Tired of everything getting bigger and bigger

[DeletedUser3507]

Settlement buildings give no rank as there temporary constructions in my view.
There only good for 1 chapter. Then deleted.

And provide a temporary boost if given ranking points.

 

[SoggyShorts]

They suffer a dip in points, but it all works out in the end.

Settlement buildings give no rank as there temporary constructions in my view.
There only good for 1 chapter. Then deleted.
And provide a temporary boost if given ranking points.

I disagree. Starting in chapter 6 a player can choose to dedicate a larger portion of their city to settlement buildings all the way until they hit the end of the last available chapter.
The whole time they are doing this, they will have a lower score than other players in the same chapter.

Dedicating space to settlement goods for about a year isn't what I would consider "temporary"

 

[DeletedUser9601]

I disagree. Starting in chapter 6 a player can choose to dedicate a larger portion of their city to settlement buildings all the way until they hit the end of the last available chapter.
The whole time they are doing this, they will have a lower score than other players in the same chapter.

Disagree. I think there's 3 comparisons to be made, and in all instances, the player who progresses with guest race goods wins out, and the player who doesn't progress at best gets a 2-3 month window of "winning on points."

If 2 players are in Ch. 6, and 1 decides to never build a guest race building (so stops in the first 1/3 of the Dwarf tech tree), they lose out:
20+ expansions from techs (plus significantly more from province expansions)
8+ levels on your manufactories
10+ levels on your houses and workshops
Main Hall, Armory and military upgrades
More efficient culture/sq buildings
Better event rewards
All of those are worth tons of points. Dwarves takes up 5-6 expansions. The points that Ch.6 buildings in that space provides will give the stagnant player a minor boost, but its quickly surpassed when the other player reaches Fairies and Orcs. I don't think that's what you mean in your comparison though.

If 2 players are in any guest race, and both finish the techs, but player 1 deletes guest race buildings and fills in the space with point-scoring buildings, and player 2 keeps that space set aside for the next chapter guest race buildings, I agree that player 1 gets a point lead. And that point lead might last a few months. But like I mentioned in my previous post, that lead won't last beyond a chapter in most instances.

If 2 players are in the same guest race, and Player 1 devotes twice the expansions to the guest race as Player 2. Well Player 1 will have fewer points, but get through the chapter presumably twice as fast (not the best assumption - but definitely faster - except for S&D). So then Player 1 has access to the higher-point buildings in the next chapter.

I think the Halflings-->Elementals transition re: points is especially jarring, because 1. the people who finished Halflings spent months feeding AWs to very high levels [which are worth lots of points], and 2. the guest race space for Elementals is larger than previously required [which means even less space for point scoring buildings]. But I still believe that if we reasonably expect more chapters after Elementals, Player 1 who stays in Halflings and spends those expansions on point buildings will eventually fall behind Player 2 who finishes Elementals and beyond.

The other point not being addressed is, let's say we give points for guest race buildings. Well, how many? They're much cheaper to build (no pop requirements, typically far fewer levels). So should a max guest race building equal a max factory per square? Or should we reward people who progress with the fewest number of guest race buildings (meaning they get 50% of the points)?

 

[SoggyShorts]

So should a max guest race building equal a max factory per square?

Interesting, I'd say perhaps equal to a max factory per square, BUT the true area should be factored in. e.g. a level 23 Gem factory takes up close to 200 squares once you count the res/culture/roads/workshops. Yes, the workshop gives points as well, so that is a factor.

This is all part of the other issues I have with the ranking system though- Workshops themselves shouldn't give more ranking points than a wonder that makes more supplies, nor should a factory give more ranking than an event building that makes more goods.

 

[DeletedUser2424]

I've thought quite a bit about why players feel there isn't enough space, and here's how I see it:
1. The player mentality of being a hoarder.

• If a player has 5 Level 19 Gem factories, when they unlock level 23 the buildings produce 78% more gems. Yet many players attempt to keep and upgrade all 5 of them despite the fact that the need for gems does not increase by anywhere even close to 78%.
• As an example, in chapter 12 the entire tech tree costs under 1 million of each tier, and yet some players have 9 million of each tier in the bank. We all like having a little extra cushion so that we can help our fellows, or in case of "emergency", but many take it to extremes.

