Best Ancient Wonders?

[Henroo]

As far as how far to level them to reach a certain competitive benefit, I don't know. I just have them, level them, and experience their benefits, lol.

With regard to leveling, I think rune upgrades are an important factor to consider. A rune upgrade actually gives you twice the stat bump as a normal upgrade. And if you are a good tournament player, chances are you will have plenty of rune shards already so it is basically a free upgrade. Anytime I have an AW within 1 level of a rune upgrade, I tend to prioritize it. Because I know after doing the final knowledge point upgrade I will also get the rune phase upgrade which follows.. And since a rune upgrade counts double, it is like getting 3 upgrades for the price of 1.

 

[Valtitude]

First I should probably mention as many of my personal biases as I can admit to:

1. I don't care how a wonder looks.
2. I don't care at all about score/ranking.
3. I like the added challenge of trying to get through chapters quickly.
4. I go for efficiency in buildings over all other considerations.
5. I prefer to fully cater until the end of chapter 6 and convert to all military by the end of chapter 8.
6. I fight encounters in the Spire, Tournament & World Map 99% of the time.
7. My FS gets gold spire every week, wins ~12 tournament chests on average, and visits me every day.

Keeping in mind that playstyles vary here's my list more or less in order

Spoiler: Martial Monastery/Sanctuary

Having better troops is far better than making more troops because it's cheaper and sometimes you win fights that you otherwise would lose.

Spoiler: Timewarp

This wonder not only really improves your real life but saves you pet food and most importantly lets you use the 5-day booster buildings for 2 full tournaments and 2 full spires at higher levels.

Spoiler: Needles of the tempest

Light ranged are the core of your army and your barracks will be your main producer for a long time.

Spoiler: Shrine of Shrewdy Shrooms/ Dwarven Bulwark

at least one of these is pretty much a necessity for any city using a military. Armories alone take up too much space(and pop) to run your troop makers 24h a day.
You can use a simple calculator to try different combinations and see what works for you here:
www.tinyurl.com/trainingcalc

Spoiler: Dragon Abbey

The ability to gain instant mana on demand is a game-changer, and mages are your second most important unit.

Spoiler: Prosperity Towers

With a reasonable number of collections this out produces a normal workshop.
More importantly, the power of the PoP spell is crazy a decently leveled PT turns 1 workshop into 4 for an entire day.

Spoiler: Simia Sapiens

Free troops are better than making troops faster and it affects all 3 of your troop makers. For comparison:
A level 30 needles doubles your barracks production (+100%)
A level 30 Simia adds 40% to your Barracks, Training Grounds, and Merc camp. (+40% x3)
But, it's multiplied together, so if your Needles is at +100% AND your Simia is at +40% you are making 280%

Spoiler: Mountain halls/Golden Abyss

These are solid wonders, but slow. The impact that they have on your city is significant, but not until they are leveled quite high and I've found that focusing on military wonders will advance your city further faster.
What's noteworthy about these two is that although the MtH has a much larger footprint, unless you have very few factories the mountain halls is actually more efficient. Obviously, the more factories you have the greater the difference.

Mountain Hall analysis By SoggyShorts

Sheet1 Based on end of chapter 11 normal buildings. I factored in everything I could think of, including roads, culture, pop, supplies. Not included is the pop you get from the mountain halls as this was originally intended to compare with the Golden Abyss Just change the number of buildings in ...

docs.google.com

It's important to note that the population boost is based on your working population which for an efficient military city is much lower. Having event buildings produce goods means fewer factories and more military means fewer goods are needed as well.

Spoiler: Flying academy

For elves this building becomes very important about halfway through chapter 10 when you unlock 2-star blossom mages. since the merc camp is your only source of long-range mage units and 2-star blossoms are better than 3-star sorcs/banshees.
For humans getting free Priests is pretty great since they are super troops right out of the gate.
Later the 3-star frog will become another pillar of your forces which is also produced in the Merc camp.

Spoiler: Temple of the Toads

For elves Until you get good frogs, your main Heavy Ranged source will be Golems who remain useful throughout due to their tankiness, so having better ones combined with free ones is nice. For humans, this wonder only really starts to shine after unlocking good frogs as mortars are generally considered pretty weak.

