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A basic guide to Ancient Wonders

DeletedUser43

Guest
HOW DO I GET A WONDER?
In order to build a wonder, either an elf/human wonder or a dwarven wonder you first need to unlock the tech in the tech tree.

Once you have unlocked the elf/human wonder you can either build a lighthouse or a monastery or both. (Neither of these are very useful and many have said they are harmful to you because they take so much space and they take boosted relics and thus lower your goods production).

Once you have unlocked the dwarven wonders you can either build a dwarven bulark or a mountain halls or both. (The only wonder anyone who has studied the issue has said is really worth anything is the mountain halls).

HOW CAN I START BUILDING A WONDER?
Before you can even start to build a wonder, you need to collect rune shards and make a whole rune. You need 9 unbroken rune shards to make up that one rune. You never know if the rune shard you collect will break or not. You find that out after you try to stick into your rune. Many of them do break. If they break, then you get a rune shard piece and that goes into another category. Once you have collected 10 broken rune shard pieces, then they will be magically forged together to make one whole rune shard that cannot break.

WHERE DO I GET THE RUNE SHARDS TO BUILD THESE WONDERS?

You get rune shards from either completing an entire province or as a bonus from helping others with their wonders.

Each level of the ancient wonders takes more and more knowledge points (KP) before you can level up. The first level take 175 KP. The second level 250. They go up and up. Anyone who has unlocked the ancient wonders tech in the tech tree (back in level IV) can contribute to a wonder. I can come over to your city right now, see you have a wonder, and give you KP towards the total you need. All I do is click on your wonder, click on the help tab and donate. The people who donate the most KP to your wonder get a bonus. If you donate the most you get 1 rune shard of the kind of wonder you are donating to (so I will get a mountain halls rune shard from donating to your mountain halls wonder if I donate the most), if you donate the second most you will also get a shard. But from there, it depends on your level. On level 1 of the upgrade, only the top two donors will get rune shards, each level is different.

Anyone at any time can come in and donate to your wonder.

So you can have all the "agreements" you want with one person, but another person can jump in any time and donate enough KP to put them in one of the top places and then you may drop down to a position where you don't get any bonus. Or one of you will drop down, or both of you will drop down.

A "club" of people who think they are going to be assured of a bonus will be sadly mistaken. You can't know anything. You can donate to the wonder and hope that no one sees you are doing it and jumps in and donates more than you are, but you can't know and anyone who is guaranteeing that you will is flat out wrong.

THAT IS A LOT OF KP NEEDED, WHERE CAN I GET ALL THIS KP? You gain KP (knowledge points) from a few places:

Time bonus: Every hour you automatically get another kp added unless your kp bar is full.

You can purchase them: In the corner of the kp bar there is a little plus sign. Click that and a menu appears. You can buy kp with coins or with your boosted goods. Each kp that you purchase increases the cost of the next one.

You can win them: If you donate enough to the wonder of someone else, you can win knowledge points.

Can I ever have more than 10 KP at once? Yes. But this part is tricky. Once your kp bar is full from the standard time bonus kp, you can still get the bonus if the wonder you helped completes that level. They will be dumped in and added to your full bar. If you win 5 kp, you would have a total of 15 kp, if you win 10, you would have a total of 20kp etc. etc. BUT....here is the tricky part....if you go to bed with an empty kp bar, and win a bonus right then, your time bonus kp will not be added. Once your kp bar is full, no matter how it got filled, you cease to get any more time bonus kp.


CAN I GET MY OWN BONUSES? No. Only the people who donate to your wonder will get the bonuses. You can donate all the KP needed for your wonder and you won't get any bonus at all. Therefore, it doesn't make too much sense to donate to your own wonder, because you keep needing those rune shards. Unless you are stuck and no one else is going to help you because they can see that they won't get a rune shard even if they help you more. In that case, you might donate to your own wonder just to level up.

ex:
Let's say you are trying to level up a level 1 wonder. It takes 175 Kp to level up the wonder.
Only 2 players will get the rune shard bonus.
The first player has donated 100 KP.
The second player has donated 50 KP.
Anyone else coming along can see immediately that even if they donate the maximum (in this case the wonder can only take another 25 KP before it is leveled up) they know they won't get any bonus of rune shards. So, there is a good chance you might not get any more help. In that case, you would help yourself so that at least the wonder can level up.

CAN I KNOW WHAT RUNE SHARD I WILL GET FROM A PROVINCE? No. It is random. Let's say all you want to build is the mountain halls wonder. You need 9 unbroken mountain halls rune shards. It is so very hard to get all the shards you want from the provinces. Let's say you finally clear an entire province, and yay, you hope you will get a mountain halls shard...but no...sorry...you got a dwarven bullwark shard. That doesn't help you. So, you try again and finally get another province cleared! You cross your fingers and no...sorry....you got a lighthouse wonder shard. Can you see how next to impossible it is to get all the shards you need? Even if you do find a mountain halls shard, you still need 8 more of them....and let's say you finally go through enough provinces and collected 9 rune shards, so now yay...you can build your wonder, right? Nope. You still have to place them in the wonder. Then you find out that a lot of those rune shards will break! Oh no!!! 8 of them broke!!! Now, I only have ONE full rune shard and 8 broken pieces! Ugh. So I need to go out and clear more provinces and hope I get the shard I want.....again. You can see why collecting the shards from the provinces is a nightmare.

