Ancient Wonder Deconstruction

[Palavyn]

Recently, Inno changed the tournament format so that wonder levels increase the cost of tournaments, both in terms of catering and troop cost. I understand the reasoning behind the changes and overall it was a significant improvement. However, it's unfair that the rules have been changed without providing a way to change our strategy. Many of us have built up AW's under the old rules where we wouldn't have done this if we had known the rules were going to be changed. In addition to this, new wonders have come out that fit a player's style better than an older wonder, thus rendering the older wonder obsolete relative to particular playing styles.

I propose giving us a way to deconstruct wonders and get back the invested KP's. One possible way would be as follows:
1) Add a "Downgrade" button in red by the "Upgrade" button in the upgrade tab.
2) When this downgrade button is selected, an information screen appears with how long it will take and what resources, if any, are required to downgrade the wonder. (or we can get resources back). The downgrade should take about as long as it took to upgrade and occupy a builder.
3) The information screen will specify how many KP's the player will receive in the form of Ancient Knowledge tokens. This amount will be the KP's required to get from the previous to current level MINUS the bonus KP's. For example, if the AW is level 4 and the research cost is 400 KP to go from 3 to 4, with potential bonus chests for other players totaling 50 KP, then the player receives 400-50 = 350 KP in Ancient Knowledge tokens.
4) If the wonder is downgraded, then after the downgrade it will be one level lower, and ready for another downgrade. For example, if the wonder is level 4, then the downgrade will leave it at level 3 as if it had been upgraded from 2 to 3.
5) If the wonder is level 1, then it can be deleted.

Pros: Gives us a way to replace Ancient Wonders that were rendered obsolete by unforeseen changes made by the developers. This is done without losing all of the resources that were invested. Essentially, it minimizes the penalty imposed by developer changes to the game that involve Ancient Wonders. It's not something that can be exploited as it will take a considerable amount of time to deconstruct a wonder and the bonus KP is subtracted from what is returned to the player.

Cons: Extra programming. If there is a quest requiring upgrading a building to a certain level, this could potentially be a way to accomplish that quest. If one is of the mindset that players should suffer the consequences of their own poor choices, then this is a way to minimize the consequences.

 

[Yogi Dave]

I basically like this idea, but do have a few comments.
When you sell a building, you get 1/2 the cost back. So, perhaps only get 1/2 the KP back. I can't see getting them all back as viable. Currently when you sell and AW you get nothing back, so I'd be happy-ish to just be able to downgrade the AW without having to start from scratch if it did have some value to me. Also, what happens when you downgrade over a rune upgrade? While it'd be nice to get some KP back getting rune shards probably doesn't help, after all, since you don't want this AW at the level it's at, you probably will never need those rune shards again.

Looking for exploits, I can see someone with a push account can have it filled, upgrade it then downgrade it getting KP to used in research while the push account refills that AW. That gives a 2nd use of KP from push accounts other than just helping upgrade AWs. Is this sufficient to render this idea not worthy of implementing? I don't think so, but it might be a reason to get nothing back when you downgrade.

 

[michmarc]

My first thought was sort of a "no way", but after a bit of reflection, I don't think this is that abusive as long as there is a cost.

1) As already mentioned, the downgrade should take as long as the upgrade and cost a builder. [Builder help can still apply.] Note that while it is under deconstruction, the wonder operates at the lower level (just like an upgraded wonder doesn't act as the higher level until the entire upgrade is finished).
2) The downgrade should cost the same as the upgrade. Also won't be a big deal for most things.
3) When downgrading a research level, give half of the net KP required. [total cost minus bonus chests.] This can still let you 'crystalize' regular KP into AKP instants, but at a 50% cost which is probably enough to prevent abuse.
4) When downgrading a rune level, give 9 runes. Note that it takes on average 20 runes to actually finish a rune wheel, so this is also returning half. Since these are no transferable and only usable by you to redo the upgrade, I can't see this as very abusable. Giving KP back would let you convert rune shards into KP, which I could see as abusable. (I have almost 1000 golden abyss rune shards -- I would cycle it up and down through the rune level if I could cash them out into KP.)
5) You can deconstruct from level 1 (instead of selling) to get the rune shards back. Selling (at any level) is also an option

With this, you should get significant return (better than "nothing") if you want to walk-back a wonder and extract some of the sunk KP that was put into it, but should be slow and inefficient enough as to not be abusable.

One tidbit is that if you could cancel downgrades, you could use it to smuggle goods across the sentient decay boundary: Downgrade a wonder that costs sentients (like the TimeWarp) just before 1am, let decay happen, and then cancel the downgrade. The goods spent will have not decayed. (This is possible for upgrade, but how often do you have an upgrade available that you don't want to do?)