Law
01-15-2012, 11:48 AM
Hey all, first time poster here and new player as well. I started this game and just casually played it, focusing on doing missions and leveling... then I realized I was being dumb. I was getting raided constantly, losing all of my money, not making enough money, and regularly being over matched when attacking/defending vs people my own level. I did some 'thinking' and came up with a strategy that is probably common sense to most experienced players here, but incase it might help someone who was like me 2 weeks ago, I wanted to share it. Also I'm not saying this is the only, or best way to go. It just put some enjoyment back into the game for me by making me much more successful in my opinion.
What I realized: Money is king.
As soon as I decided that, I needed to accomplish losing less money, and making more. That is 100% what I'm still doing now... I quickly turned my hourly income from around $10,000 to over $60,000 and I can't remember the last time I actually lost money to an attacker. Here's how I made the turn around:
My problems were:
My nation was Russia
I was level 26 and my Defense was only 500'ish
My Vault cap was extremely low
My extra money went to Unit Buildings
Doing missions leveled me rapidly and paired me up against MUCH stronger opponents
I didn't know what was the right/best thing to buy - all purchases were "gut" feelings
My fixes (in the same order):
I paid for the only thing I will in this game - a Nation change to the UK
I focused on buying the most efficient units possible to increase my defense
I made increasing my Vault cap my #1 priority.
My extra money went first to Transports, then to money building builds and upgrades
I haulted everything I could to gain experience
I created a google docs spreadsheet which calculates which upgrades were the best for me based on how many times I load the app per day
Some further details on those:
Doing some quick math told me that long term United Kingdom was the ONLY way to go for defense, and I needed sea units to stop me from getting beat up constantly. So now that I was UK, I started farming an older mission for money & boats. The mission was in the Off Shore Drilling Rig, and it's called "Aircraft Carrier - Defeat". Rewards are $1200-$3300 cash, and a sea unit every time. From what I can tell I did this mission about 135 times consecutively, and although it did get me a few more levels, it helped me achieve exactly what I needed. Here's what I got from it:
CASH - Averaging 2k per completion: 270,000
Oil Destroyers - 39 units earned
Oil Aircraft Carriers - 24 units earned
Mine Ships - 72 units earned
That yielded me a total of +261 Attack rating and +342 Defense rating, not counting my UK bonus to it.
I was constantly upgrading my vault, and every penny over my cap went to buying transports. As of right now I have 122 transports (those alone are giving me almost 1,000 defense and they're super cheap).
Next, and probably the most important thing which I would guess is OFTEN overlooked... WHICH money buildings are best, and how do you decide which to upgrade next? And which to buy next?
The important factor here is: HOW OFTEN DO YOU LOAD THE APP TO HARVEST YOUR MONEY BUILDINGS? If you have a Supply Depot that kicks out $550 every 5 minutes that's great - it gives you a theoretical $158,400 per day.... but that's ONLY if you literally load the game exactly every 5 minutes all 24 hours a day to harvest it. I load the game about 4 - 6 times a day. So to me, the Supply Depot is only worth about $2200 per day. With that knowledge, I created a spreadsheet on google docs which automatically calculates based on my "App Loads Per Day" which building should be upgraded or purchased next. The factors used in the math are:
Current income
# of payouts per day (per building)
Cost to upgrade
Post upgrade income
I used that data along with my number of app loads per day (or harvests per day), to figure out how much benefit I'll be getting per upgrade dollar spent. You'd be surprised at which buildings help you out the most. Essentially, you figure the maximum harvests per day on each, and then use a formula to limit the the number of harvests per day if the maximum number is greater than your app loads per day (again, 288 harvests per day on the Supply Depot is only 4 or 6 per day for me). Then you take that number to figure the difference in income from current income to potential income post upgrade, and then you take the difference number and create a ratio between the cost to upgrade versus the daily benefit it grants you. I call that number my "cost per dollar increase".
Anyway, long story short (too late), I employed this strategy and it's worked great for me so far. The game is much more fun, I've got more money then I can spend, and my time is now spent waiting for upgrades, expansions, and builds to finish, instead of waiting for money to come in.
