Ancient Wonders losing power in the later chapters

[Pheryll]

Some of the balance changes in the later chapters have made certain AW progressions dwindle in comparison to what is offered from event buildings. While many of the mana wonders (with the exception of Lighthouse of Good Neighborhood) already had this from the beginning, other resource giving wonders (for instance the seed bearing ones) had a progression that remained competitive through the chapter changes until the final chapters. For instance, below is a chart by chapter which divides the festival merchant production of seeds per 12 hours by the highest main hall level for that chapter (seed wonders are based upon the main hall level).

Chapter	Seeds per Main Hall level
11	37.77
12	39.31
13	41.29
14	43.03
15	42.85
16	41.62
17	40.76
18	40.48
19	44.65
20	48.88
21	55.31

Note that for the last three chapters, the amount of seeds has taken a large jump from the stable linear position it was in before. But seeds are not the only thing on the rise. Goods have also taken a significant leap, so that wonders dependent on scouted provinces have little ability to keep up. This makes many wonders shine only for one of their two effects.

 

[ajqtrz]

Interesting. So you are saying the space used by some wonders as you go up into the top two or three chapters, would be better used for some event buildings? Is the difference significant enough to justify the removal of the AW? I would think not but who knows?

AJ

 

[Pheryll]

Interesting. So you are saying the space used by some wonders as you go up into the top two or three chapters, would be better used for some event buildings? Is the difference significant enough to justify the removal of the AW? I would think not but who knows?

AJ

Well look at the Scouts' Tavern. Many use it to duplicate the bonus seeds of the sunset towers (among other things), but the Sunset towers are locked into a progression by main hall level. So with enough chapters the Scouts' tavern's extra seeds will be far less attractive even though it is a chapter 20 wonder. Right now the seed production of event buildings has only grown under 50% over main hall level from when Sunset Towers are introduced. However, with enough chapters we could see this become inferior to many event buildings that produce seeds (and since manufactories are also getting an elevated production, the need for seeds is there).

The productions that do seem to do fairly well through the chapters are those based on required population, required culture (although there is a shift for buildings to favor population requirements more than culture), coin and supply capacity, and squad size (especially with chapter 21 elevating these values).

 

[hoopity]

I'd love if someone (other than me) made a comprehensive break down of how each of the wonder's scale compared with common alternatives like event buildings or MA craftables.

 

[Pheryll]

I'd love if someone (other than me) made a comprehensive break down of how each of the wonder's scale compared with common alternatives like event buildings or MA craftables.

You are looking for multiple tables here. Some things (e.g. required population/culture) are too dependent on the city to give a proper layout, while others are quite simple.

 

[hoopity]

You are looking for multiple tables here. Some things (e.g. required population/culture) are too dependent on the city to give a proper layout, while others are quite simple.

While that's true, it might not be too hard to get working population and culture requirement from elvenstats for some representative sample of players at each chapter level.

 

[Pheryll]

For this table I used the 12 hour production of Eldrasil's Sawmill, the 24 hour production of the Orc's nest, and the 48 hour production of the Aureate Phoenix. I divided these values by the number of provinces required at the start of the next chapter. Wonders producing goods, mana, and orcs per completed province include the crystal lighthouse/bell tower, hero's forge, enar's embassy, dragon abbey, maze of dark matter, dragon ark, and oracle of fortune.

Chapter	Completed Provinces	Mana per province	Orcs per province	Goods per province
9	220	7.36	2.04	108
10	250	8.40	2.00	115
11	280	10.00	2.00	120
12	320	11.56	1.96	123
13	360	13.88	1.94	126
14	400	16.50	1.97	132
15	440	17.04	2.00	128
16	480	16.25	2.02	130
17	520	15.38	2.07	131
18	560	17.32	2.28	141
19	600	20.33	2.66	170
20	640	23.75	3.12	204
21	680?	27.94	3.67	245

 

[Iyapo]

Lost, lost, all is lost. I have no idea what this even means.