Some honorable mentions:

Spoiler: Endless Excavation

More efficient than any workshop that isn't under a PoP spell especially regular workshops. Drops off once you move up to all magic workshops and pretty much dies if you are a heavy PoP user.

Spoiler: Tome of secrets

Excellent starting wonder, far better than the Golden Abyss out of the box but becomes obsolete late game. I wouldn't take it past level 6, and if I was a slow player, I wouldn't build it at all.

Spoiler: Victory Springs

With the obvious double dip of making better dogs and faster dogs this was a nice wonder before the changes, but now that wonder levels increase all of your troop costs its desirability has dropped. 90%+ of fights can be handled without Melee units so you can give this one a pass.

Spoiler: Elvenar Trade Center

You don't need seeds all the time, and the Festival Merchant is better at that anyways. Where this wonder is useful is in making your MM spells last all day and giving them a little boost. This can help you get through chapters faster when applied to Sentient factories but realistically using the space for another factory does the same thing and can be teleported when not needed and won't require any KP investment. If you aren't using a lot of MM spells you can give this one a pass too.

The rest are basically trash for any playstyle similar to mine.
The ones that give culture bonuses simply aren't needed past the wood elves chapter where all mana buildings give culture on top of all event buildings so you're maxed all the time anyways.
The non-culture ones are either score-based or inferior to event/craftable buildings.

@Ariadne43

 

[SeekerElora]

An valid argument can be made for the value of each and every wonder. Playstyle, city build, and individual player priorities will impact what wonders you choose.

I love my Prosperity Towers even though it is a sad sorry lv 4. When paired with my 4 magic workshops running under POP Spells I get plenty of supplies for my Blooming Trader at lv 30. Which saved my scroll trading bacon and is now providing relief for the Harander steel shortage(in my area and FS)
My Golden Abyss will be with me always! The Abyss also helps to feed the BTG! Plus it works synergistically with my Mountain Halls giving me a 41% increase in my Population.

My playstyle and choices make each of those valuable to me and I could argue in favor or against all of them.

Play, decide what you want and need and if a wonder gets you there then it's a good wonder for you.

Will second this on all counts. At the moment, my (now level 14) Prosperity Towers produces more than 5 unboosted, fully leveled workshops. I would consider this AW a must-have given how many population it takes to build/maintain workshops. At very low levels it is the equivalent to another workshop. As you upgrade it and your MH it will start to produce as many supplies as 2 workshops, then 3, and so on.
GA is a valuable source of population. Very, very valuable.
MH is great both due to the goods boost and because that goods boost helps with quests during events. It also gives you a population boost, and you can never have enough population.

If you have the GA, I would say that even by the time you hit chapters 10-12, it will still be valuable. Prosperity towers, MH, and BTG as well. I've added in a couple AWs as I've grown (just opened Elvenar chapter, been playing for 2.5ish years), but I have never been tempted to sell any of the ones mentioned.

 

[Henroo]

If you have the GA, I would say that even by the time you hit chapters 10-12, it will still be valuable.

What do you mean it will *STILL* be valuable? On a square for square basis, GA is the single most efficient source of population in the history of the game. And the way it scales, it actually gets better in the later chapters.

 

[maeter75]

What do you mean it will *STILL* be valuable? On a square for square basis, GA is the single most efficient source of population in the history of the game. And the way it scales, it actually gets better in the later chapters.

Older thread for sure but Golden Abyss is unreal at higher levels probably the best Ancient Wonder per Square
At 3 by 3 with a total of 9 squares the level 30 golden Abyss in my city
has 189K population and 16.5 Million coins every 3 hours

 

[SoggyShorts]

probably the best Ancient Wonder per Square
At 3 by 3 with a total of 9 squares

With the way the formula in the tournament and spire works the footprint of all wonders needs more careful consideration. Those 30 levels have a significant impact on your tourny&spire costs, and could possibly be replaced by a few expansions.

Also, with several event buildings being "best in slot" while also giving population, not all cities or strategies require population from the GA, and some even have an overabundance of population.
This is why I hesitate to rank the GA as "best" while there are other wonders that give you something you can't get anywhere else.

