Buildings that produce culture AND population

[DeletedUser17455]

I am considering buying a second techno tent. I'm in chapter V and the tent produces 101 culture / square, which is better culture / square than I can get from buildings. From my investigation, it remains a better culture / square even during the dwarves chapter and possibly beyond.

However, I have a hard time comparing culture buildings to the (culture, pop) buildings. Elvees Stage is coming up tomorrow, and that produces (43, 32) / square. I'm trying to figure out whether it is more worthwhile for me to focus on the (c, p) buildings than the culture buildings.

My thinking so far has gone like this:

Elvees Stage is 12 squares, Techno Tent is 9, and my residences are 12 squares and produce ~46 pop / square. So I'm thinking in chunks of 24 squares, enough for 2 x Elvees Stage, vs (1.3 x Techno Tent, 1 x residence).

With the two Elvees Stages I am producing (43, 32) / square, since its just the production of the Elvees Stage.

With the (ten, residence) I have to do some math to figure out the (c, p) / s

I have ~12 squares "worth" of Techno Tent
That's ~1212 culture
My residence is 560 culture
(1212, 560) / 24 <-- divide through by the number of squares
(50, 23) / s

So, with the (tent, residence) setup I am producing (50, 23) / s where as with the two Elvees stages I'm at (43, 32) / s.

I think I can compare Elvees Stages to Techno Tents by separating the Elvees Stage into its components... like, in some sense, two Elvees Stages is kind of the same as having one culture building that produces 86 culture / square, and one residence that produce 64 pop / square. Right? Since the average over 24 squares is the same.

That's a huge amount of pop / square (for me) but not a lot of culture. I find culture to be the bottleneck, so I would rather keep my pop roughly the same and increase my culture per square.

If we do the same calculation with 4 x Ferris Wheel, which produces (53, 27) / s, it comes out to be roughly equivalent to having one culture producing building that makes 106 culture / square and one residence that makes 54 pop / square... which is great?

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I can see a problem with this kind of thinking: in order to be "efficient" with Ferris Wheels I need to replace existing residences. Right? The thinking here is that Ferris Wheel > (Tent, Residence) so I can't keep my residences and have this equation hold. I would be happy to give up my residences... except that they scale very quickly. Like, when I get into the Dwarven chapter the residences become way more efficient, so the (c, p) / s of (tent, res) slow gets better over time. The culture production stays constant, but the pop increases. Where as the (c, p) / s of Ferris Wheel never changes... But then again, I will be constantly encountering these quest events where I will have the opportunity to replace those Ferris Wheels with potentially better kinds of (c, p) buildings so in that sense the Ferris Wheels scale too...

Ha ha ha, I am not 100% satisfied with this analysis! What should I do? What would YOU do!?

EDIT: one more factor is that, since Ferris Wheels are smaller it is much more expensive in terms of tickets... like I would need 4 ferris wheels. So maybe I will get a few Elvees Stages after all (also, I hate ferris wheels in real life they are such an eyesore).

 

[DeletedUser]

I think people overthink these things far too much.

What would YOU do!?

What would I do? Get the bloody thing and toss it when something better comes along. :-|

 

[DeletedUser8187]

I'm avoiding buildings with culture and pop together. Too hard to upgrade them with similar size/stats later on. So far my older buildings are proving better stats, with the exception of the tech. tent. I'm looking for KP's and instants.

 

[DeletedUser5013]

I just go with best statistical buildings (aesthetics are irrelevant). You're probably going to replace them all with whatever new buildings you win in the next event anyway, so best to help your city out as much as possible in the interim--that's my playing style. OR you could just concentrate on making your city as aesthetically pleasing as you can (it's all subjective), and concentrate very little on production. It's difficult to achieve both with much success.

 

[DeletedUser17455]

Ha ha, the point is moot! I got two Techno Tents, but then today I spent 400 tickets with not a single Elvees Stage. The cookie! It has crumbled. I'm going to put a freeze on ticket spending until the next set item.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@Zeigfreid
Pretty good analysis, next time you should add in roads and negative culture from residences.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Your analysis is good. My rule of thumb for event buildings pre-Woodelves was this:
1. Focus on pop/culture buildings that were about a 50/50 split on population and culture. Population is generally "more valuable" than culture, and to get population for "free" (meaning no roads needed, no supporting culture needed) helped my city the most.
2. Culture buildings from events are going to be about 1.5-2 "chapters better" than what I could build for free (so in your case, Garden of Harmony). However, at low to mid-low levels, a few large culture buildings like Garden of Harmony, in a fellowship where people are visiting 4-6 times per week (on the high end of active, for sure) will give you more than enough culture for a 150% boost (which is all I'm looking for).
3. Go for buildings that don't need roads. Set buildings weren't around for my main account, but for my alt that just started Dwarves, I don't like them due to the road need. I find that the "puzzle" aspect of the game (fitting all the buildings in, reorganizing your city when you get upgrades) is much, much harder in the early chapters. So having buildings that I can just tuck in a corner and never touch (because they don't change, and they don't need roads) makes my life much easier. I'm about to fit in the Dwarven Portal and related buildings, and its going to be HARD. Its going to be much harder if I also had to dance around 2 expansions worth of a set building.

Your point about almost getting "locked into" Pop/Culture buildings is correct. You kind of need to keep doing events to keep afloat on population (at least until the Orcs chapter). But most mini-events give pop/culture buildings, so its pretty easy to do.