I welcome any advice incase my logic is flawed here, or questions if any of you want to know more.
Thanks for reading, hope this was helpful to someone. Only complaint I have is that I can't find a website or post that shows cost, upgrade cost, and income levels for all money buildings... I'm slowly building my own, but I figured someone would have done it already...
What I realized: Money is king.
As soon as I decided that, I needed to accomplish losing less money, and making more. That is 100% what I'm still doing now... I quickly turned my hourly income from around $10,000 to over $60,000 and I can't remember the last time I actually lost money to an attacker. Here's how I made the turn around:
My problems were:
My nation was Russia
I was level 26 and my Defense was only 500'ish
My Vault cap was extremely low
My extra money went to Unit Buildings
Doing missions leveled me rapidly and paired me up against MUCH stronger opponents
I didn't know what was the right/best thing to buy - all purchases were "gut" feelings
My fixes (in the same order):
I paid for the only thing I will in this game - a Nation change to the UK
I focused on buying the most efficient units possible to increase my defense
I made increasing my Vault cap my #1 priority.
My extra money went first to Transports, then to money building builds and upgrades
I haulted everything I could to gain experience
I created a google docs spreadsheet which calculates which upgrades were the best for me based on how many times I load the app per day
Some further details on those:
Doing some quick math told me that long term United Kingdom was the ONLY way to go for defense, and I needed sea units to stop me from getting beat up constantly. So now that I was UK, I started farming an older mission for money & boats. The mission was in the Off Shore Drilling Rig, and it's called "Aircraft Carrier - Defeat". Rewards are $1200-$3300 cash, and a sea unit every time. From what I can tell I did this mission about 135 times consecutively, and although it did get me a few more levels, it helped me achieve exactly what I needed. Here's what I got from it:
CASH - Averaging 2k per completion: 270,000
Oil Destroyers - 39 units earned
Oil Aircraft Carriers - 24 units earned
Mine Ships - 72 units earned
That yielded me a total of +261 Attack rating and +342 Defense rating, not counting my UK bonus to it.
I was constantly upgrading my vault, and every penny over my cap went to buying transports. As of right now I have 122 transports (those alone are giving me almost 1,000 defense and they're super cheap).
Next, and probably the most important thing which I would guess is OFTEN overlooked... WHICH money buildings are best, and how do you decide which to upgrade next? And which to buy next?
The important factor here is: HOW OFTEN DO YOU LOAD THE APP TO HARVEST YOUR MONEY BUILDINGS? If you have a Supply Depot that kicks out $550 every 5 minutes that's great - it gives you a theoretical $158,400 per day.... but that's ONLY if you literally load the game exactly every 5 minutes all 24 hours a day to harvest it. I load the game about 4 - 6 times a day. So to me, the Supply Depot is only worth about $2200 per day. With that knowledge, I created a spreadsheet on google docs which automatically calculates based on my "App Loads Per Day" which building should be upgraded or purchased next. The factors used in the math are:
Current income
# of payouts per day (per building)
Cost to upgrade
Post upgrade income
I used that data along with my number of app loads per day (or harvests per day), to figure out how much benefit I'll be getting per upgrade dollar spent. You'd be surprised at which buildings help you out the most. Essentially, you figure the maximum harvests per day on each, and then use a formula to limit the the number of harvests per day if the maximum number is greater than your app loads per day (again, 288 harvests per day on the Supply Depot is only 4 or 6 per day for me). Then you take that number to figure the difference in income from current income to potential income post upgrade, and then you take the difference number and create a ratio between the cost to upgrade versus the daily benefit it grants you. I call that number my "cost per dollar increase".
Anyway, long story short (too late), I employed this strategy and it's worked great for me so far. The game is much more fun, I've got more money then I can spend, and my time is now spent waiting for upgrades, expansions, and builds to finish, instead of waiting for money to come in.
I welcome any advice incase my logic is flawed here, or questions if any of you want to know more.
Thanks for reading, hope this was helpful to someone. Only complaint I have is that I can't find a website or post that shows cost, upgrade cost, and income levels for all money buildings... I'm slowly building my own, but I figured someone would have done it already...