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Tournament Strategies

Gargon667

Mentor
At this moment, I'm squeezing 2 Spires into 5 days. It's a hard decision to choose between the two. I might have to increase the power of the troops first and then see how that goes.

I personally don´t need booster buildings for the spire, if you do, then just use time boosters and you can put also the 2 spires into the same 5 days. The second spire doesn´t need a lot of boosting anyway as it fits nicely into the same 5 day period. So in actuality I play 2 tourneys and 1 spire on the boosters. And I play 1 spire without booster buildings, because I think it costs me more time boosters to boost an entire spire than it costs me to boost troops to play the spire without booster buildings, but that is up to everybody to decide for themselves of course...

The amount of troops you need for tourneys (if you play them big) is orders of magnitude bigger than what you need for the spire, so there is no doubt where the booster buildings are more needed, if you have to choose one or the other. The spire can be done even by convincing spirits if necessary.
 

Gargon667

Mentor
Although I agree with this, it is a bit all or nothing. To do this needs a pretty much max timewarp; anything under around L25 and you can't do the 2 tourney's in one 5-day building duration and the strategy fails. Which is the way with the timewarp - it can change the way you do the tourney, but it's usually all or nothing for a particular effect. Adding a level at random may hurt rather than help.

It is a little bit all or nothing, but not totally so.
1. You do not need 0 cooldown to fit 2 tourneys, only small enough to be able to play 6 rounds within 24h, so depending on sleep patterns a few hours (definitely less than 4hours though) of cooldown is completely feasible.
4hour is 25% so, the time reduction should be 80% or more.
2. The Polar Bear adds on to the TWarp. Even unevolved it adds 10%, fully evolved 20% which means you need fewer levels on your TWarp for the same result.
 

BonnyGwen

Spellcaster
I use a mixed approach. I negotiate spire exclusively and reach the top most every week. Since I negotiate I don't need battle boosts for it. I tried fighting a few times and it's just a slaughter for me. For tourney I auto fight as far as I can up to 30 provinces then negotiate when troops run low. I can usually finish 24 provinces to lvl 6 with a variety of lvls for the remaining provinces from 25 to 30. I score in the 6000s to 7000s range weekly. For AWs, I build them all. Yeah, people say not to do that but I'm funny that way. My military AWs could probably use some leveling up but I get to them in between all the others. I finished chap 18 about a month ago.
 

Piglets For All

Soothsayer
I have a lvl 30 timewarp and feed my stage 10 polar bear at approx 14:00 on a Friday, put down my battle boosts, 1-2 Dwarven Armor, plus 5 or 6 of the 2x2 boosts, whichever I have as I don't take account of what troops I might face as I always fight the same way, feed the bird and then whizz up the Spire, from there I go straight into the tournament and get that done as well. On Tuesday morning I throw a load of time boosts and supply windfalls at my barracks and make as many troops as I can before I get bored (tend to keep around 150 x 5hr time boosts for other things) and when the tournament opens I have between then and 14:00 on Wednesday to get both spire and tournament done, I feed the bird again before I start.
I'm beginning to hate both spire and tournament as I don't like fighting games, but having been playing since game release when it was billed as a city building game and "play it your way" its changed over time to a game in which fighting is prioritised. Getting it all done twice in a few hours within a 5 day window means the rest of the time I can forget about it.
I don't use goods in the spire, and only rarely in the tournament, and only then if in an event which is asking for x tournament provinces, I just drop a few goods in for them as my boosts have normally run out.
I have a 4.8k tournament average here on live and 5.5k on beta where my fighting AWs are a bit higher levelled.
I'm not going for the really high scores but tend to do roughly the same each week, maybe a little less some weeks if I can't be bothered.
 

Silly Bubbles

Necromancer
Thank you everyone for you posts, much appreciated :)

Regarding this specifically: the better combat AW will always be beneficial for all players. You're in a situation where the cost of AW is quite high compared to average (Ch18, but moderate number of AW levels currently), but even so the benefits massively outweight the costs. For example upgrading needles and flying academy from 0 to 30 will add 15% to your squad size. But will add 100% to your 2 biggest troop sources - probably adding something like 60%-75% to your total troop training. Oh, and you'd get free mages and a LR damage boost as well.

So upgrades to wonders like needles, monastery, one of bulwark/shrooms, flying academy, toads and simia sapiens are always beneficial to level 30 (beyond L30 they sometimes give little benefit)
Some others (heroes forge, victory springs, pyramid) give similar benefits, but are aiding melee troops and the training camp - which tend to be the least useful. So whether these are worth it depends how much you think you'll use their troops. The squad size cost of them is not prohibitive.
Dragon Abbey may be less useful than it seems - mages are great, but you can get bigger damage boosts from the temporary buildings.

Regarding general strategy, I'd suggest:
Craft every combat building (ELR, MMM, UUU) in the MA that you can now. Even if not using them yet, there's no limit on how many you can store. These are crucial to success. And, before pushing hard, you can take time to figure out when you would use them. Different tournaments benefit from different ones.
I would also suggest removing almost all your culture buildings (not pop+culture ones) to increase your manufacturies as much as possible - having good production to be able to cater the tricky matchups is helpful. With fighting there is huge variability in cost - some enemy troop combinations you can beat almost without loss; others are painful no matter what you do.

And what Far Reach said about doing SOME manual fighting. The bonuses troops get against each other is not the whole story; the way the battle will play out matters.

This helped a lot so thank you :)

So far I've decided to max out my Monastery and then Simia. Also build more armories to increase my training size so I don't have to build AWs for that. We'll see how that goes, I might have to fine tune it.
 

SkyRider99

Mentor
So far I've decided to max out my Monastery and then Simia. Also build more armories to increase my training size so I don't have to build AWs for that. We'll see how that goes, I might have to fine tune it.
Sounds like a good plan. Similar to my approach, for whatever that's worth :)

There's usually pluses and minuses with growth and upgrades. I do like my armories though :cool:
 

Silly Bubbles

Necromancer
The more I read and think about it, it seems that it's all about number of troops, time instants, bears, phoenixes and expiring boosts buildings. The benefit of too many AWs is questionable.
 

CrazyWizard

Shaman
I'd agree with that Bubbles. There's one player in my FS who is dead-set on building every AW. When she gets to higher chapters and opens more provinces she may discover the downside to that approach.
I havent calculated for the most recent chapters buit also rankking point wise regular buildings are getting very close or surpass many wonders on a points per sq basis even when you look at the entire chain
 

Turing

Bard
The more I read and think about it, it seems that it's all about number of troops, time instants, bears, phoenixes and expiring boosts buildings. The benefit of too many AWs is questionable.

I would say it's more about which than how many. There isn't "too many" AWs as such... some are beneficial, and will be so for almost every conceivable situation. Many others (ToS, Endless excavation, lighthouse/bell spire, watchtower, thrones, enar, maze, trade centre, sunset towers, and almost everything ch15+) will just push up your costs with no/negligible benefit specific to tourney.
 
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