Thinking about mana buildings

[DeletedUser9601]

I wanted to take a look at Weeping Willows (WW) vs. Arcane Libraries (AL) vs. Woodelves Habitats (WH). I wanted to share my math, and generally discuss. I think these buildings are rather difficult to compare, for a few reasons, and I wanted to hear the thoughts of players who've advanced through these chapters, as well as fellow players currently struggling through these questions:
1. Different max accumulation times - WH accumulates mana for 6 hours more than AL. Depending on playstyle, a player may lose out on several hours of mana accumulation with AL.
2. Mana decay - Related to #1, timing of collection is important. The closer one collects mana to the mana decay point (without spending), the more mana one loses to decay.
3. Mana goals - Generally there's not an agreed upon "amount" of mana production you need. Depending on playstyle, tech speed, and other activities, mana needs can vary greatly. I've tried to think about this in the second section, but I think it would be an interesting endeavour (akin to Mykan's survey on guest race space) to see how many squares people devote to mana in the various chapters.
4. Culture goals - All 3 buildings offer solid culture, but some people are more focused on keeping 150 or 160% bonuses, and really need those bonuses to have sufficient gold/supplies for the rest of the city to function.

Building Stats
Weeping Willow
25 squares (27.5 counting roads)
3,500 culture
186 mana/hour
Assuming roads, this means WW is worth 127.3 culture/sq, and 6.76 mana/hour/sq.

Arcane Library
15 squares (16.5 counting roads)
1740 culture
200 mana/hour
Assuming roads, AL is worth 105.5 culture/sq, and 12.1 mana/hour/sq.

Woodelves Habitat
28 squares (30 counting roads)
2900 culture
1130 population
161 mana/hour
Assuming roads, WH is worth, on its face, 40.4 pop/sq, 103.6 culture/sq, and 5.75 mana/hour/sq.
BUT
If we factor in the space otherwise needed in S&D to get 1130 pop, the footprint of WH gets much smaller. A level 25 residence is 121.3 pop/sq, so we should really count WH as taking up 20.69 squares (not 30).
This brings WH's efficiency way up, to 140.2 culture/sq, and 7.78 mana/hour/sq.

Analysis
WH is surprisingly efficient. I've always had a poor view of non-Event culture/pop buildings, but WH is a very nice building. However, since it comes so late in the chapter (at best its tech #24 of 31, though likely even later], I don't think its a realistic source of mana. Deleting all WWs and replacing them with WHs for the 7 remaining Woodelves techs, plus the 7 S&D techs, seems like a waste. But, it does seem like a good use of space at the end of Woodelves to add WHs instead of WWs if you are running low on mana.

AL is actually much, much better than WWs. This shouldn't be surprising, since it is a chapter later, but I've seen a lot of guides that misconstrue this gap as smaller than it is. The GamersGems guide implies that AL is about 40% better than WW, but its really closer to 55%.

Next Steps - How Much Mana?
I don't have a good sense of how much mana one needs to strive for. I got lucky during the Winter Event, and won over a dozen Frozen Fountains. These, plus 9 WW and 1 WH, meant that I was never short on mana through Woodelves, and had full Woodelves roads a few techs into S&D.
But if GamersGems suggests 15 WWs for Woodelves, that means a player is devoting 412 squares, receiving 2,790 mana/hour, and gets 52,500 culture.
For the same output, using ALs, a player would need 230 squares (approx 14 ALs plus roads). This means that AL saves a player 182 squares

The major downside is culture: 15 WWs and 14 ALs provide the same mana, but the WWs provide 28,140 culture more!! As noted above, culture has a different value for different people. But a player only needs to find culture buildings that provide at least 154 culture/sq to make up the difference. And I think that is quite easy to do, assuming active event participation. These pure culture buildings don't require roads, and a quick scan of the Winter Event prizes and dailies shows that the smallest Woodelves cultural rewards were worth 240ish culture/sq, and the very efficient prizes, like Sleighful of Cubes and Snowy Charming Tree, were in excess of 300 culture/sq. Even without events, S&D buildings like Chess Pieces and Mana Maze meet the needed efficiency targets.