 

[iamthouth]

Nothing comes remotely close to a GA for me on a population per tile basis.

 

[Pheryll]

Nothing comes remotely close to a GA for me on a population per tile basis.

I see your point. But @SoggyShorts is looking at wonders that give benefits without requiring the usual population and culture to support their benefits. For example, the Dwarven Bulwark, when leveled high enough can completely remove the need for armories.

 

[MaidenFair]

Nothing comes remotely close to a GA for me on a population per tile basis.
View attachment 15204

I don’t disagree with the usefulness of the GA, but I think what @SoggyShorts is getting at is that it needs to be taken into account that since adding wonder levels affects tourney/spire the same way as adding more expansions does, wonders in effect are never actually restricted to their base footprint. MinMax’s calculator doesn’t go past chapter 17 so these values aren’t quite right, but I plugged your numbers (as best I could) in and found that 1 expansion would give approximately the same increase at your chapter as 5 wonder levels. (Apologies for the fuzzy picture… )

That means your level 32 GA increases your costs approximately as much as adding another 6 expansions. (I do realise that in chapter 20, you’ve very possibly maxed out your possible expansions, but hear me out for the math.) That means your GA effectually has a footprint of 169 squares (6.4x25+9) rather than the 9 your calculations are based on. Would it still be the best per-square option if that’s taken into consideration?

 

[Iyapo]

That means your GA effectually has a footprint of 169 squares (6.4x25+9) rather than the 9 your calculations are based on. Would it still be the best per-square option if that’s taken into consideration?

Yes.
The Golden Abyss is wonderful!

A level 30 GA will increase my costs the same as 6 expansions. The Golden Abyss(lv 30) in my chapter 9 elcy city(iyapo1) provides 14.7k population in 9 little squares(5.8 expansions). My city is 8×8, 64 squares. If I remove my GA I will either need to immediately add 6 expansion for Residences to replace the lost population or I will need to remove expansions worth of manufactories, Workshops and/or armories. Doing the former will not have a huge impact on my costs, doing the latter will have a negative impact on my production but my costs would also drop.

The question is. If my city size remains the same does having the GA benefit or harm me. Because i have the GA i have 5.8 expansions available in my city for something other than houses. It increases my costs but 5.8 expansions worth of productions more than covers the increase, imo.

 

[maeter75]

Hmm very interesting, I have not seen that formula where is that located? I do know the "costs" go up per AW level and expansion (diamond ones less I think). That being said.....

I recently fast build 1 AW and upgraded 2 wonders. Added at least 20 AW levels the last 2 weeks and honestly I barely noticed the change in the tournament, negotiating, or spire.

 

[samidodamage]

I have not seen that formula where is that located?

Start here
This was crowd-sourced from players and if I hadn't been a part of it from the beginning I'd never have understood it. As it is, I still don't understand a lot of it, but I am confident it works.
There are sections about halfway down that lo-o-o-ng page that describe Ancient Wonder and Expansion impacts in more user Sami-friendly language. Further down, there's a link to a google sheets calculator, but I'll save you from looking for that
Players who have continued to use the calculator have observed that there have been some minor adjustments in the actual Inno formula since this work was completed. Afaik, no one has attempted to track down exactly what those adjustments have been. The results returned by the spreadsheet have been slightly more expensive in resources required than those actually required in spire/tourney.
If you look at the actual formulas, you'll see that 'total AW levels' is multiplied by a much smaller number (0.003) than 'total expansions (0.89 for regular expansions and 0.59... for premium ones). My much lower level math brain than the author says that means it makes sense that AW levels would not show an appreciable increase in resources required. I *think* the highest increase in resource requirements is seen when new mandatory research in the tech tree is activated. Optional research activation has zero impact.

 

[iamthouth]

@MaidenFair Yes, as @Iyapo points out for his ch9, the same is true for my ch20 city.
Replacing 163,350 population with normal residences lvl 45 at 813 pop/tile, would cost me 201 tiles, minus the 9 for the GA, so 192 tiles. At 24 tiles per residence, that amounts to 8 residences. If I won Magic Residences in spire or event buildings could be a bit less, but a fair gap to 169 tiles.

