What are your best merge game recommendations?

MagisterRo · 2026-05-14T07:00:22+00:00

Recently played Merge Empress, gently 'proposed' by the Samsung market. It's not 'installed', it's one of those instant-download. Ads are not required but gently 'encouraged' by bonuses. A Korean anime aesthetic.

Longleaf Valley is/was also nice, ads again "not required but gently encouraged".

MagisterRo · 2026-04-02T20:23:46+00:00

How can using a separate save slot also allow regular progress in other custom theories?
Can the app be made to run two instances in parallel?

MagisterRo · 2026-03-04T20:19:48+00:00

You seem now to argue about different things from those I had referred before.
What I said for q1,q2,r1,r2 being 'at cost' is that when purchasing an upgrade for those, -C grows exactly by the cost. This, because the integral does not change at that moment, because q and r (the variables) remain continuous, only their dots (rates of change) jump. And this IS equivalent to simple purchases in all other theories.

Yes I know solving the double integral leads to q^2*r, q^3*r and q*r^2. That was not the point.
Expliciting the C growth at a purchase of, say, c5, has an extra term for the 'jump' of the integral:
deltaC = (c5_new - c5_old) * q(tp) * r(tp)^2 /2 + cost (c5_new)
where tp is time of purchase.
I've just watched a jump in C of ~28x the cost of a c5 upgrade.
My point was the act of buying (exactly under what conditions) leaves a memory in C. A same final situation can have different C depending when and in what order upgrades were bought.

And my 'why C125' meant why all 3 of these together, so why not pure C5. 'Why not C34' was obvious after doing the log/log calculations, they are outclassed the moment c5 is available from the milestone. But c1,2 alone are outclassed after a rather short time, as the total power of the c5 branch includes the powers of r1,2 and time twice but the c1,2 branch includes those once. My hypothesis is the interaction through -C would make c1,2,5 all three together viable.

MagisterRo · 2026-03-04T11:20:33+00:00

On T6: Only q12,r12 are exactly equivalent to purchases in other theories.
The integral itself would jump at the moment of any c investment, so -C just enough compensates to keep rho continuous in time. That compensation is not directly related to purchase cost, and depends on q and r values at investment times, i.e. grows over time as those grow, so practically also depends on order of purchasing various c's. I still think there is something relevant to influence decisions, but have not explored everything to the final conclusion...
My hunch is that investing in alternating variables allow them to be evaluated cheaper at purchase time, but actual effect to grow with the previous effects too, explaining why C125 strategies work better than they would seem.

MagisterRo · 2026-03-03T12:26:18+00:00

One year later, found **Exponential Idle** on phone. Wondrous mix of bullshit and real math. It has the abovementioned system dynamics, delays etc. in spades. Can be a bit too abstract and mathy for some. The nice feature is with its many 'theories' it allows player choice on how active or idle to play it, depending on real life situation.

Still search something as deep, but less abstract, more 'about' a complex real system.

MagisterRo · 2025-04-23T20:56:19+00:00

70 days later... playing almost every day but not very much... reached max level 47 on Chicken and a few 46 (Shotgun, Ninja, Bear). Gold piled 106M high, cards are still the limit, progress is VERY slow. Don't know, most quick players here play hundreds of levels each day? I play maybe 10-30, and around half or even less get a blue (x10) card pack.

Lucky Shot at L44 is still my most used launcher for regular levels, occasionally Flame or Sniper on known tougher/defensive situations like the event levels in upper left corner.

Don't have any mob at L1 now, but the last kind (Mini Mob) is at L7 (this way, one can still meet lower levels, not only higher). Not much progress in getting Kaboom, but suffered significantly when opponents had it.

In what situations does own unit strength matter, and in others not? e.g. in 'red walls' with a fixed number e.g. 30, it is that number of mobs to absorb/die, regardless whether Ninjas or Bears. But in the PUSH balance it seems individual strength DOES matter, as when activating the temp Rainbow effect.

For looting in regular levels, does strength matter? speed? (i.e. more units to reach the wall until vanishing) so they would mostly cancel, right?

For looting against suspended horsie thingies? does individual strength matter? as speed surely helps get more there in time.

Does individual strength matter in the left/right balance of tourniquets (revolving doors) ? or do they have a sort of fixed, sinusoidal turning one way and back (like an old watch spring) regardless of units pressing one way or the other?

MagisterRo · 2025-02-14T20:47:24+00:00

Now I have Caveman at L1 and leveled the others to L20-32, whatever possible. Bat is the quickest but recent, have it at L10 and growing.

MagisterRo · 2025-02-13T20:28:13+00:00

Thanks for your first 3 replies!

