Capture the pre-war snapshot
Record treasury, per-turn income, recurring army upkeep and the amount that cannot be spent. Split provinces into a protected core and frontier flow that can disappear through siege, sack or urgent recruitment.
Do not invent one risk percentage for every faction. Create a scenario from the actual map: how many turns frontier flow can fail and what the response costs.
Test the building on a war horizon
Use actual cost and only the marginal income from the next level. Account for construction delay and compare payback with the expected interval before a major war.
Patch 8.1 added landmarks and technologies, so an old universal build order needs a fresh check. Discount frontier flow inside the scenario without presenting that judgement as a hidden game formula.
Price the next army as marginal burn
Do not divide total upkeep by army count. The next decision depends on recruitment cost, incremental per-turn burn and the threat the new stack actually removes.
Run the reserve model once for the expected campaign and once for a second-front stress case. A treasury above the protected amount in both is resilient. A buffer erased by one delay is fragile expansion.
Draw a line between live and announced
Creative Assembly announced Lords of the End Times and its major update for September 24, 2026. That is a recheck date, not a source of new values for the live model.
Save treasury, flow and frontier snapshots before release. Review official notes and observed game changes first, then rerun the models. A future announcement should never masquerade as current meta.
Replace the baseline with your inputs and get an answer for your scenario.
Data note. Every numeric example is a transparent baseline scenario. It is not presented as official publisher data and can be recalculated in the linked tool.