Ugrading Premium Items

[Hob-nob]

I would like to able to upgrade some of the premium items. For example I love the Mysterious Gateway and the Elder Dragon Oracle but they are just not efficient in my Constructs town. If they could be upgraded to the comparative value of culture items similar to where I am I would love to have them in my city. Even upgrading with diamonds would be ok as I don't mind investing a little on something that makes me smile when opening my city. (Like the "I spy" does - it's so cute!)

 

[DeletedUser20951]

I WANT THIS. I'm a huge fan of variety, and this would be an easy, simple method to allow players to spruce up their cities without suffering weak culture returns due to their creativity.

 

[DeletedUser2870]

I agree. They need to address it anyway, since there are too many free-to-grab event buildings that outperform the premium buildings one can get for diamonds. A rather silly move on their part. Premium buildings that are bought for currency (even game-currency translates into real currency) should (almost) always outperform buildings one can get for free.
And it should be a simple thing to have 'chapter upgrades' for each of them.

 

[Deleted User - 312108]

I haven't bought any of the diamond culture buildings, but I would agree that there should be something that allows you to upgrade them just as you do event buildings.
The current model for them means that they are worth less long-term than an event culture building and decreases the likelihood for a player to invest in them. Given that some of them are very interesting to look at, it would be good to be able to advance them.

 

[DeletedUser20951]

I haven't bought any of the diamond culture buildings

I've never bought any, either, but I'm sure I would if the culture they granted remained competitive, to give more flair and flavor to my cities. As a player that spends diamonds on a very limited number of things, I think it speaks to how lucrative this change could be for the game.

 

[DeletedUser2870]

I have, at first, and it is just painful to have to scrap them because they aren't worth it anymore. Worse, for regular buildings one gets at least something back in the way of resources, for premium buildings not even that. So they give only a temporary advantage at best, at a pretty hefty price. Even more so considering a lot of the event-buildings outperform the premium ones, and they can be won for free or can be crafted.
So I have not bought any of them for a long time. And if they can't be upgraded, AND are outperformed, I can't see how I could be persuaded to ever do so again. I really feel the devs made a serious mistake in not figuring out the eventbuildings versus premium buildings and how that would effect their sales.

 

[Socrates28]

I did buy some premium buildings early in the game and found, as discussed, that for as beautiful as they were, I had to sell them because they were too big and I could get event buildings which did the same job in smaller footprints and with more output to boot. Pretty, but they had to go. Too bad, so sad.