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I hear lots of complaints about how far down in the rankings people go when they sell weapons for upgrades. I used to know the value of the upgrades in age 1 and they were worth the gold. I'm not sure thats true in age 2. Are you better off just investing in weapons? And 25% , 25% of what ? Certainly not your SA or DA. I'm not sure if even 25% increase to a new weapons DA or SA?  :blink:  

Yes, they're worth the gold -- if you have enough weapons.

This is how it works:

SA = WeaponBase * 5 * NumberofWeapons * (1 + TotalUpgradePercent)

So, for 5 Excaliburs and no siege upgrades, it's:

64000 = 2560 * 5 * 5 * (1 + 0)

When you upgrade that the first time, it goes up to 80000 (a 25% increase).  But from here on, you have to calculate what your SA would be *without* upgrades before you can determine how much an upgrade will help you.  Example:

96000 = 2560 * 5 * 5 * (1 + .50)

That's not a 25% gain over 80000, that's a 50% gain over 64000, your base damage.

Therefore, since I now have 45 Excaliburs and Catapults for siege, the next upgrade will definitely be worth it for me:

1,152,000 = 2560 * 5 * 45 * (1 + 1.00)     <-- currently
1,296,000 = 2560 * 5 * 45 * (1 + 1.25)     <-- If I were to upgrade to Siege Towers
1,280,000 = 2560 * 5 * 50 * (1 + 1.00)     <-- If I were to purchase five more Excaliburs

Upgrading to Siege Towers costs 640,000 gold.  Buying five more Excaliburs costs 839,000.

I'll be getting more for my money if I upgrade before I buy more excaliburs.

Hope that helps!
Aran Taur

P.S.  Oh, and every trained soldier without a weapons adds 36 to your SA.  Every untrained soldier without a weapon adds 6 to your SA.  I assume that the same ratio applies to untrained soldiers with weapons, but I've never had them, so I wouldn't know. :D

Good S**T . Talk about information overload. Intuitively I'm not sure I believe all those numbers yet but at least now I can do the calculations and decide if my next upgrade  ( much more money than your example) makes sense.

Thanks  :D  :D  :D  

Whether it's worth it or not depends partly on how you get the money.  

If you sell off ~20 dragonskins to fund your purchase of stronghold, the point at which it's worth it is when you start out with about 220 dragonskins.  

If you have cash on hand, the question is whether you'll buy stronghold or buy ~15 dragonskins.  In that case, it's better to buy stronghold if you've already got about 150 dragonskins.
 

they worth the gold cauz with less weapons u have the same result and less weaponz means less repair :)

Be more careful with spies and spy levels though. For that, you have to take many things into consideration: the money needed to train A number of spies at level X compared to the money needed to train B number of spies at level Y, and the total loss of money if you trained J number of more spies if you were at level G than if you were at level G+1, and etc. Spy levels get confusing. And unit prodution, its not worth it to go more than 6 or 7.

The factor of 5 is for a trained soldier. If the weapon is used by an untrained soldier then it changes to a factor of 4. The weapons are distributed to trained soldiers first so as to maximise your SA or DA. I'm not sure about the contribution to SA/DA of 36 by a trained soldier without a weapon and 6 for an untrained. I do know that untrained guys contribute to both SA and DA by a certain amount, and so when you train one in say SA, you get will have a decrease in your DA. I didn't think that the difference was as great as 36 to 6 though.

I just trained a couple of guys up as an experiment...here's what happened:

Initial SA = 382,738
Initial DA = 497,215

After training 1 soldier in attack I got

SA = 382,740
DA = 497,205

After then training 1 soldier in defense I got

SA = 382,731
DA = 497,207

As you can see, the gain in either SA or DA was negligible compared to the loss in the other. The only real advantage I can see to training your guys up comes when you actually have weapons for them to use.
 

In determining how much gold you win or lose in attacks does how your SA or DA breaks down between upgrades and weapons make any difference?  :blink:  

Upgrades are worth the gold since they can't be sabbed as simple as that

unless, of course, you are unsabbable  :D  

Ahhh, the joys of spy immunity.  :D   I'd rather have upgrades than weapons though (it gives me a sense of satisfaction having something like a citadel).  ^_^  

Wait I've got one question that I'm not understanding about the upgrades.  Does it calculate it (the 25%) by any fixed variable or is it based on current status?  What I guess I"m asking is would it behoove me to get my SA past a certain point and then say I want 25% added to that, or is it 25% of something I had at some point and the timing of my purchase isn't taken into consideration?

Hehe, hope I didn't make that confusing, my mind is a whirlwind sometimes.

I think I get what you mean. if you have 1 million SA, and upgrade, you'll have 1,250,000. another upgrade would bring you up to exactly 1.5 mil (1 mil + 25%), not 1.25+25%.

So the more weapons and higher siege tech, its a great 25% or what?  or is it cumulative?  so like up by 25%, another 25%, etc etc?

I think it's 25% on base score.  Not cumulative.  sigh, wish it were...

Using the calculations listed earlier in the thread upgrades make a lot of sense early on but when your up to cannons and citadel ? When you don't have a lot of TBG and you have to sell weapons, Yeah a citadel would be nice but watching your SA or DA plummet to get it is very painful.

No, the percentage is always calculated from the base amount.  And no, not too bad. ;)  I routinely attack people with  much higher upgrades than I have.

Yeah, citadel's still worth it, at some point.  

If you're wanting to upgrade to Citadel, and you're going to pay for it by selling dragonskins, it's worth it once you have 372 dragonskins.  Just sell 31, purchase your citadel, and your DA will go from 13,094,400 to 13,094,400 (assuming, of course, that they're all manned by trained professionals :)).

SA = 13,094,400 = 2560 * 5 * 372 * (1 + 1.75)
after citadel:
SA = 13,094,400 = 2560 * 5 * 341 * (1 + 2.00)

Citadel costs 5,120,000 gold, right?

Aran Taur

Ok that makes sense. I guess I'll put off getting citadel until I have 372 dragonskins, LOL. Uh I don't think age 2 will last that long.

You just have to wait a lot more for the more expensive upgrades. Each upgrade gives the same benefit (25%) but costs more so that each upgrade becomes worth it a larger amount of weapons. But when you have 900 of a weapon already it becomes moot.  LOL  

Ha.  I now have Trebuchets.

I just love my TI-83+.  It's a must have for efficiently running my account (second only to luck in acquiring targets).  I don't really like hanging around for too many seconds with 1.3 million sitting in my banks, so I wrote a program for the marvelous little calc that takes into account how many knives I have, how much gold I already have, and spits out whether or not I should upgrade, and if I should, how many exaliburs I should sell.  And after I attacked my farm all I had to do was enter how much gold I had, and poof.  :D

Anyway, yeah.  After awhile you might as well just forget the idea of upgrading for a looong, loong time.  I have less than 75 Excals now.  I have two siege upgrades left.  If the last one is only worth it when you have 350+...I figure I'll just be buying weapons awhile.

Hehe--I have an 83+ as well. And I had quite a reputation around my school. I was THE man to go to for games. You name it, I had it, and yes, I would gladly transfer it for you. I had people I didn't even know asking me for games. I was a GOD. It was cool.  :cool:  

There's one more thing to consider when contemplating upgrading siege weapons and fortification.  However, I can't verify that it's true, I'm just going by what Everous told me on the IRC channel.  He said that the higher upgrade you have, the less damage points your weapons will take after attacking or defending, meaning less gold to spend on repairs.