Niels' Big Bad Guide to ToK
From FaitH
Alright, here is a list of all the ToKs, along with which ones I think are useful, and for what types of players. Also, I give it an overall rating, 1-10, with 10 the best and 1 the worst. A rating of 11 means that you *must* get this ToK unless you do not get that Stat. Also, it should be assumed that the ratings are designed for the class that uses that stat. (Luck is dealt with in greater detail). Also, every single person must get and build Ar Towers. No exceptions. If you don't, I will find you and beat you. Just do it. Don't ask questions; get 30 INT and build them. Now. Seriously. Stop reading and build Ar Towers. They are that good.
Buying ToK techs does cost PS, but very very little. It costs 1 PS per "level" of the ToK (The ones at 20 stat points are 1 PS, 40 stat points is 2 PS, etc.)
Contents |
Luck ToK
20 Luck: Lucky Charm field (110 PS each)
3 of them increase your flock rate by 5%. If you're a merchant going for really high peasants count, these can be useful... they'll add about 1 peon per TS. So if you care about PS efficiency at all, don't use them. Of course, if you're flocking, you probably don't care about PS efficiency.
Rating: 2
40 Luck: Well of Lady Luck (150 PS each)
3 of them increase your earnings from taxes by 5% (N.B. almost all percentage bonuses in this game are additive... so a 5% bonus from Wells + a 4% bonus from Accountant Houses is 9%). If you aren't a merchant, this is pretty much a waste (the PS you save from not having these increases your spoils in war by almost enough to make up for it. If you are a merchant, these are *almost* a must have, unless you really want to get to 250 WF by the end of the era and have your 30 INT for Ar Towers.
Rating: 1, 6 for merchants
70 Luck: Headbasher (235 PS each) vs. Cave of DreamS (40 PS)
Headbashers are expensive, and cost some PS. On the other hand, 3 of them give a 15% bonus to spoils, which can be significant, especially near the beginning of the era (which again, is the time when you want to be most lean). I've seen highly successful people use them, and other highly successful people avoid them. I don't, because they don't help me with CP, and I find I can grow just fine without them. The Cave of DreamS, on the other hand, is dirt cheap and gives a pretty good chance of informing you when someone launches on you. This lets you prepare for the battle, and thus helps you earn CP. Hence I like it. If you aren't a rogue, I don't know why you would get up to 70 luck unless you are a WM going for very short attack times, in which case maybe you know what you are doing well enough that you don't have to listen to me.
Rating: Headbasher: 3, Cave of DreamS: 8 (for naturally high luck people)
100 Luck: Magical Bloodbath Pool (97 PS each)
3 of them reduce training time by 30%. Oh Lordy, these are awesome. Makes it easier to train in time while your armies are coming home, and makes it easier to train in time to meet an attack. Not worth getting 100 luck just for these, so for rogues and high luck WM only.
Rating: 9 (for people with naturally high luck)
130 Luck Shadowcast Academy (117 PS each)
3 of them reduce the chance that rogue ops on you fail by 30%. See, these *would* be awesome if people ever tried to op rogues, but they typically don't. If you find that rogues are sending a lot of ops your way, get them, otherwise no. If you are a high luck non-rogue in range of rogues, this is a necessity... see, between well stones and Ar Towers, you'll already have a huge base Terror Resistance, and these will make it nearly impossible to land an op against you.
Rating: 4 (rogues only), 10 (high luck non-rogues)
160 Luck: Guild of Adventure (197 PS) vs. Boot Camps (178 PS each)
A guild gives you a miniscule amount of crap every TS. It sucks. Don't use it. The Boot Camps are good, but not fantastic. On the BS, 3 of these give you 5 units a TS. This helps a *little* both money wise and peon-wise. Unless you are having serious issues with your lean-ness, get these; they're useful, but not essential. If you do get the Boot Camps, remember to under recruit all your units by 25 or so. Boot Camps don't give any "Advanced" units, so you don't have to worry about gaining any high-PS units. Also, they don't recruit 13s for you.
Rating: Guild: 1, Boot Camp: 4
190 Luck: Clark Academy (140 PS each)
Remember how Wells weren't worth it? These aren't, either. If you are a merchant going high Luck (because you were dropped as a baby), then I guess these are pretty good for you.
Rating: 1
220 Luck: Targar's Library (100 PS each) vs. GoS (510 PS)
GoS kills 1% of all incoming troops for every 100 points of Luck more than 100 that you have (rounded down) (maximum of 3%). So, 1% at 200 luck with, 2% at 300 luck, and 3% at 400 luck. This is decent, although it doesn't make the difference in as many battles as you would like. The really cool thing is that unlike wars, it doesn't select for killing based on defense; it kills 3% of EVERY unit type. Makes for very expensive replacement. A good deterrent, if nothing else. If you use GoS, leave your map cheap so people know you have them. Targar's Library is a new Uber-ToK. Consider: 12% Terror Resistance from the WoK, 32% Terror Resistance from Ar Towers, and 20% Terror Resistance from Targar's Library means a base of 64% Terror Resistance. That means people will have to choose whether to HSD or Slow you... they'll never land both.
