The order in which the shot power upgrades are researched in the academy is important. They are multiplicative, which means a percentage of your current shot power is increased. As you can only research these once, you should plan which units you want to have fully upgraded before researching the academy shot power upgrades. Many 17thc musketeers have an attack lower than 10. Due to the rounding effect discussed below, researching the 10% upgrade before a unit's attack strength is 10 or more will result in that unit not getting any benefit at all. Also, 7000 gold is a lot to spend on a mere 1 or 2 extra attack points. Plan carefully to maximize your benefit. ( read on)

Furthermore, it’s very important, to do your upgrades for fire power attack in the barracks and stables if possible. Because, if for example you have the 18^th  dragoon , that has 18 shot power standard. So if you do the upgrades in the academy first, you will get something like 32, then add the 7 upgrades in the stable ( for a total of 29) = 61, instead of the 92, you could have had, if you did the upgrades in the stable first and then in the academy. Big difference. 

 

1. 9. 1  The academy and the round-up's.

 

The order in which the upgrades are researched can make a small difference in the result. When a shot power upgrade is researched, the current attack strength of each unit is multiplied by a decimal. The result often includes a decimal. As you might guess, that number has to be rounded off. Who wants a Chasseur running around with an attack strength of 46.8733333. It just so happens that it is most efficient to round the number down, so the Chasseur effectively loses a potential 0.8733333 attack. Because there are 4 upgrades in the academy, it is actually possible to research them in different orders to minimize the attack points lost through rounding. For example: Researching the upgrades in the normal 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% order will leave your 18thc dragoons with 89 attack. Not bad. If you had researched the upgrades in a different order, for example: 30%, 10%, 15%, 20%, they could have had 92 attack.

So what can be the conclusion now. Several.

Let’s have a look at the 17^th  musketeers: The worst shot seems to be the Netherlands (7/65) but he gets a bit more life then the most of the other 17^th musketeers. The best shot seems to be the Turkish Janissary. It even gets a little surplus on the life. But I would far prefer the Russian Strelets from this point of view. He has an awesome 85 life. But look at Switzerland that even has 100 life but shoots almost as bad as the Netherlands. Now this conclusion would be just too easy if it was finished now. What is not shown in the list is the attack speed (rate of attack) of the unit and the time it takes to build one unit,… For that I advise you to have a look at the Rate of attack list. ( See Chapter 1.10 Rate of attack and 1.11 Range of attack and 1.12 Build Time)

 Let’s take for example the Dutch 17^th  musketeer compared to the standard 17^th  musketeer:

    The Dutch standard not upgraded shoots 7 and has 65 life. The rate of fire is 65 ( so he shoots once in 65 frames) and the build time is 350.

    The standard not upgraded 17 th musketier shoots  9 and has 50 life. The rate of fire is 90 and the build time is 400.

You can already spot a difference in build time. If it’s just one unit , it’s not much difference, but let’s say the game plays for 2000 GT. ( 2000 * 50 frames = 100 000 frames) ( see chapter 1.3 Time )In that time you can build 285 Dutch musketeers and only 250 standard 17^th  musket.  It ‘s pretty clear that the Dutch only by numbers will win this fight. You could say, are you sure, cause the standard shoots better? Time to have a look at the rate of attack then I say. The standard rate of fire is  90 for the 17the musket. That means , it will fire one shot per 90 frames. The Dutch clearly does much better at a rate of 1 shot per every 65 frames.  After upgrades of the fire rate in the academy ( see Rate of attack) this becomes 27 for the Dutch and once per 37 frames for the standard one. Conclusion: Regarding the fact that the Dutch musket 1. Produces quicker 2. Has more life. 3. Fire’s faster. This gives him a 3-1 advantage towards the standard musketeer. Even though he shoots only slightly less good,  it’s clear who will live to see another tomorrow.

1.9.5 Combinations of upgrades in the academy

The list above (1.9.4) gives the maximum firing power after upgrades have been done if necessary in barracks and stables and the combination for academy power upgrades. Let’s take a deeper look now at those academy FIRE POWER upgrades. There are 4 of them.

In the list below the key numbers refer to the Key list above. On the left you see the upgrade order that has been conducted to achieve the result in the right columns below the unit.

 

So for Ukraine there are 12 possibilities to achieve the maximum fire power of 78. Feel free to use any of these combinations.

An easy one to remember is line 1. ( Key number 1 – see list above), this refers to this combination :

As you can see for the 17^th Hadju there are 5 ways to achieve the maximum Fire power of 24. These are the lines with number 12 – 19 – 20 – 22 and 23.

Further you can see for the 18^th dragoon that there are even 7 ways of achieving the maximum of 92. These are the lines with number 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 -17 and 18.

For the 18^th musket and grenadier there are 7 ways aswell to achieve the maximum of 22. These are the lines with the number 1 – 6 – 7 – 8  - 10 – 12 and 24.

You already can tell now that you will never be able to have your 17^th muskets fully upgraded at the same time as your 18^th dragoons.

If you look at the 18^th muskets and 18^th dragons there only seems to be 1 line that enables you to have maximum fire in both units, being 22 and 92. This is line 6.

Ok, whats the logical choice then?  To pick this line and forget about the -1 for the 17^th musket. You could play with pikes aswell.

This example goes from the idea that you would make either 17^th muskets + 18^th muskets + 18^th dragons. In this case the combination 30/15/20/10 is the best(line6).

But what if you play with hussars instead of 18^th dragons and you make 17^th muskets. Then you could look for an combination that gives you the maximum on the 17^th muskets. Now let’s look for a combination that gives the maximum for 17^th muskets and 18^th muskets.  This appears to be (line 12 with) this combination: 20/15/30/10

Further notice that for the unique unit of Hungary there are only 2 combinations that yield you the maximum of 58 being line 8 and 12.

Suppose you play a 17^th century game with 17^th muskets and 17^th dragons. The perfect line would be 12 aswell.

So conclusion for Hungary:

         17^th muskets/pikes + 18^th muskets/grenadiers+18^th dragons= 30%-->15%-->20%-->10%

         17^th muskets/pikes+ 18^th muskets/grenadiers/pandurs+ 18^th hussars= 20%-->15%-->30%-->10%