OakKnoll
New Member
@iamthouth Thanks. I was rating by culture/tile but didn’t consider the other (now obvious) ratings.
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Your Elvenar Team
started a new city
- Thread starter Henroo
- Start date
Yavimaya
Scroll-Keeper
Also, buildings that you win that are the same size as something already have placed in your city just check to see if you gives you more or if what it gives will benefit you more than the other.
Henroo
Oh Wise One
As @iamthouth has already posted, culture or population per square are the most important factors to consider with regards to which buildings to replace. However, there is an even more basic rule of thumb you can use: just look at what chapter a building is and compare it to your current chapter. If a building is 1 chapter behind your current level, it might be worth replacing. If a building is 2 chapters behind your current level, you are almost certainly going to come out ahead if you replace it with a newly won building that does something similar. Please note that I do currently have some buildings 2 chapter out of date in my city. I would dearly like to replace these with better versions. However: I am making a concerted effort to move through the chapters as quickly as possible. I have not yet had a chance to win something which is a higher chapter version of these buildings, so I've not replace them yet.
Although you did not bring this up, another consideration is what buildings you should upgrade with Royal Restorations. In my opinion, RRs should be reserved for evolving buildings and set buildings. These are almost impossible to replace and they are normally very powerful. So it is important to keep them up to date. I generally save all my Royal Restorations for these types of buildings. Anything which is a daily prize type building, I will just replace instead of trying to upgrade.
Henroo
Oh Wise One
Sorry for not giving an update on the city last week. It was a busy week at work and I was focusing on getting through the event quests in all of my cities. But mainly it just slipped my mind. LOL
In the 2 weeks since my last update, I have made a lot of progress in Dwarves. My settlement is fully in-place and is now fully upgraded. I've got the portal at L4. I ended up with 14 granite mines and 5 copper foundries and all of these are also fully upgraded. This was very different from when I played Dwarves in my previous 3 cities. In my original 3 cities, it took granite and copper to upgrade granite mines and copper foundries. Back then I spent much of the granite and copper I had made early on doing upgrades. I ended up tech locking for a day or 2 because I was focused on upgrades instead of tech advances. This was not the case this time: neither granite mines or copper foundries require any guest race goods to upgrade anymore. But the flip side of this is that they now require more gold and supplies to upgrade than they once did. Frankly, running the upgrade campaign on the granite mines while also being active in tournament and spire (and I am still heavily catering in both) nearly bankrupted me. I had to use coin rains to keep going because my city couldn't make enough gold to pay for all the upgrades while also paying catering costs in tournament and spire.
Another conclusion I reached is that my original build of 20 residences is not enough. I thought that this would be enough and that I could get the extra population I needed with pop/culture hybrid buildings. But that has not worked out. I completed all the Dwarf chapter upgrades to my existing residences and didn't have enough population to upgrade everything. Even after (finally) getting 1 magic residence to add to the total it is not enough. Now that I am done upgrading my Dwarven settlement, I have set my builders to the task of building additional residences from scratch. I'll probably end up with something like 24 or 25.
Another thing I am starting to consider is that I think I have a decent chance of making it out of Dwarves before this event ends. Quest count indicates there are 9 days left in the event. It will be close, but I think I can do it. I have not yet claimed any of the prizes for the event, so if I do manage to advance, I can claim the Verdant Phoenix as a Fairies level building instead of a Dwarf level building. Which will save me 16 RRs upgrading it...
In the 2 weeks since my last update, I have made a lot of progress in Dwarves. My settlement is fully in-place and is now fully upgraded. I've got the portal at L4. I ended up with 14 granite mines and 5 copper foundries and all of these are also fully upgraded. This was very different from when I played Dwarves in my previous 3 cities. In my original 3 cities, it took granite and copper to upgrade granite mines and copper foundries. Back then I spent much of the granite and copper I had made early on doing upgrades. I ended up tech locking for a day or 2 because I was focused on upgrades instead of tech advances. This was not the case this time: neither granite mines or copper foundries require any guest race goods to upgrade anymore. But the flip side of this is that they now require more gold and supplies to upgrade than they once did. Frankly, running the upgrade campaign on the granite mines while also being active in tournament and spire (and I am still heavily catering in both) nearly bankrupted me. I had to use coin rains to keep going because my city couldn't make enough gold to pay for all the upgrades while also paying catering costs in tournament and spire.
