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Martial Monastery

Stucon

Illusionist
Slightly off topic.
I assume the additional levels on Needles (Level 30+)are a definite no no. Am I correct?
 

Pauly7

Magus
Slightly off topic.
I assume the additional levels on Needles (Level 30+)are a definite no no. Am I correct?
Not categorically. It still depends on the whole calculation and (more importantly) it depends how much use you will get from a little extra barracks training speed. Many players use Merc Camp for the most part and you don't get any extra LR fighting power so there are probably not many people that would benefit from the highest few levels of Needles.
 

Turing

Bard
If my MM saves me 3 more units in each fight but I lose 4 more units because of the bigger SS then the net gain would be -1 unit per fight.
...
At some point already in existence or in the future the gain in SS and therefore the increase in losses will outstrip the benefit in unit loss reduction.

You've ignored the fact that the bigger your squad size the bigger the effect of the MM will be. You quote the MM benefit as a fixed number (3), but then treat the cost as scaling with the other tourney factors. In reality BOTH numbers scale equally. For a more advanced city the extra losses would be larger due to higher tourney cost factors; but with those large squad sizes the MM benefit would also be large.

I don't think anyone can do this consistently, unless they are also consistently throwing a lot of diamonds at the MA.
Indeed. I did mention using diamonds to gain UUU. I'm not sure what par is, but I'd guess someone with max timeboosts doing 2 tourneys per building might get 100% health boost - which makes the MM gain fairly small if there aren't many other wonders. I just brought it up as the one edge case where at least in theory you could kill off the benefit. I can't see it happening in reality.
 

Turing

Bard
Slightly off topic.
I assume the additional levels on Needles (Level 30+)are a definite no no. Am I correct?

As Pauly says it's not necessarily bad. Putting some more precise numbers on the downside, I think the squad size increase is:
0.3% if you have 0 existing AW levels
0.2% if you have 167 existing AW levels
0.1% if you have 667 existing AW levels.

As for the benefit, apart from 30-31 which is better, the other levels give you 2% extra troops. But that's of your base value. Ie production goes from 204% of base to 206% of base at L32 - which is really around a 1% increase of your current situation.
But that's only on one troop source. If, for example, you get equal troops from each of:
- barracks
- training camp
- mercenary camp
- orc strategists, event and evolving buildings
then it would be a 0.25% overall increase.

So a lot depends on where your troop focus is. Which will depend on where you put any time instants, and how much bonus troop production you have (those pesky bears again ;) ). If you put a lot of time instants into the merc camp and have masses of other buildings it's of doubtful value - although if you have 500-1000 AW levels already it might be worth it even then. If you put time instants into your barrack or don't use any, then it's likely of theoretical benefit.

L31 is double value and likely to be worthwhile for most people.
 

Stucon

Illusionist
Tanks @Pauly7 and @Turing
MANY years ago I did an A level in 'Pure Maths with Statistics'.
The numbers involved in trying to work out what's best are (appropriately) numbing.
 
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CrazyWizard

Shaman
You've ignored the fact that the bigger your squad size the bigger the effect of the MM will be. You quote the MM benefit as a fixed number (3), but then treat the cost as scaling with the other tourney factors. In reality BOTH numbers scale equally. For a more advanced city the extra losses would be larger due to higher tourney cost factors; but with those large squad sizes the MM benefit would also be large.


Indeed. I did mention using diamonds to gain UUU. I'm not sure what par is, but I'd guess someone with max timeboosts doing 2 tourneys per building might get 100% health boost - which makes the MM gain fairly small if there aren't many other wonders. I just brought it up as the one edge case where at least in theory you could kill off the benefit. I can't see it happening in reality.
No I was not ignoring that and 3 was a fictional number, as I said you cannot quantify it.
Lets build a theory here.

If you loose 10% in a battle and presume MM reduces it to 9.5% then
If I have 1000 units on the battlefield in the first battle I loose 100 units, in the second I Loose 95 units.
Now lets say we add some more levels and it drops to 9% losses. but unit size increases to 2000 units
2000 units *0.09 = 180 units lost

In this hypothetical scenario my SS increased and due that increase, event the lower loss of units will mean I loose more units.
I went from 95 units lost to 180 units lost.

My production did not increase.


Now not that this is an example showing the concept and problem of your conclusion that MM always counters larger unit sizes.

Now the main issue is pinding the point where a wonder no longer benefits the advantage. this would take a lot of research to collect reliable data as we do not know the background numbers in combat.

What is sure that these crossover points are real in elvenar due to how the formula is build, the problem is nobody knows if we already reached it or if we still have some room left in the game to play with. the more research and expansions a player has the more a single wonderlevel would add to the unit size formula. and since they multiply and since reaearch is an exponential formula the size increase will get out of control. it's the nature of the formula that it will do this.
 

Far Reach

Conjurer
I agree with @Turing that (in practice) every additional MM level is beneficial. I'll attempt to explain this using slightly more mathematical rigour:

The number of units we lose in any individual attack is the number of damage points done by the enemy divided by the hit points which each of our units has. This can be written as (S*D)/H where S is the enemy squad size, D is the average damage done by each enemy unit and H is the hp of each of our units.