Conclusions
I wrote this generally to think through how to approach mana in Woodelves and S&D. Now I think there really isn't much room for debate. I'll be deleting my WWs as soon as I can restructure my city, and replacing all of them with ALs. I'll also focus on getting/keeping a few excellent "pure" culture buildings from various events, since they more than make up for the lost culture.

Next Steps
I'd be interested in hearing how much space others devote to mana buildings. I don't play around with ElvenArchitect enough, but if it has "mana/hour" stats available, that would be a useful comparison. Unfortunately, the "total mana" that in-game tooltips provide are worthless, because each building has a different hour cap. Maybe we could also petition Inno to standardize its display of mana values across all buildings.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I'd be interested in hearing how much space others devote to mana buildings.

Ch 9: I went with 13 WW (event buildings didn't give mana back then)
Ch 10: Replaced 12 WW with 15 Libraries
Ch 11: I had plans to convert to Grape Farms (same mana as AL, but way more culture, and better to buff) but I never got around to it, and only did 3
Ch 12: 3 Grape farms, 6 mana fountains, 4 with 3links, 2 with 1 link, and some grape vines that can be nuked for event turds.

What makes a huge difference is tearing down your settlement ASAP, and filling that space with as many mana makers as you can, and stockpiling mana until you unlock the next settlement. Most chapters are front-loaded with mana costs, so this works quite well.

Also, cooking spells 24/7 since the dwarf chapter, and only using them very rarely makes the Dragon Abbey have a huge impact on your mana needs once you unlock it.

 

[samidodamage]

I'm finishing up the WW tech now. Will be watching this thread; already learned something:

tearing down your settlement ASAP, and filling that space with as many mana makers as you can, and stockpiling mana until you unlock the next settlement.

I tend to keep my settlement buildings as coin/supply storage until I need the resources or the space they occupy for the next settlement. Good to know now that the space can be better used after mana enters the picture.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I tend to keep my settlement buildings as coin/supply storage until I need the resources or the space they occupy for the next settlement.

Yep, what's great about this is that selling off your Fabrication or Necromancer, or Halfling farm can easily pay for your temporary Mana buildings, and then selling those mana buildings will help pay for settlement buildings.

Right now I have ~15 temporary libraries cranking out as much mana as possible that will all get nuked as I replace them with Elemental buildings.
That extra 72,000 mana per day is really helping me keep techlock to a minimum.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

@SoggyShorts great point about devoting empty guest race space to mana buildings. In between Woodelves and S&D, I spent some space on temporary military AWs, to build up my troop reserves, and push on a few tournaments. But I think mana buildings would be a better use of space.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Yes listen to @SoggyShorts

 

[qaccy]

Dragon Abbey is a fantastic AW. If I ever need mana for research I just throw out a bunch of spells to pay for it. Don't even need mana buildings anymore!

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Silly Mortal, yes you still need mana buildings, I have gone through 1.6m Mana so far in chapter 12. On the first 10 techs

 

[qaccy]

Silly Mortal, yes you still need mana buildings, I have gone through 1.6m Mana so far in chapter 12. On the first 10 techs

Nope. 2635k mana left to spend on research, and I've got 1444 spells in my inventory. At 4308 mana per spell, that's over 6220k mana available on-demand as I need it, and I'm still running my Academy constantly producing more spells, plus the ones picked up via tournaments. Even factoring in manifestation productions, I have no mana worries whatsoever.

I've not needed a single mana building ever since I got the Dragon Abbey.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I've not needed a single mana building ever since I got the Dragon Abbey.

This only works long term with either a stockpile of spells from previous chapters, and/or an upgraded MA though. A level 2 MA is at best making 2 spells a day, plus maybe 28(?) from the tournament makes 6 a day-- 26,000 mana per day isn't enough to sustain a city and do techs.
Don't get me wrong, I too think th Dragon Abbey is one of the best AW, I just think the average player can't use it exclusively and be sustainable.

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Nope. 2635k mana left to spend on research, and I've got 1444 spells in my inventory. At 4308 mana per spell, that's over 6220k mana available on-demand as I need it, and I'm still running my Academy constantly producing more spells, plus the ones picked up via tournaments. Even factoring in manifestation productions, I have no mana worries whatsoever.

I've not needed a single mana building ever since I got the Dragon Abbey.

