Cavalry - the new canon fodder

It seems from test the new great idea of devs is to switch from recruits to cavalry as the "go to" waves of troops to clear camps in Ali's chain of adventures. There is something that troubles me about it.

Time.
It takes 15m to train 25R (lev5 barracks - unbuffed)
It takes 1hr to train 25 cav (lev 5 barracks - unbuffed)

Resources.
It takes 125 Brew and 250 BS to train 25R
It takes 750 Brew and 1000(!) horses to train 25 cav

Lev5 Stable (unbuffed) cranks 5 horses every 6 min (+walking time) which means 1200 horses per 24hrs. That means 1 stable lev5, unbuffed will make you enough horses per day to train...26-28 Cavalry (depends on walking time).

As of now on test we are looking at 4-5k cavalry losses on few of the Ali's adventures. That is 160 000 to 200 000 horses per run to retrain.
This will take about 120-160 days per lev5 stable (unbuffed) and 6-8 days of training in barracks (lev5, unbuffed).

To feed the lev 5 stable you will need over 2k grain per 24 hrs. This translates into about 4 farms lev6 (!) and over 4k water per 24hrs, which will take roughly 2 lev6 watermills running. Mind you, this is only to get 1100 ish horses per day unbuffed.

And for those of you who say "Pshh, I got 2 mil horses in storage, I am not worried"... You will have to do hundreds of Ali's adventures to see your xp level gains. Those 2 mil in your storage might not be enough to run 20 of them.

I will let everybody draw their own conclusions. And you guys thought the iron "crunch" caused by "pvp" weapons was bad...:)

Um.. I am reading test posts and it seems Cav loses are in 2-3k range on some of the adventures. That is still 80-120k horses per a run... Even with whips and carrot buff (4x by 6hrs) it will take weeks for one stable to redo the losses.

OK, time for reaction to this. Ahem...Are you freaking kidding me?!!!

From test:

"Just finished the young woodcutter

Losses:

1876R, 2080B, 345LB, 834M, 475S, 4460C +1 assassin"

Obviously not optimized yet for maximum efficiency but...scary already.

"Generally, in almost all other games I have played and a new expansion is released, players are able to try out the new content on the release day.
With this update, level 50 players are expected to grind to higher levels which is a lot of time and XP before being able to unlock even the first new troop type. To do the newest adventures would require weeks or maybe even months of grinding the old content to get resources and XP for the new adventures.
Have the developers looked into making things more accessible sooner?"

Yes Peajay they did. Apparently they decided you need to grind a month (or 3 - depends on your speed) of old content to be able to check out new stuff :) Oh the anticipation, oh the excitement... My grand kids might be able to get my account to 75:)

Wheat production will be the biggest hold up. So much space wasted on that production chain. Hopefully they will "adjust" the amount of horses needed to make cav.

GJ with this insight.. that is one thing about having a bountiful test server account! Having 1000's of units to play with without considering production costs and time. Then again, I've been stuck with one of the lvl54 accounts... not much experimenting for me in regards to production.

i always thought the amount of horses per 1 cav was stupid.... this makes it stupider (sic)

Well, I'm so happy to finally have some new content coming that I even look forward to sacrificing 10's of thousands of hapless cavalry. Time to go put up a dozen stables...never thought I'd ever do that!

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Originally Posted by W1lson

Well, I'm so happy to finally have some new content coming that I even look forward to sacrificing 10's of thousands of hapless cavalry. Time to go put up a dozen stables...never thought I'd ever do that!

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The problem is you need 8 or 9 additional buildings per stable to support it. Farms, wheat fields, silos, watermills.

guess wheat prices will go up!!!! and water too

True, although I suspect I will just level up 4 or 5 more stables and just turn them on when I have a surge in demand. Let them burn through my wheat/water stockpiles then turn them off again. If later on I'm still burning through cav/knights at an insane rate then I guess its time to go level 6 on all the farms and watermills.

with grout now being just loot, i'm thinking it's going to go through the roof soon, already got all the trump clones buying it on zeus. with the ali babas being as hard as they are now, the grout that does drop will probably not go into TO, but most likely into that players island for a good while.

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Originally Posted by Troll-Phu

with grout now being just loot, i'm thinking it's going to go through the roof soon, already got all the trump clones buying it on zeus. with the ali babas being as hard as they are now, the grout that does drop will probably not go into TO, but most likely into that players island for a good while.

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Very true. *Regrets not buying lots more grout in summer event*

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Originally Posted by Raubhautz

Very true. *Regrets not buying lots more grout in summer event*

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Regret no longer ... from here...


"It can be obtained by playing high level adventures (via rewards), not only during events"

It is not just loot.

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Originally Posted by SweaterPuppies

Regret no longer ... from here...


"It can be obtained by playing high level adventures (via rewards), not only during events"

It is not just loot.

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its just loot, and maybe explorer new search, and not much at a time

http://www.settlersonlinewiki.eu/ali-baba-epic-raids/

scroll down to loot tables

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Originally Posted by Evil_J

its just loot, and maybe explorer new search, and not much at a time

http://www.settlersonlinewiki.eu/ali-baba-epic-raids/

scroll down to loot tables

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You find it occasionally from the new prolonged searches, my point was that they say "not only during events" which implies that it will still be available for event resources.

