Magic Armory

[ajqtrz]

The limit of 5 spaces in the army build queue means that as you get faster at building your armies you have to return to collect those armies more often or let your troop production stop. How about a Magic Armory with the ability to upgrade to more slots, thus reducing your troop production delays AND making more money for the developers? Maybe you add a small Magic Armory -- 3x3 or even 2x2 -- and "poof" you have 6 troop production slots. Get a blueprint and expand it to 7, 8, etc. Of course, at some point you will reach a point where your queue is long enough to cover your longest absent period, but I suspect that will be at level 10 or so.

That's my idea anyway. (Do I get a free Magic Armory for my effort when it becomes available? No? Sigh.....)

AJ

 

[SoggyShorts]

Going from 5 slots to 6 is a 20% increase in queue length.
To increase my queue by that much with armories I would need to build 5 more, each taking up 21 squares plus a road and 2500 population.

I could see a magic armory that is the same as a magic residence or magic workshop where it is about 75% better than the free version, but not one that is 400% better.

I noticed that you don't have the dwarven bulwark or shrine of shewdy shrroms in your city these are pretty much "must have" wonders.
Check out www.tinyurl.com/trainingcalc
You'll see that either of those would double your queue even at level 1.

 

[DeletedUser8946]

Hmm. As someone with only three Armories and a Level 3 Shrine of the Shrooms, I might buy a Magic Armory to increase my training size. But would it upgrade every chapter, as the Magic Res and Workshops do? In that case, wouldn't you expand your Training Queue to 16 or 17 by Amuni? That would get out of hand quickly. Anyone at about Orcs or above would be seriously at an advantage when it came to Armories, ESPECIALLY if it turned into a Breeding Ground as well. I'm a Sorcerer in my main city, and have yet to need to upgrade from my three Orc Breeding Grounds (because of # of Orcs, not training size). I've always had Orcs in surplus. If I used blueprints to upgrade a tiny magic Armory to Level 9, and suddenly had 9 more training spots, I could easily sell off two of my three regular Armories.

So I think this COULD work, but under a couple assumptions.
1) Having two Magic Armories would NOT give you two new training spots. Your number of additional training spots is equal to the level of your highest Magic Armory.
2) Every time you upgrade Armories, you don't automatically get ANOTHER Training spot. Maybe every three upgrades? If you can't upgrade them in the chapters where you can't upgrade the regular ones (which makes plain sense) that would be a training spot upgrade at Chapters 1, VI, and X. 1, Dwarves, Sorcerers, and the chapter after Amuni, assuming that they'll upgrade Armories. So Sorcerer's-Amuni would have a max of 8 training spots.
3) As much as it PAINS me to say, it should cost more diamonds then Magic Res and Workshops. It would obviously still cost a lot of Population, but a Residency and selling the old Armory would cover that. Even with all the above restraints, Magic Armories would be pretty powerful and should cost more diamonds.

I think the idea holds potential, even if it could use a bit of refining.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Magic Armories would be pretty powerful and should cost more diamonds.

Indeed. If a magic armory gave you even 1 more slot, it should cost as much as a couple of expansions, since that is what you are saving in space.
Upgrading it should probably cost more than 1 blueprint as well since each slot has the same function and subsequent slots have the benefit of not taking up any space.

 

[HJK84]

Need balancing. I doubt they'll make a Magic building that requires 2 Spells to upgrade to next Chapter.

As you ya'll mentioned it was to OP; Overpowered

 

[DeletedUser8946]

We didn't say too OP. Just that it required balancing. I was thinking one Blueprint, but some diamonds regardless of # of blueprints. There are plenty of Fellowships that consistently get 10 chests in events. It takes two weeks to get two blueprints, and at LEAST eight to get through a chapter. If you have no blueprints, that much more diamonds you have to spend then.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I think the extra slot is simply too powerful. Much easier to just make a magic armory that is 75% better than a normal one (same as other magic buildings)

 

[ajqtrz]

One of the reason I don't have the Dwarven Bulwark and Shrine of Shewdry Shrooms is because I avoid fighting -- though as of late I've begun to get better at it out of necessity.

