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    Your Elvenar Team

Mana ~ eek! Best strategies...?

LisaMV

LisaMV

Well-Known Member
I read the Woodelves mana info on elvengems already... I need some actual humans/elves with experience. Decay seems horrifying, for teeth or mana.
What do you do that works best, for collecting? Which buildings do you like best? I just started Woodelves, and I have [no laughing] 1 willow, and 2 of those cute little one-square trees. THAT took me a whole day to figure out! lol

thank you O Wise Elders...
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_/\_
 
LordVorKon

LordVorKon

Active Member
The only really decent piece of advice I have for you is: Spend as late in the day as you can. Mana decay is at 4am Eastern IIRC, so just before that is when you'll have the most after a day of collecting. And then if you spend it, you won't lose as much to decay.
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
The balance between production and spending is what causes any problems you have. Like any "income," if you spend faster than you earn you are going to struggle. So, why not plan your expenditures based upon what you will need in X amount of days? Then, if necessary raise your "income" and put up the AW that reduces decay, if possible. One way to test your daily income (because most of us don't know exactly what we are taking in, on average), is to note what your mana is at the end of the day, note what is in the morning and then compute what you are losing. Do this for about 5 days and the average of what you are losing will be close enough to what you are producing if the balance at the end of each day is fairly steady. If the balance is growing you are gaining and thus producing more than you are spending. If it's shrinking, of course, you are spending more, on average, than you are taking in.

So, my advice? First, "you cannot manage what you have not measured," so measure first . Figure out what you are taking in and what you are spending. Then determine what you want to spend each day and decide if you need more resources to get it. The "trick" if there is one, is to realize that you will have more fun by planning the rate of progress through the game by managing the various resources in a controlled manner than trying to "push," "push," "push." At least that's how I see it.

AJ
 
NightshadeCS

NightshadeCS

Well-Known Member
I also take a look at the timers on my mana buildings when I do my last collection and reset of the day. If the time that a building will spend producing the mana will last until I collect in the morning, then I will leave it going. If it will reach max production within a couple hours, then I will go ahead and collect it, since the wasted production time overnight will then be greater than the decay amount.

There is of course, a mathematical way to determine, for each building, the optimum time to collect, but I am not a person who sweats the details to quite that extent.

My other advice would be something that I think you have already grasped. Fill all possible nooks and crannies with those little mana buildings. Road ends are great. I try to put big buildings at the ends of roads, so sometimes you can have 3 or 4 squares at the end of a road in which you can place a mana building. Also, sometimes you have a little gap in the interior between large buildings. When I am REALLY in need of mana, I will back those large buildings off the road by one square, add one square of road to connect, and then fill in that little slice with those Wood Ghost Housing or other small ones.

I also like mana buildings with an early collect option, as it gives more flexibility in when I can empty them out.
 
samidodamage

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
Congratulations on finishing Orcs!
First, some good info is at Elven Gems Woodelves
I have a different take on mana, and it may not fit your play style, but it works well for me. Here's my 2 cents:
You're going to want to switch out every culture bldg you can for a culture bldg that produces mana. Culture that produces mana needs a road, so that will also be a challenge. My biggest challenge the first time in WE were the culture/pop buildings. I ended up needing to build a couple more houses and upgrade them to replace the pop I would lose by selling off those pop/culture bldg. There were no teleport or RR spells then, though. The next chapter (S&D) has a huge jump in pop for houses and I was able to reduce the number I had again once I got there. With teleport and RR spells available now, I might have 'saved' a couple of those really good culture/pop and brought them back out once I got into S&D.
I don't pay much attention to mana decay. Instead I view it as a soft cap on mana storage, but I still try to time spending it so I lose as little as possible. Doing that significantly reduced my mana anxiety, lol! One of the best tips for me was to use guest race space/buildings to jump start mana production. Here's how that works: Sell off your orc guest race buildings a few at a time, using the resources you get from those to build a Willow. Fill up that guest race space with as many Willows as you can. As you need that space for WE guest race bldgs, sell off a Willow and use the resources from that to build the new guest race bldg. That will help you accumulate mana while you're making the painful but necessary changes to your city to allow for more culture/mana bldgs. Mana will be needed in all future chapters. Moving forward, I did the same thing with guest race space between each chapter, using the best regular mana producer to fill in that space (ex: S&D gives Libraries that are better for mana than Willows but not as good culture), again selling them off as I needed the space back. The juggling act that this game requires really ramps up once mana is introduced, lol!
There's a Festival Merchant (and one other bldg I can't think of the name) in crafting that gives mana if you're able to craft it.
The mana AW's come at the end of S&D, so they are a long way off for you. Since I prefer ignoring decay, I never built Maze of the Dark Matter. My favorite mana AW is Dragon Abbey. If you have a good stockpile of spells, it can provide 'mana on demand'. You get mana from it every time you cast a spell. I remember a post on here where someone had 100+ days of culture boosts on all their culture bldgs from just continuing to use EE spells to get the mana they needed. I've never used it as my primary producer like they did, but when I run low, my city definitely sparkles, lol!
 

kctanzen

Well-Known Member
I believe that unless you are making at least 4 collections a day, the Maze isn't as useful as one might think.
To me, it is primarily a mana decay tool -- and there is a wonder that can essentially negate mana decay.

