soilder costs

is the seraphim angel, valor knight, and obsidian equipment worth the upkeep and the money u spend to get them? i know u need the obsidian stuff for quests but should u buy that equipment for ur army cuz i think its too expensive

DOR and I come at this subject from different perspectives. (I, having spent plenty of time building armies in various apps often times look at CA through that lens. She possessing much more of an instinctive understanding of building a monster thumper approaches it from that angle. I'm certain that she'd advise only buying what's necessary for the mission that you're working on and letting drops provide the rest of your gear/units.) The invasion attack, (which is really the only practical application of those items that you asked about save mission unlocks,) is most similar to the attack action in most apps. The duel attack is a bit different. A thing to consider is that you can't, except possibly at the very start of CA increase your high end equipment used through purchases. You can't buy a genesis sword or a dragon helm. But you can buy a gladiator sword. You can buy an ornate axe. I would suggest scaling your purchases. For example at the very beginning of the game I'd recommend a person get their team up to 500 right away. But at that point you don't have access to Platinum knights, or ornate axes, or any purchasable spells. At that early stage I'd suggest just getting something in everyones hand. Get them all some daggers. Daggers have no upkeep and are purchasable right away. At about the same point I'd try to make sure you have at least as many units as team. Tree ents are a good initial purchase, cheap and maintenance free. But while this happens you'll be getting drops, properties, weapons, armor, and spells from bosses. Those will be better than what you can buy at the time. As your economy & experience build so to should the quality of your turnout gear. If daggers and footmen still show up when you hit lvl 50, you should upgrade. I initially did a ton of gifting. It's a bit much for me to try to keep up on now, but that let me have a couple hundred shields of dante. At 4/7 they certainly don't compete with hellplate armor for example, but when others don't have an item for all of their team it's a massive cost free advantage that you can provide yourself.

Here's the progression that I've used for weapons:
1. Daggers
2. Longswords
3. Battle Axes
4. Gladiator Swords
5. Ornate Axes

For units I went like this:
1. Tree ents
2. Angels
3. Dragons
4. Phoenixes
5. Valor Knights

The 1st 3 weapons have no upkeep and neither do ornate axes. But the gladiator swords and the ornate axes being incremental cost items, get spendy relatively quickly. In all incremental cost items, and this includes properties, I highly recommend only purchasing the maximum increment possible as your cost will go up with each purchase. Right now I could be purchasing Obsidian Swords and Platinum Knights. I'm not because they are too spendy. Maybe when instead of 100M I'm bringing in something like 800M or 1B those won't be so price prohibitive. Over various apps I've found that if you want to keep progressing economically, it's best to not let your upkeep get much beyond about 10% of your gross income. So I look at Obsidian swords for example, at 11/12 they are much better than the Ornate Axes at 7/7. But each bears with it a 200k upkeep. So a 5-Pack is a full 1% of my gross in upkeep. It'd take about 450 to equip up to where the bottom item in my invasion weapons used list was obsidian swords. That would be about 90M upkeep. Or currently 90% of my gross. And of course that doesn't even touch on the staggering purchase price that that many would cost. And each of these investments is a lousier and lousier return on your investment dollar spent on what preceded it. If I were to buy another ornate axe it'd cost me 23.8M which is roughly 1.7M per point of weapon while a battle axe at 1M is about 250k per point of weapon. The ornate axes beat the hell out of battle axes for turnout gear. The point here is I've got to be able afford the inefficiency. I can't yet afford to equip my army with obsidian swords. But if I could afford them, those would make me incrementally tougher. And that's really much of what makes a kick ass army in CA, all these tiny little 1 point shifts in your favor. You've got to run just a ton of bosses before you start equipping your whole army with high end stuff. That's not something that you can out do with purchases. Purchases just raise the bar, instead of 1/0 daggers, 4/0 battleaxes become your crappiest weapon. And yes it makes a difference in invasions. Not duels. Not monster battles. Not War. Just invasions.

So I guess my long winded answer is get the cheaper stuff first. Build your economy to be able to afford more expensive stuff later on. Do Not economically cripple yourself with prohibitive upkeep costs. Scrutinize the alchemy recipes to see what's possible. If you don't know what some of the items/ingredients are check the list here http://castleage.wikidot.com/item-list Develop measurable, attainable goals and incrementally achieve them. And honestly I'd not bother unlocking all the high end bosses right away. You don't need the obsidian stuff until you start unlocking skaar. How often are you going to summon a skaar, or an azrael, or an alpha meph? There's usually a surplus of higher end monsters. I'd instead suggest banging out your demi-missions for the cheap skill points. It takes a while, but eventually you use the demis up faster than you can unlock new ones. It's then that I'd suggest working on closing realms out and opening up new ones. Not one of mine has yet lvl 4'd all the earth tier missions. I stopped unlocking on my main at skaar, and on my alts at keira. I've still not used my skaar orb, but I've done a ton of keira's. Heck I'm doing 2 right now. If you want to be one of those monster blasters it takes time. Do the steps.

now that's one helluva answer mikel
i only buy gear that i need to complete quests and get my army equipped by massive monster hunting. the equipment you buy from the town doesn't stack up to the gear you get from monsters, but it is good for equipping an unarmed soldier. i just don't like the price of the obsidian gear, i'd rather get monster gear