How active are you in tournaments? I worry about cutting into T4-5-6 boosts (even though I'm only in S&D) by spending so many relics on spells.
Having the space normally devoted to mana buildings for things like more armories (to progress further in tournaments each week) is tempting.

 

[SoggyShorts]

How active are you in tournaments? I worry about cutting into T4-5-6 boosts

IMO 60K mana per day is on the low end of what a player needs to not constantly have mana as the bottleneck in thier tech tree.
that's 15 spells a day. If you are getting 28 spells "free" from the tournament that means you need to cook 11 per day at a cost of at least 22 relics.
That about lines up with how many relics you are getting from the tournament, so the problem lies with the MA, not relics.

Even a level 5 MA needs 2h per relic, meaning you need to cook 44h per day.
Since that's not going to happen, we can safely say the most you can do is cook 12 relics which is 6 spells at best.
Using @qaccy's DA number of 4308, that is 25,848 mana per day.
plus the 28 "free" spells from tournament give 17,232 mana per day.
Giving you a total sustainable mana per day of 43,080.

So it can work for maybe a couple of chapters if you really crank out the spells before you even get to mana chapters, but for the vast majority of players it isn't a viable long term strategy.

Another factor is that you pretty much have to waste a crapload of those spells. It's not like you can effectively use 60 spells every time you need mana to unlock a tech. 10 for your workshops, 10 for your factories(note that these use double the relics/time), and 40 for buffs(80 days worth of EE) starts to add up, and then you have culture buildings with months and months of buffs on them.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

Agreed

 

[qaccy]

@SoggyShorts

Stalling on tech also allows time to 'catch up' on relics/spells. If I ever hit the point where I'm unable to continue constant spell production or to instantly fill any mana costs I might have via DA use, I'll be very surprised. I used the same approach in Halflings and I've still got as many spells as I quoted above.

I also don't really consider them 'wasted' unless they're simply never used. A buffed building is a buffed building, and duration extensions seem to have no limit. I might not 100% efficiently use my workshops for the 5+ days that they're boosted, but it's still a 5-day workshop boost and it's enough to get me to the point where I end up dumping hundreds of thousands of supplies per day into the wholesaler just to get rid of the excess. But who here uses their MA and plays in tournaments and has 0 spells in their inventory? I suspect the common theme is yet another case of stockpiling where most if not all of us developed players have many unused spells in our inventory waiting for this magical 'perfect time' to use them. Admittedly having a level 5 MA does make an impact, but so does a new player having access to the MA very early on compared to us long-timers playing for months without even having it (or spells) in the game.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that since the DA awards mana upon spell use, it' doesn't have to be subject to decay like produced/collected mana is. I don't have to use spells/gain mana until the exact time that I need it, at which point I can earn it all in an instant and not lose any to decay. This isn't something you can do with mana-producing buildings - you have to keep collecting from them, which means you're always going to have to worry about the decay factor. But for me, my daily mana intake can easily look something like 0-0-0-240k-0-0-0-0-260k-0-0-200k and I'm getting full use out of all of those 'collections' without having to compensate for loss.

So to your last line - yes, I very much can use 60 spells every time I need mana for a tech. If there was a constant and endless source of tech to spend mana on, eventually I'd surely run out but that's not going to be happening. As I said, I've got over 2.5x the tech requirements in my spell inventory and once I make it to the end of Elementals, once again I'll be rebuilding any losses I might have made in my spell inventory so by the time the next chapter's out, I'll probably dwarf the mana requirements for that one as well, and by a larger margin than I currently do for Elementals.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@qaccy
I think the combination of a level 5 MA which allows you to make 325% as many spells as a level 2 MA, and waiting for months for the next chapter greatly skews things. With reasonable tournaments and running your MA you were making over 470 spells per month, and how many months has it been since you finished halflings?

I have no doubt that it works for you, and will continue to do so, but I maintain my position that it is not a viable or sustainable plan for the vast majority of players.

Another point is that it is important to maintain 500 relics for your T4/5/6, so that may influence which spells you can and can't cook, or which tournaments you need to focus more heavily on.