That is also not factoring in the 11,700 culture per residence lvl 45 I would need, so an extra 93,600 culture. All else being equal, if I replaced that with say not the top, but one of the top culture buildings at 3000 culture per tile, it would cost me a further 31 tiles of culture to replace it.

 

[Yogi Dave]

I didn't see anyone mention the 2nd benefit of the MM/Sanctuary which increases the AW's value even more. It adds to your culture a percentage of what your city requires. At level 30, it adds 40% of your required culture, reducing the need for culture buildings thus saving space. This AW is the only one that is limited to level 30 instead of 35. This should tell you something about what Inno thinks both benefits it provides. Also, I think higher defense, (hit points) is more important than offense (damage). This AW provides up to 30% defense for all troops. The AWs that increase offense only help one class, so you need 5 AWs to cover all your troop types. Therefore, I think this is the best AW of them all.

Also, for culture, you might consider the Watchtower Ruins. It also provides 40% of your required culture and its 2nd benefit is good. I have both to level 30 which means I only have to provide 20% of my required culture. However, you generally have enough neighbors buffing your culture to provide more than the other 20% which reduces the value of the WR.

As with all AWs, a drawback is the increase in AW levels affects the base tourney and spire troops you bring to the fight so choose wisely.

 

[MaidenFair]

@MaidenFair Yes, as @Iyapo points out for his ch9, the same is true for my ch20 city.
Replacing 163,350 population with normal residences lvl 45 at 813 pop/tile, would cost me 201 tiles, minus the 9 for the GA, so 192 tiles. At 24 tiles per residence, that amounts to 8 residences. If I won Magic Residences in spire or event buildings could be a bit less, but a fair gap to 169 tiles.

That is also not factoring in the 11,700 culture per residence lvl 45 I would need, so an extra 93,600 culture. All else being equal, if I replaced that with say not the top, but one of the top culture buildings at 3000 culture per tile, it would cost me a further 31 tiles of culture to replace it.

Yay, more math!

Your statement that:

Nothing comes remotely close to a GA for me on a population per tile basis.

seemed to be a direct response to Soggy's statement that:

With the way the formula in the tournament and spire works the footprint of all wonders needs more careful consideration. Those 30 levels have a significant impact on your tourny&spire costs, and could possibly be replaced by a few expansions.

so I'm approaching it from that angle. As I said, I'm not arguing that the GA isn't worth having, because it clearly is. My point was merely that when approached from a pure population per tile standpoint (which is what everyone always touts about it) in relation to the spire/tourney formula, it's not all that. If someone doesn't care about that, then of course the GA wins by a landslide.

So, your chart is showing that the GA is more than 12 times better than the next non-wonder building (Magic Residences) in your city for population per square, and you were recommending it on that basis. However, when the formula is taken into account, the GA only provides 984 pop/square in your city, or about 2/3rds of what your Magic Residences provide. Even once we add the necessary culture, it doesn't even out - you'd only need 5 MRs to account for the population (169,000), that's 120 squares. They each require 13,700 culture, for a total of 68,500 extra culture, or 23 squares with your chosen culture building. That's only a total of 143 squares, vs. the GA's 169, to provide the same population. So my conclusion is that when the formula is taken into account, even a highly leveled GA does not surpass Magic Residences, specifically in the matter of pop/square.

Of course, none of this takes into account the GA levels providing seeds through the Trader, the amount of coin produced (which is where the GA actually shines, with almost 7x! as much gold produced as the MRs, assuming an average of 5 pickups a day), the shift in number of polishable culture buildings, etc., which is why I definitely agree the GA is a good build; mine is lvl 30 in my ch. 12 Khel city. It's just not far-and-away the best pop/square building in the game, as your chart indicates, once the formula is taken into account.

 

[MaidenFair]

Yes.
The Golden Abyss is wonderful!

A level 30 GA will increase my costs the same as 6 expansions. The Golden Abyss(lv 30) in my chapter 9 elcy city(iyapo1) provides 14.7k population in 9 little squares(5.8 expansions). My city is 8×8, 64 squares. If I remove my GA I will either need to immediately add 6 expansion for Residences to replace the lost population or I will need to remove expansions worth of manufactories, Workshops and/or armories. Doing the former will not have a huge impact on my costs, doing the latter will have a negative impact on my production but my costs would also drop.

