In the intricate military ecosystem of Elvenar, Squad Size Upgrades (SSU) represent one of the most consequential yet frequently misunderstood mechanics. These research-based enhancements fundamentally alter your military capabilities, affecting everything from battlefield strength to training efficiency and tournament difficulty. Understanding when, how, and whether to pursue these upgrades separates strategic commanders from players who inadvertently sabotage their own progress
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What Are Squad Size Upgrades?
Squad Size Upgrades are mandatory research technologies scattered throughout Elvenar’s 22-chapter technology tree. Each upgrade increases the numerical size of your military squads—the fundamental units you deploy in combat. A typical first Squad Size Upgrade might increase your squad size from 10,700 to 11,300 troops, with subsequent upgrades providing progressively larger absolute gains
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These upgrades directly impact three critical areas: your world map province battles, your tournament participation, and your training requirements. While larger squads theoretically provide combat advantages, they simultaneously increase the difficulty scaling of tournaments and the Spire of Eternity, creating complex strategic trade-offs that have sparked extensive community debate
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The Mathematics of Squad Size Calculation
Elvenar’s squad size determination involves sophisticated calculations that have been reverse-engineered by dedicated community researchers. The Spire Squad Size Model v5.0 and earlier iterations reveal that multiple factors influence your effective squad size
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Base Squad Size derives from your chapter progress, with each completed mandatory research adding to a cumulative total. Research from earlier chapters contributes more significantly than recent chapter progress, creating a weighted historical accumulation
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Ancient Wonder Levels directly increase squad size calculations. Each level of relevant Ancient Wonders adds approximately 6-7 points to your squad size, meaning high-level wonders can contribute thousands of additional troops
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City Expansions—both research-based and premium—factor into calculations. The formula treats expansions differently based on their source, with province expansions, premium expansions, and research expansions each carrying distinct weights
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Main Hall Level provides foundational scaling, with higher-level halls enabling larger military formations
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The complete formula approximately follows: Squad Size = Base + (Chapter Progress × Weight) + (AW Levels × ~6.5) + (Expansions × Variable Weights) + (Main Hall × Scaling Factor)
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Training Size vs. Squad Size: Critical Distinctions
A persistent source of confusion involves the difference between Training Size and Squad Size. These related but distinct concepts determine your military effectiveness
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Squad Size represents how many individual troops compose a single battlefield unit. When you deploy a “squad” of Archers, the squad size determines whether that unit contains 10,000 or 15,000 individual archers. Larger squad sizes mean more damage output and health per squad, but also proportionally higher training costs
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Training Size determines how many troops you produce per training slot in your military buildings. This value scales with your squad size—typically set at approximately 1/6th of your current squad size per slot. Ancient Wonders like the Dwarven Bulwark and Shrine of Shrooms, along with Armory upgrades, can increase this ratio
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The relationship creates important strategic considerations: upgrading your squad size through research automatically increases training requirements, but specialized buildings and wonders can offset these demands by boosting training efficiency
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The Great Debate: To Upgrade or Not?
Perhaps no topic generates more passionate discussion in Elvenar forums than whether players should rush Squad Size Upgrades or deliberately avoid them. This controversy stems from how squad size affects tournament and Spire difficulty scaling
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The Case for Upgrading: Proponents argue that larger squads provide decisive advantages in world map province completion, enabling faster expansion and access to rare relics. Larger training sizes also improve overnight production efficiency, ensuring military buildings remain productive during extended absences. Additionally, certain guest race negotiations and advanced game features require substantial military investments that smaller squads cannot fulfill
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The Case for Restraint: Critics point to tournament and Spire mechanics where enemy squad sizes scale directly with your own. A player with 20,000-size squads faces proportionally stronger enemies than one with 10,000-size squads, potentially making high-level tournament participation prohibitively expensive. Since tournament rewards provide crucial resources (including Knowledge Points and relics), artificially inflating difficulty can hinder overall account progression
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The Nuanced Reality: Most experienced players pursue a balanced approach—completing mandatory upgrades while avoiding unnecessary research that provides minimal benefit. The key involves identifying which upgrades are truly mandatory for chapter progression versus optional technologies that can be safely skipped
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Military Building Interactions
Your military infrastructure responds dynamically to squad size changes. The Barracks, Training Grounds, and Mercenary Camp each feature unique interactions
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Barracks produce basic units (Sword Dancers/Axe Barbarians, Archers/Crossbowmen, and Treants/Paladins). Upgrading the Barracks reduces training time and unlocks additional slots—reaching maximum efficiency at 5 slots. However, training time reductions become less impactful as squad sizes increase, since larger squads inherently require longer training periods
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Training Grounds unlock in Chapter III, providing access to specialized units like Cerberus, Rangers, and Sorceresses. These buildings emphasize speed over volume, with upgrades significantly accelerating production
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Mercenary Camps become available later, offering the most advanced unit types. These facilities typically require the most substantial squad size investments to operate efficiently.