Rating: Targar's Library: 9, GoS: 4 (below 300 Luck), 7 (above 300 Luck)
250 Luck: Tower of Fortune (15 PS)
These things ROCK! They are dirt cheap (buying the ToK tech costs almost as much PS as the building), and they provide: - small amounts of gold - some mostly useless but kinda cool random events - occasional small TR bonuses (very nice!) - some items that suck, except occasionally a Potion of Zircos.
No, no single thing they do is amazing, but when it all is put together over a long period of time, it is very sweet.
Rating: 11 (rogues only)
Charisma ToKs
20 Charisma: Pubs (24 PS each)
Useful before you get Whorehouses; greatly diminishes the number of times your wizards have to pump your morale. Becomes obsolete. I can fathom no reason why a non-merchant would ever consider these. There are better things that you can do with your stat points (If you are a WM or Wiz, put your last 20 stat points in Luck... luck gives all kinds of random, subtle bonuses). I don't rate this high, even early on, because I usually have no ToK at all until level 10 or so, by which time you will have access to Whorehouses, anyway)
Rating: 1, (5 for very low level merchants)
40 Charisma: Statue of the Emperor (60 PS each)
Four of these increase your maximum morale by 50. This is actually very useful, as it increases your tax income by quite a bit (over 5%, although the exact percent depends on your charisma... you don't want to know). A 5% or more tax bonus for 240 PS? Sign me up!
Rating: 11 (merchants only... everyone else has better things to do with their stat points)
70 Charisma: Accountant Office (140 PS each) vs. Temples of FaitH (160 PS each)
Three temples give you a 4% flock bonus, and 3 accountant offices give you a 4% income bonus. You know my views on flocking bonuses... the only reason I mentioned temples was for completion. They get a solid 0 in my book. The cost is steep (420 PS for 4% kinda sucks), but eat it, you'll not regret it. Consider destroying these during end-of-era play.
Rating: 8 (merchants only, duh)
100 Charisma: Vault (60 PS each)
Three of these puppies give a 40% bonus to the amount of vault access you get when you lose defensive wars or get hit by spells/ops. For 180 PS, this is AWESOME. Use them at the beginning, until you mostly get out of trouble. Then you will have a huge amount of vault access, and you can blow by the remainder of the competition. A necessity for any merchant wanting to get to the top.
Rating: 9 (merchants, early on... a 4 later)
130 Charisma: Whorehouse (190 PS) vs. I forget what, but it sucks
The whorehouse keeps your peons' morale at max, and provides a pittance of gold. No more Mem spirits! Yay! Nymph woods do something which is mostly useless, namely increase flocking.
Rating: 11
160 Charisma: Government Facility (300 PS)
This allows you to increase your max tax rate by 4%. I don't care that it's expensive! You're a merchant; go make some money. This will help.
Rating: 11
190 Charisma: Banks of Lutherville (140 PS each)
On the RPG, 3 of these will give 2000 gold to the bank every TS. Whee!
Rating: 3
220 Charisma: Government Office (440 PS)
This allows you to increase your max tax rate by 5%. I don't care that it's expensive! You're a merchant; go make some money. This will help.
Rating: 11
250 Charisma: Mines (300 PS each)
Three of these increase your total income by 15%. These provide one of the only multiplicative bonuses in the game... they add 15% of your income after all the other bonuses are added (I can only think of three other places where there is a multiplicative bonus, and they will make it into some column I write eventually). To top it off, money from the mines isn't subject to commission. Arguable the best ToK in the game.
Rating: 11
Intelligence ToKs
20 INT: War Tower (140 PS)
They get a high rating because they are a prerequisite for Ar Towers, so everyone gets them anyway. These are still useful, although not as much as they used to be. Since you can only build 10 of each type of defensive structure, towering is harder than it used to be. This also means people will build fewer negators, expecting nobody to actually have towers. So... it's a toss-up, really. If you pay attention, you can still surprise people with a towering now and then, especially if you use chaos towers. Also, at high PS (say above 175k), 10 war towers + 10 walls + Statues of the Gods gives a 30% defense bonus, which is really nice.
Rating: 8
30 INT: Ar Magica Towers(60 PS each)
Hoily crap! If everyone in your KD builds 4 of these, that's 32% TR all around for a mere 240 PS per person. Is your IQ below 60? No? Then get these and build them.
