@iamthouth, thanks for looking at it again! I appreciate the time you put into it.
Obviously, in your city, the answer is that the AW levels are worth that space to you, for multiple reasons. I was just trying to emphasize the importance of being aware that, because of the formula, it’s not quite accurate to count the AWs as only having their base footprint when doing calculations on their efficiency compared to other buildings. I’m a firm believer in taking into account the population and culture required when calculating efficiency for manufactories or armories…this feels like the same approach to me with AWs. Most people recommend the GA solely as being an immense space-saver on population, and I’m just offering a small caution on that reason for recommendation.
In your case, not having those 32 wonder levels would reduce your catering costs by almost 5%…by the time you calculate all the space saved on 5% of your orcs and mana and standard and sentient goods production, would it balance out? Maybe, maybe not, in a pure math comparison of squares, but as your analysis shows, it wouldn’t actually be space-saving on the ground in your city, not least because you have no more regular expansions to place. I’m on the other end of that spectrum, with 22 unplaced expansions in inventory and many more to come in the tree yet, so the approach to efficiency calculations is rather different in my city.