2. The Magic building trap.

• A premium player in the situation above may be getting a significant portion of their population from magic residences, and supplies from magic workshops. Those support the Gem factories. Often that player will upgrade magic residences and workshops the moment they unlock a chapter, giving them a nice push in ranking(more on this later), preparing them for everything they think they need in the new chapter. This is a trap though, as now they must keep and upgrade all 5 of those Gem factories or else have 1,000s of excess population and supplies. Reducing the number of magic buildings you have would feel like throwing away money, hence the "trap".
• The same thing goes for premium culture buildings. These can greatly reduce your flexibility. When an event comes up, it is very easy for a player to nuke 2-3 willows and free up an equal number of expansions for a temporary turd town to help with quests. If you have a city with culture/mana buildings that you paid for, you will understandably be reluctant to remove them. The same goes for event buildings. Players work hard for these unique buildings, and since they often can never be replaced, we are again reluctant to remove them. This bring us to the next point: Artwork.

3. The Artwork

• Something that drew many players to this game is the well designed pretty buildings. This can be an issue because players want to keep them forever, even once they progress and the efficiency of new buildings greatly outstrips the old. Event buildings are very often 3x4, 4x3, or 3x3, and with the frequency of events, replacing the old with the new should be fairly simple, but it isn't as we like to hold onto the old buildings for their looks, and the sense of accomplishment that they give us. The proof of this is in the 30+ threads asking for a storage feature over the last 18 months.

4. Culture

• This is one of least well understood mechanics in the game. There is a cap of 170% on culture bonus not counting spells.
• Where players often go wrong is that they will place culture buildings to reach that 170%, and then cast EE spells and ask for culture buffs from their FS. This leads to a massive waste of culture and efficiency.
• If you are "naturally" already at 170% culture, and go over with buffs on Ensorcelled buildings you are getting the 5% bonus, but totally wasting the X,XXX culture that the visit is giving you. In that scenario you would be better of sitting at 160% culture and using the visits from your fellows to bring you up to 170% plus the 5% per visit. If you are still going well over 170%(not counting the 5%per visit), it would be better to start at 150% and use the visits to bring you up and just slightly over again.
• This is sometimes compounded by the same players reaching the coin and supply capacity of their Mainhall, and then using the excess in the very inefficient wholesaler.

5. The Tournament

• Late game players have access to 40+ provinces of each type, so there is almost no cap on how many goods you could spend each week. This gives the illusion that more goods production is always a lot better. The thing is that 20-60 more KP from doing extra provinces in the tournament won't necessarily help your city progress faster than having more space to devote to guest race buildings would.
• If you are already getting 150-200 KP from the tournament, plus your hourly KP, province clearing KP, and any KP you might buy with coins, there's almost no way you can be putting it all into the tech tree consistently. This means you are using the excess KP on wonders. Wonders are obviously good, but other than the BTG, they don't help you avoid the bottleneck in your progress which is eventually guest race goods.
• If you had 2 players with an equal number of expansions, the one who has 25% more guest race buildings can often move faster along the tech tree than the one who uses that space for more goods instead. Despite this, the guest race focused player would always have a lower score than the goods producing player, which brings us to Rankings.

6. Ranking Points

• It has long been my opinion that the ranking system is flawed mostly because buildings that are more efficient don't give as many points as others.
• Wonders like the EE, ToS, and PT can often produce far more supplies than a workshop, and yet having workshops instead will give you a higher score since the AW do not affect working population or required culture.
• Event buildings that produce goods or supplies can also be better for your city than their normal counterparts, and yet they give zero ranking points.
• Most of all, guest race buildings give zero score. This means that a player who has just a handful of settlement buildings and takes 4 months to finish a chapter is considered "better" than a city that is filled with them and is capable of completing the chapter in half the time.
• Some players realize this early on and are able to ignore the ranking system, but it isn't easy as we naturally see a scoring system and assume it is a useful measurement of how well we are doing.

Great post. I think you're missing the over building of ancient wonders.
People build literally of them and most are utterly terrible. Focus your KP into a few.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

I kept 7 Magic Dust and all are lvl 23, but I am sort of an exception. According to most.
All residences and Workshops are magic
And have over 217k of free culture left

 

[SoggyShorts]

Great post. I think you're missing the over building of ancient wonders.
People build literally of them and most are utterly terrible. Focus your KP into a few.