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Originally Posted by SweaterPuppies

You find it occasionally from the new prolonged searches, my point was that they say "not only during events" which implies that it will still be available for event resources.

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thought I read "no longer available as event resource"

I think people don't realize it will not be 2-4 months grind to lev 75. Most likely it will take a year to two to get there. Not only because the ocean of xp needed to gain but also because the adventures we are going to do to get the xp are hard and slow to refill the loses.

Ali Baba / Sindbad advies are not like FT now. Those of you who do now 2 FT's back to back a day... This is not going to happen with Ali's. More like 1 run and 1-3 days to refill. That is if you got over 10k population. Those 50 ies with 5-7k pop will do 1-2 Ali's a week. 2 years to 75? Yep seems like.

Which I am quite ok with, honestly. Just dreading the big maps, meticulous blocks and calculations.. meh.

Uh oh, you mentioned the word block. Time for another thread to get closed. :p

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Originally Posted by SweaterPuppies

Uh oh, you mentioned the word block. Time for another thread to get closed. :p

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lol, whoever is closing them, does NOT like to hear that!

lol 10k pop was so pre-fm, get with it lots of players have 18k+ now

Naturally I sold off over 100,000 horses shortly before they announced the Ali Baba Adventures ... :-|

If somebody in this thread already brought this up, sorry for the repeat.

Ali Baba adventures aren't available until level 56. Level 56 is when you can begin making the advanced troops that can handle the adventures in a more or less normal manner.

Some heavy cav losses will occur clearing the new map sectors but as far as the adventures go, it won't be anything like the post that was pulled from test since we'll have knights that are a pretty heavy duty version of cavalry.

[/Panic mode end]

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Ali Baba / Sindbad advies are not like FT now. Those of you who do now 2 FT's back to back a day... This is not going to happen with Ali's. More like 1 run and 1-3 days to refill. That is if you got over 10k population. Those 50 ies with 5-7k pop will do 1-2 Ali's a week. 2 years to 75? Yep seems like.

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Not entirely sure how much I can agree to that yet, as of now with camps/units/etc being as it is, I can do Woodcutter and First Thief with just about 800 losses, drop around 150 for both of them if we get Weakest Target. The 2nd Thief is probably what RB is now, although since the map changed I incurred more losses, again something that would change with Weakest Target.
Starting the 3rd you probably have a valid point, it's a pretty big map alright, so losses will acumulate.

Anyhow, not disputing that leveling will take forever and 3 days plus an eternity currently, but that "no more than 1 Ali per day" won't be holding up once the bigger guys get access to the Elite units and +/- focus their pop on them (I guess I'd be entertaining, just on standby and 400 Besieger, 300 Armored Marksman and 600 Mounted Marksman, disregard (Mounted) Swordman and Knights atm, those are all fodder and can be on the variable table.

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lol, whoever is closing them, does NOT like to hear that!

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And alot of other stuff, because feelings lol

That new barracks is deathly slow. It only produces the cheaper units at 432 a day... I guess you can keep it buffed at x3 with skunks, till your banners run out...

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Originally Posted by Perwyn

If somebody in this thread already brought this up, sorry for the repeat.

Ali Baba adventures aren't available until level 56. Level 56 is when you can begin making the advanced troops that can handle the adventures in a more or less normal manner.

Some heavy cav losses will occur clearing the new map sectors but as far as the adventures go, it won't be anything like the post that was pulled from test since we'll have knights that are a pretty heavy duty version of cavalry.
[/Panic mode end]

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Correct me if I ma wrong Perwyn... The new units we are going to use to clear Ali adventures require new resources obtainable from ... Ali's adventures? So we are going to need to clear Ali's few times using old units before we can start making new ones from resources collected? This is a question not a statement :)

It seems that population will not be such an issue, as long as you don't do pvp -if you do you are totally screwed with the need to maintain 3 armies. Barracks speed will be the determined factor of how fast one can progress. Well, and the resources needed to make new troops. Either way, this is going to be a long way before people will be able to hit 75.

Ceruhe? Could you post your total troop losses from few advies on test? I am sure took more than 600 troops to clear it:) Just an average estimate from your experience? I read other people posts somewhere between 6-9k troops (old units) to get Ali's done. Thanks mate.

Ways of obtaining the new resources are 1> as loot from taking bandit camps in the new sectors. 2> from the new ultra long searches. 3> as rewards from quests related to the new content. So no, Ali adventures are not the only way to get the new resources.

Unlike the old military units, new units only require 1 weapon each, so 1 sword, 1 horse, etc for each. A few rainbow buffs and you've got max output of weapons needed and can make the most of limited resources.

It also may be that FT adventure loot will change. That's just conjecture on my part, but it would make sense to make the new resources available from an adventure that people have to do for the beans needed to purchase sector deeds & for leveling up, prior to the new units being available.
I'll wait till it's live to find out on that one.

Pinkleet, it would be helpful if you would go on test and play around some to get a complete understanding of what's going on prior to making these kinds of posts. Without you doing so they end up full of half information that only serve to confuse and upset people.

You are right Perwyn, I shouldn't make any assumptions here without checking it myself on test. When I do read test forums and see alarming posts it rubs on me I guess. Honestly, I don't have time to play life and test. Just going to wait and see how things get implemented and keep reading test forums:) Thanks to you guys for your time and effort put into testing and posting the results *bows*

I've just been ignoring the test forums and reading whatever info gets posted here.