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    Your Elvenar Team

How would you change the Spire formula?

Fiona Selah

Well-Known Member
Not a new discussion...

But, I have heard that there is a complicated formula which creates battles in the spire to become more difficult. That the more expansions you have contributes to this. I don't quite understand how it works...

Something like X number of expansions + chapter level multiplied by X times you burped today ÷ X number of warts on your rear x π then subtracting how many dwarves are drinking in your wayfarer's tavern.... somehow = 1 billion mages added to every wave of enemies you encounter.

Right?

I know players want it reworked. But what would be a good formula to make it work? I was thinking that it should be more based on which troops you have access to and what level they're at. Maybe even how many armories you have, whether you have training grounds and a merc camp yet. Which Wonders do you have expanding your ability to build more and build quicker. That would be somewhat difficult to rework though wouldn't it?

I mean how does having more expansions make your troops stronger and you more able to battle your way up the Spire?

How would you rework it?
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
It doesn't make it more "difficult" per se, but more expensive in terms of goods and troops. If you're catering, it's the same math probabilities at play to solving the logic, but each bet costs more. For fighting, those factors increase the size of troops taken to battle, but the ratio of your troops to enemy troops does not change. For example, at a certain point up in the Spire, the ratio of your troop stack to enemy stack might be 100 to 150 for someone in Chapter 3 (making up numbers). However, someone in chapter 10 might see that same encounter as 2000 vs 3000. Someone else might see it as 6000 vs 9000. The ratio is 2:3 in all cases and therefore, not more "difficult". There will just be a larger mound of dead bodies you need to replenish with fresh recruits. The enemy combos you get will affect "difficulty" as some are tougher than others, but you're not getting more disadvantaged by getting shortstacked or anything.

Right now, these are trade secrets not really ever officially disclosed, but minmax kinda reverse engineered the math based on crowdsourcing the data. It's not completely accurate, but it's a close picture. However, it seems right now, the cost progression as determined by the current formula is very linear. It needs to be more stepped. For example, unlocking a culture tech will hurt you the same as unlocking a barrack upgrade tech and that's just silly as the culture buildings can't save you in tourney or Spire no matter how many you build.
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
Personally, I would go back to the prior version and then adust for the small thing that can add to its difficulty, without using items that make it harder as you progress, such as adding an expansion or completing a chapter.
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
I would make the difficulty based on chapter. This would front load the increased costs at the start of the chapter, which is probably the biggest drawback. But it also means anything you do to improve your city as you work through a chapter will only help you. Which removes the biggest issue I have with the current formula: it essentially punishes you for growing your city in a city building game.
 

Hawk1911

Active Member
Wait a minute... Is the difficulty really the same as @crackie described and the only the change is the cost? I've read Minmax's formula differently and generally thought the difficulty increased with AW levels and expansions.

@crackie has opened my eyes, thank you! Great explanation.

About changes, I've never played the "old" version so don't really have anything to compare too. I've been able to top the Spire every week for the last 10 months (ever since they offered the Fire chicken) and never looked back. Yes, I need to use 5day boost buildings, sometimes as few as 2, rarely as many as 5, but I don't see a problem with that. I consider that the cost of doing business and timed properly, has helped advance my tournament scores and all the added benefits there.

I may be the odd man out, but I personally don't see a problem with the current formula. I'm happy the game continues to be challenging as my city grows and I advance through the chapters.
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
@Hawk1911 Yeah that is how it works for a combat player. The odds stay the same, but the size of encounters grow based on the formula. So as long as a combat player can generate enough troops they can keep winning. But it is not as good for cater based players. The costs of catering just keep rising as they develop their cities.

But I really do not like the underlying premise of the formula. I am sitting on unplaced expansions I have already earned. Simply because placing them in my city would raise my spire and tournament costs. This is a city building game and because of the underlying math involved, I am discouraged from building my city further.
 

Hawk1911

Active Member
@Henroo I see where you're coming from. I have unplaced expansions too, for the same reason. However, I'm waiting for the "right time" to place them when the extra space makes sense.

I feel that the early chapters, players have to place expansions as fast as they can get them just to keep pace with the game. I personally found that after about ch12, I wait for the right time to place expansions. It turns into more of a tactical decision than a decision out of necessity like the early game. Maybe I'm wierd (lol) but I've been fascinated by how the game and the challenges change through the progression of chapters.
 

BrinDarby

Well-Known Member
It doesn't make it more "difficult" per se, but more expensive in terms of goods and troops.
Simply because placing them in my city would raise my spire and tournament costs.

1) land should never count against a player.
2) difficulty should different than cost.

