Split or Steal – The Path from Early Game to Endgame

This guide was created to give the math on how “endgame” works for Split or Steal. Useful for orgs wanting to know what their goals should be or players wanting to know why people say to swap at what points.

Introduction

This guide is going to be relatively short and math heavy so it won’t take too long. I am also not going to do the breakdown on early game much as everyone should already know it and this is primarily end game focused anyways. This will cover early game (briefly) midgame (briefly) and finally endgame extensively. Will also have some artifact math explaining why lvl 2 museums into health clinics aren’t efficient unless the org doesnt plan on upgrading their health care clinics for some reason.

Early Game

This point is simple. Early game you should choose what you want to do and stick with it. Selfish split play = Hotdog stands. Org split play= Heritage Centers. Thieves primarily go loan sharks though if your org also wants some artifact generation Ivory Dealership exists.

You will choose one of these buildings and build 45 of them. From there the goal is to save up 185ish million. Demolish all of those buildings and replace with Museums, this is now midgame point. This should happen pretty quickly if you are active so its the shortest stage of the game. This point is where being in a splitter/thief org is optimal play as their large bonuses will carry you through the transition to museums.

Mid Game

At this point you have 62 Museums and are hopefully in an org with 19 other players either at that level or making their way to it. Be aware, going from those large split % or steal % levels to 0 is going to be painful. As Julian once said “The switch is like circumcision, you will have to wait a few days before the fun returns.” in an org with full Museums you should be generating 15.1 artifacts a day though, so it will only take a week or two before you pass up the bonuses you were used to. At this point your goal is now to grind out and buy all the cosmetics. At this time of this guide there is roughly 2.2 billion in cosmetics available. We do this because for every 52mil in cosmetics bought you gain an artifact a week passively. At max cosmetics this becomes 5.64 artifacts a day. From here we sadly play the waiting game as our next goal, end game, will take a few weeks.

End Game

Alright here is where things get math heavy. So, with a full lvl museum org we should be generating 15.1 artifacts a day. (12.6 from org 2.5 personal) But here’s the thing, our coin multiplier effects our HQ passive income as well, specifically Health Care Clinics. The goal is to get a coin multiplier high enough that the multiplier with 62 health care clinics will give us the same amount of money needed to just buy the artifacts at 25 mil each. This is why museums lvl 2 is NOT the end game. Museums at lvl 2 have a cap on the amount of artifacts they can give (22.32 a day), health care clinics are only limited by your multiplier. Now for some math.

Lets say your org decides to do the suboptimal thing and all buy lvl 2 museums.

• 62 upgraded museums give 22.32 artifacts (3.72 personal + 18.6 org)
• Value of artifacts = 22.32 x 25m = 558m
• Income from 62 upgraded healthcare incs at 1x coin multi = 4017600 (4.01m)
• Coin multi needed for upgraded healthcare incs to give more artifacts than upgraded museums = 558m/4.01m = 139.15
• With doubler: 69.57

This means that if your org spent 5 billion on upgrading all the museums then it would require those multiplier values and an additional 5 billion to reach the same level of artifact generation, any coin multiplier beyond that is purely higher than museums. Remember, no cap on how many artifacts you can buy but there is a cap on how many you can passively generate.

Now lets assume your org is playing (almost) optimally

• 62 unupgraded museums gives 15.1 artifacts (2.5 personal + 12.6 org)
• Value of artifacts = 15.1 x 25m = 377.5m
• Income from 62 unupgraded healthcare incs at 1x coin multi = 2678400 (2.678m)
• Coin multi needed for unupgraded healthcare incs to give more artifacts than unupgraded museums = 377.5m/2.678m = 140.96
• With doubler: 70.48

This means that you need those values to buy the same amount of passive arts per day granted by level 1 museums while using lvl 1 health care clinics. Any upgrades beyond this point will be better than all lvl 1 museums but less than all lvl 2 museums until you finish the 5 billion grind.

Lets say you want to play the most optimal way possible. This means after buying all cosmetics you start saving immediately rather than buying more artifacts. If you can save up 5 billion you can take a shortcut to endgame by swapping straight to lvl 2 health care clinics.

• 62 unupgraded museums gives 15.1 artifacts (2.5 personal + 12.6 org)
• Value of artifacts = 15.1 x 25m = 377.5m
• Income from 62 upgraded healthcare incs at 1x coin multi = 4017600 (4.01m)
• Coin multi needed for upgraded healthcare incs to give more artifacts than upgraded museums = 377.5m/4.01m = 94.13
• With doubler: 47.06

Lets say your guild doesnt believe in multiplicative math. Just completely denies its existence and says that everyone having lvl 2 museums is the best and should never swap to health care. Well here is the math to prove they are wrong…using lvl 1 health care clinics without even having to upgrade.

• 62 upgraded museums give 22.32 artifacts (3.72 personal + 18.6 org)
• Value of artifacts = 22.32 x 25m = 558m
• Income from 62 unupgraded healthcare incs at 1x coin multi = 2678400 (2.678m)
• Coin multi needed for unupgraded healthcare incs to give more artifacts than upgraded museums = 558m/2.678m = 208.36
• With doubler: 104.18

So the question is: Should our guild upgrade to lvl 2 museums first? The answer is no. It costs nearly 5 billion to do full upgrades on 62 buildings…and you arent just doing that once, but *twice*. So thats 5 billion spent in upgrades that wont even be relevant in your end game base build. The difference in full lvl 2 and full lvl 1 artifacts is 7.22 artifacts a day, or 180,750,000 a day. 5bil/180.75mil means it takes 27.5 days worth of passive generation to make up the cost of those lost upgrades.

Artifact Math

So on your way to endgame you may be wondering “How long will it take me to reach endgame after entering midgame? Well assuming you have all cosmetics thats 5.76 cosmetics a day+15.1 from org from passive play. To reach 70x coin multi we need (7048/4.2) 1,678 Artifacts. Assuming Inactive play that means (1678/20.86) 80.4 days of idle artifact generation. We can boost this number by getting 15 artifact heists every 48 hours (7 a day to give some leeway) (1678/27.86) for 60.2 days of mostly inactive play except to heist at a near optimized timing. This also assumes you aren’t buying any artifacts with money earned to speed up the process which you should be doing.

With an all lvl 2 museum org this is (6957/4.2) 1656 artifacts. Inactive play means (1656/22.32) 74 days of inactive play. This is the key reason why lvl 2 museums is a trap. It takes 27.5 days to make up the 5 billion cost but only saves you 6.4 days of inactive play to make the equivalent swap to endgame. You could instead spend that 5 billion directly on artifacts to drop the lvl 1 number needed to (1478/) 70.8 days. In the end its just more efficient to swap from lvl 1 museums.

I know what you are asking. But Bard, can I whale myself into endgame? The answer is of course! Every $20 spent is equal to about 2 days worth of idle time you dont have to wait on, so (1678/32) 52 art packs. so for the low cost of $1,048 you can whale yourself straight into a spot that others will reach in about 2 months!