Is Hades worth it? - A Guide

    Hello Everybody,


    the last big patch increased the level of the cost reduction buildings, together with a reworked wine consumption for the tavern. Both of these changes helped a lot for people who want to use the Hades wonder actively, so I figured, I share some insights about the general idea, the setup and the proper usage of the Hades.


    1. General Idea

    The principle behind the wonder is easy. Every troop that is lost in your own cities, no matter the player, returns 80% of its costs back as marble. This makes the Hades incredibly useful in war, but since the 80% are calculated from the base cost of the unit, it allows us to earn resources from it. Assuming the ideal setup of a carpenter's workshop as well as a firework test area of level 50, we can reduce the base cost to 50%, so that each unit that gets produced and dies afterward yields 30% of its base value.

    In the end, you will end up with 60% more resources than you invested, making the Hades a pretty good deal on paper.

    Taking a catapult ship for example, one would invest 160 resources (90 wood, 70 sulfur), and get 256 marble from it, once the ship dies in your city.


    The main questions now are:

    - What's the best account setup

    - How worth is this whole setup when you factor in gold costs, for upkeep and production of the units


    2. Setup

    The setup is pretty minimal, and requires very little commitment from the playing style. The Hades colony itself can be a raid, as wonders continue to work after the raid is deleted. So in theory, it is sufficient, to build a raid on an island where the Hades wonder is known to be 5, activate the wonder, and tear the raid down again.

    The second wonder, that I would consider essential, is Demeter's gardens. After unit production, villagers produce back slowly, and the demeter helps greatly with that. It is especially useful if you don't have the time to constantly tune your taverns up and down depending on how many workers still fit into the town.

    Besides these two wonders, the setup of course benefits from many high level shipyards, barracks and town halls.


    The second part of the setup is another player, not from your alliance, who kills your troops. This should be a player with more points than you, so that pushing is off the table.

    In terms of units, there are only a few considerations: They have to be expensive for the number of citizens they cost, and they should be low on upkeep.

    For your partner, they should also be easy to kill, preferably without any losses. That leaves the Carabineer as the perfect unit. If you don't care for the upkeep but only need to convert sulfur to marble fast, rocket ships or steam rams, as well as mortars are also very citizen efficient, but require a big and costly army from your partner.


    3. How worth is this?

    Now in theory the thought of generating marble from thin air is pretty attractive, but for completeness I want to also factor in the production cost of the units. This part is a bit math heavy, so I'm gonna put it in a spoiler until the conclusion for those interested in the formulas.

    Display Spoiler

    Conclusion:

    Even without the Demeter wonder, the Hades is well worth it.

    Ideally you want to build 500 carabineers from 10 cities and have them killed in one big battle during which the Hades is activated. With the demeter (or high taverns), the citizens are back after about 25 hours, resulting in a net gold loss of about 300 000 Gold (30k per city), and 800 000 marble in your warehouse.

    If you don't have a demeter wonder at hand, the whole process will cost about 750 000 gold for taverns operated at a normal rate.

    On top comes 15 000 Gold per hour in terms of upkeep for the Carabineers, which should not add up to much more than 250 000 Gold.

    Very nice, detailed and complete analysis, with all the factors involved in the process taken into account, well explained and with a lot of data for us to check and compare.


    Thank you, very interesting.

    Quote from Flummi

    In terms of units, there are only a few considerations: They have to be expensive for the number of citizens they cost, and they should be low on upkeep.

    Please explain: Why would they need to be expensive in terms of citizens. To cause surplus happiness [X] as high as possible?


    Since you have gains on every resource invested, what you want is unit that has biggest density of resources per capita.

    Use your entire idle population to maximize resources invested, since again you have gains on every resource invested.


    Your calculation is based on 5.000 carabineer (200 resources / capita). You invest

    5.000 x 50 timber

    5.000 x 150 sulfur

    total = 1.000.000 resources and 5.000 citizens and 15.000 gold/hour unkeep.

    50 carpenter and fireworks, you pay 500.000, get 800.000 in refund.

    Profit 300.000


    But if you recruit 1.000 mortars (310 resources / capita), you invest:

    1.000 x 300 timber

    1.000 x 1.250 sulfur

    total = 1.550.000 resources and 5.000 citizens and 30.000 gold/hour unkeep.