Another conclusion I reached is that my original build of 20 residences is not enough. I thought that this would be enough and that I could get the extra population I needed with pop/culture hybrid buildings. But that has not worked out. I completed all the Dwarf chapter upgrades to my existing residences and didn't have enough population to upgrade everything. Even after (finally) getting 1 magic residence to add to the total it is not enough. Now that I am done upgrading my Dwarven settlement, I have set my builders to the task of building additional residences from scratch. I'll probably end up with something like 24 or 25.
Another thing I am starting to consider is that I think I have a decent chance of making it out of Dwarves before this event ends. Quest count indicates there are 9 days left in the event. It will be close, but I think I can do it. I have not yet claimed any of the prizes for the event, so if I do manage to advance, I can claim the Verdant Phoenix as a Fairies level building instead of a Dwarf level building. Which will save me 16 RRs upgrading it...
Meadowlark
Member
@Henroo with regard to how many diamonds a completely new player might have soon after starting: I have been playing for 2 days and am beginning chapter 2. I have accumulated 360 diamonds, including 100 initial diamonds, some from quest rewards, 50 from verifying email, and 10 from watching ads.
BrinDarby
Well-Known Member
@Henroo 's City - Breakout of all ( non road need'd bldgs )
Pink = Culture .... Blue = Pop / Culture
So I have 3 questions about your strategy.
1- Most players aren't going as fast as possible. and thru need'd land they constantly
have to consolidate bldgs. See'n as you are outpacing and adding land so quickly, is
the reason for not consolidating .... SFs/CCs to use for AW upgrades, not crafting ??
2- You seem to prefer having the biggest bldgs possible, yet when your research gave
you the chance to upgrade residences, as before I'm still wondering why not upgrade
them 2 levels as you go along, rather than doing all 24 up 1 level only ?? Coins/tools
can't still be the blocker you said it was a couple chapters ago, can it ??
3- I can still tell you don't use eArchitect by your city design, and I just wonder why not
embrace it and try it ?? I was able to do a re-org and got (7) 2x2s along a road and
(1) 2x2 in limbo, with No other dead space anywhere. It was also very easy to pre-design
the next settlement area once you dump those FA workshops/T1 bldgs.... in an solid
unbroken patch of open space.
Meadowlark
Member
Henroo
Oh Wise One
1. When I started the city, the magic academy was utterly clogged with all of the evolving buildings. The chance of any 1 evolving building appearing was slim, but there were so many of them that they were constantly appearing. If I was ever going to have a normal magic academy and see buildings I wanted, I had to get rid of them. And the only way to do so was to make them. I will never place the majority of them, since I don't have the artifact to evolve them. Doing this has been eating up a ton of my crafting supplies, since each building is 8 CCs and 1200 SF. The good news is, I think I am nearly done. I just counted and I have 27 evolving building bases sitting in storage, as well as all 4 pieces of the chess set. I am finally starting to see the 5 day military buildings on a regular basis. I will now start stockpiling these and start stockpiling pet food. And I will keep an eye out for artifacts to upgrade my Fire Phoenix with. In addition to upgrading AWs, this will be what I spend most of my crafting materials on. At least until I reach Woodelves. Then I will start crafting Festival Merchants.
2. Gold and supplies were not an issue till I hit the upgrade cycle for this chapter. Then I went broke quick. I have the biggest main hall possible right now, it holds 5.7 million gold. A single residence upgrade takes 373K gold. A workshop upgrade takes 1.31 million. Plus I just got to the Mercenary Camp. Unlocking the tech advance took 2.5 million and then it was another 750K to build. Getting that last bit took 2 10% coin rains. So yeah, it is still an issue. Although I am trying to top the spire weekly and do a good weekly tournament score. The catering involved in this has eaten up a good bit of gold and supplies.
3. I guess I am that old dog that can't learn new tricks. Or is just too stubborn! LOL. Soggyshorts used to try to get me to use Elvenarchitect also.
Henroo
Oh Wise One
It has been a productive few weeks for the city. I was able to get to Fairies with 1 day left in the Phoenix event. Therefore, I was able to claim the Verdant Phoenix as a Fairies level building instead of a Dwarven building. This also meant I was able to tear down all my Dwarven settlement buildings and have a decent amount of space for the fellowship adventure.
