CAL question

[Chimaera1234]

I've heard that CAL looks at total HIGHEST EVER AW levels instead of CURRENT AW levels at the beginning of tournament/ spire. This doesn't make sense to me, either why it would be true or even HOW it would be true.

Can anyone verify, or provide a source for this? This detail does not appear in the minmax assessment that I could find, but maybe it wasn't considered / experimentally verified?

Would be vanishing unfortunate for Inno to penalize people permanently for building AW, ESPECIALLY considering that other thread discussing the significant decline in benefit provided by some AWs compared to other available buildings (e.g. event buildings) in later chapters.

 

[hoopity]

I've never heard anything like that. Although anything is possible, it's unlikely that they would do this. I would imagine they'd recycle the same variable used for the Seeds bonus from the Advanced Trader or the Ranking Points bonus from Thrones of the High Men, and I think someone would've noticed if those were screwy. In any case, this would be easy to test for anyone who is parked and has a little bit of free space.

1. Confirm the first enemy tourney squad size on 1st Tuesday
2. Build an AW (maybe level it once or twice for good effect)
3. Don't do any research or add expansions while waiting until the 2nd Tuesday
4. Confirm first enemy tourney squad size
5. Delete the AW
6. Don't do any research or add expansions while waiting until the 3rd Tuesday
7. Confirm the first enemy tourney squad size.

 

[Chimaera1234]

Absolutely, thanks for the simple test, of course. Not urgent for me, but I will test and report

 

[crackie]

I've heard that CAL looks at total HIGHEST EVER AW levels instead of CURRENT AW levels at the beginning of tournament/ spire. This doesn't make sense to me, either why it would be true or even HOW it would be true.

Disclaimer: First note that CAL is a term coined by MinMax and not an official designation by the devs. Second, the formulas given to us by MinMax has also since changed, though it seems like the number you get is now is lower than MinMax’s predictions. Nobody has the brains to reverse engineer the new formulas to the degree of accuracy like he was able to and he seems to have stopped playing.

As far as I know, this isn’t true because anecdotally, people have claimed to have sold their wonders for some minor reprieve, which suggests the formula is off total current wonders and not highest ever total built.

They have made some whacky development decisions, but to have numbers permanently stuck like that in a city builder game that requires constant tetrising is an absurd concept, even for them. Would totally suck for all those players who lost wonders during Urban Renewal Day after FAs and still paying for the wonder level cost in Spire and FAs.

 

[Chimaera1234]

Thanks as well. Seems like there is significant agreement on this point then and I will still test in the coming weeks and report.

For my part, tournament has gotten rather difficult (current average per elvenstats over 19k), and I think I'm carrying significant AW weight...like 100 more levels than strictly benefit me. A few levels extra for CAL okay fine, but 100 is significant.

 

[crackie]

Thanks as well. Seems like there is significant agreement on this point then and I will still test in the coming weeks and report.

For my part, tournament has gotten rather difficult (current average per elvenstats over 19k), and I think I'm carrying significant AW weight...like 100 more levels than strictly benefit me. A few levels extra for CAL okay fine, but 100 is significant.

Yeah you're in like the 2% bracket that wonder levels would be felt. Most people aren't doing anywhere close to 19k so wonder levels is less impactful. Any changes will be felt when you're up that high though! Very impressive!

 

[Lady Dastardly]

This thread featured a similar discussion and @Rythel was kind/curious enough to run the experiment of deleting a AW. Results confirmed a drop in squad size.

 

[ajqtrz]

Yeah you're in like the 2% bracket that wonder levels would be felt. Most people aren't doing anywhere close to 19k so wonder levels is less impactful. Any changes will be felt when you're up that high though! Very impressive!

Wondering where you would place the score where "wonder levels would be felt?" Only asking so that I stay below that level.

AJ

 

[Killy-]

Wondering where you would place the score where "wonder levels would be felt?" Only asking so that I stay below that level.

AJ

There is no magical number, whatever number of AW levels you have, additional once will matter, if you play a lot of tournament and if you don't, you don't have to bother with it. In addition, it depends on what wonders you want to upgrade. You upgrade your needles, great, that will help you in the tournament, no matte if that is your first wonder or if you are at 1000 Aw lvls. There are wonders which might hinder you in the tournament (doesn't necessarily means, you don't want to have them for the rest of the game) but again, as long you aren't planning for some high tournament scores, it wont matter much.

 

[Chimaera1234]

I agree with everything Killy said, but it's...a rather scattered reply, imo...

So those elements again:
- If you don't care about tournament difficulty, particularly in later provinces, then you don't have to care about AW levels. They will still.impact spire difficulty too, be aware.
- while every AW level counts the same regarding how much it impacts difficulty, not every AW level provides the same benefits regarding tourney and spire. Needles is a good example, simia, etc. Enar's, sorry Enar's, is bad for tourney. Every level of enars will hurt, but you also don't get anything that helps, so an enars level could be considered worse.
- the raw number of AW levels that "matter" will again depend on your objectives, but, again, namely only matter if you aim to be competitive in tournament.
Example 1: an endgame player with all premium and chapter expansions placed, 15-20k tournament points wanting to reduce AW levels from 600 to 400. You can see how this may not apply to very many people.
Example 2: a midgame player (ch15) who likes to play with all the bells and whistles and doesn't care about top 3 tournament score. This player does not need to worry about their AW levels, they can just play however they want and enjoy themselves.

I'll note that many players are in the middle, as in they're in an FS that was some goal of tournament chests (10, 12, 19), and so they do need to manage their CAL (see: tournament difficulty) to some degree. Should you place Enar's? No, you should not. Should you delete Enar's? Yes, yes you should.

 

[ajqtrz]

So, the short answer is: "it's complicated."