Does Selling AWs Decrease Battle Difficulty?

[Gkyr]

Purpose: This thread hopes to consolidate discussions by reference and (hopefully) encourage experiments to determine whether or not selling off Ancient Wonder (AW) points will decrease the CAL-modulated difficulty of fighting in Spire and Tourney. Gamers have asked about this.

Background: The reverse engineered algorithm that predicts the allotment of diplomacy, catering and battle difficulty in response to an increase in a city's AW levels was wonderfully deduced by @MinMax Gamer (https://minmaxgame.com/city-advancement-level-model-2020/ https://minmaxgame.com/spire-progression-model-2020/ https://minmaxgame.com/tournament-progression-model-2020/ ). @MinMax Gamer has retired, or almost retired, from Elvenar after providing the tools to assess how increase in city factors affects gameplay. However, no similarly rigorous exploration of how the decrease in city factors, notably AW levels since it is the only factor that can be reduced, affects gameplay, if at all.

A limited experiment seeking to address this issue appeared in the forum but I cannot locate it in search.

Keywords for the Elvenar search [sic] engine: cost, ancient, wonder, levels, battle, difficulty, "city advancement level", tournament, spire.

 

[crackie]

MinMax’s formula is somewhat outdated and no longer as accurate as it once was in terms of % error in predicting costs. As it stands, things are slightly cheaper in-game than his model. You can tell by using his spreadsheet and checking with your in-game numbers at whatever encounter in Spire or tourney. That being said, I am sure the devs tweaked the numbers, but the key variables are likely still in play, as it makes sense that they are indicators of progression in game. For my small city, I can still observe the effects of expansions and techs quite easily. And lastly, wonder levels had always been the smallest influencing factor out of all the variables before. Personally, as long as I don’t build every single wonder, then it’s good enough cost saving for me. The ones I do have, I don’t really worry about maxing them out (plus, I heard @Sprite1313 is trying to catch me). Now with all that disclaimer stated, you used the somewhat subjective word “difficulty” in your title question, which will prob get confusing and muddle the picture a bit.

There are actually several MinMax formulas and they describe different things. The Spire and Tourney progression formulas are separate from the CAL formula, but are derived from CAL. The CAL number describes your progression in the city based on techs we’ve unlocked, plots, wonders and such. CAL does do not explain difficulty. It’s just a number to describe how the game sees how “far” you have come along. The progression formulas describe costs, both to cater and fight. One can say this somewhat also describes “difficulty” as you can see the ratio of your troop stack used (yes, I used stack again, @samidodamage …to avoid confusion with squad size). However, the progression formula shows this ratio is actually fixed for everyone, regardless of what combo of whatever they have unlocked or built in their city. In other words, regardless if you build 700 wonder level upgrades or 7, it will result in the same ratio at a particular encounter in Spire or tourney. If the ratio is 2:3, for example, a player might see that as a battle of 200vs 300 troops or 18000 vs 270000 troops, depending on how they have built the city. Therefore, on paper, it is not necessarily more or less “difficult” if everyone has the same ratio. Howeverrrr, you will need to replace more dead troops by next week if your numbers resembles the latter and *that* might be more “difficult”. The formula also does not account for enemy troop combinations, which also affects difficulty.

“Difficulty” is tricky word, but it is mostly dependent on how far up the Spire or deep into tourneys a player chooses to go as the ratio widens for everyone until it hurts a lot since it is harder to fight outnumbered. Selling wonders will affect your costs for sure, but “difficulty” is somewhat subjective.

This post is brought to you by “quotation fingers”.

 

[Sprite1313]

(plus, I heard @Sprite1313 is trying to catch me)

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Keywords for the Elvenar search [sic] engine: ancient, wonder, levels, battle, difficulty, "city advancement level", tournament, spire.

Cost also, because it is the cost of the encounter, not the actual difficulty of the fights, for fighters. The only difference in an encounter for a fighter who has 500 AW levels or 100 AW levels is the amount of troops needed. The enemy squad types will not be different and the percent difference between player and enemy squad sizes will not be different. Only the size of the player's and enemy's squads changes. Now, for a caterer, cost can equal difficulty because goods expenses are not as abstract as troop expenses.

 

[Gkyr]

Thank you, @crackie and @Enevhar Aldarion for introducing more precision into the discussion. Whether it is worth our time to wonder if the AW levels' decrease is registered by the cost, involvement, scale or investments going down in Spire or Tourney endeavors is peripheral to the gamers who just want to know if this dynamic is operating. The fascination with algorithm, sometimes in a way that has universal appeal (thank you, @MaidenFair ) or just matters to the gamer is just another aspect of how to interact with this self-described "fantasy city-building game".