Another noteworthy event was that I *FINALLY* saw the Moonstone Gate in the magic academy and was able to craft it to complete the Moonstone set. I was able to make the Mana Plant, Gum Tree, Endless Scroll, and the Library itself fairly early in the game. And then it absolutely refused to show me the Moonstone Gate, despite me checking the MA multiple times every day. It was rather frustrating, but it is over now. And moving forward, I'll be making an extra CC every day now that my Moonstone set is complete.
I am currently in the middle of an upgrade cycle for my workshops. This is going to be one of the biggest changes to my city for this chapter, since the Fairies level workshop upgrade involves a change in both size and shape. And I have 7 workshops to upgrade. I estimate this will take about 2 more days. Once I get the workshops upgraded and moved, my next step will be to start work on the Fairies settlement.
Another noteworthy event was that I *FINALLY* saw the Moonstone Gate in the magic academy and was able to craft it to complete the Moonstone set. I was able to make the Mana Plant, Gum Tree, Endless Scroll, and the Library itself fairly early in the game. And then it absolutely refused to show me the Moonstone Gate, despite me checking the MA multiple times every day. It was rather frustrating, but it is over now. And moving forward, I'll be making an extra CC every day now that my Moonstone set is complete.
I am currently in the middle of an upgrade cycle for my workshops. This is going to be one of the biggest changes to my city for this chapter, since the Fairies level workshop upgrade involves a change in both size and shape. And I have 7 workshops to upgrade. I estimate this will take about 2 more days. Once I get the workshops upgraded and moved, my next step will be to start work on the Fairies settlement.
Pheryll
Set Designer
This is a major problem for new accounts. You start Elvenar and then you have to play catch up for every evolving event released before you came. I don't know of too many games that penalize new players like this. Having to now use CCs and SFs on wonder leveling makes the situation even worse.
Meadowlark
Member
I'm newly back to the game, and the problem I see with @Henroo's strategy is that when we actually want those buildings if we've cleared them out at the beginning the ones in our inventory will be low chapters and we will have to frag them and get new ones. Which is uneconomic at best.
Henroo
Oh Wise One
But they are really only worth actually building if you have the artifacts to evolve them with. Virtually any stage 1 evolving building is not worth putting in a city if you evaluate it on a square for square basis with regards to what it produces. It will vary from building to building and there are a couple of outliers, but a good rule of thumb is that they don't become worthwhile until sometime around stage 5 or stage 6. Unless the artifacts for a building are in the spire, it takes forever and costs the moon to get enough artifacts to evolve a building to a decent level. So I don't really see this as a problem. I am very rarely going to be placing these old evolving buildings, so them being outdated and sitting in my inventory is not really a problem.
Henroo
Oh Wise One
Sorry for the delay between posts. Things have been busy and I forgot to post updates for a couple of weeks. Due to this, this one might be a bit long.
The big news is: I entered Orcs today! (I don't care what they call it now, to me this chapter is Orcs). I was honestly surprised by how quickly I got through Fairies. I did not think the chapter went this quickly the first time around. After some thought, I think I realize why. 2 reasons come to mind: 1. I think I am playing the tournament in a more aggressive fashion and am doing better in it than I was doing with my original 3 cities when they were at this phase of the game. Because of this, I am winning more KP from the tournament on a weekly basis than I did the first time around. 2. You can now get 4 or 5 free KP daily by watching ads. I have been doing this. This was not an option the first time around.
My settlement for Fairies consisted of 5 Day Farms and 4 Night Farms. If memory serves me, the first time I did the chapter I tended to use 4 Day Farms and 3 Night Farms in my cities. I think there was 1 of my 3 cities where I had 4 Day and 4 Night, but the other 2 were 4/3. Therefore, my settlement this time around was larger than the first time through the chapter. Despite this: I had to use some portal profits in order to avoid being tech locked.
However: I was ready to start constructing a settlement 3 days before the fellowship adventure started. And I did not do so in order to have that space free for a FA slum. I don't really regret this, because my fellowship did top 10 in the fellowship adventure (Goldengods rock!). And devoting this space to a slum was the only way I could pull my weight and make a decent contribution to the team effort. And it is not that they put pressure on me to do so. Nothing like that. It is that *I* would have felt bad if I were not making a meaningful contribution to the team effort. But due to this, I lost 9 days where I could have been building and starting to upgrade my settlement. I think if I had those extra 9 days, my settlement would have been able to make the guest race goods I needed without using portal profits.