The Dragon Abbey wonder provides instant mana for every spell you use -- and it is possible to stack spells on top of each other on the same building to increase the length of time those spells stay in effect.

The KPs invested in the Maze to make a meaningful impact I think would be better spent elsewhere, particularly with the assumption that the tourney revamp isn't changing much from Beta or EN servers -- one part of that formula is reputed to be wonder levels.
Investing in marginal wonders could be a very difficult problem going forward.



As far as mana production alone -- look for Festival Merchants in the crafting menu before you get to Halflings.
Mana sawmills are another option though a bit less effective. They have a full production length of 6 hours.
Wood elf / S & D chapter Festival Merchants produce mana, at a considerably higher rate than arcane libraries (from S & D) and in a smaller foot print. You can leave leave them in that chapter (don't upgrade with RR spells) and use them for mana quite a while. The lower culture values can easily be replaced by looking for high value event buildings.
 
Henroo

Henroo

Oh Wise One
kctanzen said:
As far as mana production alone -- look for Festival Merchants in the crafting menu before you get to Halflings.
Mana sawmills are another option though a bit less effective. They have a full production length of 6 hours.
Wood elf / S & D chapter Festival Merchants produce mana, at a considerably higher rate than arcane libraries (from S & D) and in a smaller foot print. You can leave leave them in that chapter (don't upgrade with RR spells) and use them for mana quite a while. The lower culture values can easily be replaced by looking for high value event buildings.
Click to expand...
I just entered Woodelves this afternoon. I've read the Elvengems guide which recommends Weeping Willows for mana production. Are the Festival Merchants more efficient?
 
Henroo

Henroo

Oh Wise One
Still in the rather early stages of Woodelves. Currently have 4 Weeping Willows, 2 Festival Merchants, 2 Bell Fountains, and 1 Magical Nutcracker making mana. It works out to 1,529 per hour. Will this be enough, or am I still low and need more production?
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
The only way to tell if it will or won't be enough is to calculate what you think you will be using as you go. Look ahead, find out what's going to use mana, how much you'll need for that, including any researches, and how fast you want to go. If you can calculate the next 30 days (a complex idea but doable) you can then average your usage over those days and bring your hourly or daily production levels up to what you need. So if you figure you will need 500,000 mana for research over the next 30 days, and 100,000 for other things, you will need to produce 600,000 or 20,000 per day. But since mana decays you will need to add another 10% so that would mean 22,000 mana a day. Or, to put it another way, you are producing about 1,529 per hour or 36,000 per day. Subtract 3,6000 for decay and your daily usage can be 32,500 without straining your system. How far can you go on that? Again, how much do you need for research and other outputs (including quests, btw)?

These numbers may not even be in the ballpark for your chapter but the idea is the same. I'm at 4.72-5.25 million mana level because I produce about 500k mana a day. But I've looked ahead and am now "drawing down" my mana production because I can see I won't need more than 30k/day in the future...at the rate I am wanting to move ahead (this will vary depending on your playing style).

Hope that helps you answer your question.

AJ
 
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samidodamage

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
@Henroo
I only remember going through it before portal profits or Festival Merchants and before I got a gazillion Burning Pools and Mana Huts. I think I had around 12-13 Willows that I kept after removing the extras I put in the guest race space. I vaguely remember reading '15 or more is not unreasonable', lol! Elven Gems recommends 7-8 Willows by the time you get to the Main Hall research and says 'don't stop there'. 7 Willows would be making 1306/hr. 12 would be 2240/hr. It's also dependent on how quickly you want to go through the chapter. I move very slowly and don't mind tech lock, but if you prefer a faster approach you'll likely need more production than I did.
 
Veesviewpoint

Veesviewpoint

Active Member
Thanks so much everyone..meanwhile, hope I'll be able to determine configuration, etc (thankfully have many PP's and hoping that will prove helpful too)...returning to task at hand...post tourney, FA and next event...sigh....chuckles. ;)
vees
 
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