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To build all 7 levels of troops, the Castle requires 9 buildings, roughly in this order:
- Archers Tower – 5 wood+5 stone+1000;
- Blacksmith – 5 wood + 1000;
-Barracks – 5 stone + 2000;
- Mage Guild 1 – 5 wood + 5 stone + 2000;
- Monastery – 5 wood + 5 stone + 2 mercury +2 sulfur + 2 crystal +2 gems + 3000;
-Portal of Glory – 10 mercury + 10 sulfur + 10 crystals + 10 gems + 20000;
- Stables – 10 wood + 2000;
- Training Grounds – 20 wood + 5000;
- Griffin Tower – 5 stone + 1000.
In total, buildings cost 50 wood and 25 stone. Mercury, sulfur, crystals, and gems – 12 of each, and 37000 gold.
For the Conflux, 7 buildings are needed.
- Magic Guild 1 – 5 wood + 5 stone + 2000;
- Altar of Air – 5 stone + 1500;
- Altar of Water – 5 stone + 1500;
- Altar of Fire – 5 wood + 5 stone + 2000;
- Altar of Earth – 10 stone + 2000;
-Altar of Thought – 5 wood + 5 stone + 2 mercury +2 sulfur + 2 crystal +2 gems+3000;
- Pyre – 10 wood + 10 stone + 10 mercury + 10000.
Total – 25 wood, 45 stone, 12 mercury, 2 of each other resource. And a total of 22000 gold.
The results:
-Wood + stone.
The most needed resource for the Conflux is stone, requiring 45 units, and 25 units of wood.
For the Castle, conversely, more wood is needed (50 units) and 25 stone.
In terms of total wood+stone, the Castle is slightly more expensive to build up.
-Mercury + Sulfur + Crystals + Gems.
Both castles need 12 Mercury, but for Sulfur, Crystals, and Gems, the Castle needs 10 more units of each.
Gold. The entire Conflux costs 22000 gold. Whereas for the Castle, a single angel building will cost 20000, and the total cost is 37000.
So, the Castle is more expensive to build by 15000 gold, 10 sulfur, 10 crystals, and 10 gems. That's quite a lot. Even without horses, it's still expensive.
Added 4 minutes later
And more about mages.
Playing as mages is indeed interesting. Moreover, the higher the player's level, the more a warrior's chances increase. A mage simply hits enemies with combat spells or casts expert slow on monsters, while a warrior must learn to maneuver troops on the battlefield to avoid losing them. And in my opinion, on a map with sufficient resources, by the third week or even earlier, a warrior can become too much for a mage to handle. Once the fighter has cleared the griffin towers or hives, he already has an army. Even if the mage has gathered a similar army using the same slow (though losses in those hives will be higher), after expert haste, the fighter's troops will hit the mage's army hard. The warrior only needs to know how to maneuver troops. Meanwhile, the mage needs to build the mage tower—even though resources have already been spent on building and upgrading troops—and manage to return and learn everything, otherwise he risks being caught without magic and without mana. Or he might encounter at least a Cloak of Denial in battle.
Therefore, it is good to play as a mage on small maps, say size M, or on fixed maps, where you can reach the opponent quickly, by the end of the first or beginning of the second week. With a mage, a small army and some combat spell—Air Bolt, and quite often Lightning—is enough.
The army isn't there yet, and generally neither is the money, so the warrior won't be able to defend himself; all defenders will be taken down by combat spells. A mage will be able to defend, and even then, not every mage.
I conducted a small test of Castle and Conflux mages if they meet early. The esteemed Forrest has already written about several almost cheating Conflux mages, so I will take, say, Aenaina. Skills – basic wisdom and air magic, stats -0,0,3,3, 30 magic points. Against her, the best Castle mage in my opinion is Caitline. Basic wisdom and intelligence, 25 magic points.
Suppose both meet quite early, within the timeframes I mentioned, and by that time both have gained an equal amount of experience and are level 6. I experimented twice.
In the first case, besides expert wisdom and air magic, Aenaina got basic intelligence (a terrible combination of words). Stats (2,0,5,4), 50 mana points, lightning hit for 175 hits, air bolt for 80 hits. Total 6 lightnings (8 mana points) or 12 air bolts (4 points).
In the second case, Aenaina got sorcery instead of intelligence. Stats (0,0,5,6), 60 mana points, lightning hit for 183 hits, air bolt for 84 hits. 7 lightnings or 15 air bolts.
Caitline (1,0,2,2) in both cases leveled wisdom and intelligence to expert and got basic air magic, which is not bad given the reduced cost of combat spells.
In the first case with stats (2,1,3,4), lightning hit for 85 hits, air bolt for 40, with 80 mana points.
In the second – (2,0,4,4) – lightning hit for 110 points, air bolt for 50, but this was not enough. 6-7 lightnings were more than enough for the Conflux mage to beat the small Castle troops.
Of course, all this is subjective. Shortly after the start of the game, found artifacts will play a role, and there it's a matter of luck.
That's why, and due to the large number of strong mages who are often banned, I concluded that Conflux mages are stronger.