Has anyone recorded changes after selling off AW points? Is anyone interested in trying (with good record-keeping)? If not, we can just delegate this question to the bin of 'if you really want to know, try it and let us know'.

 

[crackie]

Thank you, @crackie and @Enevhar Aldarion for introducing more precision into the discussion. Whether it is worth our time to wonder if the AW levels' decrease is registered by the cost, involvement, scale or investments going down in Spire or Tourney endeavors is peripheral to the gamers who just want to know if this dynamic is operating. The fascination with algorithm, sometimes in a way that has universal appeal (thank you, @MaidenFair ) or just matters to the gamer is just another aspect of how to interact with this self-described "fantasy city-building game".

Has anyone recorded changes after selling off AW points? Is anyone interested in trying (with good record-keeping)? If not, we can just delegate this question to the bin of 'if you really want to know, try it and let us know'.

In the original MinMax formula, wonder level (A) shows up as "(0.003A + 1)". Well, 0.003 is less than a penny to a dollar and that's the coefficient that's being multiplied to. That means you have ~333 wonder levels to play with before it jumps to doubling your CAL. If most wonders max out at 35, that means you have almost 10 wonders to max out before you hit that threshold.

The question to ask is really what sort of player profile describes you. Selling a maxed out wonder will save you 35x0.003 = .105 on your CAL. Are you the type of player that counts every nickel and dime spent? For some people, the answer is yes and for others, it’s no. The number is objective, but people’s response to it will be subjective.

Lastly, the majority of the player base is prob casual and do less than 2k of tourney. Remember, the ratio your troops to enemy troops is set for everyone, so if a player sticks to the first 6 provinces, for example, they will ALWAYS have a numbers advantage no matter how they built their city or what chapter they are in. Therefore, the difficulty in this situation is ALWAYS easy because you get to fight outnumbering the enemy. Needing to manage wonder levels will only really affect people who do a crazy amount of tourney because province cost is somewhat exponential in higher provinces, meaning to jump from say 8000 to 9000 in score is more difficult and expensive than 1000 to 2000, even though both increase in score by same amount. Those players putting up monster scores of 15k+ will prob feel impact of wonders to their costs, but they are what…10-20 players per server? And now, everything hurts less because costs have gone down since formulas were published. Besides, up to a certain threshold of score, fighters need to occasionally feed Brownie anyway to sustain the numbers so compensating for increased costs is offset by the blunt instrument of feeding Brownie. I’d imagine it’s the same for caterers. It’s mostly how deep into tourney (how many provinces they do) they go that is generating huge increases in costs, as the progression formula is a straight multiplier on CAL for catering. That decision will matter more than how many wonders you’ve built/upgraded. We know most caterers have to stop earlier than fighters, or at least I have not heard of any strictly caterers putting up 15k and such steadily.

When taking all these things into consideration, I think there is a general freak out and fear mongering over wonder levels. Yes, it does increase costs, but for most people, it will probably be manageable.

 

[Iyapo]

I looked at your city @Gkyr ...you pull 10k+ in the tourny and have 335 wonder levels. If you deleted all your wonders it would reduce your costs. The question is, would you still be able to get 10k at the reduced cost with the equally reduced performance of your wonderless city? I don't think anyone is willing to try that even in the name of science.

A player deleting a thrones of the High Men will have a better result than a player deleting a Martial Monastery.

 

[Lady Dastardly]

I do know of some players who, based on minmax's formula and their CAL, deleted wonders with the specific intention of reducing their costs and found it to be successful. Unfortunately, I don't play with any of those players at this point, and they aren't forum members, so I can't help you out with hard data. If I decide to sell off my Mountain Halls, like I keep threatening to, I'll try to remember to record my numbers.

 

[Gkyr]

I looked at your city @Gkyr ...you pull 10k+ in the tourny and have 335 wonder levels. If you deleted all your wonders it would reduce your costs. The question is, would you still be able to get 10k at the reduced cost with the equally reduced performance of your wonderless city? I don't think anyone is willing to try that even in the name of science.

A player deleting a thrones of the High Men will have a better result than a player deleting a Martial Monastery.

There are a few (very few) gamers who are revamping their cities, going from battle-oriented to high (700%) culture-EE-PoP-wholesaler equipped for catering/diplomacy. They would be set up for an experiment, but the desire to know is even scarcer, but does come up from time to time.

 

[Gkyr]

In the original MinMax formula...When taking all these things into consideration, I think there is a general freak out and fear mongering over wonder levels. Yes, it does increase costs, but for most people, it will probably be manageable.

Your detailed exposition ought to serve as an answer, perhaps even the definitive answer, to those who are wondering about this. Thank you for your input in support of this thread.

