Warrior General Games

I played way back like 2010-14, just came back a week ago and forgot everything. A lot of my old dots that I got into the level 60s all had high effective levels but I didn't do anything special but build basic dots. What does effective level mean/do? and How do I keep it up as I progress to higher levels?

I'll let wiser build-gurus give you more detail, but it's basically all about maximizing your Automatic Level Gains and your Training efficiency through the magic of cap-building.

Long-story-WAY-too-short, you hold onto your Skill Points and don't spend them until you have enough SPs saved up to be able to push one of your Attributes over its next Softcap. (A Softcap is the point at which the SP cost of raising an Attribute by one point becomes more expensive.) When you have enough SPs saved up to push an Attribute over the next Softcap, you spend JUST enough SPs to go over the Softcap and immediately stop there, even if you have leftover SPs. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The highest Training efficiencies occur when an Attribute is just past a Softcap, and the higher that Attribute gets, the less efficient Training is... until the Attribute passes its next Softcap, at which point Training efficiency spikes up again. So, by holding onto your Skill Points until you have enough to take an Attribute to the next Softcap, that means the Attribute will spend more time being trained when Training efficiency is higher and less time being trained when Training efficiency is lower.

The other part of cap-building is this: start by picking one Attribute as your "primary," and, using the cap-building method I described above, take it as high as you can as early as you can: usually up to the 6th softcap, though I've seen some build plans that take the primary up to the 5th or 7th softcap depending on what you're trying to do. (It gets even more exotic with things like Kickers, Punters, and QBs.) Once you take your Primary up as high as you need it, you pick another Attribute as your "secondary" and push it almost as high (or even just as high -- again, depends on what you're building.) Then do it again with a third attribute, and a fourth. In the meantime, Automatic Level Gains will be pushing your Primary attribute even higher as you level up, and -- here's the best part -- the ALGs will push your Primary attribute higher for free, without you having to spend ridiculous amounts of Skill Points to do it.

From there, it's all details: do you Multi-Train? (Short answer: if you're smart, yes! Quad-train!) Do you Enhance training on any of your Attributes? (Short answer: Maybe! Probably! You'll get a lot of different answers from a lot of different people on that question.) Do you build or shop for Advanced Equipment, and do you want 2, 3 or 4 pieces? (Short answer: be prepared for people to defend their answers to that question with a nearly-religious fervor!) But as long as you're cap-building correctly, you're about 80% of the way to a good-quality dot who will hold his own on the way up the ranks and then perform respectably in Natty Pro. The other 20% are the details that determine whether or not you'll do well in World League.

Make sense?

Hmmmmm... well, once you've built a few to the end you'll get to know a few things. To start with the variance between your EL and your real level will both grow and shrink as you build. Someone else will have the more exact numbers but I can say this much. At the very start, the EL doesn't get to far ahead of the real level. Slowly, as you build, you start to get a bit of variance. Around level 40-ish(?) it starts to really separate between the two. Near the end you can get as far apart as 10 or more (between EL and real level). However, once you do your very last boost, spend your SP's on SA's mostly, the gap closes down a bit again. Why? Because instead of putting SP's into Skills at that high a level, 90+% of most all builders finish off their ST trees and bonus SA's instead of trying to push their primary skills even higher. And, even if they DID spend their SP's on their primaries, it wouldn't raise them much higher so the EL would still drop some. EL is based (mostly) on your SKILLS... not your AEQ, CEQ, EQ, or SA's or even VA's.

Also, WHAT kind of build you're doing matters as well. Standard dots tend to hold their EL's better. Some examples (all level 79);

A Stop Center with 79 Real level and 74 EL. Because he's a STOP and not a true Center he gets penalized for lacking true Center skills. He's a great STOP... would not be a great Center... and so his EL sucks. If I had built him to a high EL he'd be a real good Center... but a lousy Stop.

I have a Guard those EL is much better than his real level because he's a Guard... totally. And built according to specs. So he doesn't suffer the fate of the STOP Center.

And I have a Punter built with an idea in mind that detracts a little from what the game considers to be 'Perfect'. He can tackle and run and has MT % gear so he's not a worthless body on the field like a GLB perfect punter would be. Because of that his EL is only 1 higher than his real level.

So how you build the dot effects EL... and what part of the dot building process also matters.

Hope that helps.

From what I have been led to believe, it’s mostly linked to your primary gold star skills. The more you pump them, the higher your EL goes. If you put points into secondary or other attributes, it doesn’t move your EL or moves it very little. IMHO. Like Theo said, if you build a player, especially like a STOP or a rush only QB, that is really not standard, your EL will suffer. Doesn’t always mean it’s a bad player, just non-standard.

I see, thank yall.

Originally posted by utvols
From what I have been led to believe, it’s mostly linked to your primary gold star skills. The more you pump them, the higher your EL goes. If you put points into secondary or other attributes, it doesn’t move your EL or moves it very little. IMHO. Like Theo said, if you build a player, especially like a STOP or a rush only QB, that is really not standard, your EL will suffer. Doesn’t always mean it’s a bad player, just non-standard.

even those players should still end with a higher EL than level

no matter what type of player you want to build, you should always have a higher EL than actual level; if not, you didn't build him as efficiently as you could

Originally posted by reddogrw
even those players should still end with a higher EL than level

no matter what type of player you want to build, you should always have a higher EL than actual level; if not, you didn't build him as efficiently as you could

centers?

Originally posted by Monkey Boy
centers?


hmmm - at one time (after the ALG changes) a center would still be at least 79/80, not the 79/77 I am now seeing

Originally posted by reddogrw

hmmm - at one time (after the ALG changes) a center would still be at least 79/80, not the 79/77 I am now seeing


Ah, but is it a STOP center? Because GLB measures a Center's ability by what a normal Center should be and a STOP Center has way different Primary skills... so it shows up very poorly quite often. I actually thought that ALL dots were judged by their Primary skill #'s but you can build a GREAT STOP Center and his EL will still suck (especially when compared to a normal Run Block Center). So I am no longer 100% certain about how GLB calculates EL's. I have a pretty good 'guess'... but no... not certain.

Originally posted by Theo Wizzago
Ah, but is it a STOP center? Because GLB measures a Center's ability by what a normal Center should be and a STOP Center has way different Primary skills... so it shows up very poorly quite often. I actually thought that ALL dots were judged by their Primary skill #'s but you can build a GREAT STOP Center and his EL will still suck (especially when compared to a normal Run Block Center). So I am no longer 100% certain about how GLB calculates EL's. I have a pretty good 'guess'... but no... not certain.

it is strictly the EL value compared to whatever level they have assigned to that value

centers are messed up because at the beginning centers only had 2 primary attributes so their EL value would get really high

Originally posted by reddogrw
it is strictly the EL value compared to whatever level they have assigned to that value

centers are messed up because at the beginning centers only had 2 primary attributes so their EL value would get really high

I do miss building Monster centers!

Originally posted by RiverRat2
I do miss building Monster centers!

For the entire o-line with that +1.0 ALG

Originally posted by TJ Spikes
For the entire o-line with that +1.0 ALG



Yep.Build 10 centers and you could run all day!

A neat way to get EL higher up, is to take all your trained abilities to .98 and stop, then up to the end-build train the last .02 in those abilities.