Is an end game city better going to full negotiating in tournaments instead of fighting??? What do you think?

[Dadnaz]

Hello all,

I was thinking later about what to do with my city now that I finished chapter 21. There is a lot of discussion in my FS about how tournaments are getting harder. AWs lvl, expansions... So my question is simple. Considering the large amount of armories, POP AW. Many Manus. Isn't it better to go for negotiating tournaments, with just a little fighting?

 

[ajqtrz]

Personally, whatever works, works. And, for me that means not being tied to either fighting or catering but being flexible enough to do what I need. So I usually negotiate the first 6-10 provinces on each round and save my troops. If I run into a hard province (meaning I loose) I look at it and consider if I can do better, but if not, I just cater it an move on. In the Spire I negotiate the first tier, fight the 3rd, and, depending on my troop vs good level, do the middle accordingly.

Now, of course, if you are going to switch to completely catering/negotiating then that will change your city. But I like the flexibility of a balance of both.

I think there are a couple players who are catering only. I'll bet they'll have lots of advice.

AJ

 

[StarLoad]

Hello all,

I was thinking later about what to do with my city now that I finished chapter 21. There is a lot of discussion in my FS about how tournaments are getting harder. AWs lvl, expansions... So my question is simple. Considering the large amount of armories, POP AW. Many Manus. Isn't it better to go for negotiating tournaments, with just a little fighting?

That would be very dependent on how deep you go in the tourney or your score you are looking to achieve.

If your goal is a few Thousand points then catering is the way to go and get rid of all the extra military buildings. 3000 points and higher will likely require some fighting so there is your hybrid starting place. Although, you can depending on the chapter you were in cater 24 Prov to 6 rounds 6480 points without too much trouble. But you are in 21 so I am sure the costs would be more than I would see at 16.

 

[MaidenFair]

I’m not at the end, so I don’t know for sure how it would work there. However, I can report that as a caterer in ch. 14, I just increased my tourney score to a sustainable(I think) average of 7020 while I top the Spire every week and am still moving through the chapter as fast as I can make the guest race goods.

If I weren’t progressing in chapters and could use all the guest race space for productions, as well as only needing to produce enough sentients for Spire, not for research too…I can easily imagine I would be sustaining 10k+ in tourneys, maybe more if I weren’t trying to keep the goods inventory growing, and it would be much faster and less-RNG dependent than fighting.

That is, admittedly, with a city built for catering, so I’ve purposefully kept it smaller than normal (80 expansions right now), and really leaned into calculations for maximum tile efficiency. I don’t know what scores would be possible in a city that had used all or most of the possible expansions, since that really increases the costs.

The things definitely in favour of catering: 1) doesn’t need as many AWs
2) isn’t reliant on RNG giving pet food and boost buildings every week
3) saves a fair amount of RL time in tournament, especially when going deep
4) doesn’t have any “must-have” event buildings, like the Fire Phoenix, Brown Bear, etc., for fighters

It also doesn’t require as much culture, allowing for a high culture bonus with much less space used to achieve it. Those may make it worthwhile, even for an end-game player who didn’t originally build with an eye to that. I’d love to hear results if you or anyone else tries it!!

 

[iamthouth]

@Dadnaz I've also finished chapter 21. I cater the spire to lvl 12, but fight as much as I can in tournament.

To grow my tournament score I think will need to improve my fighting wonders instead, rather than go harder through catering. The cost to cater is really high in tournament levels, 100K plus per level and resource, times 3 resources. So depends on what score you want, but I think a fighter can go deeper in tournament than a caterer.
Possibly if running a lvl 35 Elvenar Trade Centre, and applying Magical Manufacturing it could be feasible, I haven't built it yet, yours is lvl 26 I see.

I am well placed for seeds and mana now. I need the seeds for sentient goods in the spire, but could add manufactories for standard goods instead I guess. Gold and supplies should be doable too, but would perhaps need to run a higher culture boost than now. Having the triple combo of GBS/CL, WT, and LGN is possibly needed, I have neither.

But you do double my tournament score, so a further 20 levels of catering times 100K times 3 resources times 6 rounds per province is 100K*3*20*6=36mill extra resources per week.

