Elvenar Woodelves – Day 05 [15%]

So, we’re in day 5 of Elvenar Woodelves chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Woodelves – Day 04). Let’s just say that that today was the most exciting day in this chapter so far. The reason? Barracks upgrade. So how did it go? Well, find out below 😉

City changes

I have constructed all 13 Weeping Willows, and will stop here for now. 13 WWs will produce slightly less than 60K of mana a day (before decay), and that should be sufficient for now. Most of the near-term research needs less than 50K of mana to unlock, and would usually take more than a day. And until I construct the guest race settlement I have no other use for mana.

On the other hand, there are other things that I need to build. I need to upgrade barracks, move workshops into their permanent spot (by upgrading) and of course I need pop to support all that. As I’ve finally got enough mana, I unlocked residences upgrade. So I am currently upgrading 2 residences from L21 to L22. Every such upgrade will get me 190 pop in about 12 hours of build time.

Population challenge

But the real excitement came from the barracks upgrade. As I described in the section on progress, I managed to snipe barracks upgrade research today. Usually, I try to implement such an upgrade right away, using booster instants. But this time upgrade is not just for 2 levels, but for 4 (L22-L25). So that’s a lot of requirements! So I’ve got space allocated, cultural requirements are obviously not a problem with all those willows. Coins, supplies and goods needs, while hefty, I was ready to cover. I even had enough time boosters stashed up.

But what about that pop? All 4 levels need about 1.5K in excess pop, and I had only about 200 at the moment. So what to do? Waiting for all this pop to be generated by upgrading residences would have taken forever (well, a couple of days 😉 ) That’s the time that barracks won’t be producing at max speed. But the temp L1 residences only get you so far, at only 31 pop each. Well, I put down some of these for about 200 more pop, but then I just realized that I do have some untapped pop supply.

So what is it? My L19 plank manufactories! I am planning to drop 2 of these in this chapter, and I thought to do that after updating some of the remaining ones to L20. But I haven’t been constrained on T1 goods in a while, and 1 out of 5 manufactories is not a big deal, so I can afford to sell one of them early. And it turns out that one L19 planks manufactory is worth about 1.1K in pop. Wohoo!

Barracks upgrade

So I’ve done the sale, and had my pop requirements for barracks covered. Now it was time to break out my time boosters. Those barracks upgrades are 24 to 30 hours each – ouch! Luckily, I stocked up on time boosters in the last events, including several 20hr ones. I am glad I did! So 4x 20hr, one 8hr, one 5hr, several 2hr and 1hr boosters later, my barracks went from L21 to L25. Whoosh! Took less than a minute, instead of better part of the week. Very satisfying!

And I must say that this upgrade is amazing. I am producing troops almost twice as fast as before. My ~2.5 squads queue that took about 4:45 (thanks for Shrine of Shrewdy Shrooms AW) is now down back to 2:40. That’s superfast! This means I may also want to rethink combat AWs that I want to focus on. Needles of the Tempest for speed may not be as critical, but larger training size may finally need to be boosted. And I though that Shrine of Shrewdy Shrooms was optional 😉 No, it was really a must with that kind of production from the barracks.

Elvenar Woodelves progress

Today was a pretty exciting day from a progress perspective. First, I collected enough mana to unlock residence upgrade research. That’s a crucial tech as it will underpin most other upgrades, and will keep builders occupied throughout the whole chapter. The next research on the list was barracks, and I saw an opportunity to close it off quickly. I’ve collected enough mana (only 25K, so less than half a day of production), but some KPs were still missing. So I went to the map, and negotiated for all the missing KPs! Boom – barracks upgrade is unlocked!

So now I need to work on workshop upgrades. This research doesn’t have mana requirements, so will be unlocked as soon as a get enough KPs. I am planning to negotiate all the scouted provinces tomorrow to get another KP boost, we’ll see if that would be enough to unlock the tech.

I am also doing more in-depth analysis of Elvenar Woodelves settlement requirements, and will likely need to adjust my target state comparing to the initial planning. More on that later.

Steel Tournament – recovery and preparation

Recovery mode is on from the tournament perspective. I usually re-stock primary units from the previous tournament (fully depleted) up to 20 squads. This is not really necessary, but for whatever reason I prefer to keep all the units minimally stocked. If you play every tournament with no downtime this is not needed at all. You might as well just jump into producing units for the next tournament right away.

With that, my Bud Sorceresses are back up to 20 squads, and I am going full steam ahead on Elite Archers production (light range is a primary unit for steel tournament). Also, Dryads should be good here once leveled up. Unfortunately, right now they are only at level 1 for me, so probably not worth it.

And I’ve just got a glimpse of the power of L25 barracks. Holy moly, the speed is amazing! I am building about 5 squads every 2.5 hours (full load). Previously, I was able to build about 70 squads total before tournament start. This time, I won’t be surprised if I’d be able to break 100 squads. That would be awesome! This saves on goods for catering, but will increase supply utilization. That speed is not free – I need about 8.5K supplies every half an hour. That’s a lot, but I have build for high supplies, and I still have some untapped capacity. Should be good!