I've seen 2 tourn changes, and when I started , if I remember correctly, not only
was each week "theme'd" and you had to prepare for that, but enemies could
be more than 5.....
Since the APP doesn't have manual fighting, fighting itself is not equal in Elvenar.
Because there are quirks in troop placement, and terrain is not revealed before
troop selection takes place, even manual fighting has its issues....

Because this is a city builder game, my guess is that the Devs don't want fighting
to be overly complicated ( fun/challanging ), therefore it will never ultimately be
strategy based. Even autobattle has no AI options like @ architect ( battle sim ).
As a city builder game tho, land should be the 1 thing that doesn't count against you.

I would like to see a formula for all fighting ( Spire and Tourn ) that gets "harder",
not just more expensive to fight (or cater). I liked before for each reasource to
be theme'd, not sure if that transferred over to Spire, as I have always catered.....
The biggest problem in a formula is how to balance out well established players
versus newer players that won't have the buildup yet of helper Evolves and 5days.


I have never understood why barracks squad-size isn't my actual squad-size.....
Terrain, # of slots of troops, both can get "harder" easily. Star* level tho shouldn't
get "harder" past a certain point.
If you're going to tie difficulty to research, then as I open up better troops, then
why doesn't that also unlock better enemies .... in line with the ones I have ???

With (0) 5day bldgs, (0) AWs, and no Fire chicken... its too expensive/hard to
manually fight past the 6th encounter of the 1st level..... but fairly cheap/easy
to cater all of level 1. Its pretty darn expensive to do level 3 catering....

Before we can talk about a new Spire formula, we have to decide will it be
based on difficulty.... or just more expensive ?????
 

The Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
I would make the difficulty based on chapter. This would front load the increased costs at the start of the chapter, which is probably the biggest drawback. But it also means anything you do to improve your city as you work through a chapter will only help you. Which removes the biggest issue I have with the current formula: it essentially punishes you for growing your city in a city building game.
THIS!! 1000X THIS!!
Fights/negotiations are hardest/costliest at the beginning of a new chapter, and then become progressively easier/less expensive as you continue to progress through a chapter!

We're not asking for dirt cheap, auto wins by any stretch. Just something that's remotely snae and functional that doesn't bend players over the barrel and do horrific things to them just for building larger & larger cities, in a fething CITY BUILDING game!


...also, it would be nice if for the Spire, your various decaying goods were NOT included in the list of possible resources for negotiating.
This would at least bring a bit more semblance of balance back to the fighter vs. catering strategies, as right now, once you hit a certain point in the research tree, catering is basically impossible due to the astronomical costs, AND, trying to maintain millions of mana + seeds + sentient + now ascending goods! (ie: just leave T1 - T3 goods, coins, supplies & Orks as possible catering resources)

Tournament negotiations can maintain ALL possible resources for their catering costs, as those are at least possible to manage in a 100% 'catering only' strategy.
 
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Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
I actually like that the spire/tournaments are cheaper at the beginning of each new chapter than they are at the end of the preceding chapter. I like the little drop in cost at the beginning of each new chapter and I like that the cost grows with me.
I would be seriously unhappy if I went from a 5k tournament average to a 2k tournament average at the start of every chapter.

I understand that there are problems with the formula for chapters 16+. I am only in chapter 8 so far my production increases are out pacing my cost increases.
 

Myne

Oh Wise One
I actually like that the spire/tournaments are cheaper at the beginning of each new chapter than they are at the end of the preceding chapter. I like the little drop in cost at the beginning of each new chapter and I like that the cost grows with me.
I would be seriously unhappy if I went from a 5k tournament average to a 2k tournament average at the start of every chapter.

I understand that there are problems with the formula for chapters 16+. I am only in chapter 8 so far my production increases are out pacing my cost increases.


End of chapter 11 here. I started noticing a big difference in chapter 10 and struggled pretty badly for a while. Just now coming out ahead since for the first time. I expect it to happen again in the next chapter at some point.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
I actually like that the spire/tournaments are cheaper at the beginning of each new chapter than they are at the end of the preceding chapter.
Wait.. which part of the formula would cause that?
AW x Expansions x techs
I would be seriously unhappy if I went from a 5k tournament average to a 2k tournament average at the start of every chapter.
I would be seriously happy though if your tournament went from 5 to 4.5 and then at the end 5.5
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
Wait.. which part of the formula would cause that?
AW x Expansions x techs
Chapter, at the start of each new chapter techs hit zero and the spreadsheet registers a slight drop between chapters.

This is happily aggravated in my city using blueprints/RRs at the beginning of each chapter. My production ability gets a boost and the costs drop slightly.
 

