manually, Hex with basic auto-conquer. (Both levels require x1 IM to finish quickly, 1 from wzib, the other from IM arti, so no powers from the maps are needed)
Skipping Old Town/ScandinaviaOnce the first skip level becomes available after completing Breaking Green,
play Hard Far Land instead of Far land. Both levels take the same amount of time, can be mostly cleared with regular AQ and require minimal techs. The boost in AP means two important things:
1. You don't need to pick as many +25% AP as I did to reach maximum cruising velocity on the right side, so you can concentrate on picking some +100 AP instead,
2. You can unlock all SL.
Now you can optimize the right side:Play Fort Harbor instead of Old Town, this will save quite a lot of time, since it has less markets, needs less techs and has way less territories, then continue as usual. The new path will look like this:
Left side:Tutorial → Breaking Green (no hard levels), Hard Far Land
Right side:Fort Harbor, Netherlands, Plateau, Hex, HCCC(optional)
If you followed up until this point, you might think that exclusively picking +100 AP to optimize the left side of the path might be the best course of action:
YES and NO.
That's because I chose a conventional point to separate left and right side, to make things easier to understand, a clear distinction between what can be (more or less) easily improved and what can't.
In reality, the "real" separator between left and right side of the path is set much earlier, and it coincides with the level where the cumulative amount of AP awarded by picking +25% AP becomes bigger than 100 AP: Siege of Feldmere. Or in other words, it's the point where the balance tips in favor of picking +25% AP. Plot twist, since skipping levels is by far the fastest optimization available at this point in the game,
picking +25% AP is the faster option to unlock SL-advancement early, but only up until Siege of Feldmere.
In my experience, an early injection of APs makes the first levels quicker, but it plateaus quickly. I think over 1k starting AP starts to get into overkill territory and I would prioritize unlocking SL after Siege as soon as possible.
