Sergey Kryvorotchenko said:

Let's consider 2 cases:

1. Your Prizes' progress is known. You need just send Units to Prizes and wait for your progress reaches the certain value. Very simple.

2. Your Prizes' progress is hidden. And you have to a) find out what is the Resource value of each type your Units; b) Calculate all the loses; c) investigate which types of Units are more useful for exchange on Prizes; d) pay attention to details to find out your bank is full and it's time for a big reward!

And which case is more strategical to you, Captain?

Number one, because with it I can plan, i.e., make strategy. With number two, I can play detective/researcher/adventurer (or ignore the prizes, as I usually do).

Hello!

Cool! I'm glad that we resume this thread!

Well, some of the in-game features should not be explicitly shown to players. To me, this adds more excitement and thrill to the game. 

Timur The Lame said:

Why can't we see our banking accounts that we used to see before the prize update?

Hello!

Cool! I'm glad that we resume this thread!

Well, some of the in-game features should not be explicitly shown to players. To me, this adds more excitement and thrill to the game. 

When working in the lower levels, payouts are a pain. You generally exhaust more troops than what it pays out. Ideally you want to be in the 40s+. This is where you start to see decent payouts. 

Secondly yellow barring doesn't work the same way anymore. Its best to yellow your highest and second highest then take out your advancer. Then because it won't pay the full payout you drop down and hit your second highest. Also when yellowing you don't want to yellow 30's or less. Its relatively useless.

OH. And, don't forget to mention that the minimum banking requirement for a given prize is also a variable.  

So, even if you think you've met the minimum bank, and take down the prize, quite often that's still not enough to trigger a payout. Figured this out when going back down the ladder and taking down yellow-lined prizes of lower level. I sometimes go down 2 or 3 levels before triggering a payout. What's up with that?

A variable of 1pc, 2pc, even 3pc, is probably fine to make a fuzzy bank. But, when it's 9pc. to 20pc. it becomes monstrously difficult, especially when dealing with high level prizes.

To put things into perspective, after a prize run it takes 3-5 days, or up to a week, to re-train pirates and mercs (especially mercs), and that's only working towards bank on a lvl.33 prize. Some of me higher-level brethern are constantly training marauders for prizes and other things. And, do you know how many they have in their harbor at one time? Take a guess? (answer below). 

There's got to be a better way. I feel like a mouse on a wheel. I'll eventually forgo banking and just work at taking down the highest level prize I can get away with limited to 2 days of re-training. See where that takes me. 

Crowbar said:

I wholeheartedly disagree with Plarium's "we won't tell you a thing" policy. Can't make strategy if you don't know how the system works, and I haven't seen this level of secrecy in other company's strategic games. I admit I have no idea how the prizes work (beyond the general concept of bank), nor do I bother much with them.

They tell us enough.  Those that like to figure it out don't mind the secrecy, they actually relish in it.

Smitten said:

My 12 year old son tells me that he did his homework, and when I check he has not completed parts b, c, and f.

"Finished homework" means "finished the whole homework". "Share a secret about something" does not mean "share all the secrets".

Smitten said:

So Crowbar, a man who identified himself as the leader of Phoenix bh told me that he reverse-engineered the lighthouse.Maybe you can share some of the findings with us in order to level the playing field.

My 12 year old son tells me that he did his homework, and when I check he has not completed parts b, c, and f. At the time, Alyona only said that bretheren units count.

So Crowbar, a man who identified himself as the leader of Phoenix bh told me that he reverse-engineered the lighthouse.Maybe you can share some of the findings with us in order to level the playing field.

Smitten said:

Last year you shared a "secret" of the lighthouse with us. The secret was that bretheren units do count toward your bank account. Should we assume that you were telling the truth and they are worth 100% as much as regular units? or was this a "half-truth" where bretheren units are worth less than regular units?

It wasn't a half-truth: they do count, but she has always maintained that she can't say how valued. So, yes, it is possible that they are worth less.

This prize game is frustrating. My biggest payout was 2812 jugs on an 81 corsair prize. However I have spent rubies reviving over 8,000 jugs and using them in the prizes. After a large payout I know my bank is still in the positive but it doesn't give me a big payout until I have used up all the units that I have just previously won. Sometimes I get to the point where I do not have anymore units left. So now I am in the hole by 8,000 jugs. This shouldn't be happening at level 81 highest prize done. The algorithm for prize payout blows. It should always pay you out when you have banked enough. For example a level 59 payout is around 22 million. So if you have over 22 mil in the bank you should get paid after defeating the prize. The downside of it is if you do level 1-30 I guess you will always get a large payout if you have so much banked up. Doing things this way will make the prize game easy wouldn't it. You can keep going until there are no more prizes. But with the way things are now you can have close to 200 million banked up and still run out of units doing level 81 and lower prizes. I guess that's how the developers want it to be. Speaking of strategy, there is no real strategy to the prize game. The only strategy is "I hope I get my large payout" at least for me in this case, since I have so much banked up. No kidding though there is a bit of strategy to this prize game besides luck of getting a large payout. For corsair units you can use whatever offense you want since it will always be the same type of unit defending it. For the other 3 type of prizes like the caravel, safe haven and sea fort what I do is send in 1 unit first and wait for the battle report. From there I can see what types of unit are in the prize and send in the appropriate units to minimize my losses. For example if a caravel is mostly submarines your better off sending in pirates, mercenary or fleet units. If you don't have those then just skip it and do the others until you get enough units from mini payouts or a large payout to do that prize. However if you don't want to wait then be prepared to lose a lot of armada ships killing off that caravel. Hope my rant might get things changed and the strategy I use may be helpful to those who find it to be useful.

Sergey Kryvorotchenko said:

Crowbar said:

Sergey Kryvorotchenko said:

Crowbar said:

Sergey Kryvorotchenko said:

Let's consider 2 cases:

1. Your Prizes' progress is known. You need just send Units to Prizes and wait for your progress reaches the certain value. Very simple.

2. Your Prizes' progress is hidden. And you have to a) find out what is the Resource value of each type your Units; b) Calculate all the loses; c) investigate which types of Units are more useful for exchange on Prizes; d) pay attention to details to find out your bank is full and it's time for a big reward!

And which case is more strategical to you, Captain?

Number one, because with it I can plan, i.e., make strategy. With number two, I can play detective/researcher/adventurer (or ignore the prizes, as I usually do).

You can plan with number two as well. Why not? You just need to investigate this feature carefully to make a more precise plan. The difference is just in difficulty level.

I cannot plan if I don't know how it works. The question was "which case is more strategical to you?" and my answer is: "the one in which I can plan to make strategy". The other one is a detective game (where you can change things under the hood without us knowing). We can play both, of course, but only one is (more) strategical.

I can accept that one can plan to a certain point without knowing the exact rules and/or when they change (i.e., in case #2), but there is no doubt that one can plan better if they know how it works, making the case one more strategical, which was the original question I was answering.

I feel like we're going in circles, sir Crowbar. Prizes are a difficult part of the gameplay. I know a lot of players who lose their troops. On the other hand, I know players who get their rewards constantly. What does it mean? It means some players have a strategy even without their Prizes' progress (bank) and another part doesn't have any strategy or tactics.

The dissinformation from community managers runs rampant and is abundantly apparent on PToF Forums. If you want a fine tooth comb with the understanding of the details,.. I will help you. Never forget the Community Managers have historically post to confuse & disinform the common player in so far as to remain unchallanged in the effort to maintainin total control in game.

They have a certain value, but we cannot tell you any exact information.