[Play style] Investment, Diminishing returns, Matchmaking, summons, and limited paths or Playing Empires when you have 5285 finished heroes in Extra low cost training

[Play style] Investment, Diminishing returns, Matchmaking, summons, and limited paths or Playing Empires when you have 5285 finished heroes in Extra low cost training

Progress

Empires uses unmodified RNG, and diminishing returns, so the game is not a single path, linear progression. With no checks on RNG, you get some weird hero rosters. But by storing Hero XP and food I can take advantage of RNG when it smiles on me.

Investment

Having 2018 finished heroes in Extra low cost training in one camp and 3268 in another is actually deceptive when trying to track my progress through the game.

I run a third Extra low cost training that has zero finished heroes.

I have been leveling what troops I can get from Epic Troop Tokens.

I actually off color, 1 day, power leveled Wilbur to 4*+1 and later Proteus to 4*+8. So when I get heroes that are game changers, I can level them quickly.

Brute force versus efficiency or Titans and War

I am always in the Top 5 of my alliance on titans and Top 10 war - Top 10 for all 60 players not Top 10 for my alliance - because I deconstruct games for fun ( freemium paywalls, the MMO principal of diminishing returns, attack stat soft caps, etc.). For more info, see below.

War Matchmaking

When my heroes reached 4*+5, I had to drop out of wars because the matchmaking algorithm is suboptimal - especially when it comes to nodes X*+1 to X*+15 - and I was costing my alliance 2 war chest points per week ( 1 point for a loss is brutal ). Yes I was always in the Top 5 for my alliance, but my roster is very oddly shaped so it throws off matchmaking. So far we are winning 2 more wars per month since I dropped out. Once I can get a solid set of 5x 5* heroes ( fingers crossed for Hero Academy ), I can rejoin very quickly.

But by dropping out, my teammates have been opening war chests faster and several have leveled critical heroes with the loot. Due to diminishing returns, it is better for me to skip the War Chests now, to help my whole alliance improve and take down bigger titans.

Raiding

Gryphonkit, my wife, and other teammates have a lot of 5* 4.80 heroes but are only ahead of me in raiding. Because 5* 4.80, and to a lesser extent 4* 4.70 heroes, are much more costly in Hero XP than 4* 3.60 heroes. Add the attack stat soft cap and there are some interesting things you can do with at least two healers on your team, 4* 3.60 heroes, and 5* 2.60 heroes. But raiding is not one of those activities.

Quests

I have stopped doing quests that do not guarantee at least 1 non farmable treasure. Part of this is the fault of Atlantis Rising having superior loot to the rest of the month. But most of it is I have so much stuff and nothing to use it on. At least Class quests gives me something to use Dragon bones and Midnight root.

Farming

Surprisingly I am leveling green Kadilen to 5* 2.60 and yellow Melia to 3*+1 for farming since they are both fast mana speed, attack all enemy, heroes. They also work well with yellow 4*+11 Wu Kong and green 3* 3.50 Brienne.

Summons

Since I have all the Classic 4* heroes except purple 4* Cyprian, I am really hoping Hero Academy gives me new heroes to work on. Having spent approximately $2.5 USD per day for approximately 1.4 years, gem summons have definitely reached the point of diminishing returns.

More Paths

I find it interesting that green 4* Kasshrek ( healer with elemental defense buff ), green 4* Little John ( mana generation debuff ) and green 5* Kadilen ( fast mana speed, attack all enemy ) are not part of the original Classic 4* / 5* heroes.

I am really hoping “skins” do not just boost Classic 4* / 5* heroes, but make them more versatile. Unlike matchmaking, which is out of my control, this would give me more options to explore.

After the basic “skins” are released, I would not mind a “Skin” of the Month.

Roster

4*+11= 9
4*+1= 4
5* 3.70= 2
4* 3.60= 17

5* 2.60= 5
3*+1= 4
3* 3.50= 10

5 Likes

I too hope that.

When talents were announced ad first I were hoping for non-RNG benefits with a lot of customization available, like having to choose from increase heroes’ stats in a D&D style and a unique skill for every hero, to make them on par with all the other ones.

The stats increase in my mind would have been an emblem’s “point buy” system where we could pour our points into bonus mana generation, attack, defense and health, with a team power’s cap and a unique skill, granting an extra effect to their special’s skill, that would have ben unlocked with the first talent (achieving a true balance between empowered heroes), like a class’ capstone power.

