Stoat Academy.

[taekwondokid42]

I was running some calculations on the academy spell, and I ran into some disturbing things. But before I complain, I want to double check to see that all my variables were correct. Here is what I assumed:

You get 62 workers per tent at 5% tax (I think wolf bite said this somewhere)

Academy turns 10% of your workers into leaders.

Cities give you 1500 tents.

You need a leader/hut ratio of at least 90 to use academy.

[Shadow]

looks right

[The Obliterator]

cities give 1000 tents and 500 markets

[taekwondokid42]

No, cities was the one thing I was sure  about.

Okay, since I have shadows okay, here is what I found:

With 10 cities, you will get somewhere near 85k leaders per academy (because when the workers are turned into leaders, they disappear, but they are quick to re-appear anyway).

If you want to fill 65k huts (for a nice round 75k land), and you start at a ratio of 90, you will be short 4.8 million leaders. This means that you will need to academy 57 times to fill up your huts. 57 academies takes a ton of loyalty, turns, and food, and cash (you are supporting 10 cities!).

If you wanted to take the time to finesse with your leaders, (keep your ratio just 100k leaders from full, academy, and then build tents into huts), I would imagine that you could cut this number down a bit, but not to much less than 40 academies, which is still a ton.

So my point is that we over weakened the academy spell. I personally think that if we took 10% of workers, and turned each into 2 leaders, then we dropped the cost of the spell a bit, we would have a better balanced strat. (But that is really up to the admins to decide)

[Shadow]

Academy should not be the focus of a run. You can have a decent run on maybe 5-10 academies if you use the capture attack a lot. Academy is not designed much for normal netting gameplay, it is intended as an offensive/defensive weapon, and as such has many uses beyond simply filling huts, which it is admittedly not very good at doing beyond about 50% land.

[taekwondokid42]

Would you not agree that 100 turns and ~25mil loyalty per run is a lot for an offensive/defensive weapon?

[Shadow]

Yes, but if you are using all that you are doing it wrong. Capture is your friend, as well as finishing attacking completely so you have a huge amount of tents before you even start academy.

[taekwondokid42]

Hmm, I can see your point.

[CobyCopper]

Usually this is what I did...

1) Assess situation (sell troops, &c)
2) Start espionage on potential targets, prepare to hit them
3) Grab land
4) At low health, build so you have enough huts (huts = (leaders/huts) / 95), build the rest tents.
5) Academy to 170-175
6) Grab more, again build enough huts, destroy tents if necessary
7) At about 60-80% land, destroy all tents
8) Earn loyalty until I have enough
9) Drop excess huts now--leaders/175, but round up.
10) Run missions (feast/enrich, loot/goldmine, make sure defenses are raised even if you're well-protected)

After that, log off and wait for next round of turns. If you do log on, be careful not to take turns, especially if you were already broken for land. If you get a 300+ ratio even after people capture from you, keep them there as long as possible.

[Shadow]

It should also be remembered that academy at low huts costs relatively little, and if you are running land that isn't on tents/huts while academying, you are shooting yourself in the foot.

[taekwondokid42]

I just tried running with the new academy, and I'm happy to say that although I ran short on loyalty, the strat was not as under-weakened as my calculations told me.

Looks like the admins know what they are doing after all  ::)