Leveling Strategy - Alliance Wars

So when they Introduced Alliance Wars into Empires and puzzles, everyone started scrambling to get those 30 needed heroes.

I think this means we need to re-think leveling strategy. The new advice give someone 10 heroes (2 of each color) a sporting chance of being useful in a week or so!

Old Advice - Get a solid Rainbow team (one of every color) leveled up first then get then work on other heroes depending on your fancy (Titan Strikes, Raids, Challenge Events).

If you don't want to be in the top of your alliance score during the alliance war, well then stick with this advice. By the way, Anchor with Seven Days Departed put together a super great hero list with recommendations for leveling.

New Advice - Consider leveling up heroes in batches to 1 or 2 ascensions and then moving on to the next hero. After you get 30 or so hum drum heroes leveled up to 1/2 ascension, start maxing them to ascension material limits.

Note that examples are after the assumptions. I think this advice is sound given the following assumptions list.

Assumptions

Intermediate Player - I am assuming that you like me don't have a level 20 (or 19 for that matter) training camp and haven't been playing since the beginning. I am a level 30 player with a stronghold level of 18. If you have level 20 stuff available to you, the strategy will change. I assume that you have training camps at several training camps at levels 11 and at least one at level 13. So at this level, you should have a defense team with a team power of 3,000-3,500.
Titan Strikes - I like high scores, so I need them... I have seen and have performed significantly better on titan strikes when I put many heroes of the strong color on the team and have a whole bunch of colors missing.
30 Good Heroes - I want to do well in wars, so I need thirty heroes leveled to the ascension item limit. Once I get the ascension items, i will be choosy on who i ascend.
3-2-1 Alliance War Strategy - This is my current AW strategy, it is: Three (3) heroes of the strong color against the tank or if they have two heroes of the same color, Two (2) heroes that are strong against the non duplicate/tank hero that scares me the most (e.g. Alberich), and One (1) prayer to the developers that I get Favorable boards. This strategy (and my heroes) has kept me as a top scorer in our alliance, as I develop a stronger bench, I may go to a strategy more similar to raids.
Heroes - I have paid for several 10 Hero draws and have more heroes than time. I think this is common for most people as even for FTP players, level 13 training camp can get more than enough 3* heroes to level to match this strategy.
Upgrade Strategy - I always (well usually) feed my heroes 10 1*/2* heroes of the same color at a time to maximize the chance that I level the special up to Level 8 prior to hitting an ascension material limit (or max a 3* hero out).
Hero Storage - I have also paid for hero storage, In order to level up heroes with 10 color matched heroes, you will need somewhere between 40 and 50 extra hero spaces.
Feeder Hero Generation - I use two training camps at level 11 "Extra Low Cost" and one swapping between Levels 1,2,3 and 11 (depending on ham, swords/backpacks and recruit availability). This allows me to generate about 100 heroes in 24 hours with about ⅓ of them 2* and the rest as one star heroes.

Example 1 - So check the following out. While my Sartana is a little less developed than I hoped for this example. It shows that leveling up two new heroes is better for the 3-2-1 strategy than one more trained hero.

The table below shows two options... one is level up Sartana to the ascension limit... and the other shows leveling up both Quintas and Tiburtus.

The benefit of the new advice, is if you use my 3-2-1 Alliance war team strategy, your team is better in half the time. Or another way to look at it is you can get Tiburtus leveled to 3/1 in another 4 days, then you a real advantage against yellow heroes.

Example 2 - So check the following out. While I have enough ascension items to max level Vivica, I can't do that with any other hero, so I am going with team depth.

The table below shows two options... same as before, continue with Viv or use two other heroes.

In the ten days it would take to get Viv to 4/1 you could get Li Xiu to 3/1 and Jack to 2/20 or so...

It's worked for me... I have since the wars started now have about 30 heroes that don't ----, and am close to ascension item limiting the best of them. Don't just willy nilly update heroes, but do the best with the cards you are holding.