Kekune

Well-Known Member
Chapter, at the start of each new chapter techs hit zero and the spreadsheet registers a slight drop between chapters.
My understanding of the techs is that they're cumulative. Since you can't "unresearch" a tech, this number would only increase and never go back to zero.
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
@SoggyShorts and @Kekune
Your right, sorry. Tech never hits zero, for some reason at the start of each chapter I forget to add in advanced scouts :)

I still get a production jump from RRs and blueprints, I think ;)
 

The Unbeliever

Well-Known Member
@SoggyShorts and @Kekune
Your right, sorry. Tech never hits zero, for some reason at the start of each chapter I forget to add in advanced scouts :)

I still get a production jump from RRs and blueprints, I think ;)
Early to early-mid game, the bigger jump comes from expansions & AW's, with techs seeming to have the least effect.

For example:
My K-world city, I had negotiation costs of 1200-1400 T1 on the first floor, past the 1st gate.
I placed down 4 reg expansions + 4 diamond expansions, and my costs for those same encounters jumped to 1400-1700 T1.

Expansions hurt like hell.
 

Deborah M

Oh Wise One
I have made peace with the changed formula. I have max expansions and 676 AW levels. The thing is that #1 goal since the Spire came out has been upgrading troop related AWs so most are at level 30. Of course, it took years to get them there but I wasn't focused on troop priority for the first few years. I have zero understanding why anybody is afraid of expansions now that I have given it a lot of thought. I went through the game with only 4 Armories most of the time, increased by a few after the Spire came out, and just went up to 10. That is because I just switched from catering the Spire to battling all the way to the top. I still cannot get over how much easier the Spire is for me to battle than it was over a year ago when I went to 100% catering. The thing is that I still need all of those expansions for when the next guest race comes. Of course it is always a balancing act. To add more Armories meant storing some factories that I shouldn't need since I'm not catering anything now. So, while I do everything that is supposedly wrong with the new formula, my city's battle difficulty seems to have gotten much improved since the change. I guess that is because I focused on what I could do with what I have to outweigh the changes. I could not have done that if I didn't have the expansion space to put everything.
 

Yogi Dave

Well-Known Member
However, it seems right now, the cost progression as determined by the current formula is very linear.
All except the tech term is linear in the increase of number of troops you bring and cost using goods. Techs are an exponential factor in MinMax's Eq., which is very good at computing troop size you will bring. I did some plots in the Tournament Changes thread back in March that can be found at the following link Graphs of squad size changes There are 3 graphs on that page. In the 3rd graph, there is an incorrect assumption of number of techs in Chapter 18 since it hadn't come out yet. I used 30 techs since that was pretty much what previous chapters used. There are 38 in it. If you didn't place any expansions or upgrade any AWs, the techs alone would increase your initial tourney and spire squad size by 17%. So, that exponential part of the equation overruns all others as you reach the higher chapters. Though in fact doing 38 techs will have increased the squad size by 17% what it was regardless of how many techs you had already done.

Back to the original question: First, the initial troop size for the spire and tourney use the same computations, so and changes affects them both. To me the best change is to not make competing techs exponentially increase the number of troops needed in a fight. I like the concept of doing a balance for each chapter instead of one calculation across the entire game. Each chapter is unique in one way or another and the way squad size is computed should reflect that. It would start with the value at the end of the previous chapter then increase as is best for that chapter. That makes it on the quality of the chapter. I don't think making it dependent on what you have in your city should be part of it, at least not directly like the sum of AW levels, sum of armory levels, etc. would.
I mean how does having more expansions make your troops stronger and you more able to battle your way up the Spire?
If you have more land, you can build more buildings that help with troop replenishment, but I don't agree that should affect the squad size.
I have made peace with the changed formula.
As have I and the rest of your post is very good. If I hadn't I'd quit playing since where's the fun in being mad while playing a game? That doesn't mean I don't want it to change, just that it doesn't mess with my mind anymore. I still play to maximize my city, though I do give more thought to which AWs I will upgrade or build or keep. Since I'm at the end of chapters, I use my diamonds from the game to buy a couple of the pop/cult buildings. They last several chapters before their value decreases too much which turns into years now.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
All except the tech term is linear in the increase of number of troops you bring and cost using goods.
I meant linear as in all unlock techs are treated equal in the progression. It should be more stepped. As others have suggested for example, Advanced Scouts, which indicates a new chapter, should prob be weighted more than a meaningless culture tech. Same with factories and military buildings.
 

Cronopiio

New Member
hi, with the new 4 star units, staying in chapter 16 is still the most profitable for tournaments? did someone do the math?
 
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