Capitol Ministries

Capitol Ministries and a little math are on the agenda today. This guide explains the ministries with the necessary detail and finally how the acceleration buffs actually work.

What are Capitol Ministries?

Capitol Ministries are positions within the Capitol that can be held by different players and offer certain advantages. First, there is the President (R5 of the alliance that holds the Capitol) and the First Lady. The First Lady is appointed by the President, changes regularly, and is a bit of a poor soul. Her job is to approve the applications of all players for the various offices. Typically, she assigns the offices in the order of applications for a period of 5 minutes each. Each office provides a specific buff.

What offices are there and what are their buffs?

Secretary of Strategy: +20% Hospital Capacity, +20% Healing Speed
Secretary of Security: +20% Troop Training Limit, +20% Training Speed
Secretary of Development: +50% Construction Speed, +25% Research Speed
Secretary of Science: +50% Research Speed, +25% Construction Speed
Secretary of the Interior: +100% Food, Iron, and Gold Production

How do I get the buff?

You must apply for the offices by clicking on your profile picture in the top left, then on the Capitol, selecting the appropriate office, and clicking Apply. This will put you on the waiting list, and at the appropriate time, the office will be assigned to you by the First Lady. Please note that you can only apply for one office at a time, and after holding an office, you cannot take on a new office for 10 minutes.

How long do I have to wait?

This primarily depends on the First Lady, the time of day, and, of course, the day of the week. On days when the Alliance Duel includes, for example, City Building, the Secretary of Development usually has a long queue. Alternatively, the Secretary of Science can be used, but this office usually also has a long queue – so be patient.

How will I be informed?

Once the First Lady has assigned the office, you will receive the following notifications:

In-game mail – unfortunately, this is only visible if you are in the mail window
Scrolling text at the top of the screen – unfortunately, it’s small and often goes unnoticed
Banner in the middle of the screen – unfortunately, it’s only visible briefly
Buff icon next to the profile picture – small and inconspicuous

If you are offline when you receive the office, you will get a corresponding notification on your phone if your notifications are set up correctly. Since the 5-minute duration of the offices is quite short, I really recommend paying close attention; otherwise, you may receive the buff without having the chance to use it.

How do the buffs work?

The buffs are divided into two groups:

Acceleration

Acceleration buffs increase, for example, construction or research speed. These buffs accelerate the corresponding activities as long as the buff is active when the activity starts. They do not change the speed of activities that have already begun. Therefore, they are very useful for starting long activities and should be used before upgrading the headquarters or starting multi-day research. Once the activity has started, the buff is no longer necessary.

Capacity

These are passive buffs that increase, for example, the capacity of the training camp or the hospital. Nothing else needs to be done here.

How much acceleration is 50%?

I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. 50% is not half. It’s a bit complex to explain, but I’ll try anyway.

Let’s first assume that we want to build a building. This building consists of (virtual) stones. Let’s also assume that it takes exactly 100 stones to complete the building and that without any buffs, it takes exactly one minute to build one stone. This would result in 100 minutes to complete the building. This would be the basis of the calculation.

Now, accelerating factors such as research or a buff are added. It’s important to understand what this buff applies to – it’s not the time it takes to build the building, but how many stones you produce per minute. If we assume a 50% buff, this means that with the buff, you no longer produce one stone in the same amount of time (1 minute) but 1.5 stones. However, we still need 100 stones to complete our building, so we now need the number of stones divided by the stone production time = 100 / 1.5 = 66.6 minutes instead of 100 minutes. This corresponds to a reduction in time of 33%.

Other bonuses from research also play a role and are calculated in the same way as a buff.

Construction accelerators or universal accelerators, on the other hand, directly affect the remaining time. Therefore, it is important to always start construction or research with the maximum buffs and then use accelerators to reduce the construction or research time.

I hope this sheds some light on the mystery of buffs. I wish you much patience with the First Lady and maximally reduced construction and research times.

Happy Buffing

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