Or you can be guaranteed to get the shard you want from donating to the proper kind of wonder.

This is why people will do whatever it takes to donate and get the rune shard as a reward. Because that rune shard is so terribly valuable/hard to get.

WHAT ELSE DOES IT TAKE TO LEVEL UP MY WONDER? In addition to needing all that tons of KP, you also need to use relics to level up your wonders. And you need to use some of those relics you collected to give your goods more of a boost. So, the main reason why people say many of the wonders are a waste of time is because you LOSE some of your boost for your boosted good in making the wonder. The higher you upgrade your wonder, the more of a boost you lose. Even with the mountain halls wonder (which gives you a boost of goods) takes your boosted relics to upgrade. The reason the mountain halls wonder is worth it is because it then gives you back more goods than you lose. Especially the higher you upgrade it.

ONCE I GET ALL THE RUNE SHARDS I NEED TO BUILD MY WONDER, I WON'T NEED ANY MORE, RIGHT? Wrong. No. At some level, you will need even more of those types of rune shards to level up your wonder.

WHAT IF I DELETE MY WONDER? WILL I GET MY BOOSTED RELICS BACK? No!!!!! You lose those boosted relics forever! So make sure you want to build those wonders!!

I hope some of that was helpful. :)

This guide is meant to be a supplement to the Elvenar Wiki here: https://en.wiki.elvenar.com/index.php?title=Ancient_Wonders
 
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DeletedUser43

Guest
SHOULD I BUILD A WONDER? AND WHEN? AND WHICH ONE?

'These are very personal questions. I will tell you how I decided to answer them.

Knowledge points are so valuable and they are needed to get through the tech tree. I thought it was more important to my game to get through the tech tree first. The early wonders you get from level IV, the monastery and the lighthouse take up so many boosted relics, I thought they were more harm than good. Maybe they will be worth it in the future, but for now, the cost is simply too high for the benefit to me. Others have written extensively on this subject. https://beta.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/discussion-ancient-wonders.3508/

I wanted that mountain halls! That is the one that gives me extra goods and with extra goods I can buy more kp, I can negotiate sectors and I can help my fellowship with goods to trade.

Therefore, I decided not to build a wonder until I got to the Mountain Halls wonder. Then, it took me three months of trying to get shards because by the time wonders came along my world map had been extremely well scouted. It now takes 2-3 days for me to scout one province. Hopefully, for those of you coming along behind me and getting the shards as you go along, this won't be such an issue.

Why do I only want the Mountain Halls? Because it takes what I consider to be very valuable boosted relics to create a wonder. I didn't want to lose that boost and produce fewer goods per cycle. The mountain halls wonder at least gives you more goods per cycle so even though you lose some boost, you get it back and get more in the end.

Because I only wanted the mountain halls, I saved a lot of my provinces and didn't finish them until I had researched dwarven wonders. Until you research dwarven wonders you can't get rune shards for the dwarven wonders from completing provinces. You can get them from donating to wonders, but as I stated earlier, I really needed that kp to get through the tech tree. When I hit patches of being stalled, for example while waiting for granite for copper, then I used kp I didn't need and donated to other wonders in an attempt to win a shard.


Good luck, enjoy playing, and I hope I have helped a little tiny bit on this very confusing subject.
 

DeletedUser61

Guest
Bobbykitty said:
another person can jump in any time and donate enough KP to put them in one of the top places
Click to expand...
This is very well done. As you illustrated later in your article, it IS possible to capture an award position by contributing enough points.
  • If you've contributed 50% of the KPs, then nobody else can contribute more than 50%, so you've locked down 1st place
  • If two people have each contributed 34%, that only leaves 32% so both 1st and 2nd place have been captured
  • The moral of the story: If you're going to jump in at all, jump in hard enough to capture an award slot
 

DeletedUser43

Guest
Katwijk said:
The moral of the story: If you're going to jump in at all, jump in hard enough to capture an award slot
Click to expand...

Or you can just help someone. But you aren't wrong from a strategic standpoint of how to get ahead.

Isn't it sad that we have moved from a win win model of successful cooperation? Now it is all about winning shards and taking them from others. So much for the helpful little Elven world we used to have. Sigh.
 

DeletedUser61

Guest
Bobbykitty said:
we have moved from a win win model of successful cooperation? Now it is all about winning shards and taking them from others.
Click to expand...
Being organized allows us to extract TWICE as many awards FROM THE GAME ITSELF.

Everybody in the club gets higher profits, and each club member can easily achieve a 10% return on their investments, compounded twice weekly, and get twice as many Rune Shards as well.