Rating: 12
70 INT: Observation Towers (40 PS)
These *would* be really really good if they were the 40 INT ToK. Two of them double the effectiveness of your exploration. If you have this ToK and plan of exploring any time soon, build them. 80 PS never hurt anyone... much. This brings up a good point, though... 80 PS isn't much, but if you have 10 places with 80 PS, that's 800... the little things really add up in this game. The reason I don't like these is that you have to pay 17k to get to them, and by that time you will already have done a significant part of your exploring, anyway.
Rating: 11 if exploring, 0 else
100 INT: Material House (?)vs. Architect House (30 PS each)
Material Houses are so bad, they don't even appear in my PS calculating spreadsheet. Three Architect houses halve the time it takes to build a building. That's like a free HC *every* time you build a building. This is awesome for towering, and also for lots of random things. As a technical note, build times are somewhat random... that random factor is calculated *after* the architect house (and double speed building) takes effect (so if you randomly get a build time of a day longer, it'll still be an extra day with architect houses, not a half day). Recent experiments show that the random extra time is uniformly distributed in (0,1) days. (that's the interval between 0 and 1 which does not include either)
Rating: 11 (-1 for Material House)
130 INT: Sherlock Academy (70 PS each)
Three of these means you will pretty much know who is running rogue ops on you. Why would you care?
Rating: 2
160 INT: General Academies (70 PS each)
Three of these give a 15% bonus to all sources of exp except one (the random event that gives EXP). As they are cheap, these are well worth it. If you level aggressively, these can get you an extra 2 or 3 levels when it's all said and done. Also, they help you get to level 30 a little bit faster, and that's not a bad thing. On the other hand, 2 or 3 levels aren’t a huge deal.
Rating: 9 (before level 30), 7 (after level 30)
190 INT: Recruitment Center (200 PS each) vs. Chaos Tower (190 PS)
Since Magic Towers rock, you gotta pick Chaos Tower. The Chaos Tower makes your towers twice as hard to negate. I still like chaos tower a lot. It makes towering easy. With the restrictions on towers (10 of each type per corner), your going to see a lot of people with very few negators. This makes them very tower-able. Chaos towers helps with that a lot. Only tower if you know you are going to win, which means you gotta know how many negators your enemy has. It is tough, but not impossible to be an effective towering player.
Rating: 6 for Chaos Tower, 0 for Recruitment Center
220 INT: Magic Towers (120 PS each) vs. Fortune Teller (280 PS)
The fortune teller tells you how many weeks a defensive battle lasts... you are a wizard: cast a BD! Magic Towers can tell you about attacks against you. They have an approximately 80% chance of working, in which case they will tell you that there is an attack and also what direction it is coming from. They randomly give you some extra information sometimes, including (1) what KD the attack is from, (2) who is attacking you, (3) what strategy they are using to attack, and (4) when the attack will arrive (assuming no hastes or slows are cast). Build 2 in every non-lava corner. If someone attacks you over lava, that's their problem.
Rating: 0 for Fortune Teller and 11 for Magic Towers
250 INT: Keeps (400 PS each)
Three keeps increases the building capacity of your buildings by 45%, but increases the PS cost of all your unit buildings by 30%. This would be great, except that 3 keeps costs 1200 PS, and making up for that takes 8000 PS of unit buildings. So using 1:1 Tolkein as an example, you break even with a 45,000 PS army (total PS around 60,000 usually), and you save 1200 PS with a 90,000 PS army (total PS around 105,000). So, my advice is to build this once you pass 100k, and expect it to start being really good around 150k PS. Also, keep in mind if you are Rift that the Keeps will increase the PS of your War Engine Workshop by 30%, costing you an additional 600 PS :(
Rating: 3 (before 100k PS), 7 (100k-150k PS), 10 (150k-200k PS), 11 (200k PS +) [subtract 1 from all ratings for Rift]
Warfare ToK
20 WF: Candy Shop (30 PS each) or 30 WF: Toy Store (30 PS each)
These are dirt cheap (the new cheapest buildings, in fact) and very useful. They mesh with the 40 WF ToK well, as Candy Shop (defensive protect CoT bonus) goes with Walls (defensive bonus) whereas Toy Store (offensive kidnap CoT bonus) goes with Blacksmiths (3% attack bonus all the time). I personally like to attack a lot, so I pick Toy Store and Blacksmith. If you are defensive, go the other route. Getting and using these is a no-brainer. EVERYONE should do it.
Rating: 9
40 WF: Blacksmiths (100 PS each) vs. Castle Walls (60 PS each)
Three blacksmiths give a 3% bonus to attack in all wars. If you are an attacker sort of person, these are great for you. Each Castle Wall gives a 1% defense bonus in that direction. If you are a defensive minded person, these are amazing, because they are less than half the cost of war towers. Of course, you can only use 10 in a corner before having to use War Towers for further %defense bonus. Caste Walls are best with Statues of the Gods.
