Humpers Guide Part 2: ''Empire Economics Explained:

Looting Cycles and Coins, the Technicus and the Cashbox.

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

Introduction: Firstly, thank you for purchasing this section of my guide and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have researching and writing it! In this instalment I have decided to mainly tackle and analyse the world of coins, which many people seem to be struggling with especially since the infamous coin update, in which GGS decided to significantly reduce our coin income through lowering the amount looted from towers. Having previous explained where to (and more importantly) not to spend your rubies in Part 1, I will in this guide discuss some very handy tips on looting rubies and other useful information about rubies in general. Understanding Looting Cycles: Looting cycles is the term that I have chosen to describe using the same attack set-up in a structured and organised way to maximise profit and this is purely based on one factor of this game, if it were to change peoples looting would become significantly different and limited: each towers set-up is completely predetermined. That is to say that a level 4 robber baron castle will always be the same, or a level 59 cultist tower with 3 victories until level 60 will also be consistent in its defensive set-up. Whatever the level in whatever realm, that tower will be identical to others of equal level. A quick note here is that this is not true with regards to event non-player-controlled towers such as Nomad camps, pirate ships in Blades Coast and so on. Based on this knowledge it is also important to be aware that towers have maximum levels too. This second component piece of knowledge is the basis of your looting cycles, in grass the maximum is level 35 with 1 victory until level 36 or as they will be referred to from now on (35.1), in ice it is 36.1, in sands it is 50.1 and in fire it is 60.5; yes thats right 60.5, it isnt logical but I assure you it is the last cultist tower. In other words to start systematically looting the first necessary step is to level up towers to the maximum, especially in ice, sand and fire which is where you will be raking in the money, grass is slightly more difficult and tool-consuming plus it takes longer to level up the towers: bear in mind there is a 3 hour gap between being able to attack the next set-up. In grass there are 180+ set-ups (ie from level 1 up to level 35.1) to take down before you max out your first grass tower, in ice there are 52 set-ups so it is less than a third of the time required to max out an ice tower. In sands it requires even less time with 47 different set-ups and finally fire has just 43 set-ups. This is apparently random but also good news for us, if you are attacking 6 towers a day you can max out a cultist tower in just a week, which is easily achievable! Logically hitting at a more sane activity of 3 attacks per day means you will have your cult towers ready to be systematically looted in just a fortnight. Now its time to do the number-crunching and get down to business, as I know many of you readers will already have maxed-out towers.

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

Max Ice tower strategy: In ice there is a useful set-up for taking down the max towers which results in 0 losses (except for two martyrs which are optional and make it less tool intense) thats right 0 losses. If you have marauder that is 8000 coins for free, which will start really boosting your coin count. This strategy relies on spreading the attack power between component troops. My recommendation is to use two swordsmen (or now since the latest update other cheap and expendable troops) as martyrs in the first wave on the left flank and in the centre. In other words you just put one swordsman in those waves in those spaces. This is to consume the tools of the enemy tower. Then in the second wave on the left flank you place 20 veteran crossbows, and 18 heavy-crossbowmen. In the second wave in the centre you place: 25 Veteran macemen, 25 2handed swordsmen, 20 veteran crossbowmen, 17 heavy crossbowmen and 25 renegade norsemen (melee). Worth noting if Kingsguard troops are available to you, replace the vets with KGs and the heavies (2handed and heavy crossbowmen) with veteran troops. The tools in the second wave that are required are 6 ladders in both the left and centre, and 6 rams in the centre. Finally for this strategy to work with 0 losses you must have a commander with at least 45 melee and 45 ranged power, slightly more if you are using veterans rather than KGs, however, if you dont you will two or three troops more. For those of you who prefer something visual here is the Humpers 0-loss strategy:

Ice towers are a nice little boost since the set-up means you only have to recruit the martyrs and since the commander needed is very easy to build (just a couple of nice epic/legendary items) then it is always worth looting the ice towers.

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

Max Sand towers strategy: Note how when going through my level 36.1 ice tower strategy you may have noticed I often used the terms little boost, since sand is where you will start reeling in so many coins you dont know what to do with them. Fire towers are the big bucks but sand towers are accessible and a great place to start. With the marauder you will be raking in 15000 coins per sand tower and will be spending at most 1000 coins on troops and 1000 coins on sending costs (to close-by towers) so this is all profit. Traditionally most players loot here with a 50-mantlet strategy (previously 40 before the recent castellan ranged defense update), however, I will discuss an alternative 20-mantlet strategy which is less-tool intensive and very affordable in terms of troop losses. The 50-mantlet strategy: On the left flank you use 25 mantlets in the first wave and use ranged troops from wave one to four ie 208 ranged troops on the left flank. On the right flank you use two martyrs (see martyr note earlier) in waves 1 and 2, then in the third wave you use 25 mantlets and ranged troops only. This strategy only requires ranged troops and will result in very low losses, with a ranged bonus commander that can be reduced to just one or two losses, however, I propose now more than ever with the recent update forcing players to use 25 mantlets on each flank, to consider my 20-mantlet strategy. Here is the visual guide to the 50-mantlet strategy:

The Humpers 20-mantlet strategy: This strategy will result in losses of around 7-10 soldiers but is significantly less of a burden on your tool production and therefore will mean you can loot more coins since you may find yourself limited to tools. At the very least it provides an option for when youre lower on tools for whatever reason. With this strategy

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

you attack the centre and left rather than the left and right flanks. On the left flank you use 20 mantlets rather than 25, and use all melee troops instead of all ranged troops so you will have 208 melee troops in the four waves. Then in the centre you will have two waves with a martyr in them and in the third wave you will have 6 ladders and 6 rams as tools, and all ranged troops. In the fourth wave in the centre you will have all melee troops. Although you might comment that although being less tool intensive in mantlets this tactic requires ladders and rams, however, my advice is to read the next section, which will also be the most useful for experienced players. The option to buy the ladders and rams will cost roughly 3500 coins (see below) so the profit is variable with the amount of tool building with this strategy. Here is my visual guide to the 20-mantlet set-up:

Max Cult tower strategy: Ice. Tick. Sands. Tick. Its time to discover the beautiful cash cow that is the level 60.5 cultist tower. The loot you will receive from defeating one will exceed 22000 coins if you have marauder. Again I have seen in my time playing Empire many different strategies for this tower set-up but I would like to promote my own, which has many advantages over other strategies which are intuitive mantlet-heavy strategies: The Humpers 0-mantlet strategy: This is something I have been doing for several months now and the whole point is being able to loot towers in fire with 0 mantlets needing to be built. Why? So that we can use the armourer to purchase tools directly from him for coins (namely ladders and rams). This means that by using this strategy you will never be limited by tools. At first you will might be limited by commanders since I started doing it with a 90 ranged 40 melee bonus commander and the losses were fairly high, but with a very good commander you will be losing just

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

10-12 Veteran (or Kingsguard troops). In this instance I am going to show you the set-up first and then we will analyse the figures:

With this 0-mantlet set-up you are likely to lose between 9-13 actual troops ie non-martyr troops, so your overall losses will be between 13 and 17 assuming you have a very strong commander. When I started farming the maxed out cultist towers in this way my commander had a combined melee and ranged bonus of about 130% and it was easily viable then since even with 20 losses the profits are still astronomical. Lets take a look at the actual profit then:

Above is the total cost of 8420 coins, with no tools produced whatsoever, if you are producing even half of the tools yourself you can see how the cost is reduced even further. The amount of coins without the marauder is roughly 19000 and with it is 22000 coins, meaning the profit per tower can exceed 13000. So what other things are there to note with regards to fire towers? Well the food from the towers is easily enough to sustain some large fire armies with many peoples food levels at -10000 per hour so with several level 60.5 towers your earning capacity is huge. Even if your commanders arent up to scratch you can suffer double the losses and your profit will barely be affected. If you are hitting many towers simultaneously another cost will likely be incurred, that of transporting troops, but even if you assume you transport all the attackers to fire from other barracks you will still easily be raking in 10000 coins per tower

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

Understanding Coins (How to Spend them): Many players in this game find themselves limited by coins on a frequent basis, and the amount that resort to buying a few hundred thousand coins from the travelling merchant for rubies still surprises me but following the looting cycles above, especially in fire, you will be more likely now to be wondering, what should I spend my coins on? Coins are everything in Empire. Just like in war in real life, the alliance with the biggest bankroll in Empire always wins (as of course does GoodGameStudios), and coins are a hugely important factor, which should not be underestimated; many things are important, not just rubies. This is because one of the most expensive things in Empire is transferring troops between realms, especially back to grass and in warfare when you are fighting on multiple fronts you may have to be shifting across thousands of defenders many times throughout the day. In my experience in a serious war I will be burning through 100,000 coins per day and given we have experienced wars that have lasted months on my server, en1, it stands to reason that one of the first things you should do is create a reserve fund (boring as it is). We all know how quickly the game changes so having that spare 1 million coins is worth it! Here is a demonstration of the costs to each realm, (note that the cost does not vary from which realm it is sent and from which I will explain a little pro-tip subsequently).

