Best farming method

No offense, but to some extent you’re doing it wrong. What you’ve done is an inversion of the strategy. Meaning that, instead of creating a situation where your farming unit is surrounded – you’ve chosen to surround units, which does two things:

* Reduces the overall efficiency of the farming scenario – in real time.
* Reduces the effectiveness of your setup for farming rank/nobility.

Let’s take it from the top, these are the things you’re farming for in the game:

* Rank
* Nobility
* Medals
* Refresh rate

Rank and nobility should be farmed initially together, using a setup like I describe below. They increase relative to each other, but nobility can be farmed for separately – IF you get tired of farming for them together – because it takes a long time to get nobility=10, when farmed together, and nobility on its own is arguably more important than rank.

Basic rank/nobility farming setup.

The principle here is to have two locations surrounded by as many near-to-dead units as possible. The max of course is 11 units (you need a path to move between the two locations). You are taking a single general (typically in a double-armored car) and moving them between the locations. This means of course that you save the setup without a general in the car, and place your desired general at the beginning. If you don’t do this, and instead choose to surround and kill a bunch of units, then most of those kills (all except 3 in the OP) are not credited to the general for rank/nobility farming.

Clujnapoca/Bucharest is the traditional map location for this, because Clujnapoca is always a cavalry fort and can be used to spawn the near-fresh armored car you’ll need, and Bucharest is a “move” away. Also, being cities, these locations draw enemy units. Yes, it’s slightly more complex to set-up.

PRO TIP: There’s a reason that the “On War” and “Crown” items are the most expensive in the game. If you’re farming for rank without “On War” or farming for nobility without “Crown”, then you’re wasting countless cycles.

Saved - without general:


With general - position 1:


Position 1 - All killed:


Position 2 - All killed (plus Fort destroyed by Sophia):



Nobility farming setup.
Stealing farms increases your nobility. That is why someone far more perceptive than I created the “Chain the Beast” nobility farming method.

Chain the Beast Position 1:


Chain the Beast Position 2:


Medals
Your chance of generating medals is directly proportional to the number of engagement points in your setup – and if you’re doing all the attacking, one setup isn’t much better than the other. However, the reason why classic medal-grinding scenarios like the “1815 wall of cars” and “Trafalgar grind” have been recognized is to take advantage of engagement/medal generation during the AI turns. Yes you can generate medals using the scenarios discussed in this thread but there are far more efficient methods.

Refresh rate
Refresh rate is proportional to the number of enemy units killed and their type (including killing of generals on units). Units/presence of generals have different refresh rate values, that is why you should include non-infantry in your refresh rate farming whenever possible, and just killing leaderless enemy infantry as described in the OP is probably the least efficient way to generate refreshes. If you keep the preceding two sentences in mind, there is no reason to have a dedicated refresh-rate farming scenario.

Just to be clear, since your generals are at nobility-10, I believe you need “on War”, and not Crown, to help your rank farming. With that item and the set-up I showed, you’re knocking out 35+ medals each turn towards rank improvement (when you click the icon to see how many medals you need to upgrade to the next rank).

The map is Conquest – Europe 1815, playing as Russia, where both Ottoman and Wallachia are your enemies. Another reason to use Russia is because they are one of the few countries with armored cars at 3-10+ (although Poland, in your scenario, is another).

If you look at the screenshot, you’ll see that there are other Russian generals/units in the area. These are used to both attract units to the area, and then to “soften” those units to one-shot kill levels, without eliminating them. Basically, you just play it through until you get to a point where enemy unit placement and strength-levels are where you want them, and then you save. It’s not that hard because the enemy wants Clujnapoca back, and the units in the Wallachian cities aren’t going anywhere. Also, enemy units won’t go on suicidal attacks (although they’ll sometimes move away). I’m sure you’ve developed a feel for what attacks are going to only damage vs. eliminate an enemy, however, you may want to create save-points as you get close to the optimal setup.

You can also place your units to create morale-down situations. Note that when Berthier moves to position B; Sophia and Isabela are placed to create morale-down situations for the enemy in Bucharest and the city north (although probably not necessary).

I created this just for farming Berthier, who at that point had a couple of cavalry stars added. If I was going to create it for a whole HQ of fresh out-of-the-box generals, I would have softened the two Ottoman cavalry units southwest of Bucharest a little more.

As always, items can help with grooming. +6 cavalry pistol helps if you’re farming new cavalry or non-cavalry generals. Also, you’ll notice that the initial double-armored car is not at full-strength, so snare drum may be needed as well, depending on who you're farming with.

You need about 290 campaign stars for Lan, which will probably put you somewhere in early Rise of America - that's why your conquest numbers are good but your years ruled are not.

Regarding your comments in the other thread, Stonewall Jackson was right, Victoria has value - but more so on Navy than Infantry. Especially if you don't have Kate, but even if you do, because she's almost Kate's equal - so keep her around. I read in one of your previous comments that you plan on adding navy stars to some of your elite non-navy generals. This works for Sophia, who becomes something of a coastal fort specialist, and is good vs. ships, but you're still going to need Kate and/or Victoria to be your primary navy in SNS, even if you plan to S/L your way through the navy scenarios.  Also, per Stonewall's comment, as the game goes along you'll have fewer units but usually have at least one strong infantry unit (double or triple guards, or double machine-gun) which is good for Victoria.

You are playing the game with four generals at this point, but you're really only about halfway through the game, so leave yourself some flexibility to expand your HQ, even if you don't think you'll need to. Meaning, don't go re-grouping Kate and/or Victoria, and don't be in a hurry to offload Golitsyn with plans to pick-up again as your last general. Buy a couple of slots and stash your elite generals, even if you only want to play with four.

I have my doubts about a 3-man HQ of sophia/isabela/golitsyn getting to 290 campaign stars. This isn't a knock on you personally, it is what it is.

I hope you prove me wrong.

Yes, buy bow-chaser and propeller.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about playing S/L in campaign. I imagine that doing that, anything would be possible. If you mean that you're going back and replaying campaigns to 5-stars, then good - that's the way to do it.  You should be able to get Lan by the tail-end of EO then.

Easy there grasshopper, you did HRE 1798 in 24 turns by taking advantage of a game-bugged map...

european-war-4.boards.net/thread/5814/bug-on-low-health

Banastre Tarleton In case you don't know, I made a Chain the Beast guide already...