Rating: 8 for Castle Walls (9 with SoG) and 10 for Blacksmiths.
70 WF: Fortress (50 PS each)
Another one of those that are tempting to get because they only total 150 PS, three of these reduce the rate your peons get stolen in defensive losses by 30%. This sounds cool, but really, you don't need it except when you are really down on your luck and need peons FAST. My advice: don't ignore them, but don't use them for no reason
Rating: 6
100 WF: Military Academy (170 PS each)
Three Military academies lets you have as low as 0.84=(# of LR units + # of LR/CR units)/(# of CR units + # of LR/CR units). The only churches with a significant imbalance in LR vs CR are Karla and Good Celeste. These both have KoN, which SUCK! If you use Military Academies, you can get to about 1 KoN per 1.8 LR unit without any penalty (because the units with both LR and CR count as both LR units and CR units). This is KEY to the success of these two churches.
Rating: 1 (9 for Karla and Good Celeste)
130 WF: Statues of the Gods (150 PS each) and Engineering Workshop (220 PS)
3 SoG will increase the %defense bonus from walls and War Towers by 50%. An Engineering Workshop will double the number of negators you have. These are both good, but neither is really an uber-ability. EW means that unless you like attacking wizards, you will never need more than 15 negators. Very PS efficient. SoG are quite useful at high PS. 10 walls + 10 war towers + SoG gives you a 30% defense bonus relatively cheaply. If you aren't an attacker, it's almost a must-have.
Rating: 7 for each
160 WF: Hospitals (90 PS each) vs. Mountains of Faith (90 PS each)
Unless you are low heal trinity, you should build them once you get the ToK. The effect isn't huge, but it's WELL worth 270 PS, except at pretty low PS. It doesn't matter much to me which you use; you'll find it doesn't make a huge difference either way. The one exception is high heal trinity... if you are going to use a lot of DMV, this is an essential ToK.
Rating: 11 for whichever you want
190 WF: Mines (40 PS each)
Building 3 of these in a corner provides 900 trample in defensive battle in that corner (but you have to rebuild them in between weeks, because they blow up, so maybe you should have 6 in each corner, as the excess mines don't blow up). Of course, no need to protect lava corners. Considering that you can get these at level 15, they are equivalent to a free win for maybe the first week that you have them. After that, they continue to be useful, even unto really high PS. Building 12 of them is 480 PS, but makes a huge difference on defense (oh, and the 3 of them exploding will kill a negator or two for free!)
Rating: 11
220 WF: Stables (430 PS each) vs. Mountain Retreats (330 PS each)
Oh man, both of these are awesome. Building three stables lowers the time it takes to get to/from battle by 3 days. Sounds like a big deal (and it is), but as you are probably going to get hasted every battle, it is really only a 1.5 day difference. Still, very useful at high PS and if you are trinity trying to get as many 13s as possible. On a side note, for Tolkien and Omega (and Karla - sorta) which have very very weak shadow armies (note that this is not because they have so much more attack than defense, but rather because they lose their bonus), stables *can* make the difference of getting home to defend often enough to be essential. I wouldn't know; I don't play those churches.
Mountain Retreats carry a pretty heft price for something that doesn't help you immediately. Building 4 of these will give you 15 WF points every RT week after they are built. Build them ASAP and keep them until two weeks before the end of the era (or one week). You can (pretty easily) get 510 WF or so for a 17% attack bonus in offensive wars (and 12 percent attack bonus in defensive wars)... it's nuts.
Really, though, the most important thing about this level of ToK is that it precedes the Guardian Angels... Pick the 220 WF ToK based on which 250 WF ToK you want.
Rating: 9
250 WF: Defensive Angels (590 PS each) vs. Offensive Angels (590 PS each)
You know how I said Mines were arguably the best ToK? I was lying... these two makes Mines look like Material Houses. Which of these two is better? Well, if you've been paying any attention, you'll know which on I'd choose That being said, *most* people disagree with me. A lot of people choose the defensive angels for two reasons: First, the stables are pretty nifty (although most people overestimate them, now that the GoS have been nerfed), and secondly, having good heal in defensive wars means that when you do multiweek offensive wars, they are less likely to get messed up by a retal. This is very important.
On the other hand, Offensive Guardian Angels are just awesome. If you do things right, these babies will let you hit anyone you want. I played an infinity WM a few eras ago, and I could beat *everyone* in my PS range when I was on the offense. That's right, I could attack up 12% against a WM who was at HOME and win. I owed half of it to the Offensive Angels, and half of it to the fact that infinity was naturally stronger than eternity
Anyway, whichever you pick, it'll save your rear a bunch of times. As far as when to get these is concerned: the calculation for trinity is easy, obviously, but more subtle for other churches. It might be high enough for some churches that they are not useful on the RPG very much. Definitely useful after 150k PS in all cases, I think.
Rating: 12