 

[Heymrdiedier]

in my opinion, the only reasonable way to decrease your cost, should be making your city smaller or decreasing the amount of your base boost relics, destroying wonders (progression) is a very bad idea for any game. Sadly its the only possible way to do it, as removing expansions isnt possible and getting rid of relics can only be done with crafting and upgrading wonders, and is a very slow way to do it. (much slower then the amount of relics you gain from tournament each week).

So yeah, i have indeed destroyed some wonders in the past, i didnt think were very usefull for tournament.
Sadly enough the impact of destroying them wasnt enough to make me enjoy tournaments again. So instead i just started a new account and made it very minimal expansions wise. It took me years to level it up with low space, but its finally at a decent level and i finally have enough expansions to do high ranking again, and im really enjoying tournament and the game again on that account.

 

[Mykan]

I looked at your city @Gkyr ...you pull 10k+ in the tourny and have 335 wonder levels. If you deleted all your wonders it would reduce your costs. The question is, would you still be able to get 10k at the reduced cost with the equally reduced performance of your wonderless city? I don't think anyone is willing to try that even in the name of science.

A player deleting a thrones of the High Men will have a better result than a player deleting a Martial Monastery.

I have seen a person do 20K+ scores regularly with 3 wonders (none were a monastery). But if a person thinks deleting all but 3 wonders will magically let them do 20K+ tourny every week they need to think again. A lot of strategy and planning goes into creating such a town and wonders is a small part. Towns do it with a lot more wonders than 3.

The person I saw do this had a enemy troop number they worked on at x province level. They would add and delete wonder levels as they tweaked strategy. As long as they kept the upper tourny troop count to their desired level they were happy.

 

[MaidenFair]

Has anyone recorded changes after selling off AW points? Is anyone interested in trying (with good record-keeping)? If not, we can just delegate this question to the bin of 'if you really want to know, try it and let us know'.

I did not make any records, but anecdotally, I have dumped mid-level wonders before and did notice a change in my Spire and Tourney costs (and I do mean costs, since I'm a caterer, haha!).

I intend to swap out my (currently level 12) Enar's Embassy for a Lighthouse of Good Neighborhood when I get to the end of Amuni, but that will probably be a few months since I'm mid-Elementals at the moment. If I still remember then, I'll be happy to compare costs before and after.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Has anyone recorded changes after selling off AW points? Is anyone interested in trying (with good record-keeping)? If not, we can just delegate this question to the bin of 'if you really want to know, try it and let us know'.

A player's chapter, for completed research, and number of placed expansions will also make a difference in how much you save when removing an AW level. I remember way back when some of us were doing all the testing to find out the actual values for the Spire formula, I was in chapter 12 or 13 and adding an AW level was raising my starting Spire squad size by about 15, while other people in higher or lower chapters were getting different amounts, mainly because of the other factors in the formula. So if someone at the end of chapter 20 with all free expansions and some premium expansions placed and 500 AW levels is going to see a far different amount of reduction from selling a level 20 Wonder versus someone in chapter 12, with so much less research done and expansions placed. Which all comes down to only players with similar cities will see similar results and could compare notes.

But you can always test your own. Record your starting squad size at the beginning of the Spire. Build a new Wonder at level 1, then do not level up any others at all during the week or complete any research or place any expansions, and then look at your new starting squad size when the Spire opens again the next week for how much one level changes things.

 

[Fayeanne]

But you can always test your own. Record your starting squad size at the beginning of the Spire. Build a new Wonder at level 1, then do not level up any others at all during the week or complete any research or place any expansions, and then look at your new starting squad size when the Spire opens again the next week for how much one level changes things.

And then take it one step further--after that week, sell the level 1 Wonder and don't make any other changes to your city and see if the cost goes back down the week after.

 

[Rythel]

Alright friends! I plan on selling my level 12 Sanctuary within the week and would like to give you some insight to hopefully help answer this question.

05/02/23
Province 1 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: 69
Province 26 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: 24402
Number of Placed Expansions: 112
Number of Premium Expansions: 8
Ancient Wonder Levels: 158*
Completed Required Research in Current Chapter: 14
(Note, I am in chapter 15 with all other previous chapters 100% completed)
Relic Boosts: Max

*As for Ancient Wonder levels, I had one upgrade in progress when the tournament started that is NOT included in this calculation. I am unsure whether or not this upgrade would be included as the ranking points awarded are after the wonder is completed. If it is included upon selecting upgrade, then then number should be 159.

I will let you know next week with my updated stats and tournament squad size!

 

[Rythel]

Here are my stats for this week after selling my level 12 Sanctuary.

