Answered Military upgrades and enemy strength

[. Storm]

Is it Armory upgrades that cause the 'Shady Characters' numbers to grow, or is it my Squad Size Research? It seems like I am in a worse position every time I try to grow, they grow more than I do. Do the upgrades to Barracks & Training Ground also have an effect on the troop numbers and strength you face in province battles?

 

[Pauly7]

The size of squads in province encounters goes up with each squad size research. Armoury upgrades increase the training size which determines how many troops can be trained at once. Upgrading the Barracks improves your training speed, which governs how quickly they are produced.

 

[DeletedUser3571]

The squad size upgrades increase your squad size in provinces, the size of the enemies squad is based on the cost of scouting the province which will not change once it has been scouted.
If your enemies squad size is growing quicker than yours than its likely that you have scouted further than the developers intended you to have done at that point. You can see how far the developers intend for you to scout by looking at the provinces needed to open the next chapter in the research tree. You are allowed to go further than they intend for your to at the point you are but in return the province will be harder to fight and negotiate.

 

[. Storm]

The size of squads in province encounters goes up with each squad size research. Armoury upgrades increase the training size which determines how many troops can be trained at once. Upgrading the Barracks improves your training speed, which governs how quickly they are produced.

Hi Pauly7, and thank you for responding.
Yes, I know all that. What I don't understand is how it all relates to the size of the opposing army, and how I can avoid 'creating' opposing armies so large that I have no chance of winning the battle. How does this work?

 

[. Storm]

The squad size upgrades increase your squad size in provinces, the size of the enemies squad is based on the cost of scouting the province which will not change once it has been scouted.
If your enemies squad size is growing quicker than yours than its likely that you have scouted further than the developers intended you to have done at that point. You can see how far the developers intend for you to scout by looking at the provinces needed to open the next chapter in the research tree. You are allowed to go further than they intend for your to at the point you are but in return the province will be harder to fight and negotiate.

Hi pompeywolf, and thank you.
That makes a lot of sense, although I'm not sure how I can use it to escape the position I'm in. Thinking back, I had been stopping at the required number of provinces in the initial phases of the game, but I would then get a quest which required 'complete xx provinces' or 'get xx number of relics', for example. This has continued to happen, add to that the need for expansions, which requires more provinces. With the game itself driving the acquisition of more provinces, how do I get back to a position where I have, at least, a chance of winning a battle?
Also, just to double check, I can go ahead upgrading my military buildings and researching squad size, because they won't contribute to this problem? Is that right?

 

[DeletedUser3571]

You are fine to upgrade military building as that will help you as Pauly7 said in his post.
But squad size upgrades are a tricky issue, while doing them will help to make province fighting easier it will also make your losses greater in the tournament. There are lots of threads where this issue is discussed if you want to find out more, and im sure someone else might explain it better than me.

 

[Paladestar]

Squad size upgrades are poison, skip all that you are able to.

In a tournament both your squad size and the enemy squad size is a percentage of your squad size. The enemy size ranging from 85% of your squad size for round 1 and 160% of your squad size for round 6. Each round, your own squad size will be 0.05 multiplied by the province number.

So regardless of your squad size, the battles will always essentially be the same difficulty.

Where squad size hammers you is training troops. Imagine you train 1000 troops per hour and have a squad size of 1000 - you train one squad per hour.

Double squad size to 2000 and those it now takes 2 hours to train one squad of those same troops - so it takes you twice as long to train the same number of squads of troops, or you lose twice as many troops per battle, whichever way you want to look at it.

Some numbers if it helps...


Round one of a tourney, in province 1:

You have a squad size of 1000, so based on the information above your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 1000 = 50
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 85% of yours = 85% * 50 = 42.

If instead you have a squad size of 2000, your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 2000 = 100
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 85% of yours = 85% * 100 = 85.


Round two of a tourney, in province 1:

You have a squad size of 1000, so based on the information above your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 1000 = 50
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 100% of yours = 100% * 50 = 50.

If instead you have a squad size of 2000, your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 2000 = 100
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 100% of yours = 100% * 100 = 100.

So 50 vs 50 or 100 vs 100, the difficulty is the same - you just need twice as many troops and a higher squad size doesn't help you train troops faster, so you're worse off in terms of how much you can fight before you'll run out of troops (yes, some ancient wonders that produce free troops scale from squad size, but this comes nowhere near offsetting your extra losses from a larger squad size).


Round six of a tourney, in province 1:

You have a squad size of 1000, so based on the information above your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 1000 = 50
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 160% of yours = 160% * 50 = 80.

If instead you have a squad size of 2000, your squad size for the fights in this province/round will be = 0.05 * 2000 = 100
Your enemy will have a squad size that is 160% of yours = 160% * 100 = 160.

50 vs 80 or 100 vs 160, you're at the same percentage disadvantage, you'll just lose more troops from the higher squad size, the fight won't be any harder to win.


Squad size upgrades do give you an advantage when fighting enemies in provinces that you've scouted on the world map. However, if you're playing the game in a way to maximise your progress you're going to be doing waaay more tournament encounters than world map encounters. As you're able to go further in the tournament as you grow (do more tournament provinces), the tournament encounters will start to cost much more than the world map ones too.

If you cater instead of fighting, the same applies, the amount of goods/supplies/whatever needed to cater will scale with your squad size, costing you more to cater the same fight than if you had a smaller squad size.