If you increase the speed of your unit production you compound the problem of the queue being shorter than 8 hours -- assuming you like to sleep -- and thus run into non-productive time. I wish to avoid that and be more efficient

I'm not sure why you would need more armories. My idea is a Magic Armory that merely increases the number of slots and nothing else. It could just as easily be a Magic Barracks or Magic Mercenary Camp or even a Magic Outhouse. LOL. There is no reason an extra slot need to do anything but add to the length of the queue.

As I think about it the Magic Armory could be limited in time as well, needing renewal (i.e. upgrade) every 100 days or so. This would work in lieu of upgrading as it wouldn't add yet another slot, but would "renew" the slot it represents. Just another idea on the fire.

I do think the Magic Armory that does 75% more than the standard Armory is a good alternative but I'm not versed enough in these things to figure out all the details. I'll leave Soggy to that. (His skills of which I have great respect).

AJ

 

[samidodamage]

If you increase the speed of your unit production you compound the problem of the queue being shorter than 8 hours -- assuming you like to sleep -- and thus run into non-productive time. I wish to avoid that and be more efficient

The Bulwark, Shrewdy Shrooms and Armories help me do that. It's a balancing act. Soggy has talked about it in several threads. The 'sweet spot' of training changes as you progress through the chapters. He shares a calculator to use to help with the juggling of the values and I found the link to it in a different thread:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UyC58Lbn1Bq1DWhChs1XONjufT7wOBAa0sxX4VsZabY/edit?usp=sharing

 

[SoggyShorts]

If you increase the speed of your unit production you compound the problem of the queue being shorter than 8 hours -- assuming you like to sleep -- and thus run into non-productive time. I wish to avoid that and be more efficient
I'm not sure why you would need more armories.

I always aim for a 10h queue
Factors that increase queue time:

• Slots in barracks (by far the most powerful)
• Armories
• Shrewdy
• Bulwark

Factors that shorten queue time:

• Barracks upgrades
• Needles

My idea is a Magic Armory that merely increases the number of slots and nothing else. It could just as easily be a Magic Barracks or Magic Mercenary Camp or even a Magic Outhouse. LOL. There is no reason an extra slot need to do anything but add to the length of the queue.

So just a special 1-time purchase building that adds a slot and cannot be upgraded? Very powerful.
Here's an easy way to see how good such a building would be:

Going from 5 slots to 6 slots is a 20% increase in queue time.
So you take your Shrewdy, Bulwark, all the KP you put in them, your armories plus the residences and culture for those armories, and the roads that they all need.
The Magic outhouse(heeheh) is worth 20% of that.

I'm using around 375 squares in my city to increase my queue time, so 20% for me is about 75 squares (3 expansions) and I spent over 4,000 KP on those wonders, so 20% of that is 800 KP.
3 expansions and 800 KP would cost me around 40,000 diamonds
if you want to look at time instead of diamonds, I'd need to scout for 75 days to get enough provinces cleared to gain 3 more expansions.

What's strange though is that the value would be totally different for someone in say chapter 4....

 

[ajqtrz]

I'm still confused how by speeding up the production you enable your queues to continue producing when you are asleep. If the queue can produce X troops an hour, you have X*8 in the queue to have it continue production during those 8 hours. Increasing the rate of production makes it harder to have it produce for the entire 8 hours since it raises the X and you still have only 5 slots to fill with 8*X of troop production.

To perhaps put this more clearly. If I produce 100 troops per hour I get 2400 troops. Provided I the queue can hold enough troops to keep producing when I am gone. Let's say I get back, during the day, 3 times. If my queue can hold 800 troops -- I can be gone 8 hours at most before my queue goes dormant and stops producing troops. But many queue are much shorter than that. Five hours is not unusual. So if I visit three times a day, the most troops I can produce is 500 x 3, 1500. Since adding a slot to the queue gives me the ability to add another 100 to the queue and I can be gone for about 6 hours.