Perhaps you can record a tally of catering costs (even if fighting) next week and report back?

 

[Darielle]

I catered a province that cost 170K marble, 170K steel and nearly 90K elixir. This was towards the end of last week's tourney in which I made just over 10K. I catered a lot and fought a lot, but near the end I ran low on troops (despite making nearly 17K archers per slot in barracks, without brown bear fed). I run a level 32 ETC but I don't always use my MMs, depending on what I need to save them for (like FA).

I currently have 7 level 32 planks, 4 level 32 silk, 2 maxed dust and a few sentients, among other things. I wouldn't mind switching to all catering but I don't think I could manage it. A couple weeks ago I dipped down to below 2 million on several of my goods, which was uncomfortable and I had to race to pull them back up above 3mil. Even my planks, with so many of them, is at about 4 and a half mil. That's not an excessive amount.

I've got a couple techs to go before I hit 19.

I only have 4 maxed armories, plus maxed barracks, tc and merc. Maybe I should go for more armories, but the guest races are ridiculously big, as you know, and it's hard to go for more armories with that many factories. I kind of like my combo fight/cater lifestyle.

 

[Dhurrin]

It would very much depend on your style of play. Just a few thoughts;

- Do you autofight everything or do you do all or part manually?
If you plan on doing at least part manually, you'd probably be better off doing more fighting than catering. Troops can be generated faster than goods, as 1 time-instant on a barracks or training ground or mercenary camp has more result than the same on 1 factory. Plus you can use larger time-instants on troop generation, but not on factories without wasting a lot.

- Have you set up your city for fighting? which means at the very least 6 high lvl military AWs, maybe as many as 15 if you have all the ones that are combat-related. So what will you with those?
If you want to switch to (mostly) catering those AWs take a lot of space where you could put manufacturies. And the same goes for armories. And/or if you don't have (all) the ones up that will help with goods you'd have to put those up.
Fun part is of course that selling off some high lvl AWs would make the tourney a bit easier, but you'd lose their benefits too. Not to mention all the KPs spent on them.

- What kind of weekly average score is your goal? 5.000? 8.000? 10.000? 15.000? More than that?
Catering the later provinces is very expensive, not just in goods, but in mana and orcs too. I regularly see provinces where a single encounter requires about 1.000.000 mana, or 100.000 orcs so you may want to fight those, as these kind of numbers drain such resources pretty fast.

- How much time do you have to spend on the tourney weekly?
The more time you have, the more profitable it will be to fight at least part manually. Catering however is much faster.

- How important are ranking points to you?
A chap 21 T3 factory is 58.1 K points, where an armory is 74 K points, so replacing armories with factories will see you drop in points.

 

[Dadnaz]

Perhaps you can record a tally of catering costs (even if fighting) next week and report back?

I will do that. Thanks!

 

[Darielle]

I will do that. Thanks!

I'd love to see that; thank you!

 

[Vigali]

- What kind of weekly average score is your goal? 5.000? 8.000? 10.000? 15.000? More than that?
Catering the later provinces is very expensive, not just in goods, but in mana and orcs too. I regularly see provinces where a single encounter requires about 1.000.000 mana, or 100.000 orcs so you may want to fight those, as these kind of numbers drain such resources pretty fast.

This is probably the most important point. Even if you're able to supercharge your goods productions via the most optimal AW combinations and keep everything spelled constantly, you still have to deal with orcs and mana. When you start hitting those 100k orc tourney rounds and say "I'd rather fight this," you may not even be able to beat it if your city is cater-focused and you don't have military boost buildings/military AWs.

A cater-only city is probably top-end limited to some extent based on orcs and mana -- it would depend on the city, but there is likely some point in the 10k-12k range where you just can't progress past with any regularity (if at all). A fighting city, on the other hand, can cap themselves on provinces by adding some more boost buildings.

 

[Dhurrin]

This is probably the most important point. Even if you're able to supercharge your goods productions via the most optimal AW combinations and keep everything spelled constantly, you still have to deal with orcs and mana. When you start hitting those 100k orc tourney rounds and say "I'd rather fight this," you may not even be able to beat it if your city is cater-focused and you don't have military boost buildings/military AWs.