I agree that there is a tendency towards becoming a "jack of all trades", and many forget that the second half of that phrase is "master of none".

Personally I enjoyed having a zero military strategy up until orcs where (since I was forced to build armories) I transitioned to a hybrid build (fight tournaments, negotiate world), and now I find myself continuing that change to the other end and heading towards full military. The space saved by dropping goods more than makes up for the addition of military wonders, many of which are great imo.

I don't think I can agree with the statement that "most are utterly terrible" though. From all of the calculations I've run, most wonders are actually really good even at level 1 for most playstyles. The only ones I don't love are the
Maze (because I spend all of my mana as fast as I make it),
Heroes forge (because I have loads of orcs and still haven't gotten around to removing my orc nests)
Thrones (because I don't like ranking)
Lighthouse&watchtower (because I don't really need the culture, and can't be bothered to collect visit chests)

The other 15 wonders I have unlocked each save me space compared to getting what they make/do from normal sources.
Also since the bonus to seeds come from levels, and lower levels cost less KP, more wonders = more wonder levels than just focusing on a few.

 

[Deborah M]

I wanted all of the AW but I sold some off when I needed space at a lower level. Not too long ago I built all of the ones I didn't have. I was really glad I did because of the seeds calculation. I think they are all beneficial so not regretting having them. At least they stay the same shape & size

 

[DeletedUser2424]

I don't think I can agree with the statement that "most are utterly terrible" though

Perhaps a bit extreme. I'm a) Biased b/c i do care about ranking points and b) still haven't adapted my perception of many of the earlier wonders since they made the change to be percentage based instead of fixed values as they were when they first came out.

I'd be interested in seeing your calculations if you've shared them already.

Tome of Secrets - Arguably useful in the beginning but not as useful as golden abyss so push your KP in to that instead... In the beginning space was so much more at a premium in my opinion...

Maze - Completely agree with you. Dragon Abbey is better no matter how you slice it from my analysis... plus the mage attack bonus will make it never go completely obsolete.

Enar's Embassy - You'll certainly outgrow...

Others suck too but that's all i got time for now.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I'd be interested in seeing your calculations if you've shared them already.

I've been meaning to gather them together in a more accessible format, so far they are scattered around the forums because I often make them to just answer 1 question like "is the GA better than the Mountain Halls?" (the answer(link)for chapter 11 is no, unless if you have fewer than 2 of each tier factories)

Others are pretty straight forward like the EE. All you need is to calculate the real space of a workshop (including residences, culture and roads) for your chapter, and compare that supplies/sq vs what the EE gives (for the chapters I checked 8-12, the EE is always better than another workshop, even at level 1, unless you have a PoP spell on)

Spoiler: For some chapters you barely even have to use a calculator:

Chapter 11 workshop
21 squares (plus residences+culture)
9h production is 9,500
Level 1 EE with MH level 27
20 squares
66,000

So even if you have 200% culture, and run 9h,9h,3h,3h the level 1 EE is more than 10% better than a workshop, before you add in the residences and culture buildings the workshop needs. If you take the math so far as to factor in the workshops real space(49 squares) and then compare it with the EE at 22 squares(road) then the level 1 EE beats your 200% culture workshop even if you run 1h productions 24/7

Same for PT if you can collect 4+ times per day, and the ToS is better if you scout at least once every 50h not to mention the free KP.

Enar's Embassy - You'll certainly outgrow...

Even at level 2, in chapter 12 I still haven't outgrown it. As long as I scout once every 2 days (my scouts are 35h) It gives 30% more mana than a grape farm. Granted it gives a useless shard every 7 days instead of 6K culture, but the 200-300 extra seeds I get from it are worth more to me than culture that I don't need.

 

[DeletedUser9551]

Can't have it all. Sorry.

And I'd like to add one vote into the tally for "prefer bigger buildings." Imagine workshops were still 2x2. Do you want to set 30 productions? Or set 5?

i d rather have a moderate number of workable, good size workshop (10-15) than 5 and fail at quest production, or 30 and run out of space (which i already do.. )

 

[DeletedUser9551]

i agree , everything is so freaking big, i just upgrade my barrack to level 16, (8 x 4) , from 6 x 6, yes, it s 32 square vs 36 previously, but the headache or rearranging my town barely worth it.. and it s becoming harder to get expansions, let alone spending $200.00 to buy diamonds just to get more expansions, not that it would matter, as it goes, those would simply get fill by the ever growing size of buildings!!