05/09/23
Province 1 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: 68
Province 26 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: 24213
Number of placed Expansions: 112
Number of Premium Expansions: 8
Ancient Wonder Levels: 151
Completed Required Research in Current Chapter: 16
Relic Boosts: Max

Change over the week:

Province 1 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: -1
Province 26 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: -189
Ancient Wonder Levels: -7 or -8
Completed Required Research: +2

So it does look like selling wonders reduces the enemy squad size. For those math wizards out there, hopefully I've documented enough statistics to see if it fits in the projected equations or not.

 

[Genefer]

Province 1 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: -1
Province 26 Starting Tournament Enemy Squad Size: -189
Ancient Wonder Levels: -7 or -8
Completed Required Research: +2

hmmm

I don't know if it is accurate to interpret the decrease in Squad Size or catering cost as a decrease in difficulty - after all deleting the wonder has degraded the value or availability of troops and/or decreased city resource production - depending on the wonder deleted.


CAL stands for City Advancement Level - and only provides the costs associated with a city's advancement - basically an If-Then scenario.


It is clearly not a cost benefit analysis, because he did not account for all the variables influencing the value of Ancient Wonders.


He counts Ancient Wonder levels, but fails to consider which Ancient Wonders, the level of each individual Ancient Wonder, or if the player uses the Wonder effectively.


If a player has the Prosperity Tower, Elvenar Trade Center, Lighthouse of Good Neighborhood, the Dragon Abbey, but does not use Enchantments they are not being used effectively.

If a player has the Watchtower Ruin, Bell Spire, Sanctuary, Thrones of High Men... but does not actively seek neighborly relations to increase the Culture Bonus - they are not being used effectively.


If the levels of Complimentary Ancient Wonder are not relatively balanced, they are not being used effectively. This is especially true for military Ancient Wonders. A city's troops affected by a level 30 Needles & a level 3 Temple of Toads will not perform as well as a city with a level 15 needles & a level 15 Temple of Toads. A city with a level 30 Needles, Flying Academy... and a level 5 Bulwark will not produce as many troops as a city that has the training speed & Training size relatively balanced to eliminate idle buildings.


To maximize the value of Ancient Wonders requires the player to actually put them to use effectively - to build their city with the benefits of the Ancient Wonders as the guide.


It is illogical to use what is in essence a price list in place of a cost benefit analysis.

.
I have 25 Ancient Wonders & 442 Ancient Wonder levels - and with each additional level my city performance increases - I have never experienced an observable negative effect from upgrading my Ancient Wonders. Ancient Wonders when used effectively will only benefit your city. Does the cost on the pricelist increase - maybe a tiny bit, but used effectively the benefit far outweighs the increase in the cost of living.


It is the player that creates the disadvantage of an Ancient Wonder. Rather than consulting a pricelist to determine the value of an Ancient Wonder - take a moment to consider if you actually put it to use - if not than get rid of it.

 

[Rythel]

I don't know if it is accurate to interpret the decrease in Squad Size or catering cost as a decrease in difficulty

The question and argument you are posing is beyond the scope of the initial experiment.

Purpose: This thread hopes to consolidate discussions by reference and (hopefully) encourage experiments to determine whether or not selling off Ancient Wonder (AW) points will decrease the CAL-modulated difficulty of fighting in Spire and Tourney.

The conclusion to the initial question of whether or not selling off AW points will decrease the CAL is simply yes.

There is no conclusion as to whether or not this would make the tournament/spire easier. As difficulty is very subjective and the variables you've listed would be impossible to control for, I fear there isn't a scientific way to conclude either direction. Though it would be mostly safe to say selling unbeneficial wonders would make both activities easier and selling beneficial wonders would make them both harder. I think it's also a fair supposition to make that selling a bunch of wonders isn't going to increase your score in either activities sustainably.

 

[Genefer]

The conclusion to the initial question of whether or not selling off AW points will decrease the CAL is simply yes.

Oops! I assumed the intent was to discover an observable decrease in difficulty when Ancient Wonders are removed. The term used is "difficulty", which the CAL calculator does not even attempt to assess. It is a generic tool that calculates expected costs associated with the values the user assigns to the variables used to generate a CAL score and a corresponding price list.


If the question is whether the CAL score reflects an increase or decrease in the cost of both troops & resources relative to Ancient Wonder levels - there is no need for an experiment - this is precisely the purpose of the calculator. Ideally, it would be used in advance of making a change, so the player has an idea of any increase in costs they'll have to cover with the change.


Like using the tape measure to determine the length of wood needed for the fence, prior to using the saw. Of course, knowing the linear foot required does not reflect the level of difficulty in building a fence.