I do have 1 complaint about the new Fairies questline. I was fairly late into the questline when I got a quest that wanted me to "make 10 Nightshade." In Fairies, the only use for Nightshade is to upgrade your Night Farms. But by the time I saw this quest, all of my Night Farms were already fully upgraded. In order to complete the quest, I had to spend time making a guest race good I no longer had any use for. I am not saying get rid of this quest. "Make 10 Nightshade" is a very reasonable quest which is not that hard to complete. I am suggesting it would be better to move this quest to an earlier position in the questline.
So far I have been able to keep up with the CCs and SF I need to upgrade AWs in this city. For far I have: Golden Abyss (L16), Martial Monastery (L11), Needles of Tempest (L8), and Dwarven Bulwark (L3). I do not plan to build any of the other early chapter wonders. Having just finished Faires, I do plan to build both Blooming Trader and Prosperity Towers once I get the runes filled in. One thing I did in my original 3 cities which I did not do this time was build Tome of Secrets. However, in those cities I only leveled Tome to L6. And then when I reached the end of Fairies, I replaced Tome with Prosperity Towers. This worked very well under the old system because PT is a better wonder for supplies than ToS. But they are very similar in size. And under the old system for wonders, it didn't cost that much to level ToS to L6. But now that it costs CCs and SF to level wonders, it did not seem worth the cost to put out Tome, knowing that it would only be a temporary AW.
Another decision I have made it to forgo Mountain Halls. I built it in all 3 of my first cities, but am skipping it this time around. This might hurt me in the short term, because the bonus to good production it gives in the middle chapters is nice. But this bonus becomes meaningless in the later chapters. At least for the way I build cities. All 3 of my end game cities get the vast majority of standard goods from evolving buildings, set buildings, and the wholesaler. There are almost no standard good manufactories left in my ch 21 cities. The only benefit these cities get from MH is population. And frankly, they could function without the extra population. If we ever gain the ability to teleport AWs out of the game, I would take Mountain Hall out of my advanced cities. I just can't bring myself to delete it, after I spent effort upgrading it...
One last good piece of news is that I had recognized there was a chance I would hit the Orcs chapter before this event ended. Therefore, I had not claimed any of the set buildings before today. I did so after entering the new chapter and I got 5 of the 6 buildings from the set at Orcs level instead of Fairies level.
The only one I am missing is Gilded Jar, which you get at 260 points. I do believe I will get there. I am currently at 181 flowers, I have 978 unused shovels, and I am on the quest lock.
Something else I am considering is spending diamonds to splurge for the Royal Prize Pass. I have never done this before in any of my cities. If I get to the 260 level, the RPP gives 500 diamonds and a blueprint. This instantly repays 800 of the 2000 diamond cost. It also gives 250 shovels. These would cost 1200 diamonds. There are some other stuff like Royal Restorations and Sips of Clarity that are worth diamonds. All of this is mostly a wash for the cost. But the unique building offered in the Royal Prize Path is Sweetcomb Square. And it might be the best building in the game for population on a square for square basis. I haven't done a full comparison at all levels, but at Orcs level it beats Goblin Gift Shop. Orcs level Sweetcomb Square is 4x5 and gives 2,100 population and 220 culture. This works out to 105 population per square. By comparision, the Orcs level Goblin Gift Shop is 3x3 and gives 840 pop and 183 culture. This works out to 93.3 pop per square. So: the previous king of population per square has been dethroned. It might cost me a lot of Royal Restorations to keep it upgraded, but that kind of high density population building seems like the kind of thing I would want in my growing city moving forward...
The big news is: I entered Orcs today! (I don't care what they call it now, to me this chapter is Orcs). I was honestly surprised by how quickly I got through Fairies. I did not think the chapter went this quickly the first time around. After some thought, I think I realize why. 2 reasons come to mind: 1. I think I am playing the tournament in a more aggressive fashion and am doing better in it than I was doing with my original 3 cities when they were at this phase of the game. Because of this, I am winning more KP from the tournament on a weekly basis than I did the first time around. 2. You can now get 4 or 5 free KP daily by watching ads. I have been doing this. This was not an option the first time around.
My settlement for Fairies consisted of 5 Day Farms and 4 Night Farms. If memory serves me, the first time I did the chapter I tended to use 4 Day Farms and 3 Night Farms in my cities. I think there was 1 of my 3 cities where I had 4 Day and 4 Night, but the other 2 were 4/3. Therefore, my settlement this time around was larger than the first time through the chapter. Despite this: I had to use some portal profits in order to avoid being tech locked.