The interaction between squad size upgrades and building upgrades creates optimization puzzles. A player might prioritize Barracks upgrades to unlock additional slots before pursuing squad size increases, ensuring training queues remain full despite rising per-slot requirements
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Ancient Wonders and Squad Size Management
Several Ancient Wonders directly influence squad size calculations and training efficiency:
Dwarven Bulwark increases training size based on your world map squad size, providing percentage-based bonuses that grow more valuable as your squads expand. This wonder particularly benefits players who have already invested heavily in squad size upgrades
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Shrine of Shrooms (also called Shrewdy Shrooms) boosts training size based on total Armory levels in your city. Unlike Bulwark, this wonder rewards players who maintain extensive Armory infrastructure regardless of their squad size choices
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Needles of the Tempest accelerates Barracks training speed, helping offset increased training times from larger squads
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Victory Springs provides similar benefits for Training Grounds, while Flying Academy serves Mercenary Camps
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Strategic wonder selection should align with your squad size philosophy. Players pursuing aggressive squad size upgrades benefit most from Bulwark and speed-enhancing wonders, while those maintaining smaller squads might prioritize Shrooms and alternative economic wonders
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Practical Training Management
Effective military management requires balancing training speed versus duration. Ideally, your training queues should span your typical absence period—whether overnight sleep or workday hours. If your Barracks completes all slots in 2 hours but you sleep for 8, you’re losing 6 hours of potential production
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Experienced players aim for 10-15 hour total training queues across all military buildings. This requires careful calibration: squad size upgrades increase per-slot training time, while building upgrades and wonders decrease it. The goal involves achieving approximately 1 squad per hour production rate per building, translating to roughly 72 squads daily from fully optimized facilities
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Temporary Armories provide flexible adjustments. These buildings increase training size (through Shrooms multipliers) without permanent city space commitment. Strategic players deploy temporary armories before extended absences, ensuring maximum overnight production, then remove them when active management resumes
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Chapter-Specific Considerations
Squad Size Upgrade availability and impact vary dramatically across Elvenar’s 22 chapters:
Early Chapters (1-5): Upgrades remain relatively inexpensive and provide substantial relative benefits. The percentage increase from 1,000 to 1,500 squad size feels more impactful than later upgrades adding equivalent absolute numbers to already-large formations. Most players complete these upgrades without hesitation
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Mid Chapters (6-12): The strategic dilemma intensifies. Tournament participation becomes increasingly important for Knowledge Point generation, making difficulty scaling more consequential. Players must weigh province expansion benefits against tournament sustainability, often leading to personalized “soft caps” where they pause upgrades temporarily
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Late Chapters (13+): Squad sizes reach massive proportions, with individual upgrades adding thousands of troops. The training infrastructure required to support these formations becomes substantial, demanding dedicated city space for Armories and military buildings. Guest race settlements and advanced features may require specific military investments regardless of tournament considerations
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Optimization Tools and Community Resources
The Elvenar community has developed sophisticated resources for squad size management:
Spire Squad Size Calculators (available through MinMax Game and forum contributions) allow players to predict exactly how research choices will affect their tournament and Spire difficulty. These tools input your current chapter, Ancient Wonder levels, expansions, and research progress to project outcomes
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ElvenArchitect and similar city planning tools help optimize military infrastructure placement, ensuring efficient road connections and culture coverage for training facilities
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Community spreadsheets track the “cost” of each Squad Size Upgrade in terms of increased enemy strength versus training benefits, enabling data-driven decisions
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Conclusion
Squad Size Upgrades represent Elvenar’s most strategically complex military mechanic. They embody the game’s fundamental tension between immediate power and long-term sustainability, between individual battle strength and tournament viability. There exists no universally “correct” approach—optimal strategy depends on your play frequency, tournament goals, wonder investments, and chapter progression.
The most successful commanders treat squad size as a managed resource rather than an automatic upgrade path. They calculate consequences before researching, maintain flexible infrastructure that adapts to changing requirements, and regularly reassess their approach as new chapters introduce additional variables. Whether you pursue massive armies or maintain surgical precision forces, understanding Squad Size Upgrades ensures your military serves your broader city-building vision rather than undermining it.
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