 

[samidodamage]

Not calling out any one player, but why on earth would anybody play a real time strategy game with a city building basis and expect to NOT deal with issues of growth and limited space? Not sure what they'd call a building game with little to no growth and plenty of space. It would certainly not fall under the category of 'strategy' game...

 

[DeletedUser9551]

Not calling out any one player, but why on earth would anybody play a real time strategy game with a city building basis and expect to NOT deal with issues of growth and limited space? Not sure what they'd call a building game with little to no growth and plenty of space. It would certainly not fall under the category of 'strategy' game...

Let s put it this way, what would you do if you keep running out of space to build , without being able to increase the space you need? you d have to keep destroying previous building you spent time and resources building/competing for, only to get rid of them? what s the point in building/competing for those then? might as well have only one of each? which we know is not advisable..

 

[DeletedUser12423]

Starting in chapter 6 a player can choose to dedicate a larger portion of their city to settlement buildings all the way until they hit the end of the last available chapter.

Do players actually do that, Sog? I'm close to Dwarves now and may not want to delete them. But I also care about rank. As far as buildings getting bigger and bigger, I think thats one of three elements of Elvenar lol

1st City Growth -Part of that is upgrading buildings, and that only makes sense for that to effect building size.
2nd Build Wealth -Which they have balanced pretty damn well.
and 3rd Build an Army to Defend it -Which is my favorite part of the game. I love the Combat System!

 

[DeletedUser9601]

Let s put it this way, what would you do if you keep running out of space to build , without being able to increase the space you need? you d have to keep destroying previous building you spent time and resources building/competing for, only to get rid of them? what s the point in building/competing for those then? might as well have only one of each? which we know is not advisable..

Our ancestors built some really nice mud huts that were really important at the time, and cost a lot of time and resources. I don't think anyone is crying that we built five-star luxury condos on the site of the old huts.

 

[The Unbeliever]

Interesting, I'd say perhaps equal to a max factory per square, BUT the true area should be factored in. e.g. a level 23 Gem factory takes up close to 200 squares once you count the res/culture/roads/workshops. Yes, the workshop gives points as well, so that is a factor.

This is all part of the other issues I have with the ranking system though- Workshops themselves shouldn't give more ranking points than a wonder that makes more supplies, nor should a factory give more ranking than an event building that makes more goods.

Poor Soggy, you apparently never read Inno's fine print on the whole issue;

'Welcome to Elvenar, where the rankings are made up & the points don't matter!'

 

[SoggyShorts]

@samidodamage Just a point of clarification, Elvenar is not a Real Time Strategy game, it's a city building simulation game. RTS games do not progress incrementally in turns, but rather are non-stop action, often without a pause feature (starcraft/age of empires etc)
Your point is still valid though, even SimCity had limited space.

Let s put it this way, what would you do if you keep running out of space to build , without being able to increase the space you need?

Replace outdated buildings with new more efficient ones that you have unlocked?

Do players actually do that, Sog?

Absolutely. It depends on what your goals are, but to move swiftly through the tech tree (rarely getting "techlocked") many players use 20-30% of their city for the guest races all the way from 6 to 12.

 

[Mykan]

One of the hints at the stat of the game is/was along the lines of build a few big buildings (factories) or lots of small ones, your choice. Factory number is almost the single biggest reason for space issues. There are some other but by later in the game space is plentiful and you have lots of options on how to use it.

 

[DeletedUser2424]

@SoggyShorts eye opening. You're a true non-conformist for adopting your own ranking point system. The efficiency point system.

My new position is having lots of wonders is efficient. But, you're best off investing your KP selectively in the best wonders: Mountain Halls / Dragon Abbey / GA / Sanctuary.

Here are two AW Calculators I had previously built. It includes:
1. Dragon Abbey Vs. Maze
2. Shrine of Shrewdy vs. An Extra Armory

http://bit.ly/ancient_wonder_calculators

Feel free to use them if you ever make a consolidated bundle.