Early game 4* troop strategy?

Gameplay Help & Tactics
1

My 4* troop roster:
Yellow - L5 Crit, L5 Mana
Red - L5 Crit
Blue - L5 Mana
Green - L5 Crit, L5 Crit
Purple - none, Only 3*

I’m probably good for L6, but after that, I’m pretty much out of feeder troops. It takes ~2500XP to get a 4* troop to L5, and my farming plus epic troop pulls have let me do that twice, so ~5000XP; I’m going to call it 3 months farming.

it is ~7500XP more to get to L11, so that will be a 4-5 months, just to get one troop of a color to that level.

And it is ~10000XP more to get to L17 from that, so another ~six months?

My first conclusion (reached a little too late!) was that 4* troops are so much better than 3* and 3* are so much better than 2* that upgrading a 3* or 2* troop is a bad investment. Fortunately the investment for the first few levels is relatively low, so I didn’t go too far wrong.

The next question is how many to use, and how many to level up? My titan attacks usually involve three of a color, and my raiding often does as well. So that means I want at least three top of the line troops in each color. I’ve played with monochrome raid teams, and might do it more when I have enough maxed heroes to do it more effectively, so the argument for five of each color is kinda valid.

Obviously, I’m going to keep all my 4* troops until I have at least 5 per color, perhaps 5 crit troops and a mana troop or two per color … but that’s gonna be a long haul too, unless I throw thousands of dollars at troop summons. to speed that up.

The dead horse has been thoroughly flogged, and it is written about here… 4* troops - mana or crit?:

…with one special exception:

A 4* mana troop at L11 will take Very Fast mana charging from 7 tiles to 6, which is a huge difference; two match-3s, or a single match-3 ghosted will charge him up. (AFAIK, that list is Gravemaker and Guardian Jaguar; I have Gravemaker and hope to pull Jaguar this week.)

It is pretty clear that the crit troops are preferred over mana troops at levels I can achieve in “only” six months of farming or spending less than thousands of dollars on leveling.

Still, as somebody who doubles or triples colors a lot, what’s the best strategy for leveling your 4* troops?

  • Max one per color, and leave the rest of that color at level 1?
  • Bring the second and maybe third along with you, keeping them at the same level?
  • Level the one you’ve got, or don’t even spend feeders leveling up a mana troop that you aren’t going to get across the threshold of L11 or worse, L17?, waiting to pull a crit troop of that color?
  • Level all of them up to 5 or 6 'cuz that is relatively cheap, but only work on taking one higher than that?
2

I’m not sure this strategy is entirely rational, but here’s what I’m doing:

  • prioritize L11 mana troops is red and yellow for Gravemaker and Jackal, respectively
  • crit troops up to 10% crit chance
  • then mana troops up to L11
  • then crit troops up to L18 (12% crit)
  • then back to mana troops for the foreseeable future

I’m not willing to just buy gobs or troops from gems, so I’m not sure how far along this path I will manage to get.

3

How many of each color are you working on leveling up in parallel? Or do you have enough to even be doing more than one per color yet?

4

I only level up one crit and one mana troop of each color. When I triple stack, someone gets a L1 troop.

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5

I’ve leveled each 4* troop to level 3 with 1* troops while focusing on one main 4* troop to use 2 and 3* troops on to level. I plan on doing this for up to 4 4* troops if I ever get there. I also do the same for 3* troops for events (but never go further now as it’s cost prohibitive).

Out of boredom and because the cost is so high now on 4* and even 3*, I’ve been leveling 2* troops for events as an FYI.

6

I do burn my 1* feeder troops first, then 2*, then 3*, to get the best milage out of the huge food cost to level. I never thought of starting one troop on the 1* feeders. Good idea!

7

I have found use for 2* troops like events and on 2 color teams for titans and war… try to feed 2 &3 to my 4 and 1 to the 2*

8

Reminds me. Early on, I thought:

“There are two different kinds of troops, I should level one of each; I bet they are good for different things.”

Uhm, scratch that. A bit of reading and thinking tells me otherwise. At least in the 2* and 3* troops; I’m pretty sure the strong-attack troop is the very clear winner. To the point that I should feed my level 4-6 defensive troops to a 4* troop, just so I don’t use them by mistake, over a level-1 attack troop, and I’m pretty sure they would make my team weaker in practice.

That and flag 3~4 2* and 3~4 3* attack troops of each color for saving to use in challenge events, and not worry that I’ll forget myself and eat them.

Maybe I’ll level them up someday, like when I’ve gotten tired of feeding my 4* troops for a couple months without even seeing a level gain.

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9

For challenge events, I completely agree that the attack-heavy 2* and 3* are the right choice. Events aren’t about surviving, but by attacking hard and fast.

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10

I also agree, as someone who focused on the wrong ones LOL.

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