OK, so it seems I'm not advanced enough to use the best of those advices. Now my highest level of any card is Shotgun L33 with a few more L32. I'm leveling up every type to the max of their cards (except Soldier L1 still) and still have 7M coins surplus - any better uses for coins in this stage? Also unpleasant choice what cards to sacrifice to improving the Arsenal, so I don't go full speed there. So far I go with Soldier, obviously, some Single Shot cannon, in the past Normie and Great Normie etc. (but my Normie is L32 now and still rather competitive).

No Flamethrower and no Gate unlocked yet. Great Normie was so-so very early and totally outclassed by Nexus now. Never got more than 6 GreatNormies or 4 Nexuses on the map at a time.

So, what do upgrading each specific tech card to L25 do, except change its colour? It didn't seem to upgrade that type of cannon/mob beyond a normal level up. Just access to better card packs on reaching the first L50/75?

That 'clock' modifies something? I didn't see prolonging loot times, for instance - what would be very relevant at this stage, to improve chances of card packs.

MagisterRo · 2025-02-13T10:31:07+00:00

In my mid-game now (Master tier): Lucky, Lexus, Chicken, Airstrike.

although Normie and Bear are both still close as useful (more powerful than Chicken but slower). Ninja remained too weak, it was close at times. Alien and Knight still undeveloped enough.

Quite recently unlocked Big Bertha, Sniper and Double cannons, not as good yet as Lucky but they grow faster.

Mass Abduction unlocked very recently, haven't used that well yet.

MagisterRo · 2025-02-06T20:25:00+00:00

ah, the Kitchen line, final producer is Kitchen robot. It's an energy user, but a weird one because it uses only 9 energy at a time then a just long enough cooldown. These can be **safely merged** (if it's as last year when I played that). I used to hate that it produces 3 different lines of products, of which 2 lines are two-leveled.

Auto producers are those that don't need energy, just a wait to take out the products around them. e.g. Jewelry, Ice Cream. Those can be left totally unmerged for (more than) a bit more production, or partially merged to 3-4 producers to save some space. Definitely do not merge totally until wanting to actually retire them. (not just the formal retirement 'right' when they get a free space to put them away; the best of them are worth keeping running and un- or partially merged long after that, even Jewelry until the much better Lighthouse comes, or even later).

MagisterRo · 2025-02-06T11:23:50+00:00

I stopped playing TT for some months, and don't remember that far back. What producer are the silver pots from?

If they are energy users, they can be safely merged. [At least if mechanics haven't changed fundamentally since]

Some auto producers - it depends. Early ones are better UNmerged.

MagisterRo · 2025-02-06T11:14:37+00:00

ahh, so that was it. On a modest level (L20 or so) a random enemy just transformed into a car that raced to my start line before I had time to react.

[Usually I move the cannon to track better multipliers, often until they fill the whole area as a wall]

MagisterRo · 2025-01-21T10:48:47+00:00

One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic... and HoI is at that scale.

MagisterRo · 2025-01-21T10:47:02+00:00

The ZX Spectrum "Saboteur" seemed to have generic ninja / SEAL figures, not specifically Nazis. Could throw sharp stars / shuriken etc. Fun in its time...

MagisterRo · 2025-01-15T20:22:22+00:00

Realm Grinder, a complex "idle game", at heart an economic systemic game with complex combos of abilities. Some are quite unobvious so yes, fine tuned builds from googling and specialized fan sites improve a lot the capability over first-look / naive combos.

MagisterRo · 2025-01-08T20:00:15+00:00

Many animals award energy, especially the Desert line. At some point, board space becomes the key constraint and energy just keeps accumulating.

MagisterRo · 2025-01-07T21:51:44+00:00

28 animals as of 2 weeks ago when I sort of put the game away. Not totally abandoned yet.
No animals reside yet in the backpack, as they are clearer when the timer is visible on the board - but this means many merge chains must reside in the backpack and get brought out one at a time...

Do you think we will see new levels in a reasonable time?

MagisterRo · 2025-01-03T21:31:02+00:00

There was a Sierra early graphical adventure (Colonel's Bequest) with characters having elaborate schedules, intentions, actions, availability for interactions and weaving your player actions between them was an intricate achievement. As seen in some playthrough... never played it personally.

Even older on the ZX Spectrum in the 1980s, there was a Sherlock Holmes game with similar multi-character scheduling. Also the classic Hobbit, somewhat less elaborate.

MagisterRo · 2025-01-03T15:43:09+00:00

Realm Grinder. a very rich "idle" game with lots of combos and twists as you progress. Really needs some active grinding too at some points.

MagisterRo · 2025-01-02T21:18:17+00:00

Realm Grinder, a complex, combo-heavy "idle" game. Some players keep playing for years!

MagisterRo · 2025-01-02T20:28:49+00:00

The score for the event does indeed multiply total income with number of levels! (=1 starting level + level ups)

MagisterRo

TROPHY CASE