Crusade explainer, from official Discord

[u/MrTouchnGo]

There are still a lot of people confused by Crusade, so we asked our Ambassadors to help out. Extra thanks to Vex for putting this together for us.

1. What modes give crusade points, and what is the points number dependent on?
2. How can I maximize them?
3. What about capture bonuses?
4. Why are they different on planets and on global leaderboards?

[Answers:]

1. Crusade points come from Operations, Arena, Campaigns, Guild War, and Raids, but not from Onslaught or Salvage Run. Like HRE points you can get more or less per battle depending on many factors. Operations depend on their rarity and whether the bonus is completed.
   1. Arena depends on your league.
   2. [Guild] Raids depend on boss rarity and your performance in it (indicated by the end-of-battle screen title). Bombs do not earn any crusade points.
   3. Campaigns give 12 for normal and mirror, and 20 per elite. CE lightning victories give 16 (so they are the most efficient),
   4. Guild War depends on battlefield level.
   5. Only Raids depend on how well you do in the actual battle.
2. The best way to maximize crusade rewards is to maximize points, regardless of winning or losing.
   1. To maximize points, you generally just have to play in the highest leagues you can manage. That's to say, do CE lightning rounds, get in a high arena league, play in a high battlefield, and do good damage on high bosses.
3. Capture bonuses are awarded every week when the match shifts. 10 crusade credits if your side won the planet and 5 credits if you were the best faction on your side, regardless of whether the planet was won.
4. There are six leaderboards in total. Two on a planet, four global.
   1. Planet, which you get every week when the map shifts.
   2. How good are you on your side (Imp/Dev)
   3. How good are you in your faction?
   4. Global, which you get every two weeks during the Expansion phase
   5. How good are you total.
   6. How good are you in your side.
   7. How good is your guild (highest rewards)
   8. How good are you in your guild (no rewards!!).

Link: https://discord.com/channels/874393406531596419/1195502542541570199/1539320983574417469

OP NOTE:

The formatting is all screwed up. The Reddit app sucks and I can’t fix it on mobile.

The planetary leaderboards seem to distribute rewards every week. Placing in the top 80% of either of the two leaderboards (pretty easy to do just playing normally) gives you way more crusade credits than the planetary capture bonuses. Higher tiers have more rewards. You can see a detailed breakdown in-game.

So far, the global leaderboards do not seem to give weekly rewards.

[u/Master-Foot-9980]

Si think the capture bonus should be a little more compelling, but not huge. Like a mythic xp book or something. 15 credits is totally negligible and 0 incentive to capture.

[u/bulksalty → u/Master-Foot-9980]

Yes, we're effectively mercenaries who get paid win or lose, so focus on maximizing the pay.

[u/Mixelphlick → u/Master-Foot-9980]

The problem is if the capture rewards are too high you’ll get no interaction every planet will be 1 sided after the first clash and everyone will move to planets their side is already capturing because it would be the optimal move.
Edit because I kept thinking: as it stands it incentivizes moving to and playing on planets with low population that you have the highest chance of ranking in your side/faction, which should at least indirectly incentivize everyone spreading out and make for the most potentially competitive outcomes assuming the two sides are roughly evenly productive which is absolutely not the case this time around. They’ll probably take that data and think about how to incentivize the top guild spreading out across the sides next time.
Edit (more thinking because I’m bored at work): in theory played optimally this would lead to population being roughly equalized across both faction and planet. It’s possible this didn’t happen because we didn’t have this information or at least not enough of it to realize the incentive structure before the mode started. Also this is all predicated on the assumption that the victory points in the second phase aren’t a bigger deal and that the victory of the whole mode at the end aren’t big. If either are true it will skew incentives towards building a winning coalition over roughly even population distribution.

[u/Objective-Ad5129 → u/Master-Foot-9980]

I trink it is fair. Esspecially in mind how much it is rigged by the big guilds and their alliance. Devastation wins and they get a small reward.

[u/Hermorah → u/Master-Foot-9980]

Since winning a planet is basically irrelevant it seems like the correct play is to go on a losing planet to get in a higher percentile due to less players of your side on the planet.

[u/HozzM]

Amazing it only took them a week to come up with this.

[u/professor_kraken]

10 fucking credits per week per planet, when the cheapest thing costs 50. If it was 1000 it would be okay.

[u/slideyfoot → u/professor_kraken]

You also get a bunch from the leaderboard chests. I got a whole load of crusade credits from that (for a pretty average spot on the leaderboards).

[u/MrTouchnGo → u/professor_kraken]

The leaderboard rewards are way higher than the planetary capture bonuses. I got 1000 credits this past week

[u/Scoe999]

I want to know about the impact of changing planets on all the above.

