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    Your Elvenar Team

"Best" Military AW

DeletedUser9601

Guest
I'm curious about people's (albeit subjective) thoughts about the "best" AW for fighting. My second city is going to be military-focused, and I planned on heavily levelling the Martial Monastery. It seems like the best option because it improves all troops, but the culture boost is arguably a "waste."

The other AWs are either focused on giving you much better troop improvement (50% more in some cases) (though that opens up the discussion of troop health vs troop strength), and either give free troops (great) or allow faster troop training (less great).

I anticipate in my second city, supplies will be at a premium, so faster troop training doesn't seem that appealing.

I wanted to get others' thoughts though.
 

DeletedUser3507

Guest
Martial Monastery for defense. Toads for Rock Golems production and heavy ranged damaage. Shrewdy for Archer production and a large gain in troop builds
 

Risen Malchiah

Well-Known Member
Definitely the Monastery/Sanctuary. I underestimated the value of this and I'm glad I'm finally leveling it up a bit. Eventually, once you're past orcs and space is not so tight, the Shrewdy Shrooms plus a bunch of armories churns out an impressive amount of troops, FAR more than the armories alone. Pair that with Needles for improved training speed and you can pretty much fight every tournament every week without a problem. :)
 

dikke ikke

Well-Known Member
don't forget the dwarven bulwark, it increases the amount of troops you can train and give free barbarians, good as canon fodder in the early stages of tournaments
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
"Best" is hard to define, but probably Monastery as @Risen Malchiah said.
There are however other "Must have" military wonders. Once you hit the point where 2 max armories doesn't keep your barracks running 24/7 both the SSS and Bulwark are better than getting a third armory even if you keep them at level 1.
 

Risen Malchiah

Well-Known Member
The key difference is Shrooms is based on your total armory levels while Bulwark is based on your squad size. If you skip optional squad size upgrades as I do (to keep the tournaments easier) then that suppresses the output of the Bulwark.

To give you a comparison, my Shrooms gives me 1032 while my Bulwark gives 414 and while my Shrooms is leveled slightly higher, that's still a significant increase because I have 4 armories. (I want my barracks training to be at least 12 hrs long so that it's alwyas running while I'm sleeping or working.)
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
Once you hit the point where 2 max armories doesn't keep your barracks running 24/7 both the SSS and Bulwark are better than getting a third armory even if you keep them at level 1.
What's your trick? I've got 3 L23 armories, L9 Shrooms and L8 bulwark, and my barracks still runs out if I sleep in.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
What's your trick?
4 armories, and no needles. Level 6 SSS and DBW, skipped almost all techs.
I really should build the needles, but I'm making enough troops for 2,000 tournament points, and wasn't sure how space would be in chapter 12.
Here's my calculator, it's kinda ugly because it's just for personal use, but it does calculate total queue time and total stacks trained per week.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WijzEhGh2rF-F_LftHXKZa9ZY7qYC96BmkVr7EOAGJY/edit?usp=sharing
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
I'm doing Okay this week.
upload_2018-1-20_10-46-56.png

Admittedly, I burned three Unleashed Unit Buildings for our FS push this week.

It's possible we went overboard...
upload_2018-1-20_10-48-10.png
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
Excellent thread! I just started what I intend to be full military not long ago myself. Obviously the foundation is the Sanctuary/Monastery but where to go from there is something I've been debating with myself for a month now.

I'm thinking Prosperity Towers is going to be next so I can have less Workshops and more armories. I know it isn't 'military' but supplies are pretty critical and this seems to allow for more training and the supplies to support it. Maybe?
Then paired with not doing optional SS will make the Shrine win out over the Bulwark...
...and depending on where I am by then maybe a later game Needles?

That's the argument I've been having with myself. ;)
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
I just started what I intend to be full military not long ago myself
Then paired with not doing optional SS will make the Shrine win out over the Bulwark
For a full military build you should definitely get both before building a 3rd armory.
2 armories, then SSS, then Bulwark, then 3rd armory.
Deciding which of the 2 to level up first is easy, just open and see which one gives more.
iirc you are very active, so the PT might be a great choice for you. What are your current wonders, and cleared provinces at?
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
What are your current wonders, and cleared provinces at?
On the one I'm planning, half way through chapter 3 with no wonders and just doing provinces I have to, it will be months before any of this actually matters. I just like having a plan. I probably won't build any wonders until the sanctuary. Leaning hard on event buildings until then and just grinding tech. then I will sloooow way down and level Sanctuary for a few months before proceeding. This is like a yr long plan at what I guess would be a berserk turtle build in a game where there is no real benifit to doing it that way. LOL :D
 

