DeletedUser9601
Guest
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.
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.