A cater-only city is probably top-end limited to some extent based on orcs and mana -- it would depend on the city, but there is likely some point in the 10k-12k range where you just can't progress past with any regularity (if at all). A fighting city, on the other hand, can cap themselves on provinces by adding some more boost buildings.

Or by catering a handful of encounters when needed. I fight about 95%. If for some reason I see hard combo's, or because I'm on the app and cannot fight something manually, I may choose to cater some encounters.
It will be easier for a fighting city to cater some encounters than fight those encounters for a catering city.

But this week;s marble Tourney I paid attention to the catering costs (normally I don't since I fight anyway) In the range of 30-40 provinces I noticed several provinces that would have required 3.000.000 mana per province spread out over the 6 encounters. So that in those 10 provinces (so 60 encounters) I would have had to spend 10 million+ mana. And that's not even counting the smaller amounts in earlier provinces, let alone the even worse costs later on.
Such amounts are hard to cater on a weekly basis.

 

[mucksterme]

I only have 4 maxed armories, plus maxed barracks, tc and merc.

I'm very near the end of CH 20 and have gotten along fine with four maxed armories for quite a while.

 

[lauren1957]

That would be very dependent on how deep you go in the tourney or your score you are looking to achieve.

If your goal is a few Thousand points then catering is the way to go and get rid of all the extra military buildings. 3000 points and higher will likely require some fighting so there is your hybrid starting place. Although, you can depending on the chapter you were in cater 24 Prov to 6 rounds 6480 points without too much trouble. But you are in 21 so I am sure the costs would be more than I would see at 16.

 

[lauren1957]

The cost of negotiating is too high once mana enters the picture and yes, once you get into the higher chapters.

I fight spire and cater the world map.

 

[Flashfyre]

The cost of negotiating is too high once mana enters the picture and yes, once you get into the higher chapters.

I fight spire and cater the world map.

Nope.
I exclusively cater the Spire for all but the first 4 encounters which I fight because they are easy. I am in Ch16, so I have to use mana, seeds, orcs, and all T and S goods. And I do that every week, without significantly reducing my inventories of stuff. Because I don't fight very much (only the first 6 Tourney provinces, and only Very Easy and Easy map provinces), I have plenty of goods productions to replenish each week.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I have been playing long enough that I keep temporarily reaching "endgame" since chapter 14. I was mainly catering until I started converting to fighting around chapter 10. It took a while to build up the military AWs, so it was probably around chapter 14 that I felt strong enough to just fight everything. Having the different military evolving buildings and temp boost buildings come into existence during that stretch did not hurt either. So for a while now, I have fought everything on the world map, can fight the entire Spire, if I feel like it, and currently fight 25x6 in the tournament. I could go further each week, but I don't like grinding in games. This is also why I do all of this with auto-fighting, even though I play the browser version.

 

[iamthouth]

So I followed my own suggestion and also recorded catering costs. I completed the first 15 provinces times 6 rounds, which is 4050 points.
I had already done province 1.1, but those costs are minor. For future reference, this was a Marble Tournament.
Total costs for 15x6 at the top. 15 levels are probably doable, but you see the costs in round 6, and increase from there, so I don't think I could go for any 10K plus score.

Rounds 1 and 2

Rounds 3 and 4

Rounds 5 and 6

 

[Smooper]

My costs to do 12 provinces as a ch. 5 city are way lower. This is very dependent on your chapter level so it is hard to compare everyone's experience. I feel I would have no problems doing 15 provinces when my city is fully optimized but I am balancing wanting to cater the Spire also. Once this event is over I will be able to make a few more manufactories and I am still exploring to open up more provinces.

 

[Darielle]

So I followed my own suggestion and also recorded catering costs. I completed the first 15 provinces times 6 rounds, which is 4050 points.
I had already done province 1.1, but those costs are minor. For future reference, this was a Marble Tournament.
Total costs for 15x6 at the top. 15 levels are probably doable, but you see the costs in round 6, and increase from there, so I don't think I could go for any 10K plus score.

Rounds 1 and 2
View attachment 16588
Rounds 3 and 4
View attachment 16586

Rounds 5 and 6
View attachment 16587

Thank you, Iamthouth; that's very helpful.