The alternative is to add speed to the queue. So my queue can still hold 500 but it will now take 4.5 hours. Have I gained anything? I still come, fill the queue with 500 production and still return 5 hours later with those 500 built. And an empty queue.

In the end adding armories to speed up production does not help me with the problem of the queue emptying before I can return because once I reach 5 slots that's all I get.

I'm quite sure there's a lot I don't know here and am missing something. And I'm just as certain somebody will let me know what I don't know and thus, I will, no longer, be missing something. Lucky me!

AJ

 

[SoggyShorts]

In the end adding armories to speed up production does not help me with the problem of the queue emptying before I can return

Ahh I thought this might be the issue- you have armories and barracks mixed up.
The armories do not speed up production, they allow you to queue more troops which makes your queue take longer.

Lets say you have 5 slots, and a training size of 100
This lasts 10 hours.

Then you add or upgrade an armory increasing your training size to 110
Now you train 550 and it takes 11 hours.

Have you checked out
www.tinyurl.com/trainingcalc
yet?

 

[ajqtrz]

I'm using around 375 squares in my city to increase my queue time, so 20% for me is about 75 squares (3 expansions) and I spent over 4,000 KP on those wonders, so 20% of that is 800 KP.
3 expansions and 800 KP would cost me around 40,000 diamonds
if you want to look at time instead of diamonds, I'd need to scout for 75 days to get enough provinces cleared to gain 3 more expansions.

I'm a bit confused -- as usual. You are using "375 squares to increase your queue time." I reading the two mentioned AW's they say nothing about increasing the queue time. The Dwarven Bulwark "produces a certain amount of Light Melee in our barracks," and then says it does so every 3 hours. Are you saying it just increases the number of units in each queue slot (that have light melee being produced) but not the speed at which they are being produced? This would mean, effectively, increasing TIME it takes to empty the slot, and thus the queue length (in time). If that is what is going on then the AW's that "produce a certain amount" of whatever, aren't really producing anything you couldn't produce just as quickly if you were online more, right?

Now the two AW's mentioned have a 22.5% effect on the type of troop they mention, but not on all troops. To get all troops -- light and heavy melee, light and heavy ranged and mages -- you would need one AW for each type, a lot more expensive than just the two. I'm not sure they offer all five but you have to be very high in the research tree to get there.

So, in actuality, the 1 slot would be worth a lot more than you even mention, provided my (new) understanding of the effect of the AW's on the queue length is accurate.

If I got it right, thanks for the clarification, if not, mea culpa, no doubt.

AJ

 

[ajqtrz]

Thanks for your patience, Soggy. I see now that upgrading Armory's increase queue length by raising the number of troops you can train - and since they still take the same amount time, effectively lengthening the queue. And barracks increase the speed by being raised. So those who have too short a queue length need to raise the level of their Armory's or add another. A new slot would do the same and would do it for all troop types. I guess my suggestion was like like doing surgery with a stick of dynamite. LOL. (Still it would have worked!)

AJ

 

[SoggyShorts]

No problem =)

As for the wonders, they have 2 abilities. The first is free troops every 3 hours- the same as your residence makes free coins
The second ability is the reason they are "must have" wonders for anyone not ignoring military.

That 1083 is added to each of the 5 slots, massively increasing my queue time

I put your city into the calculator, and the Shrewdy should increase your queue time by about 7 hours, as will the bulwark(I'm guessing at the bulwark since I don't know your squad size)

 

[Risen Malchiah]

I would absolutely purchase a Magic Armory. However, I agree that adding extra slots could be too powerful, though it would be awesome. If it added only 1 slot, then people would only ever need to purchase one of them and upgrading it wouldn't be very important, so it would need to scale properly if players purchase several and upgraded them with diamonds/blueprints.

If the Magic Armory simply added training size at a larger value than a normal armory, that could work. But then it mimicks the Bulwark and Shrooms AWs so it's value would mostly be for players in the earlier chapters.

But if it also included a modest training speed increase in addition to the training size, it could be useful. (Though the increased training size should be higher than the increased speed to avoid players skipping the normal armories entirely and having unfairly fast troop production.)

