Stuck at R16?

[Brids17]

Since around R14 the builds I've been using have been massively slowing down in progress gain. Now at R16, it's come down to a crawl. I was using the lightning forge build for a while but have since switched to Diamond forge but it's still been extremely slow to get gem gains. Are there any builds that surpass those or is it normal for progress so slow to a near halt at this point? I haven't done a ton with the research yet due to excavation limits.

[Necrodoom]

Make sure you:
Maximize excavation count
Buy max royal exchanges
Buy max buildings
Do full spell combos
Have all relevant easy secret trophies

This phase should be relatively easy and get you to required gems for research unlocks in a few hours at most.

[PseudonymousBosh]

Also, make sure that you have excavated the artifact Know Your Enemy, Part I.

[Brids17]

I've done all of that. It's still slowed to a crawl.

[Necrodoom]

Take a screenshot of your run, with upgrade tab on.

[Brids17]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992459721

[PseudonymousBosh]

You are in R17, not R16. Go and do research.

[Brids17]

I thought the reincarnation button said what you would become, not what you were...

[Necrodoom]

Skipping on so many buildings hurts your production a lot. You are also lacking multiple secret trophies.

[Brids17]

I skipped them since they weren't affected by any of the mercenary upgrades and it takes so long to get lightning strike to hit the blacksmith as is. I've gotten most of the trophies that were easy, are there any major ones I should get?

[Necrodoom]

Originally posted by Brids17:

I skipped them since they weren't affected by any of the mercenary upgrades and it takes so long to get lightning strike to hit the blacksmith as is. I've gotten most of the trophies that were easy, are there any major ones I should get?

I mean its clearly slowing you down and you are losing a bunch off all building scaling upgrades.
Off above image i can notice mana waste, helden streben nicht, faction run and probably others missing, a bunch of autocast upgrades and i think the 500 assistants trophy and doesnt look like you have maximized excavations either. Sunforce also helps a lot but isnt generally needed.

[Brids17]

I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to get lightning strike to land on blacksmith with all buildings purchased and didn't manage a single time. So the production is infinitely worse when I can't even get the combo to work a single time. I'll try getting those trophies though.

[Necrodoom]

Originally posted by Brids17:

I just spent the last 20 minutes trying to get lightning strike to land on blacksmith with all buildings purchased and didn't manage a single time. So the production is infinitely worse when I can't even get the combo to work a single time. I'll try getting those trophies though.

20 minutes? Thats 0.3% chance of happening. Either you have extreme bad luck or it wasnt actually 20 minutes.
Follow instructions and all goes well, severely gimping the builds by outright ignoring 4 buildings will get you nowhere.

[Brids17]

I had a youtube video running at the same time, I gave up 20 minutes into the video.

[Brids17]

How would I go about getting Mana Waste? I got the other two you named today.

[PseudonymousBosh]

At this stage, you should be going into research. It's fairly straightforward to get mana waste with angels.