Rob-As I said you aren't competing with high end drops you are raising bar on the low end. If instead of 40 longswords, 30 dagger +1's and 30 daggers, you have 100 ornate axes as your crappiest items that's a significant numerical advantage. You'll not displace your duel equipped items with purchases. (Well a couple of mine are actually using the barbarus helm, but that's just crappy drops. Once the helm of dragonkind is assembled on those it'll disappear into inventory unless Barb is equipped.) Again this only makes a difference on invasions, not duels, monster fighting, or war. So if you don't mind being atm'd, by all means disregard this. The thing is most of the drops suck. A very small percentage are excellent items. Eventually drops should displace purchased items. I still have over 400 ornate axes, several hundred dante shields, and several hundred valor knights showing though. If I hadn't purchased those then something crappier would be used instead. Further if someone has the same stats as me and has instead of valor knights managed a turnout of several hundred platinum knights, he will win. I got myself farmed by a guy I can beat a while back because I'd not noticed the war unlockable ornate axes. If I'm fighting someone that's not bothered to stoke their inventory of drops with purchasables, well let's just say I've not run across anyone with so many good drops that they win. It is possible, but I've not seen it yet. And this is all about how tough are you right now? Not after you get X drop(s) somewhere down the road, not after 30 levels of bsi buttressing. Right now. If you've the money you can change how tough you are vs. invasions right now. I'm certain that we agree that a 30/20 hellblade trumps a 4/0 battle axe. If I'm concerned about an additional point of attack shouldn't I also pay attention to the potentially thousands of points that could be used in my favor by displacing the crappiest drops with the simply mediocre purchasables. If I can buy something better than what's been dropped shouldn't I? If not, then what's CA money for? Why bother with an economy at all? There's only so often that I need to heal.

mikel- i see the point u made but i wish they would bring the upkeep and incremental costs down 2b for an obsidian sword and the price goes up 1b for every 5 so to get 20 swords i have to spend 70b and 4 mil in upkeep so unless u have hundreds of mil of every hour u cant afford to spend on this yet.

i had to buy like 300 magics to get a few people off my ass in PvP

Mikel is mostly right about me...

Buy what you can that isn't too expensive. If you can buy magics, do it so your whole army has something. However, don't bother with buying the Obsidian Gear (more than what you need for quests).

northhigh-I agree that upkeep costs on those are prohibitive. Like I said I'd be down to almost no income were I to attempt to replace ornate axes with obsidian swords. But the idea is still a sound one. Next time you do an invasion, click the view more link. Look at the stuff on the bottom of the lists. That's where there's real room for growth usually. Oh btw watch those buggers on the quantities of items to unlock missions. Pay attention to how many of each item you will need by the end of the tier. They'll try to trick you with an increment like 8 but by the end of the tier you'll need 25. Buying the minimum required at that point will cost you in the long run as you'll need to make extra purchases.

D-man-yeah that's another little spot to grow. The spells you can buy suck. But yeah I think the few hundred points I've got from the crappy little 3/3 champions auras help plenty. There again though, they get expensive quickly, with less than a hundred purchased, it'd be another 250M for me to get another 5-pack. No upkeep on those though. Even when I get hit by people way above me, they mostly don't have 500 spells. I've not managed that yet myself. Then of course I'll need to displace the hero's resolves, energy bolts, and angelic blessings which are the daggers and shortswords of spells. Of course now that you've got meph you could benefit from a bunch of little extra stuff. I just can't decide on that war unlockable spell, I forget it's name, but it's a 4/4, a slight edge over champions aura. I think I'd find myself farmed by the cc guys, to whom I'm certain war seems like a gift, if I bumped up high enough to get them though. In war I can get by for now off of a decent bsi and having bothered to level up all my heroes. But I've already started noticing a bunch of epic generals. For the time being I'm going to consider myself out of that form of combat.

northhigh916 wrote:is the seraphim angel, valor knight, and obsidian equipment worth the upkeep and the money u spend to get them? i know u need the obsidian stuff for quests but should u buy that equipment for ur army cuz i think its too expensive

A lot of good answers posted above -- I expect each is correct for a certain aspect of the game. My two cents ...

If you are not really into the PvP part (and do not have a high Battle Rank that needs defending), then of course you do not need to outfit your army with expensive stuff. Probably want to make sure you have a unit for every member in your army (Treants are good for starters) as well as something for each of them use (Battle axes are good for this). This should help prevent getting pawned by EVERYONE who comes a knocking.

But, if you are interested in PvP and want to defend a better than average Battle Rank; then that expensive gear starts becoming more desirable.

For Dueling -- it is Best in Slot stuff that counts -- most of the best stuff comes from drops; but if there is something that you can buy that is better than what you currently use in that slot, then you should probably buy it.

For War -- very similar, except it uses the top 7 items (no more than 3 of any one thing). Again, if you are Warring and there are things you can buy that will replace stuff you are currently using, then you probably want to buy it (and go collect the better stuff that you are missing).

Invasions -- this is really where all that other stuff comes into play -- and Mikel is spot on when he says that what you should be counting is that stuff at the Bottom of your list -- the worst stuff that is getting used. If you can purchase gear that will replace things at the bottom of the list of items you are using, then you should consider upgrading. But, you need to watch the upkeep and again Mikel's rule of thumb of keep the upkeep <= 10% of your income is a good one.

Finally though, it is your ATT and DEF (as well as army size for Invasions) stats that have the most affect. During an Invasion your Stats are multiplied by the number of folks in your army -- so, if you have a 501 army and add one point of ATT, your Attack Value just went up by 501 -- takes a lot of pretty good gear to match that! (But if your stats and army size are close -- then it comes down to the gear and luck.)