 

[qaccy]

@SoggyShorts
I think playstyle probably matters more than you think it does. Even not counting end-of-tech, a lot of players simply move through tech relatively slowly, choosing to alternate between AWs and tech or even stopping completely before the end of the tree for some other personal reason. Both of these have a similar effect to just not having anything to research at all, and in all of these situations MA production/spell acquisition can always be happening. The one concession I'll make is that a level 5 MA is likely required to completely remove the need for other mana buildings for most players, but OTOH level 6 isn't very high for an AW (what mine is at) and I'm on the low-end of conquered provinces as well at 359 compared to what's seemingly an ever-growing number of people who've hit the province expansion limit at 457. If I instead had a level 10/11 DA and 457 conquered provinces I'd be getting 7312/8226 mana per spell, practically doubling the amount of mana I have available in my spell inventory. Using very rough estimations, I could cut my spell inventory by 1/4 to 'revert' to a level 2 MA and that'd still leave me with an inventory worth 2639k/2969k. A small number of mana buildings would be advisable in that instance to cover smaller 'constant' expenses like building productions and the quintessential road upgrade, but it's not like I'll be spending all of that on research all at once. For my part, the takeaway here is: If you're through the S&D chapter and still need mana buildings, obtain/level up your Dragon Abbey until you don't. Even without diamonds to upgrade the MA, it's more than possible to completely remove the need for them and can reclaim that space for more culture or culture/pop buildings, which not only means you can get more value for culture and population but they additionally don't require roads like the mana buildings do.

I feel that since we all have the opportunity to crunch all of our mana needs down into two buildings that require a total of 40 squares, it's a good idea to capitalize on that. That is, until Inno reads through this discussion and decides that the DA is unbalanced and reduces or changes its effect.

EDIT: Something important I completely looked over is that technically, nobody 'needs' to be short on spells for DA use. If you're playing the long game, we can't even build the DA until after S&D so until that time, you could simply stock up all of your produced spells to save them for mana generation. I don't see an issue with that, being someone who essentially only values spells FOR that mana generation and with the exception of MM spells (which take longer to produce) the effects are rather marginal on their own.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I think playstyle probably matters more than you think it does. Even not counting end-of-tech, a lot of players simply move through tech relatively slowly, choosing to alternate between AWs and tech or even stopping completely

Well yeah, of course anyone can stop advancing whenever they want in order to sit and stockpile lol
I guess we should say what type of player we are mostly talking about.
If there is a player that is hardcore enough to have a level 5 MA, and does enough in the tournaments to get the relics needed to feed that MA 24/7, but also chooses to sit for a while mid chapter and relax while dumping KP into wonders and stockpiling spells....I'm not talking about that guy.

The one concession I'll make is that a level 5 MA is likely required to completely remove the need for other mana buildings for most players

That's all I'm saying.

I'm on the low-end of conquered provinces as well at 359

Nah, you are comparing yourself to other 1%ers. I've been scouting pretty much non-stop (unless I forget, and I admittedly never set an alarm or anything) since I hit chapter 8, and I also have 359 provinces cleared. Anyone who has more that that is for sure in the top 1%.
It is 79 more provinces than needed, which takes about 115 days* to scout even if you do set an alarm and keep him out 24/7
Those players with 100 more provinces than you or I are waaaay out there, having spent at least another 5 months** of 24/7 scouting more than us.

If I instead had a level 10/11 DA......

Yeah, it's possible to do that, but getting a level 11 DA is close to 3,000 KP (Which is 2-3 months of KP***), and quite a few runes to fill that wheel 3 times. Still possible, especially if you ignore all other wonders, or are especially slow getting through halflings, but I would not expect the average player to be coming into Elementals with more than a level 6.

*Based on 35h scouts
** Based on an average of40h scouts
*** 24 hourly KP, 0-6 purchased KP per day, and ~100-150 tournament KP

 

[DeletedUser2424]

You're gonna want to build a few mana buildings... I like you am a HUGE believer in the Dragon Abbey and I've invested a ton of KP into it with the same plan as you of saving a ton of real estate by needing minimal mana buildings. But, even with 1000 spells stock piled... you do not have enough (assuming you stay at your DA level)...

Assumptions: Portal Level 3 (for construction of artifacts... this is conservative since you'll produce a lot of artifacts at level 1 and level 2).. Plus you don't have any trader bee.

