Not true. I feed my brown bear before I collect from the barracks, merc camp and training grounds in the morning, so that I get a lot more troops that way. So never, ever empty your slots before feeding the brown bear. You lose a great deal of troops that way.
Actually, with any resource in this game, make sure you use the resources (pet food, magical spells) just before collecting, not after.
I probably wasn't clear. By "clearing the slot" I don't mean "collect before feeding." Once the troops are created the slot is automatically cleared so collecting has no impact on the slots in the queue waiting to be produced. The only slot where clearing the slot might be a problem is the first one where the troops are already being produced. If you clear that you lose the troops but it may still be worth it if you just started production...though usually not. However. clearing any of the other queue slots with troops waiting to be produced effects your troops count not in the least because they haven't yet been produced. So, what I meant to say is that the slots in the queue that haven't started yet should be cleared AFTER you apply the pet food to your brown bear, and then refilled so the number of troops waiting to be created in ech slot is maximized. Otherwise the number waiting in each slot remains at the lower number applicable BEFORE you fed your brown bear. Hopefully this clarifies what I meant.
Now as for collecting, if I'm right and the queue slots don't automatically update when you feed your bear, wouldn't it also mean that the number of troops ready to collect would not increase either? It seems reasonable to me that such would be the case. Thus, feeding the brown bear just before collection would have no effect on the number of troops collected. I'm sure, and have always assumed that the feed before collection strategy actually increased the troops collected but now that I think about it, I've never actually checked. Has anybody?
It gets down to a question of if the coding for production reads the number displayed or some other adjusted number and when it applies the adjustment. If I feed the bear, does some internal number get adjusted but not the display (a bug, perhaps?), or does the queue slot reflect some internal number that is used to determine how long that slot runs to produce the displayed number of troops? In other words, the internal number may be right (or not) but the display of what is going to be produced, may be off.
When using the Brown bear, feed it in the morning before you pull your troops so all those troops accumulated overnight have that extra 50% (or how many brown bears you have as it is additive). What you see in larger cities are many armories. This allows them to collect troops for a longer period of time before pulling them and maximizing their use of the brown bear on their initial pull. It also allows them to use 14 hr and sometimes 20 hour time instants when making troops.
Great point. In general though, if you don't use your brown bear too often isn't it better to match your queue duration to your usual overnight absence? Here's my thinking:
If my queue is too long It means I've put more armories in place (or whatever way you use to increase your production) and thus some space is being taken that may not be needed. In other words, if I am not a habitual user of my brown bear but, instead, keep my production at the level I need it by collecting more often and keeping the queue slots filled, wouldn't the space needed for more armories be better used for something else?
The overnight -- or, call it "extended" queue length you get by having more armories will certainly contribute a lot more troops when you feed the brown bear right before collecting -- provided the system actually adjusts what has already been produced (see above). But if not, then feeding the bear has no impact on what you collect -- though the extended queue length will have it's impact.
In any case, it may be that the ideal situation is to know the average "extended absence" you will be away each day and to use that as the "target" time for your instants. I'm usually away 8-9 hours so my queues only need to be about 10 hours long for me to maximize my production AND thus, the longest instant I would require or use is the 8 hour one since my queue is never longer (It's usually 12 hours as I speak). Another way might be to use instants just short of the length each of your slots takes to produce. If you need just over 25 hours to produce 5 slots, 5 hour instants (or 20 as a multiple of 5) would be perfect.
AJ
AJ