Here is a sample of four different defensive troops which you are most likely to be transferring but as you can see especially the cost of transferring the Veteran spearmen back to grass can be crippling. Many people will be transferring thousands of troops at a time and transporting back to grass is problematic not just for the cost. If you have distant outposts it can be a nuisance redistributing your defenders so my personal pro-tip is to send emergency troops from ice, which will save you literally hundreds of thousands of coins. If you then suddenly need more defense in ice, then you can resort to sending extra help from grass but your first line of extra defense makes sense coming from ice. Troops are expensive to train but as explained in the Cult tower section, you should be raking in many more coins than you burn through spending on troops, although when recruiting troops in all 7 barracks and building glory flags in all 7 siege workshops it can draw your coins down substantially. 300 glory flags, which is a fairly standard amount to send when looking for glory will set you back 37500 coins and sometimes you may hit no troops so you can see how these tools can become very expensive.

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

However, small players and elite players alike on each server will know the bane of any coin reserves, otherwise known as the Technicus. I will here do a bit of nerdy number-crunching which will provide us with some interesting statistics and importantly allow us to budget our Technicus spending effectively. Below is some self-explanatory data from which we can draw some interesting facts:

Here you will see all the costs and the chance of success. From this data you can work out the average cost per level upgrade, however, clearly the Technicus is random and I would recommend adding 50% onto each figure in the case of budgeting. Despite its randomness, we can draw some very interesting conclusions, such as the average cost to maximise a rare piece of equipment is 57000 coins, an epic is 213000 coins and a legendary is 1million 293000 coins in general. Clearly it is only worth upgrading the very best legendary items to level 16, with three useful bonuses, at least to the maximum level. I also notice how poorly upgraded many peoples castellan equipment is, in doing my research for this section. Many players even in the top alliances choose to massively upgrade their best castellan gear, which is obviously great if they are online and can move it around, however, assuming you have 7 castles, and 4 pieces of equipment in each castle, instead of upgrading one awesome piece from level 15 to level 16, you would hypothetically be able to upgrade every single equipped piece of castellan gear from 0 to level 5 and still have 100,000 coins in the bank, compared to what you would have from that one legendary item upgrade. Indeed due to the random nature of it, there is also a lot less risk and building up everything a bit is well worth the investment, comparatively speaking.

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

Worth mentioning is the demolition of dwellings which seems inevitable for many strong players. My first part of this guide touched on the topic of demolishing dwellings and again now we have analysed the amount of earning capacity you have you should clearly be able to see the benefits of having a larger troop count. Bear in mind you will, however, not be able to complete the daily challenge for tax collection, which is a nuisance. Understanding your Alliance Cashbox: In this section I will provide you with data that I have been compiling over the last few months with upgrade costs of the various upgrades. I am aware some are complete and others not entirely complete, however, it will at the very least give you enough data to give you an accurate idea. I will be updating this section as and when I get more data. I will start with the ones that I would consider essential upgrades and those which are likely to be the most useful for you and your alliance rounding off with the less important cashbox upgrades. So firstly I will start with member slots.

As you can see the member slots become very expensive, very quickly and end up at roughly 140,000 rubies per member! In total the cost is in excess of 3 million rubies for a maxed out 65-slot alliance. Next up we have support speed. This upgrade is an absolute necessity and will also save you thousands of rubies in the long run from expensive supporting:

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

This data set is complete and so we can see that the cost of maxing support speed to 290% is 716,000 rubies. This represents excellent value for rubies and should be considered before expanding the alliance if you have a decent amount of members. I have seen several 65-person alliances without 290% support speed but the statistics speak for themselves. It is absolutely crucial. With the two essentials covered I have data here that is less complete but should also offer you some interesting insights into the ruby costs of the other alliance cashbox upgrades and the rate at which the costs increase.

Finally I have some data and insights on the alliance smithy. Many people think this is a waste of time and understandably so, however, with a bit of conscious

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.

effort towards upgrading it, it can be useful. Ultimately you will be getting something from it each day for the daily tasks regardless of whether or not you appreciate its value, so it makes sense to improve it as much as possible! It starts giving out legendaries at roughly level 10, and at level 15 in the last twenty days it gave me 13 rares, 6 epics and 1 legendary. These figures are again not hugely accurate, but I have seen some excellent pieces from my alliance and the point to consider is even if the chance of a legendary only increases by 5 percent, if you multiply that by 65 people, it means every day your alliance is receiving on average 3 more legendary pieces, or 20 per week. The formula of how many you receive is impossible to work out but according to data sets from other alliances and other players it is safe to say that at level 15, the alliance smithy gives out just over 50% of the time rares, and the rest of the time epics or legendaries. The problem is that at lower levels the difference between ordinaries and rares seems less noticeable since rares are never useful anyways. Here are the upgrade costs that I have collected:

I hope you have enjoyed reading this section of the guide, which dealt with statistics and number crunching and welcome any questions as always on my thread or in my inbox! Until the next time, Humpers

All content copyrighted by the author, it is forbidden by copyright law to share any of this material with others without the express permission of said author. The reader and purchaser accepts the author has introduced some figures and facts with a difference of less than 5% as seed data and thus is inaccurate up to this figure in very rare instances.