DeletedUser5800

Guest
If I was going to make 1yr+ plans, I'd focus on the ToS a lot.
Yuk. I hate that thing, I know there is math to support it but I choose to ignore it based on how much I really freaking hate that thing. Also if I'm not scouting much it's just setting there making a Kp I could get with GA gold that would at least add some pop. but I'm not building that either. I have 4 armories now in Ch. 3, will be 6-8 by the time I add the Sanctuary, with only 1 or 2 of each tier factory. I'm seriously building it like PvP and defense exist for no reason at all. I do realize the only actually viable military build as things are is glass cannon. Level hard and fast and put everything extra into attack (troop output). But I'm bored and like experiments. :)
 

DeletedUser9601

Guest
Thanks to all of you for making this thread useful. I think I'll go for Martial Monastery, especially since its available so early (though not early enough - late Ch 4!).
 

qaccy

Well-Known Member
Definitely a fan of the Sactuary/MM for the universal defensive effect. Extra health means less retraining needed and for stage 3 units, means you're more likely to enter successive battle rounds with 5 sources of debuffs still alive.

Attack-boosting AWs are less useful IMO because of their affecting only one type of unit, but this can't be ignored either. More damage means killing more units faster, which leads to you taking less damage in return.

Remember that enemy units don't get attack nor health bonuses like we do, so AWs provide a powerful benefit to help offset the scales tipping against us in later tournament rounds. I feel like they're not as useful for normal province battles because it's very easy to control the difficulty of those by simply limiting your scouting. I don't need health nor attack bonuses on my units when the enemy squads are half the size of my own!
 

DeletedUser9601

Guest
Thanks for all the input. I feel like I struggle to consistently level the 2 AWs I have in my current city (GA; Mtn Halls), but I might try to make room for a level 1 MM just for the extra tournament help.
 

DeletedUser3507

Guest
452 provinces

lvl 11 Martial Monestary
lvl 11 Endless
lvl 14 Mtn Hall
lvl 3 Shrewdy
lvl 6 Toads
lvl 3 Dragon Abbey
lvl 3 Prosperity Tower
lvl 3 Elvenar trade center
lvl 4 Golden Abyss
 

DeletedUser7370

Guest
The best military wonder is Martial Monastery/Sanctuary. Both of its benefits are important to a military build. While the culture benefit is not great earlier in the game, by the woodelves chapter it is almost higher per square than even the best event buildings. Culture is critical for military because all military building use more culture than population and often 2:1 culture : population. The health benefit is a little obvious, but what is not obvious is that the autofight AI will regularly walk your high initiative troops forward into range of lower initiative opponents giving your enemies the first hit. The health bonus ameliorates that bad choice. I suggest building the Monastery and leveling it to 6 as soon as possible and raising to maximum as opportunities present.

Military productions requires 2 things: supplies and time. Supplies can readily be gained from workshops and PoP enchantments can easily enhance that. That makes time the critical component in production. There are only 24 hours in a day and not too much you can do to change that. Instants and diamonds are better spent elsewhere. This means that wonders which improve the speed and duration of production are the second class of important wonders. Needles is the first of that category and given that it also enhances damage for a unit that dominates one tournament and supports in 4 others, the needles is the most important of this category. It should be upgraded to 6 rapidly and then considered for further upgrades later when both Bulwark and Shrewdy are L6. Next in this category are Shrewdy and Bulwark. Both should be built up equally as you have spare KP and whenever your training queue does not last for continuous 24 hour production. The free units provided by these may be enough to allow you to not have to train any of those unit types, or can free up time to produce Training Grounds and Mercenary Camp units for those weeks that would use the LM and LR unit types heavily. Keep in mind that the training grounds is sometimes faster, but usually slower than the barracks with needles. The final wonder in this category is the Flying Academy. By the time you can build it the mercenary camp troops are only slightly useful, and mages are often ineffective in combat. This wonder can be leveled slower and it is often better to focus on raising the monastery towards L16 until more of the camp units get promotions. If your FA is below L6 once the monastery has gotten to L16 then raise the academy.

The other wonders that increase troop damage are all useful and should be built if you have the space. That space can often be found by demolishing factories (I have had a 1-1-1 build since chapter 5 and keep stockpiling more goods), workshops (I reduced mine from 10 L15 to 5 max level during orcs), and the residences that were used to provide population to those buildings. However leveling those wonders should not be a high priority as the L1 bonus is the biggest single step.

Wonders that provide supplies: Prosperity Towers, Endless Excavation, and Tome of Secrets can all be useful and have ranked usefulness in about that order.

If you happen to have a city on Elcy you can check mine out. Last tournament I did nearly 3000 points and only catered 4 or 5 encounters because of silly loses. I could do that because I started the tournament with 80 squads of golems. I got 160 KP during the tournament and since my fellowship was in recovery mode only 15 more from the chests. In the last hours of the tournament, I could see I would not get any more KP and we were not close to gaining another chest so I stopped for that week and reset my training queue for heavy melee, which is often the go to choice in crystal. I expect to start the crystal tournament tomorrow with 90 squads of treants and that was nearly all trained starting from Saturday at 11am.
 
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