    50 carpenter and fireworks, you pay 775.000, get 1.240.000 in refund.

    Profit 465.000


    Is 165.000 more resources worth extra 15.000 gold/hour?

    Quote from Flummi

    The second wonder, that I would consider essential, is Demeter's gardens. After unit production, villagers produce back slowly, and the demeter helps greatly with that.

    I think Demeter's gardens is useless.

    If you already have city on such island then ok, otherwise don't waste city.

    Permanent city can bring 130.000 resources / day pasive income. No log in, sending raids. You live your life.


    Produce 2 cities x 2.500 Spearman, they cost 5.000 citizens and 75.000 timber (5.000 x 15 (50 carpenter)).

    You will cause 2.500 surplus happiness [X], as you named it.

    You will cause 50/hour population increase.

    Let's say you produce them in 4 hours. During those 4 hours you will replenish around 165 citizens.


    Once you finish producing 5.000 spearman, disband 2 x 2.335 of them, and you will have max population in both cities again.

    You'll recover 11 timber and citizen for each spearman you disband.

    Meaning that you pay 18.680 timber and not earn=lose? 60.000 gold (simplified 5.000 x 3 x 4h) per city in exchange for not having Demeter's gardens.


    Save remaining 330 (5.000 - 2 x 2.335) spearman as "stored manpower", to disband them in different city for instant citizens, when surplus happinessis low.


    Quote from Flummi

    The second part of the setup is another player, not from your alliance, who kills your troops. This should be a player with more points than you, so that pushing is off the table.

    Why would this be pushing?

    You are not doing anything outside what game allows you.


    What you described was viable even with carpenter 32, and miracles were there.

    Meaning, this was in game for years....


    All you need is opponent with balloons and let those mortars be petrified.

    Edited once, last by Ing ().

    What I meant was not expensive in terms of citizens, but expensive per capita, as you said. It was worded poorly, I agree.


    You answered the first question yourself, your Partner needs balloons. That's why I included both resources per capital as well as resources per capita AND gold in the graph. What suits your situation best is up to you, but carabineers are very easy to use. Mortars outperform them by a factor of 1.5, which in my opinion isn't worth the effort your partner has to take.


    The spearmen idea I don't think adds any value. You pay 18680 wood, and 60k gold just to have 330 manpower stored? That is pretty much useless, and a very steep price for very little use. What the demeter does is making the Hades easy to use. You can achieve similar results if you adjust the wine usage in your cities after production until the town hall is full, to regain the population quicker. Demeter does this for you, with the added benefit that you don't waste the extra wine.

    For newer servers it might not be as useful, but on old wonder maps. It is not uncommon to see a setup like 3 forges, 5 poseidons, 2 colossus for 10 cities, but if you have more then that, i would say demeter is well worth it if you don't plan to add a fourth sulfur island. Ofc you can work with a raid for the demeter as well.


    For pushing i can't make an official statement of course, but the Hades has been discussed in the german forum, and pretty much as soon as a weaker player has a disadvantage from cooperating with you, that could be seen as pushing. How heavy that is enforced, I don't know.

    I was thinking that if one needs to have Demeter (and possibly also Hades) at 100% only for this purpose, maybe the gold they don't earn because of the priests needed to maintain the wonder at full faith should be added up to the cost of the operation.


    Edit: Oh, read your post again and you mentioned using raids to activate the wonder and then leave, that would save the priests' cost.

    Edited once, last by Guevero ().

    As for "spearman tactic", you can wait for your natural increase in population of course.

    Although not very profitable in terms of gold, it adds value it terms of having "stored manpower" ready to boost city population immediately.


    By the way, in your first reply, excel table "Resources per population and gold", you just divided total resource by nominal gold maintenance.

    You assigned same price for each resource. I can buy sulfur for 11, and timber for 14, that should be taken into consideration.

    Quote from Flummi

    For pushing i can't make an official statement of course, but the Hades has been discussed in the german forum, and pretty much as soon as a weaker player has a disadvantage from cooperating with you, that could be seen as pushing. How heavy that is enforced, I don't know.