But E&P gonna RNG, so it didn’t go as I were expecting.
I hope that skins will solve that with more versatility.

What is attack stat soft cap? I’ve seen it mentioned twice recently probably by you lol.

Fascinating.

PS (and character limit): I knew this post was by you before I opened it, just based on the title.

2020

This post is out of date, but not as much as I thought. SGG has not addressed some original player issues with merciless RNG, and diminishing returns.

Troops

For more insight to my troop situation:

Merciless RNG

Not my situation, but you cannot level 3* / 4* troops you do not have.

(Troops - Which troops do I keep? - #25 by Gryphonknight)

Diminshing returns and troops

If you look at Return on Investment ( ROI ), reducing special skill by 1x tile or 2x is . . . not a great reward.

It gives players a goal, but due to the random nature of boards, and how mana items work, it is . . . underwhelming. Same for Healing bonus and crit bonus ( especially against titans ).

For my play style, stat boosts are more important. Even stat boosts have diminishing returns especially since 75% of troop loot drops are 1* troops ( Hero academy is not being as helpful as many would like ).

As a general rule, the more food/ iron something takes in Empires, the more real world time required to utilize the feature. So any high food/ high iron feature must make it worth the ROI in both real world time, and in game resources, for my play style.

Other MMO solve this problem by scaling loot resources drops with higher level map stages to keep pace with higher level features. But for most loot, 1.8-7 is still considered better than 2.27-10H ( except Player XP ).

Notes

(Troops: keep levelling 1 of each color or level a few of each color? - #7 by Gryphonknight)

FIN

You analysis makes a lot of sense. However, I think it’s difficult to argue whether it is worth it or not when the “investment” in ROI is time.

Imo, reducing special skill by 1 tile or 2 tiles can be more significant than stat boosts depending on which heroes we are talking about. I think it matters especially for hero specials who can make your other heroes stronger (e.g. defense down heroes, buffers, etc) and hero specials who can save your team and buy you time for get your tiles (healers/cleansers, mana slowers/cutters/manipulators).

For example, in this current meta of Telluria tanks, I find it vital getting my Guardian Falcon (or other defense down like Wilbur, Gormek, etc) and buffer (e.g. Boldtusk) to charge in three 3-matches instead of 4. If I don’t have a lvl 23+ mana troop on my average speed heroes, I often find myself in an awkward situation where my fast/very fast speed heroes are charged but my average speed heroes are lacking 1 tile to charge. Do I fire my fast/veryfast hero specials in this situation? Or wait and try to rearrange the board to get 1 more match? This type of situation can make or break a match.

Not my situation, but you cannot level 3* / 4* troops you do not have.

I have been playing maybe ~15-16 months now (although only more seriously in the last ~4months or so) and I have pulled using only EHT’s:

  • 2 purple mana troops; 2 purple crit troops
  • 3 yellow mana troops
  • 1 blue mana troop; 1 blue crit troop
  • 2 green crit troops
  • 1 red mana troop; 1 red crit troop

My 4*troop pulling rate with EHTs has actually been slightly lower than 10%. My troops are very far away from being maxed.

Anyways, I just found it surprising that you mentioned you haven’t collected food from your farms in like over half a year.

Cheers

Meta

Cool.

I am glad that strategy works for you.

With my play style, I would rather spend the food to reroll, trophy drop, or lose the current war.

Food

Click for SGG rant

SGG has decided to increase RNG paywalls instead of decreasing them, or adding non RNG alternatives.

You troops show some of this streakiness of merciless RNG.

I had real hopes for Costumes, Alchemy lab and Hero academy.

Interestingly Lab v2.0, and Academy, have no guaranteed way to create 4* ascension items, 4* troops, or 5* heroes

But the more merciless RNG, the sooner a customer gets trapped with no advancement options and the larger the number of trapped customers.

I have no interest in grinding more, because SGG wants to make the game more grindy to increase profits.

FIN

2 Likes

This.

Also they are making the game increasingly demanding on your time by adding more and more grinding elements (with of course increasingly diminishing returns). When I do decide to stop playing this will be the reason why.

3 Likes

Surprise!

Just checked my training camps and have not collected Extra Low Cost recruit training ( RT11 )

380 days

658 days

Hope

I still hope SGG will, one day, make actual improvements to gameplay and not just keep adding more merciless RNG micro transactions ( loot boxes )

1 Like