However: I was ready to start constructing a settlement 3 days before the fellowship adventure started. And I did not do so in order to have that space free for a FA slum. I don't really regret this, because my fellowship did top 10 in the fellowship adventure (Goldengods rock!). And devoting this space to a slum was the only way I could pull my weight and make a decent contribution to the team effort. And it is not that they put pressure on me to do so. Nothing like that. It is that *I* would have felt bad if I were not making a meaningful contribution to the team effort. But due to this, I lost 9 days where I could have been building and starting to upgrade my settlement. I think if I had those extra 9 days, my settlement would have been able to make the guest race goods I needed without using portal profits.
I do have 1 complaint about the new Fairies questline. I was fairly late into the questline when I got a quest that wanted me to "make 10 Nightshade." In Fairies, the only use for Nightshade is to upgrade your Night Farms. But by the time I saw this quest, all of my Night Farms were already fully upgraded. In order to complete the quest, I had to spend time making a guest race good I no longer had any use for. I am not saying get rid of this quest. "Make 10 Nightshade" is a very reasonable quest which is not that hard to complete. I am suggesting it would be better to move this quest to an earlier position in the questline.
So far I have been able to keep up with the CCs and SF I need to upgrade AWs in this city. For far I have: Golden Abyss (L16), Martial Monastery (L11), Needles of Tempest (L8), and Dwarven Bulwark (L3). I do not plan to build any of the other early chapter wonders. Having just finished Faires, I do plan to build both Blooming Trader and Prosperity Towers once I get the runes filled in. One thing I did in my original 3 cities which I did not do this time was build Tome of Secrets. However, in those cities I only leveled Tome to L6. And then when I reached the end of Fairies, I replaced Tome with Prosperity Towers. This worked very well under the old system because PT is a better wonder for supplies than ToS. But they are very similar in size. And under the old system for wonders, it didn't cost that much to level ToS to L6. But now that it costs CCs and SF to level wonders, it did not seem worth the cost to put out Tome, knowing that it would only be a temporary AW.
Another decision I have made it to forgo Mountain Halls. I built it in all 3 of my first cities, but am skipping it this time around. This might hurt me in the short term, because the bonus to good production it gives in the middle chapters is nice. But this bonus becomes meaningless in the later chapters. At least for the way I build cities. All 3 of my end game cities get the vast majority of standard goods from evolving buildings, set buildings, and the wholesaler. There are almost no standard good manufactories left in my ch 21 cities. The only benefit these cities get from MH is population. And frankly, they could function without the extra population. If we ever gain the ability to teleport AWs out of the game, I would take Mountain Hall out of my advanced cities. I just can't bring myself to delete it, after I spent effort upgrading it...
One last good piece of news is that I had recognized there was a chance I would hit the Orcs chapter before this event ended. Therefore, I had not claimed any of the set buildings before today. I did so after entering the new chapter and I got 5 of the 6 buildings from the set at Orcs level instead of Fairies level.
The only one I am missing is Gilded Jar, which you get at 260 points. I do believe I will get there. I am currently at 181 flowers, I have 978 unused shovels, and I am on the quest lock.Something else I am considering is spending diamonds to splurge for the Royal Prize Pass. I have never done this before in any of my cities. If I get to the 260 level, the RPP gives 500 diamonds and a blueprint. This instantly repays 800 of the 2000 diamond cost. It also gives 250 shovels. These would cost 1200 diamonds. There are some other stuff like Royal Restorations and Sips of Clarity that are worth diamonds. All of this is mostly a wash for the cost. But the unique building offered in the Royal Prize Path is Sweetcomb Square. And it might be the best building in the game for population on a square for square basis. I haven't done a full comparison at all levels, but at Orcs level it beats Goblin Gift Shop. Orcs level Sweetcomb Square is 4x5 and gives 2,100 population and 220 culture. This works out to 105 population per square. By comparision, the Orcs level Goblin Gift Shop is 3x3 and gives 840 pop and 183 culture. This works out to 93.3 pop per square. So: the previous king of population per square has been dethroned. It might cost me a lot of Royal Restorations to keep it upgraded, but that kind of high density population building seems like the kind of thing I would want in my growing city moving forward...
Meadowlark
Member
I was thinking of the use of combining catalysts and spell fragments on this instead of something else as the uneconomic part.