The question is. If my city size remains the same does having the GA benefit or harm me. Because i have the GA i have 5.8 expansions available in my city for something other than houses. It increases my costs but 5.8 expansions worth of productions more than covers the increase, imo.

The numbers for your city would probably be a little different since I think the ratio of pop/tile changes for residences and magic residences in different chapters (plus since the GA provides a percentage of working population, it would matter how large that number is which can vary greatly by city even in the same chapter); however, as you can see in my response to iamthouth above, the GA is not necessarily the best pop/tile building in the game, once the formula is involved.

As you point out, however, it has other benefits (I'm quite convinced the real power of the GA is in its massive coin production, rather than its population!), and it matters exactly what one trying to do in one's city as to how one may view it.
You're looking at it in the light of "This saved me 6 expansions worth of residences!", while I'm approaching it with the thought "Tournament is now as expensive as if I had 6 more expansions! Is it worth that?". Both are true observations, it just depends on which way we're looking at it and what our cities need.
If I took my GA out right now, I wouldn't add residences to replace it because I would still have 5K+ free population, so in that sense, it's not actually saving me any space. It does, however, raise my tournament costs, so I tend to look at it from the angle of "If I had six more expansions, could I fit in extra manufactories to cover that cost increase and maintain my tourney scores instead?" (The answer is no, btw, because of how much coin the GA gives that I use in the wholesaler and there is no other building that comes close to matching the coin production, but that is also particular to my city, my level 29 BTG, my desired tourney scores, and my particular catering strategy.)

 

[MaidenFair]

Oh, and thanks for answering the formula question above, @samidodamage ! You gave a much better answer than my tired brain would have been able to formulate yesterday.

 

[iamthouth]

I don't agree with you that the GA (or any wonder) counts as that many tiles, because what are you replacing it with?

The impact on the Spire/Tourney formula could be less by not having it, but I showed above that it would cost more tiles to replace it with regular residences. Should I be lucky enough to win enough Magic Residences, the formula would be:

163,350/1408=116 tiles of Magic Residences required to replace the population, so 116/24=5 Magic Residences (rounded to whole residences).
The culture 5*13,700=68,500 divided by 3000 culture per tile = 23 tiles of culture for a total tile spend of 116+23=139 tiles, or 5.56 expansions. I'd save 9 tiles from the GA, so 130 tiles, equal to 5.2 expansions.

But the comparison isn't with expansions, because that would cost diamonds to buy at an escalating diamond cost if I were to replace the reduced tile efficiency with expansions. If I removed the GA, I wouldn't get the extra space, I would have to spend 130 existing tiles to replace it.

Even if the tournament is now easier, with no extra expansions, I would have to delete 130 tiles of other buildings to find space for the population replacement options. I'm likely not removing Barracks, Training Grounds or Mercenary Camps from reduced troop needs. I could remove manufactories, but would have to remove 130 tiles worth, or about 5 manufactories. That in itself then saves population, so there is an equilibrium somewhere lower than 130, but I'm now also less productive.

At CAL 10337.5 vs 10845.4, what is the actual cost impact on tournament or spire? Would it offset the reduced resource production I now have?

Total AW Levels 350 Tournament Costs

Total AW levels 318 Tournament costs. At round 16, where I would likely start purely catering, T1 reduced by 3000, T2 by 2000, T3 by 2000. Each marble manufactory that I had to remove produces 13,122 marble in 3 hours, which I can have running all week. Given all costs reduce, including gold which we get from GA, I could reduce Orcs or Mana production too, balancing between all requirements, but I still think I'm worse off.

You are right that the gold and impact on other wonder productions also make it worthwhile, but for now I will stick to ranking it no 1 on population per tile.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@MaidenFair @iamthouth
Are you using premium expansions or regular when you calculate CAL vs AW?

It seems to me that there are significant variables under consideration
1. Premium vs regular expansions
2. Magic vs reg residences

 

[iamthouth]

@SoggyShorts mine are total expansions, but I think that is why we list the next premium expansion cost on column F. I have all possibly research and scoutable expansions.