0% Slow Artifacts (you only do fast builds)
Mana Needed
+ For Tech Tree / Buildings 6,245,000
+ For Artifacts 3,636,470
= Total Mana 9,881,470

50% Slow, 50% Fast Artifacts
Mana Needed
+ For Tech Tree / Buildings 6,245,000
+ For Artifacts 2,090,729
= Total Mana 8,335,729


I made an impressive spreadsheet... was going to wait to share until i was sure it was bug free.. but it's gone through several rounds of edits and I think it's good enough.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...puhwibJbnmNjl-ksFKyBYgpbc/edit#gid=1334210085

 

[DeletedUser9601]

I think @SoggyShorts posts about timing and the efficacy of the DA are good ones. DA is unlocked as the last tech in S&D, and best case scenario for most players is that they can build it immediately. I'm fairly active in tournaments, and I have 7 DA runes. But I'd need to get lucky with those runes, and still have to "build-and-break" a few worthless wonders to power through via the broken shard wheel.

So we complete the DA right as we enter Halflings, and then its either delay a few weeks while levelling the DA, or enter Halflings with a level 1 DA. I plan on trying this, but I don't expect it to be the only source of mana.

I'm also interested to see how Major Event rewards keep developing. I feel very fortunate in how strong the Frozen Fountain was, and how it was possible to have 40+ chests saved up to open on the day. The Frozen Fountain was slightly more powerful in Woodelves than the Arcane Library. Given the pace of mana-using chapters (assume 1-2 months minimum for all chapters after Orcs), a player could get some serious mileage out of relying heavily on Major Event prizes for mana. Though hopefully in a few weeks we will have some beta info on the Spring Event to test this theory.

I feel that since we all have the opportunity to crunch all of our mana needs down into two buildings that require a total of 40 squares, it's a good idea to capitalize on that. That is, until Inno reads through this discussion and decides that the DA is unbalanced and reduces or changes its effect.

This is probably my biggest fear. CL was clearly an overpowered wonder, so I expected it to get nerfed. I think DA isn't as overpowered, but it does "break" the intended playstyle (slow accumulation - deal with decay - devote significant city space to mana resources). So I'd be somewhat wary of devoting massive resources into it right at the start of Halflings for that reason.

@fasdfTTT that is awesome!

Thanks to all of you for a great discussion. This game has lots of really good guides and resources, but I'm finding that alot of them fall off or are otherwise lacking once a player gets to later chapters. So I'm glad the forums are such a great resource.

 

[qaccy]

@fasdfTTT

Really great tool, that spreadsheet! I'll probably make a copy to look at until I finish the chapter because I find ticking off checkboxes to be oddly satisfying.

Anyway, mana's actually still the least of my concerns, I think! I plugged my entire spell inventory into the 'spells per day' box, since it really is all on-demand mana that is available to me at a moment's notice. That's enough for me to get the 'time needed' for mana generation down to a single day, which is obviously required with this approach (2 days would mean needing to use my entire inventory or at least another significant amount of spells twice, which is definitely not happening). I figure I'm going to do nothing but fast runs for essence since 6 hours is a very friendly production timer even if it's not perfectly collected each time, and I'll run 4 fast/1 slow on artifacts per day. With this setup, the rest of my applicable info, and a level 1 portal/manifestations I get an estimate of 41 days left to finish the chapter from where I am right now. I've now got 1450 spells on hand, and over that 41 day estimate I'll be able to generate an additional 246 spells in the MA and collect an additional 136 or so from tournaments. With a total spell inventory of 1832 by day 41, I'll have just over 7.9m mana against a remaining cost of 7,479,684.

However, I discovered a pretty important problem with the spreadsheet. My Abbey value wasn't adding up correctly and I figured out that it was because there's an error in the mana calculation from it. The formula you have for cell N82 adds 5 to the level input before multiplying the rest, but for level 6+ that doesn't work because the rune levels add 2% to the AW power rather than 1% like the KP levels. This means that the formula calculates level 6 as having a power of 11, when it's actually 12. That ended up being a difference of over 600k mana in my case at only level 6, which is fairly significant since it meant the difference between having enough spells and falling short! Also, while not really relevant for me, how come there aren't any spaces for Maze of the Dark Matter info? Cell A82 mentions some sort of comparison between it and the DA but I don't see that anywhere. Was it something from an earlier version that got removed?