I suspect some of you might be a little confused, where are the secondary resources and why do I even call the above resources.
I don't consider Maranian Amulets as either a primary or secondary resource as they exist as a control on special units, an opportunity tax.
Your secondary resources convert themselves into tertiary resources primarily through tournaments.
Sapphires
Sapphires have 4 sources; settlements, tournaments, Amelia's gifts, and credit cards. The relative ease through which sapphires can be gained make them the least valuable but they will continue to remain relevant for the lifetime of the game whereas the others have an eventual cap. Units are the least effective way to spend sapphires as units are temporary and a resource themselves. I strongly suggest spending sapphires on things like defensive emplacements and craftsmen. While craftsmen do have an eventual expiry date that is months away as the build time on your upgrades take longer and longer and defensive emplacements last forever. Should you find yourself having bought your 4th craftsman, a castle skin, and all defensive upgrades then sure, buy some units.
Skull Runes
Skull Runes can be sourced through leveling, tournaments and purchasing with soulstones. I believe they can also come from the completion of the highest level battleground available to you but I haven't been able to confirm it.
Although I said above that Skull Runes have a cap, that cap is very high. To fill every bonus in your Obelisk of Power you will need
Unit Group 1: 411
Unit Group 2: 722
Unit Group 3: 362
Unit Group 4: 576
Unit Group 5: 530
For a total of 2601 Runes. Not as many Soulstones to reach cap but much harder to reach. Runes I consider the no. 1 reason for spending troops in Battlegrounds and PvP.
You do not need to completely fill a Unit Group before proceeding to the next, and indeed it is inadvisable to do so. Focus on long term utility bonuses like Discovery, Additional Raids, Combat Experience and Food Consumption. Speed bonuses on your slowest units are a waste of time, no matter how many points you put in them they will still be very slow.
Soulstones
Soulstones can be gained through Saga Quests and Tournaments. The relatively few avenues are made up for by their low cap and quantity of stones for the effort invested.
The primary purpose for Soulstones is to purchase a range of scrolls for your higher level units. Anything more powerful than Great Lords needs to first have scrolls purchased and then discovered through your House of Scrolls. You will need 2700 Soulstones to obtain all the scrolls, by which time you should find that your caravans are large enough that you don't really need to upgrade them. Spend any excess Soulstones on Skull Runes.
Maranian Amulets
As I mentioned above I don't consider Maranian Amulets a resource as such but in lieu of making an entire post about them I will cover here why I consider them a tax, and in a later discussion on comparing Units I'll discuss their use.
You can obtain Amulets through Amulet Shrines or later on converting Gold and Iron on a 1+1:1 basis once you have the Altar of Mara. Note: You won't be able to build any units with Amulets until after you have discovered the Lost Art that allows you to build the Altar.
Amulets can be converted at a best rate of 500 amulets/hour. Assuming you don't sleep that means you will at best do a little worse than 12,000 amulets/day (including client/server delays on starting each new cycle), but a more realistic cap is around 8000/day.
Lost Ones will use 7980 amulets in just 9 hours and 30 minutes. This is where the opportunity tax comes in. With focused farming you should be able to easily keep an infantry queue working non stop all day, realistically you'll fill less than half a day with Maranian Units. With two Shrines captured you might keep the infantry queue running 24/7, but that will also cost you units to keep control of the Shrines.You're better off using Amulets as a supplement to your queues, I consider the Unit Building League Quest an ideal time to build them, an easy way to block fill one of your queues.
Tips:
Consider Units a resource to be spent
Don't use Sapphires on units unless you're a wallet warrior.
Look through the entire Skull Rune tree before spending
Save your Soulstones for Scrolls
Maranian Amulets are nice but not a viable part of your logistics
Plan ahead.
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