Optimal amount of expansions for a tournament and spire city

[AsterObelix]

Hello,

Even if I'm just in the Orcs and Goblins chapter I'm wondering already how many expansions my optimal city should have.
The goals of this city are :
1) 6000 to 8000 points in the tournament.
2) Reaching the top of the Spire with conceiving.
3) Playing every chapter.
4) Fair support in FA so the 3 stages can be done with minimal general effort.

Because I'm playing this game for a little bit more than 4 months now, I don't have access to Fire Birds or Brown Bears (OK, they are in my inventory, but I miss the necessary artifacts to evolve them), so I can only use the temporary boosters from the MA.
What's the minimal amount of expansions I need to get there ? So that I know when to stop expanding my city.
Some explanation how you get to that number will be appreciated.

 

[BlueBlou]

I think the answer is too complicated with too many factors involved and you want to play chapters too. Probably try and keep to the number of scouted and explored provinces as needed per chapter in the research tree. Rather place premium expansions than regular expansions. If you can get away with not placing an expansion, then don’t place it, but this may impact on your game play and make it no fun at all. You need to do 6 rounds of tournament with about 25 to 30 provinces to get to your target tournament score. Doable, but your timing needs to be right.

 

[Gargon667]

The fewer the better if you talk about tourney scores as expansions increase the cost of tournies. But if you want to play all the chapters and FAs then you will certainly want lots of them, some of the latest chapters do need lots of space and FAs need as many as you can possibly get.

As always there is no magic number, but also you don´t have to worry about that topic any time soon, for now just place all the ones you get. Once you have more than 100 you can start thinking about the topic of where to stop again. But 99.9% of people will always tell you to place them all. I personally have a few I didn´t place, but that is highly unusual.

There is no magic way (besides buying premium expansions) to get more provinces, you get them one after another in the research tree and by completing map provinces.

 

[m4rt1n]

The fact this question has to be asked shows how the Inno development team have make errors with how certain things including expansions gained and AW levels accumulated adversely affect the tournament, when the original goal is to build the city.

My experience is I have taken all available expansions, upgrade as many AW's as I can and fit in as much as possible without spending money, so I used won diamonds firstly on upgrading the Magic Academy to level 5 to make CC spells in 6 hours so I can craft 24/7.

I have completed every spire since it's introduction and average above 8000 tourney points but it can be tough for me these days.

By no means a good strategy given the current formula's but I time crafted boosters placed to run so I can fight the first half of the spire on the Sunday while still running then take my time with the remaining spire once the tourney starts on Tuesday with boosters placed.

Also quite a few spire chests are very easy on autofight without boosters, others are impossible, it takes experience but I use a rule of thumb, if every enemy in every wave can be killed with 1 or 2 adjacent troop types I autofight rather than convince.

As for the Fellowship Adventures, that is a coordination exercise that requires good fellowship communication so you can together plan the best route for minimum effort unless you are going for ranking glory.

 

[Turing]

I'm wondering already how many expansions my optimal city should have.

The number you currently have.

Some explanation how you get to that number will be appreciated.

2 reasons for that:
Firstly you can add expansions later when you need them. You can't unplace them. So your best strategy is to wait and place them later when you find you NEED them.
Secondly I have 2 cities, one playing "normally" and one doing what you describe which has just 3 expansions more than you currently have. I'm in chapter 14 and have felt very little need for more yet.

Your problem is the ideal city for (3) and (4) is different to (1) and (2). (4) is probably OK if you can time to be between chapters each FA; I'm able to contribute my fair share to FA in a FS which clears the entire of all 3 maps always with ease. (3) is going to be your problem as you hit later chapters; the portal buildings get ridiculously large (even if you place all expansions). Some chapters you can just PP through the whole thing, but some require the uncapped bits not given by PPs. So I reckon your number of expansions will ultimately be governed by how few you think you can get away with while completing the guest race bits. But for that you can add expansions as you get stuck in a particular chapter

 

[AsterObelix]

Thank you for your reactions and suggestions.
I intend to follow the suggestion of @Turing and stick with my current number of 70 expansions. And then see how far I can get.
Of course this means that I have to make my city more efficient, but I was already aware of that when I started this thread.