 

[DeletedUser17455]

@SoggyShorts good point! I'm efficient with my roads, so each residence in my city is using 3 road segments and costs 158 culture. My roads produce 20 culture each. Since I was using 1.3 techno tents above to simulate having 12 tiles (makes the math easier to think about 24 tiles), I can replace the 3 "virtual" techno tent tiles with 3 road tiles in my calculations.

This drops the culture production from 1212 in the 1.3 tent setup to 969 culture with (1 x tent + 3 x road). That's a huge drop! Add in the culture cost of the residences and we now have a culture total of 881 on 24 tiles... that's only 33 c/s compared to the 50 c/s in my initial result. So the final comparison is:

(33, 23) for the (tent, res) setup vs (43, 32) from the Elvees Stage! That's a landslide for the stage!

Soggy, that's very helpful!

OK so here's how I feel, in my gut: get as many culture/pop buildings as you can and replace them when they start underproducing pop. Maybe need to do back of the napkin calculations in a notepad somewhere for reference, since it isn't as easy as just comparing culture / square of available culture buildings. Doing this will net the player more culture/pop but is "hands on" in the sense that it require more careful monitoring than just always building the biggest culture / square.

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@Tedious Thanks! It's interesting to hear you say that you rely on your fellow for the 150% boost. I'm only in chapter V so I don't know how things will go later, but so far I have always maintained a baseline of 150%, and my fellows bump me up into the 160/170% tiers. Really early on I looked at the culture boost tiers (100%, 125%, 150%, 160%, 170%) and felt like 150% was the "normal" or "acceptable" level, and I guess I've never questioned that. Now you've made me think about it and... I guess it is a tradeoff between supply/gold and goods? If I was at 100% I would be earning .66 times as much supply/gold but I might be able to support more goods production... Hmm!

Here's my town for reference.

EDIT: also, a point on aesthetics was brought up. Clearly I care about efficiency, but I think that a well groomed, organized, nice looking town is important. I've visited hundreds of high ranking towns, and for the most part they feel crowded and disorderly. When I do find a town that feels even a little like a real place it pleases me. I'm willing to sacrifice some amount of productivity in order to keep things looking consistent. For example I have 1 holy codex even though it's culture / square is very low. This is because it fits in with my sun codex and witch codex. I would feel weird about having any 1 of those buildings because they are so weird... but with 3 it can easily be seen as a kind of trend in my town. Similarly, I _loved_ the aesthetic of the phoenix cult and would be thrilled to have a nice big phoenix cult enclave, maybe fenced off with gardens.

 

[SoggyShorts]

OK so here's how I feel, in my gut: get as many culture/pop buildings as you can and replace them when they start underproducing pop.

My experience has been that I win ~10 buildings each event. I usually blast through the questline before the best Pop building comes out and go all in. Since I changed chapters for each major event, and pop buildings were generally good for 2 chapters this meant I was able to replace them in a leap-frog way.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Now you've made me think about it and... I guess it is a tradeoff between supply/gold and goods? If I was at 100% I would be earning .66 times as much supply/gold but I might be able to support more goods production... Hmm!

I generally think of supplies/gold backwards:
-Gold for me is a non-issue - I've been nearly constantly scouting (over what each chapter requires). So if I ever "needed" gold, I could just visit each neighbor. Right now, in Elementals, I can make 10M gold a day visiting all my neighbors and my FS. So whether culture boosts my gold by 25% or 50%, my life doesn't change that much. Sure, it might mean 1KP or so per day, but I'd rather trade that KP for the 3-4 expansions worth of culture I'd need to go from 25% to 50%.
-Supplies is somewhat of a gating item, but I think of it more as an equilibrium to be maintained. I want to have enough daily supply production through workshops (assuming a 9hour production overnight, a few 1 hour productions, and a few 3hour productions) and AWs (get Endless Excavation and Prosperity Towers as soon as available) to fund my supply needs (3x 3hr, and 1 9hr production on all my factories, plus keeping my barracks cooking troops at all times, plus whatever guest races require). I want that equilibrium to generally tip in favor of "accumulating supplies" because buildings and tech cost supplies sometimes, but I don't want to burning off supplies every day at the wholesaler. And major dips in supplies (from techs like Advanced Scouts, or some of the City Expansions) can be offset by a few days of PoP spells, or some supply instants.

So if my current culture level permits me to keep up as mentioned above, I'm happy. There's some question of whether I could be more efficient by deleting a workshop and adding more culture, since 6 workshops at 170% culture might be better than 7 workshops at 125%, but I'm also at a point where pure culture buildings are hard to come by, and I'd be devoting a lot of event currency to maintaining those pure culture buildings through progress.

Check out the spreadsheet here (https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/hazeltown.13503/) by @TedGrau. It is really helpful in assigning "scores" to pop/culture buildings based on what chapter you are in. I use it very frequently to decide when some of my older pop/culture buildings have become obsolete. Maybe this is a tool @elvenstats or @Jackluyt / Platinum Leaf could steal as a website-based form (vs an Excel sheet)

 

[DeletedUser17455]

Ha ha, the point is moot! I got two Techno Tents, but then today I spent 400 tickets with not a single Elvees Stage. The cookie! It has crumbled. I'm going to put a freeze on ticket spending until the next set item.

Since posting this I earned a few hundred more tickets and managed to get two Elvees Stages.

@SoggyShorts I think that's what I'll do. I'll get me some culture/pop buildings and ignore the urge to buy wishing wells ;p

@Tedious I'm going to give that a shot: I'll drop to 125% or 100% for a while and see how it feels.