 

[DeletedUser12171]

I don't value training size or even barrack slots as much as I value training speed.

When you need to fight, what you need is squads. 5 squads, each time. Who cares if you have 10,000 training size or 10 training slots, if you take a jillion hours to train them?

I don't care if my barracks are not training anything when I sleep, as long as I can fill 5 squads every time I want to fight. If there will be a super military building, I will take training time reduction over training size anytime

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Training time reduction is great when you're awake and near the computer (or have access to the mobile app). Downtime while sleeping or working is my biggest concern since that's wasted time that could be used for more troops. Since I've pushed nearly every tournament for a year and a half, I want as many troops as possible. I'll also use time boosters for instant barracks upgrades, and alternate leveling Shrooms/Bulwark with Needles/Flying/Victory to train as much as possible while keeping my full queue over 8-10 hrs.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

Training time reduction is great when you're awake and near the computer (or have access to the mobile app). Downtime while sleeping or working is my biggest concern since that's wasted time that could be used for more troops. Since I've pushed nearly every tournament for a year and a half, I want as many troops as possible. I'll also use time boosters for instant barracks upgrades, and alternate leveling Shrooms/Bulwark with Needles/Flying/Victory to train as much as possible while keeping my full queue over 8-10 hrs.

Okay let's say both of us have squad and training size 1,000, 5 training slots and take 1.6 hours to train 1,000 troops. So we get 5 squads (5,000 troops) in 8 hours. In 24 hours we get 15 squads

Now we each get a choice - increase 50% training size or reduce 50% training time. Squad size stays the same. So you get now 1,500 training size and your full barracks trains 7,500 in 12 hours. In a 24 hours you still get 15 squads, clicking your barracks twice a day. For me, I now train 5,000 troops in 4 hours. Say I slept 8 hours, I could get up to 5 full barracks trained a day I.e 20,000 troops or 20 squads. I'll take 20 squads and 4 hours downtime anytime over 15 squads and no downtime

also, supposing we continued upgrading our buildings but you always went for training size and I always went for training speed. what you'll eventually end up with is perhaps just clicking your barracks once a day, you can fill out the day and get that 15 squads. I, on the other hand, will make more and more squads in that same amount of time. Albeit, I need to set productions more frequently, but I will still always be able to make AT LEAST as many troops as you, with the potential for much more, in the same amount of time

 

[DeletedUser8946]

You make some points, but that's a very specific situation. I'm a Sorcerer with only three Armories. I used to have six in Dwarves, but I've gradually been selling them off. My maximum Barrack training time is six hours, (although admittedly it's 10 in the Training Grounds, but I'll be upgrading that soon) and it'll only get lower since I need to sell off my Bulwark anyway. I would love for a Magic Armory to increase training size and use it to replace one of my regular ones. (And Orc production isn't anywhere near a problem. I've not fell below 40000 Orcs since they were first introduced). And Barracks and Needles upgrade can always happen, so I'd choose a size bump over a time reduction. That way I'd get maximum efficiency when I slept.

And yes, you'd be able to collect more faster, but you'd need to be on at least what, every 4 hours? Not many people can do that. My overnight is usually 10-11 hours long. Halving my training time would only make it 3 hours, so that would be about 8 hours every night where I'm not doing anything.

I think a minor time reduction could be useful, but mostly a training size bump. Maybe 75% bigger training size then a normal armory, but it reduces your Training Size time by 5%? After all, training size is what Armories DO. None of the other Magic Residencies or Workshops have an additional use beyond high pop/coins and supply production. (Although admittedly, the extra training slot WOULD be an additional use, so I guess taking this route any further would be downright hypocratic)

I would absolutely purchase a Magic Armory. However, I agree that adding extra slots could be too powerful, though it would be awesome. If it added only 1 slot, then people would only ever need to purchase one of them and upgrading it wouldn't be very important, so it would need to scale properly if players purchase several and upgraded them with diamonds/blueprints.

I absolutely agree with all of this. I'd totally get one, and you're right, having it give more then one slot is overpowered.