Academy

 
1.  9 The Shot power upgrades in the academy: Plan carefully
 

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 18th  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.

1.9.2 List of minimum attack without academy upgrades or barracks
 
List of minimum attack for the different shooting units. So without any upgrades in either barracks or academy. These are the units as they come standard. So for example the Hungarian Hadju has 9 shot power and 50 life (9/50) .
 

So what can be the conclusion now. Several.

Let’s have a look at the 17th  musketeers: The worst shot seems to be the Netherlands (7/65) but he gets a bit more life then the most of the other 17th 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 17th  musketeer compared to the standard 17th  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 17th  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.

Needless to say that Ukraine has a very powerfull Serdiuk. Obviously the power nations if they get into 18th century have a clear advantage from the start. But let us not wonder off and continue.
1.9.3 List of maximum fire power after upgrades in Barracks
List of fire power after the attack upgrades have been done in the barracks and stables, but not in the academy. Most of the 18th  musketeers cannot be upgraded for firepower in the barracks (except the Saxonian 18th Musketeer and the unique 18th). The upgrades are usually to upgrade their melee attack (or sword). Same issue for the grenadiers. They do not receive fire power bonuses. Difference can be achieved as well because for some units the amount of upgrades or the upgrade amount is not the same. For example the Hungarian Pandur starts off at 20 (see list above) and the Austrian at 18, but trough upgrades they both achieve 30. (see below )
Notice that where in the first list Russia and Poland’s 17th musket both fired 10; after upgrades Russia is stronger with 28 to 26 for Poland.   Notice aswell the Saxonian 18th Grenadier after upgrades. Pandur’s for Austria and Hungary now have the same fire power.
 

1.9.4  Maximum Fire Power list:

List of maximum attack firepower  possible after upgrades have been done in both the barracks and academy.

 

These are the maximum fire power, but it’s not always possible to have all the units of one nation to  shoot at the maximum fire power at the same time, so keep on reading….
 
 

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.

10%               and costs 7000 gold 
15%                and costs 6000 gold 
20%             and costs 12000 gold 
30 %            and costs 21 000 gold
 
As debated above in point 1.9.1 The academy and the roundups, it’s very important what order you do the upgrades in. There are 24 different combinations possible for every unit with these 4 upgrades (see key list below). However you can only do the upgrade’s once, so for the maximalisation of your upgrades read on further Since most units have different values to start off with it all gets more complicated.
Key List of possible combinations with the 4 shot powder upgrades:
  

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.

The unit before the upgrade has the fire power as shown in the list above ( 1.9.3 ) after it has received upgrades from the barracks/ stables. ( 40 shot power ) . The analysis of this example is found below it.

 

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 :

 30%-->20%-->15%-->10%
 

But in our next example it gets a bit more tricky. This nation taken as an example has 6 different shooting units all with different values, ( see list 1.9.3) So when applying the different combinations on this nation, you get this result:

 
Nation: Hungary
 Allright, how do you analyse this now?

As you can see for the 17th 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 18th 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 18th 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 17th muskets fully upgraded at the same time as your 18th dragoons.

If you look at the 18th muskets and 18th 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 17th musket. You could play with pikes aswell.

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

But what if you play with hussars instead of 18th dragons and you make 17th muskets. Then you could look for an combination that gives you the maximum on the 17th muskets. Now let’s look for a combination that gives the maximum for 17th muskets and 18th 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 17th century game with 17th muskets and 17th dragons. The perfect line would be 12 aswell.

So conclusion for Hungary:

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

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

Now Hungary is an example that follows very much the standard nations regarding the combinations. However due to the fact that most nations have something different than the standard nations this gives very different values than the previous example.

So for an overview of all the nations just follow the links on top in the menu under Academy.