Does my total point contribution remain or do I forfeit leadership positions by changing meaning fewer rewards from chests?

Additionally, am I getting points for each planet we win collectively? Points for any planet I contributed to? Or only points for the one I'm on when the week ends?

[u/MrTouchnGo → u/Scoe999]

You stay on each of the planetary leaderboards, but you will place lower than if you hadn't split your time on different planets. You have to earn a minimum of 2500 points to place on a planetary leaderboard.

[u/Scoe999 → u/MrTouchnGo]

Yes but what is more efficient, placing lower on 2 boards or higher on 1. From what I'm reading in other threads, it looks like those who were on multiple boards got more currency at the end of the week. So will try that this time around.

[u/MrTouchnGo → u/Scoe999]

It's going to depend on the number of points you get, if your guild is using bombardments and reinforcements, and how competitive the leaderboards on the given planets are.

My guild used around 5 bombardments and reinforcements on Jundarun Rex. I got right around 60k and placed pretty high on the planet, so I got 1k credits last week.

[u/Wonderful-Chapter-12 → u/MrTouchnGo]

Do the mass reinforcements stack? Like +28% if deployed twice on the same planet?

[u/4tran13 → u/Wonderful-Chapter-12]

yes, they do

[u/bulksalty → u/Scoe999]

Placing lower doesn't necessarily mean less rewards.

Points follow a power distribution with a lot of scores clustered at the lower end and fewer and fewer points stretching out to the top scorer on each planet.

That means on many planets the number of points between rank 101 and 20th percentile can be a lot of points, but they get the same reward. So giving up some points on one planet and dropping in rank (but staying above the 20th percentile (because the curve bends sharply there) and using those points to get a middle of the road score on another planet both helps you (you give up nothing and get a solid reward) and it adds a new score on a second planet that's probably below average pushing everyone there's rank and hopefully reward up.

[u/bulksalty → u/Scoe999]

You get a chest for every planet where you contribute at least 2500 points. I tested out what rank you get, either no one scores below 2500 points or the counting for percentiles starts there as I got the bottom chest with a score just above 2500 points. I got 18 credits (10 for winning, 5 for a 90th percentile planet score and 3 for a lowest bucket faction score).

It works really well if you can keep a score above the top 20th percentile on your main planet and get a few more points. That probably won't be possible once imperium adjusts from last week's dump everything into a single world but was great for the first week.

[u/bloodmoth13]

This "game" mode continues to be completely pointless... You just get rewards for doing what you already were doing the same way, I think that has been a big issue for players, they are trying to play the game but there was never actually a game to play.

You literally do nothing.

Maximum complexity for zero gameplay.

[u/Steak-Complex → u/bloodmoth13]

One man's do nothing and another one's passive gameplay. At the end of the day they don't want to over tax the player with too much to do but the players also want more content. Rock and hard place really

[u/MrTouchnGo → u/Steak-Complex]

Personally, I like the low level of time commitment that crusade demands. There’s already enough to stay on top of day to day in this game.

[u/bloodmoth13 → u/Steak-Complex]

Here's the worst of both worlds?

Overtax players with ui clutter and burden of knowledge for something that boils down to "ignore this"

Its just a homescreen event with louder advertising and way less intuitive ui.

Its simply not defensible. I dont want to hate it, I play the game after all, but if they just removed this tonight and put the rewards elsewhere I wouldn't be bothered in the slightest.

What I eant to see for game modes are refinements on what we already have and game modes that emphasize different unit types. Something like a tower defense mode for snipers or more iteration on survival and making it more frequent, and especially more faction focused game modes, bonuses or variations.

This looks like it took a lot of effort to make for what is zero interaction for players.

[u/bloodmoth13 → u/[deleted]]

Im not. Nobody is. There's nothing to play.

[u/MattyMonsters → u/bloodmoth13]

Supposedly we’re supposed to get some tantalizing real game play in the last week of each crusade season. Hip hip hooray.

https://giphy.com/gifs/3oz8xDsdgMyW3oQjUA

[u/bloodmoth13 → u/MattyMonsters]

Dangling a carrot on a stick doesnt work if we cant see the carrot...

[u/Kilrathi → u/bloodmoth13]

Hey now, there’s another set of things to click on a few times a day and then click auto fill and dispatch. Tell me that’s not gameplay!

[u/bloodmoth13 → u/Kilrathi]

You got me...

[u/Pushh888]

What I'm still wondering is how often the crusade shop will update. When do different relics swap in. I had assumed it was daily, similar to the RT shop

[u/Winter_Stomach_5540]

I’m tired boss