 

[Katwick]

AW Chest Rewards

The Wiki has a pretty comprehensive Ancient Wonders breakout for everything OTHER THAN Chest Rewards.

I'm currently plowing through a lot of AWs to accumulate enough data to narrow down the relationships amongst Chapter, Level, KPs, Rune Rewards, and Token Rewards

AW Chest Rewards is a work in progress; it's a Google Sheet so it can be Sorted and Filtered to a Fare-Thee-Well. The relationships are much too eratic to be algorithmic. Just as example, in Chapter 14, at Level 5 one of the AWs wants 320 KPs while the other wants 430 KPs.

To the point, if there's other "missing AW data" that would be beneficial, I might as well capture it as well.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

Lost, lost, all is lost. I have no idea what this even means.

The way I see it is that we should not go out of our way to build and upgrade AWs. I have only few of them and it seems fine, there are always some other ways to get what I need. The problem with AWs is the lack of flexibility. Different chapters need different things, I found it easier to use event buildings and then sell them once there was no need for them.

 

[iamthouth]

I don't quite follow why you are comparing to provinces or main hall level, but interested to learn more. Whilst those are determinants of outputs of some wonders, I don't see the relevance to compare over chapters, it is fine if that changes over time.

This game is about space constraints. My comparison has always been per tile per hour. It is true as you point out that some wonders diminish over time, and some wonders improve over time. But that is part of the game, adapting, changing, renovating.

 

[Pheryll]

I don't quite follow why you are comparing to provinces or main hall level, but interested to learn more. Whilst those are determinants of outputs of some wonders, I don't see the relevance to compare over chapters, it is fine if that changes over time.

I am looking at the ancient wonder scaling over the chapters, vs. the event building scaling over the chapters. In the last 3-4 chapters many AW productions have been dwarfed by event buildings growth making the AWs less competitive. Prior to these later chapters, many of the AWs were keeping a similar scaling as the event buildings.

 

[hoopity]

This is picking on Enar's Embassy, which doesn't need more abuse, but it's fun to show. Here are the values for a few different levels Enar's compared with a MA-craftable Mana Sawmill on the basis of mana per square per hour:

Mana per square per hour

Chapter​	9​	10​	11​	12​	13​	14​	15​	16​	17​	18​	19​	20​	21​
Enar's - 1	20	18	17	16	15	14	13	13	12	11	11	11	10
Enar's - 11	60	55	52	48	45	42	40	38	36	34	33	32	30
Enar's - 21	100	92	86	80	74	70	66	63	60	57	55	53	51
Enar's - 30	133	123	115	107	99	93	88	84	80	76	73	71	67
Mana Sawmill	15	20	26	35	46	60	69	73	75	90	113	142	177

This chart shows that the Mana Sawmill passes a level 11 Enar's for efficiency somewhere around chapter 13. But don't worry you could drop a few thousand KP and bring it to level 21... only to passed by a sawmill by chapter 15. In fact, here's a table for the minimum AW level you would need to meet or exceed the efficiency of the Mana Sawmill:

Chapter​	9​	10​	11​	12​	13​	14​	15​	16​	17​	18​	19​	20​	21​
Enar's level to match Mana Sawmill	1	2	4	7	12	18	23	26	28	-	-	-	-

Notes
This does not factor in Scout's Tavern, and I don't intend to do anything about that. Most players won't ever have Scout's Tavern anyways, so try not to get hung up on it. Here are the values I used for provinces and scout times by chapter:

Chapter	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Estimated Provinces	220	250	280	320	360	400	440	480	520	560	600	640	680
Estimated Scout Time (hours)	24	29	35	43	52	61	71	82	93	105	117	130	144

 

[hoopity]

Same deal as above, this time for the Heroes Forge:

Orcs per square per day

Chapter​	8​	9​	10​	11​	12​	13​	14​	15​	16​	17​	18​	19​	20​	21​
Heroes Forge - 1	9	11	12	13	15	17	19	21	23	25	27	29	31	33
Heroes Forge - 11	27	32	36	40	46	52	58	63	69	75	81	86	92	98
Heroes Forge - 21	46	53	60	67	77	86	96	106	115	125	134	144	154	163
Heroes Forge - 30	61	70	80	90	102	115	128	141	154	166	179	192	205	218
Orc Nest	50	56	63	70	79	88	99	110	121	135	160	200	250	313

The Forge does a lot better than Enar's, mostly because it doesn't get stuck waiting on scout times. The Orc Nest is roughly equivalent to a level 21 Heroes Forge for most chapters until the explosion around chapter 18/19. Bummer.

 

[Alram]

@hoopity
Are your scout times off or did you mean to show what its like to be overscouted by a full 2 chapters with minimum province completions? Is there an advantage in having 80 incomplete provinces?

 

[MaidenFair]

Chapter	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Estimated Provinces	220	250	280	320	360	400	440	480	520	560	600	640	680
Estimated Scout Time (hours)	24	29	35	43	52	61	71	82	93	105	117	130	144

Don’t get me wrong, I’m finding these tables very interesting (thanks for putting them together!), but I am wondering where you got the scout times. I’m in ch. 14, 372 provinces completed, another 12 scouted (384 total), and the time on the scout I started this morning was only 39 hours, or 2/3 of what your table estimates?

 

[Pheryll]

The Forge does a lot better than Enar's, mostly because it doesn't get stuck waiting on scout times. The Orc Nest is roughly equivalent to a level 21 Heroes Forge for most chapters until the explosion around chapter 18/19. Bummer.

Look also at how long the level 21 forge was in line with the orc's nest. Balance changed in the last 4 chapters that devalued the forge. The pyramid of purification, however, only got slightly nerfed as the goods increase in the latter chapters was only slightly better than the orc production increase. Which brings out the question why wonders as late as chapter 17 (dragon ark and oracle of fortune) were being offered with balance based on province completion, when the later chapters would all contribute to devaluing their production. The scouts' tavern cannot be seen as a way of correcting this 80% or so increase.

 

[hoopity]

@Alram and @MaidenFair

I made these scout time estimates based on a handful of forum responses I could find related to scout times, then fit them to a power curve. If you have any suggestions on how to find a canonical estimate for scout times let me know. I didn't feel like surveying a bunch of players, but that's probably the only solution. Maybe someone has already done it?

 

[hoopity]

The Sunset Tower is a beast, it turns out. The following numbers ignore the seed decay, obviously, and are based on getting 3 neighbor chests per day, which could obviously change all the way in chapters 20-21 with the Scout's Tavern that I'm again ignoring.

Chapter​	12​	13​	14​	15​	16​	17​	18​	19​	20​	21​
Sunset Towers - 1	75	80	85	90	95	100	105	111	116	121
Sunset Towers - 11	224	239	255	270	285	301	316	332	347	363
Sunset Towers - 21	373	399	424	450	476	501	527	553	579	604
Sunset Towers - 30	497	531	566	600	634	669	703	737	771	806
Festival Merchant	190	213	237	250	257	265	277	320	367	433

Even with the change in festival merchant seed calculation around chapter 19, the Main Hall-scaling on the Sunset Towers is so strong that it continues to win. The festival merchant is roughly a level 10 Sunset Towers in terms of efficiency, and won't beat a level 30 ST for many more chapters to come at the current pace.

 

[Alram]

@Alram and @MaidenFair

I made these scout time estimates based on a handful of forum responses I could find related to scout times, then fit them to a power curve. If you have any suggestions on how to find a canonical estimate for scout times let me know. I didn't feel like surveying a bunch of players, but that's probably the only solution. Maybe someone has already done it?

I think people have tried but too many give erroneous info. I just have estimates, also based on forum responses of people who are not overscouted for their chapter.
12-24
13-34
14-44
15-54
16-64
17-74
18-84
19-94
20-104
It would be great if we had more than estimates.