An investment that DOESN'T generate any awards, within a few days, just means than NOBODY is ever going to achieve a 10% rate of return, compounded twice weekly.
 

DeletedUser1105

Guest
Hello,
quick question... is there any correlation between province type and what rune shard you receive ?
Thanks in advance.
 

DeletedUser61

Guest
There's no correlation. You have an equal chance of getting a Rune Shard for ANY Ancient Wonder for which you have researched the technology.
 

DeletedUser1122

Guest
Are the benefits of the Dwarven Bulwark show in the Wiki accumulative or does each upgrade stand on its own. When you go from lvl 1 to 2 the extra population is 410 + 80 = 490 population increase? The boost to production(assuming 100%) is 10% + 17% = 129%?
 
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DeletedUser1122

Guest
Gonna try to answer some of my own Q.
Population is accumulative. Total population gain is 1,480 at lvl 10.
The production boost can't be accumulative therefore it changes from 10% to 17% a boost increase of 7%.
I'm currently at Steel boost of 370% which each boost increase took 8 relics.
To get to lvl 2 I give up 9 boosted relics decreasing my boost from 389% to 348% representing a production decrease of 4%
Is this is off set by the 17% increase from completing lvl 2?
Is this 348 + 17 = 365 % boost increase or
348% * 1.17% = 407% boost increase
 

DeletedUser627

Guest
A personal opinion about when to build Wonders.

Don't build them until after Dwarven Level. Start collecting Runes during Dwarven Section - Mountain Hall runes whenever possible. It's the only powerful Wonder as of this writing. Only spend KP on Wonders when your forward progress on the research is blocked (while you wait on copper -hehe).

Dwarven level requires massive amounts of goods. It requires more space than ever, since the more room you have for copper / granite mines, the better. I have seen cities with easily over a dozen mines, trying to get through all the requirements.

If you succumb to the allure of building a Wonder before Dwarven, this is what happens:

  1. You will sacrifice boosted Relics, thus lowering your Goods production at the very time when it needs to increase
  2. You'll lost valuable space that you'll need for mines / regular production
  3. You'll lose out on KP. The faster you put KP into research, the faster you'll have bigger and more T1 goods manufactories. With all the excess goods, you can cheaply purchase lots of KP to use either in faster research OR on Wonders. Spending daily KP on a Wonder significantly slows progress.
I know the developers opted to allow Wonders - even encourage them, early in the game. If you have endless patience, and don't get discouraged by slow progress and goods shortages - you can ignore everything I've written here. If you're looking forward to Dwarve, Fairy and beyond - and want to get there the shortest way - don't build Wonders. As of this writing, they detract from overall progress, not add to it.

Note: once you're in late Dwarven and ready to build up Wonders, join a small group of players and built each other's Wonders. They'll pop up quickly - and you'll have enough personal experience with the game to know which one(s) you do or don't want to build.
 

DeletedUser61

Guest
bobbipiazza said:
Don't build them until after Dwarven Level.
Click to expand...
Like most of the choice in a well designed city builder, there's more than one option.
  1. If plumping up your score is your objective, regardless of the cost, then indeed the Ancient Wonders won't help you all that much.
  2. If you prefer to play a game that has a low cost/benefit ratio, the Ancient Wonders are .... ummm .... wonderful. They're akin to a fancy box on your technology tree, in that they provide benefits forever more, without any additional effort unless you want even MORE benefits. As such, they are the best investment in the game because they make everything ELSE easier.
At the very least, and Ancient Wonder will give you SOMEWHERE useful to stick your extra Knowledge Points, while you're waiting on the Coins/Supplies/Goods that you need to avoid spending Diamonds for research.

No, you can't plan your way around it. The most basic dynamic in the game is that you'll need a ton of Culture at the start of each chapter, to boost the Coins and Supplies that you'll need for all of the new upgrades, but once that's accomplished more Coins and Supplies are sort of useless. So you can toss out your antiquated Cultural buildings and use the space for something else, like an Ancient Wonder.

Rinse and repeat.
 

DeletedUser43

Guest
Katwijk said:
They are the best investment in the game because they make everything ELSE easier.
Click to expand...

Except advancing in the game, getting through the tech tree, building more factories, having enough room for portals and mines and such and getting any points. Those things ....well those things, the wonders hinder (except the mountain halls).

To any new folks reading these posts, don't get confused by Katwijk. He has a very unusual playing style in that all he wants to do is minimize clicking, he doesn't care about score, or the tech tree or getting to new races. Everyone has their own style.
 

DeletedUser61

Guest
Bobbykitty said:
Everyone has their own style.
Click to expand...
  1. Katwijk is mostly in the Explorer Class
    Explorers love analysis, but once they've got a spreadsheet that works they'll go explore something else
  2. Bobbykitty is mostly in the Achiever Class
    Achievers like spreadsheets too, so long as they help you get where you want to go.
  • Explorers like the research.
  • Achievers prefer to avoid all of that tedious research.
  • You'll have to read the article at http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm if you want to know about the other two classes. :p
 
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