I didn’t come up with the chart. It only covers mana troop mana bonuses.
You take the base tiles it takes a hero to charge their special, and divide it by the mana troop bonus percentage.
For example, gm charges in 6.5 tiles. Given a lvl 11 mana troop which has a 9% bonus:
6.5 / 1.09 = 5.96 or rounded up to 6. 6 tiles to charge gms special.
If you want to include khagans, just do the math. Add 24% to any of the mana troop bonuses.
2 questions:
It’s a matter of preference. They boost different stats and you can have a mana troop that is not at the level where it helps your hero.
If I remember correctly, a very fast hero with lvl 11 mana troop will need 600 mana to charge. Every turn, they get 100 mana regardless of whether or not they are hit. Each tile hit generates 50 mana.
Imho it depends strongly on the hero and what your primary gaming field is.
I own 4x 4* (2 crit green, red crit, blue mana) and this after one year of gaming. So I started to level critical troops for some reason:
1.) 4* is better as 3*- always
2.) It doesn’t make sense to me to wait for mana troops - and there’s also a chance I may never get one (nf2p). So it’s better to level what you have.
3.) crit is commonly underrated - extra hit damage via crit is useful
4.) my mana troop is on level 16. sometimes I’m able to save 1 tile until the special ability is fully loaded. But this is rarely. Most of them I’m wasting tiles in combos after the special ability is already loaded. For this reason a tile saving is not possible.
5.) it seems to me that crit troops are more useful in map gaming, events and titans where you can also use mana pots. Mana troops are definitely more useful in raids, tournaments and wars
Sorry, missed this earlier, just getting back to this thread.
Dividing makes sense. But that’s not what the formula in the chart you posted says. (I know you didn’t make the chart, but look at it.) The formula says to multiply. And in the chart, as an example, they’ve taken the base units to charge, 6.5, subtracted 1, and then MULTIPLIED by 1 + the percentage (1.05), to get 5.775 tiles, which rounds to 6 tiles. Theae are the tiles needed to charge with the boost? Supposedly? But this is making zero sense to me. With the boost, there should be FEWER tiles needed to charge, not more!
The formula seems to relate to the top part of the chart, in which the numbers are going up. But how does that chart relate to the bottom part, where the numbers are going down, as they should?
Haha! But being a math geek and eternally curious, I would still like to understand the original. 
lol I have no idea what the top piece of the chart is trying to accomplish.
I only ever cared about what’s the fewest tiles I need to charge a hero. 
Disagree. 3* troops, which are all crit troops, have 2 advantages: 1, they level up so much faster than 4*. And 2, they’re useful in more circumstances, since there are times you aren’t allowed to use 4* troops. So you might prefer to start with focusing on 3*. Especially if you use monochrome teams a lot (or nearly monochrome, like 4/1 with Wu Kong as the off color, which is typical for titans, or perhaps an off color healer, say for challenge events), it would take forever to get enough troops to make best use of those teams if you only go for 4* troops. But with 3*, you can actually have enough decent, leveled troops for your whole team in a much shorter amount of time and for a much lower food cost as well.
I’m not sure exactly what the best compromise is – whether you would want to actually max those 3* or where exactly to stop them for best benefit before switching focus to leveling your 4*. But I would definitely suggest putting at least several levels on a few 3* before starting seriously on your 4* troops.
Ugh. Okay, how do I type “3*s” without winding up in italics? (Without having to put it in quotes?) I wound up just removing all the plurals, which I don’t like and feels clunky but I guess at least is readable and looks better than having random transitions in and out of italics!
This might be a very silly question, but i cannot find the answer…
If a hero has 400 Attack, and use a +25% ninja troop. Does that make 425 attack or 500 attack?
It’s a percentage increase, so 500. Is that a trick question?
Thank you, that makes perfect sense! No not a trick, I was probably distracted by the specials which are also in percentage
Be aware that it increases the attack statistic (you can see how much buffs in game increase it by pressing and holding the hero you want to check). So you can see that similarly by remembering the base attack on the card, then press and hold in game when no other buffs and debuffs are present
Also, the relationship between a percentage increase in attack stat and damage dealt is not linear, it depends on defense stat and the resolution of a mathematical formula. So just because you have a 25% increase in attack stat does not mean a 25% increase in damage dealt
So a question here. What do people tend to level in terms of amount of Troops. eg I level 1 set of mana troops of each colour and have got them to Lv17 (so slow now average). Do most people carry on leveling this main set to 29, or do they tend to start working on the next set of mana troops?
Depend on roster, mana troop and playstyle.
Just a notes for me currently IMO the most valuable for offense team stack, mana break:
Very Fast Heroes, 6 tiles:
Avarage, 9 tiles:
Very slow, 12 tiles:
6, 9 and 12 tiles are easier to rich with 3-match.
I did not have any experience for slow heroes as the impact is not significant, except maybe if we use support like Brynhild surounded by slow heores Little John / Alby.
For the short terms, I like to build 3-stack for my mono or 3-2 teams.
Depend on heroes and playstyle…
Currently my purple: 5, 5, 17.
Level 17 for Proteus+19. Level 5 for Rigard.C+17 and Tiburtus.C+20. Fast heroes use crit troop.
Sometimes I use Ursena+20 with Level 17, I would replace this mana, because Ursena only need Mana Level 11, so to make it more eficience, while I’m waiting another mana troop purple.
So next target is: 5, 11, 17.
That’s just a sample in my purple. For long terms, I will start continue my level 17 troop to 23, but after I have this setup plan: 5, 5, 11, 17.
Then,… will continue to 29 (if I can 
).
I dont know if someone has already mention this but a really cool new concept to the game could be the mana per turns troops. This will be something pretty cool for those who always have bad boards xD