Each additional level of Martial Monastery increases both S and H. @CrazyWizard observes that if S increases by more than H then our losses can increase (which is true of course). @Turing is calculating exactly what proportional increases we will get to each of S and H (which increases also depend upon the number of existing AW levels as well as the existing hp bonus from UUs, Dwarven Armourers and MM levels). The maximum percentage increase to S per MM level is 0.3% and any player not running with a large number of booster buildings is guaranteed to get a larger percentage increase to H. This means that the losses will necessarily reduce.
 
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Turing

Bard
If you loose 10% in a battle and presume MM reduces it to 9.5% then
If I have 1000 units on the battlefield in the first battle I loose 100 units, in the second I Loose 95 units.
Now lets say we add some more levels and it drops to 9% losses. but unit size increases to 2000 units
2000 units *0.09 = 180 units lost

In this hypothetical scenario my SS increased and due that increase, event the lower loss of units will mean I loose more units.
I went from 95 units lost to 180 units lost.

The reduction from 10% to 9.5% losses is achieved (or better) with around a 5% health increase, which you get from 6 sanctuary levels assuming you don't have a lot of other health boosts.

For the cost part you have DOUBLED (!) the tourney squad size. Doing this by upgrading AW requires adding a number of levels equal to the total number you have already PLUS 333. So a player with 200 or so would need to do 533 AW upgrades for this to happen. For all players it's going to be many hundreds of levels.

So your example compares the benefit of 6 upgrades to the cost of many hundreds of upgrades. No surprise that can make the cost exceed the benefit.

But we can actually work the example accurately for those 6 sanctuary upgrades. If the tourney squad is currently 1000, then adding 6 levels:
increases it to 1018 for a player with 0 existing AW levels
increases it to 1012 for a player with 167 existing AW levels
increases it to 1006 for a player with 667 existing AW levels

And the troop losses for these 3 players are now:
96.71
96.14
95.57

All of these are below 100 showing an improvement. And the first is the worst case scenario - having more existing AW levels makes the number better and better.
 

JollyElf

Soothsayer
200 or so would need to do 533 AW upgrades
Not true. Only the first 333 levels doubles.
next 333 levels increases from 2 to 3. Next 333 levels from 3 to 4. Fraction gets smaller progressively.

increases it to 1018 for a player with 0 existing AW levels
increases it to 1012 for a player with 167 existing AW levels
increases it to 1006 for a player with 667 existing AW levels

Small miscalculations.
1001.8 not 1018
And so on for next 2 calculations too
 

Gargon667

Mentor
Just for the sheer joy of arguing (and to further complicate a complicated topic of course) I want to add one major point that so far has been entirely ignored:

The MM can actually make you win a fight that you would lose without it. That advantage is incalculable unfortunately.

Imagine an extreme case, where you loose a fight (just barely), but a MM giving you like an extra few HP to survive the last enemy attack and then strike him back and kill them.

That is something none of the above calculations include as they are based on you always winning your fights :)

It is also one of the reasons why MM (and all the damage increase AWs) are supper powerful and are beneficial against the tourney formula: They actually make your fights easier to win! The tourney formula does not make your fights more difficult, only more costly (as in troop numbers you need to replenish). But if you can win a fight you would otherwise loose, you make a big step upwards in terms of efficiency (even if that fight is more costly). It is better to win an expensive fight than losing a cheap one.
 

Gargon667

Mentor
It doesn´t matter how much penalty the martial monastery could or coudn´t give you, or how much loses in terms of single units it could cause you with 3-4 Brown Bears (aka imba bears), 4-6 UUUs, and thousands of time boosters that penalty is a little fly to a player with all that.

LOL!

BTW the MM can beat 100 bears if it makes you win a fight you lose without it. You can throw a million troops at a fight a million times and still loose. If you make your troops better you can win the fight and move on.
Bears are awesome, but bears without booster buildings and Firebirds will not get you far in terms of high scores. Garbage troops don´t win tourneys. Not even if they are nearly unlimited in numbers (that is also the exact reason why I didn´t build the Victory springs)
 

Gargon667

Mentor
Slightly off topic.
I assume the additional levels on Needles (Level 30+)are a definite no no. Am I correct?

I´d say you are entering the area where the benefits and costs get very close to each other... I did 1 or 2 of them because all the better options were already done and I don´t want to do the ones that are even worse. But I think I stopped halfway through those 5 levels just because the exercise is so pointless and I started giving away free KP to fellows and then pile the rest up in my KP bar which is less work than upgrading AWs that give me no net benefit lol.
 

Stucon

Illusionist
I´d say you are entering the area where the benefits and costs get very close to each other... I did 1 or 2 of them because all the better options were already done and I don´t want to do the ones that are even worse. But I think I stopped halfway through those 5 levels just because the exercise is so pointless and I started giving away free KP to fellows and then pile the rest up in my KP bar which is less work than upgrading AWs that give me no net benefit lol.
From what folk have said, it would seem the first level (31) is worth it.
Now, if I only had the resources!
 

Gargon667

Mentor
From what folk have said, it would seem the first level (31) is worth it.
Now, if I only had the resources!

31 is a rune circle so it certainly is always the best one for all AWs past 30 :)
 

Gargon667

Mentor
I never bothered with Toads level 31.

me neither, you don´t get a damage increase anymore past 30 so there is no point at all. But if you do go past 30, then level 31 at least gives you double the effect that you get from levels 32-35 :p
 
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