*** When I talk about enemy squad size, the number shown in game might not always correspond per the formulas given. This is where the enemy has more or less than 5 slots. The percentage of the enemy's total size will always be based on the formula divided by the number of slots they have. E.g. Round two of a tourney in province 20, your squad size is 1000, with your 5 slots all counter, your total team squad size is 5000. If the enemy has 5 unit slots in their team the game will show enemy squad size as 1000 too. If the enemy has 4 unit slots in their team it'll show 1250 as their squad size (1250 * 4 = 5000, still the same total as you). If they have 8 unit slots in their team the squad size will show as 625 (625 * 8 = 5000).

 

[. Storm]

Thank you Pauly7, pompeywolf & Paladestar .. I feel I am finally beginning to understand the balance. Tournaments are more important to me than provinces, since attaining more provinces does not directly help my Fellowship, but my contribution via the tournament certainly impacts the Fellowship, and each Fellow participating in it.
Understanding this information is important, and thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. It's going to take a while to did myself out of the hole I created, but at least I now know how to.

Thanks again

 

[AstralSoul]

How about the AW affected by them @Paladestar , that is the only thing I wonder about? Not worth it neither?

 

[Pauly7]

How about the AW affected by them @Paladestar , that is the only thing I wonder about? Not worth it neither?

I think it's a very legitimate consideration depending on what your city set up looks like. Every squad size upgrade makes the Dwarven Bulwark more powerful. For those people struggling with not enough armouries it is certainly something to think about.

 

[Gargon667]

Thank you Pauly7, pompeywolf & Paladestar .. I feel I am finally beginning to understand the balance. Tournaments are more important to me than provinces, since attaining more provinces does not directly help my Fellowship, but my contribution via the tournament certainly impacts the Fellowship, and each Fellow participating in it.
Understanding this information is important, and thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. It's going to take a while to did myself out of the hole I created, but at least I now know how to.

Thanks again

Don´t worry about the province fights, you are doing only a very limited number of them, if figting is too difficult, cater them. Also those fights will get easier every time you research an advanced scout. So moving through the chapters quickly will keep the provinces fairly easy even without SS upgrades. Of course eventually this tactics will run out of advanced scouts when you reach the end of the chapters, but by then provinces really are not an issue any more. I am in chapter 15 now, but still have medium difficulty fights (which really is super easy) and I have never done any optional SS upgrades. But yes eventually I will go back to catering those. With a scout taking 2 days it means something like 20 encounters per week. I do 1000 in the tourney, so it simply makes no difference at all if they are easy or difficult, cheap or expensive.

 

[Gargon667]

How about the AW affected by them @Paladestar , that is the only thing I wonder about? Not worth it neither?

Nope not worth it.

Yes you are right, what you gain is increasing with SS, but not anywhere close to as much as you would need to make up for the tourney costs. If you have the AW anyway for other reasons (like Shrooms for training size giving LR or Toads Temple for improved damage also giving HR) you get a couple extra as a nice bonus. Say thank you and be happy about it, but don´t waste your resources on them just for that. It is not worth it building the AWs and it sure as heck is not worth increasing your SS! As mentioned before SS upgrades are poison! Stay away from them if at all possible! And it looks like finally the obligatory SS upgrades in chapter 16 will mean the end of the research tree for me. Certainly not going to happen before they release an insanely awesome chapter 17 (which is more than half a year away) to convince me to shoot myself in the foot again for the 58th and 59th time (lucky the 57th is optional lol).

 

[CrazyWizard]

Is it Armory upgrades that cause the 'Shady Characters' numbers to grow, or is it my Squad Size Research? It seems like I am in a worse position every time I try to grow, they grow more than I do. Do the upgrades to Barracks & Training Ground also have an effect on the troop numbers and strength you face in province battles?

Maybe it was already noted but I also noticed some wrong so here my 2 cents.

World Map: The enemies numbers are based on the costs of scouting that province, the second you send out your scout the numbers are fixed.
An improved/advanced scout reseach lowers the costs for future scouts but does not change the existing enemy units since those values are already set.

The value in gold/coins is the only deciding factor how strong the enemy units are.

Tournaments:
Your base squad size * 5% * province number * round value

Round Values:
Round 1: 85%
Round 2: 100%
Round 3: 115%
Round 4: 130%
Round 5: 145%
Round 6: 160%

Example your SS is 2000, you play round 3 province number 17
2000*0.05*17*1.15 = 1995.
This is in a 5 vs 5 battle, there are some other modifiers that make it bigger or lower depending on less or more enemies. but your base difficulty in province 17 is 1700 vs 1995. (your SS is SS*5%*province number)

Spire:
The spire is not really known,
We know that research, expansions, wonderlevels and some other variables decide the difficulte of the enemies, but how the formula works is still a big mystery

Wonders are a big factor in these battles and can increase the difficulty up to 300%

 

[AstralSoul]

I think it's a very legitimate consideration depending on what your city set up looks like. Every squad size upgrade makes the Dwarven Bulwark more powerful. For those people struggling with not enough armouries it is certainly something to think about.

Well, I have five armories breeding grounds, so I guess I should really not research them (I hate to leave it unresearched hehe.)

Edit:

Initially, I am building all up to them, and getting them to level 6, but to level 7 I only got BTG, and the military ones (in woodelves). Except for Needles of the Tempest, which I have it at level 12, and I won't stop until level 30.