    I do speak German, but I couldn't find that post in German forum.

    Could you send me link to read analysis?


    Then let weaker player attacks you.


    I haven't fought battle long time, so I've forgot the numbers of losses per "square" of battlefield for each unit.

    If you have 7 "squares" for long range units (carabineer) and main line (hoplite, giant), how many of each will get killed per square per round?

    • hoplites
    • giants
    • carabineer

    You want some unit (hoplite, giant) to hold line for designed number of rounds. That is until all carabineer get destroyed.

    "Main line holder" get destroyed along the way, and you include them in refund as well.


    So, now math for "main line holder"

    To hold the main line, unit that:

    • costs maximum resource per capita,
    • least gold to maintain and
    • gets destroyed at designated rate.

    Excel table from first reply, modified with how many hoplite and giant gets destroyed per round.


    Example, let's say you lose all 12 carabineer per square = 84 per round. (I do not know the exact number)

    Battle is designed to last 60 rounds. (5.000 / 84 = 60). 15 hours


    How many hoplites do you need for battle to last 60 rounds? Answer: P

    How many giants do you need for battle to last 60 rounds? Answer: Q


    Will I get more refund from recruiting P or Q?


    After weaker player (attacker) wins, he'll loot city (send 10 ships, loot 5k or whatever).

    His attack is successful, and I get 400k+ refund. (300k from carabineer and rest from main line)

    You can have mortars as well, as discussed above for even more profit. No gyros.

    So he can send balloons.

    I were defending.

    No pushing.

    I don't wanna discuss the pushing aspect too much really, as that's not really the point of the post, nor is it my job to enforce the pushing rule so i cannot give anything besides the official rules and what i have been told anyway


    Here is the german post: Zählt Heiliger Hain des Hades zu Pushing?

    You cannot have a smaller player attack you and split the marble. Take that as you want, but i prefer to have a bigger player attacking me so that there are 100 percent no problems. For Carabineers no units are lost for the attacker, so there really isn't much of a discussion.


    Considering the resources, you can factor that in for yourself, for me sulfur and wood are about 1/1 in terms of value, and my market shows completely different values than yours, I can't really make something general out of that. You can have a look at the screens yourself, i can buy wood for 5, sulfur for about 8 in my region and server.

    Hi.


    In the previous analisis I do not see values for aviations.


    I am think of a battle 1 stem ram + 5 tender + paddles vs same formations.


    Supposing the battle was double ( one for me, one for my opponent so both can lose units in battle but both benefits).


    I am thinking on paddles because they are very cheap in gold maintenaince cost and if attaccked when are alone they scatter, so I can accumulate them without be worried someone will kill them when I am off wihtout hade active

    That's an interesting idea, and something I haven't tried out yet.

    Paddles have 320 res per pop and 64 res per pop and gold, which definitely makes the whole thing appealing.


    I think for one round, each player would lose 15 paddles, resulting in 7680 marble per round compared to the 13440 you would get from carbineers.

    They are also reasonably quick to produce, and don't have the issue that they need cargo ships when you are moving them, so that would be another plus. Overall, it's probably a toss up what is better. I use carabineers currently, but will try out the paddle version at some point as well.

    I have been using miracle of hades and I love it.

    I use it with a neighbor of mine who occupies a city with spearmen and 30 balloons.

    I produce a huge amount of mortars (sometimes as many as 2,000 at a time) and activate the miracle

    I try to free the city with 1 spearman + 30 mortars and I always lose the battle. The spearman dies on the wall and the mortars on the occupant's balloons.

    As it doesn't generate a battle, I can send waves after waves (until the city's action points are maxout) and so in 20 minutes with 2 launching cities (neighbors on the island of the occupied city) I manage to destroy 24x (1 lancer + 30 mortars) , about 720 mortars and earn about 37,200 marble for each battle (about 900,000 in those 20 minutes

    In an hour I destroy 2,000 mortars and make 2.5 M of marble.


    I think it's the best way to use miracle without pushing problem because:

    - your neighbor does not lose troops

    - you are trying to liberate your city.


    I have excess sulfur production (5 cities in sulfur vs 4 marble cities) and so I can use all mines to produce sulfur.

    Edited once, last by DIAS ().