 

[30158729]

I think you are needlessly hindering yourself by doing that @AsterObelix

We can all play however we want but if you are putting so much stock in how expansions hurt tournament performance, why not chapter progress? Or upgrading AWs? Seeds and mana will be a nightmare when you get to those chapters if you restrict yourself so much.

 

[FieryArien]

and stick with my current number of 70 expansions. And then see how far I can get.

At least into the Halflings chapter. My beta city has 54 placed expansions and it’s currently in the middle of Halflings chapter. It’s self sufficient (zero star trades weren’t needed), does fair share (and more) for 10 chests in tourney, climbs 2 levels in Spire and also the third level (at least) once every three weeks. It’s one year old (August), no money spent and already managed to evolve the Fire phoenix and Brown Bear.

So I’d say your city’ve got bright future ahead.

I should admit, that I’m still trying to find the proper balance in producing seeds; and mana finally started to be a nuisance (Spire now asks for it and I also need to produce those seeds). However, last chapter gave me Dragon Abbey, which solves the most serious troubles with mana. ;-) There are still chapters ahead, which are doable with Portal Profits, but then it will be tricky and I suppose I’ll be adding more space. If not sooner.

 

[Gargon667]

I think you are needlessly hindering yourself by doing that @AsterObelix

We can all play however we want but if you are putting so much stock in how expansions hurt tournament performance, why not chapter progress? Or upgrading AWs? Seeds and mana will be a nightmare when you get to those chapters if you restrict yourself so much.

Certainly those 2 things also should be considered.

if tourney/spire is the main objective, only military AWs should be upgraded
chapter progress is probably best stopped half-way through chapter 15 after activating the 3 star frogs.

 

[Far Reach]

The goals of this city are :
1) 6000 to 8000 points in the tournament.
2) Reaching the top of the Spire with conceiving.
3) Playing every chapter.
4) Fair support in FA so the 3 stages can be done with minimal general effort.

You should be able to meet those goals without limiting your expansions (or indeed Wonders) at all. (My city does.) If you are seeking a very much higher tournament score then I'd start off by focussing on optimising Wonders (as @Gargon667 suggests above). This may make your other aims harder, but they should still be achievable.

 

[Wibbly Woo]

Certainly those 2 things also should be considered.

if tourney/spire is the main objective, only military AWs should be upgraded
chapter progress is probably best stopped half-way through chapter 15 after activating the 3 star frogs.

I am curious about this common wisdom around only military wonders. Yes, all else being equal, wonder levels of any type raise the cost of completing tournament and spire encounters. That is an obvious first order consequence of the function minmax derived.

However… if we place economy wonders, can they be sufficiently efficient that we can avoid placing city expansions for a certain economy level? If so, while they would cost more on the AW factor, they should save on the “expansions placed” factor (assuming the expansions in question aren’t already placed, of course).

However, this would require the economy wonders to be that efficient, and I haven’t run the costs to see if any are, and I could well believe none are.

 

[Turing]

However… if we place economy wonders, can they be sufficiently efficient that we can avoid placing city expansions for a certain economy level? If so, while they would cost more on the AW factor, they should save on the “expansions placed” factor (assuming the expansions in question aren’t already placed, of course).

However, this would require the economy wonders to be that efficient, and I haven’t run the costs to see if any are, and I could well believe none are.

I haven't run the numbers exactly, but looked roughly and they look doubtful. TBH quite a few of the economy wonders seem rather pants even if not optimising for tourney. Crystal lighthouse/great bell spire anyone? Tome of secrets?

A low level prosperity towers, sufficient to extend the PoP duration to cover all your collections in a day can give a dramatic boost to supply production and may displace a workshop (and the required pop+culture for it) so must be at least very close to beneficial.

The %age based population effect of GA or mountain halls would only beat adding magic residences or the best event pop-buildings on very, very large cities, probably larger than is possible. In many cases I think the pop would only justify 40%-70% of their tourney cost. Whether they might be worthwhile would then depend on what value, if any, you ascribe to the coins or goods. Due to its small size the level 1 GA might just sneak in as technically helpful for large cities.

If a tourney city isn't progressing much through the tech tree then it doesn't much in the way of sentient goods, seeds, etc, so that rules out quite a few.