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    Your Elvenar Team

Why upgrade your manufactories?

  • Thread starter Deleted User - 4404748
  • Start date

Deleted User - 4404748

Guest
Hi there!

I'm in Chapter 7 (fairies) on mobile in US, and had a question about the efficiency of upgrading my manufactories (+ workshops) beyond a certain point, as measured by effective # of squares used (actual building + road + supporting buildings for culture and pop + roads for supporting buildings). I believe that all costs can be boiled down to "culture per tile" aka CULTURE TILE, as even population buildings need culture. Also, I assume space is the most valuable asset, followed by time. Remaining materials (coins/supplies/goods) are not important in the long-run (say, looking out a year).

I tried this (old?) efficiency calculator by @Serrif (now no longer on the forum) and commented on by @SoggyShorts: https/us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/elvenar-efficiency-calculator.17073/

According to this, ALL goods producing buildings and workshops get LESS efficient after Chapter 5 (Dwarves), by production per culture tile. Does this mean that it's better to build new factories and get them to chapter 5 levels than to upgrade existing ones beyond that? I'd love to get another pair of eyes on the math and logic.

I can see a few reasons where this doesn't hold:
1) time value: it takes much more time and micromanaging to build and maintain another 1+ buildings from scratch - however, this is more a one-time cost than ongoing.
2) one-time building costs: upgrading from scratch costs more (coin/supplies/goods) than getting the next big upgrade - this seems less important assuming goods production is not an issue for you
3) Enchantments like PP/MM apply to single buildings, so if you use them well and often they can more than offset the efficiency loss
4) ranking points?
5) cool-looking city, shows progression to your FA/visitors, builds your brand

Thoughts?
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
I couldn't get the link to work. But here are some comments anyway.

I'm not one to over-calculate things in comparing different resources. A base line "equivalency" measurement where every type of production is reduced to a single value system (in this case culture per square if I read it right) and compared, I think, assumes too much about the comparative value of this resource verses that. I think your question is efficiency, and there are, I believe only two questions a player needs to consider.

First, am I producing enough of the particular resource and will I continue to do so into the near future? Every resource, coins, supplies, goods, mana, seed, and all the rest, has a supply/demand ratio that changes as you go through the game. If I am producing more coins than I can use and thus are having to visit the wholesaler several times a day (and paying through the nose for goods as I cycle through them two or three times to create storage for my continued coin production), then I have too many coin producing buildings. Ditto for everything else. Thus, keeping my supply a bit ahead of demand in each category of resource is easier to monitor even if it may not be absolutely the most efficient.

Second, are my goals really an efficient city? This may seem counter-intuitive, but, if I want the absolutely the most efficient city I can have, I will have to be like the two referenced players and probably develop my own ever changing statistical model of the game. Since Inno is constantly adjusting and adding things, and since my buildings are constantly changing, I'll need constantly work and rework my model. Some people really do love such a detailed and, in my opinion, complex analysis, but is it right for me?

In the end the efficiency of your city can be 98% of what the absolute maximum possible with only about half the work. In any complex system achieving the last 2% of efficiency is usually extremely costly and may not be worth the effort. For this reason I measure each resource and the buildings producing that resource as independently as possible (since some produce more than one resource it's a bit of a "judgement call" in some cases), and use the most efficient for that particular resource. I think I'm probably 98% efficient that way.

Those are my thoughts. Hope they are useful.

AJ
 

Deleted User - 3932582

Guest
According to this, ALL goods producing buildings and workshops get LESS efficient after Chapter 5 (Dwarves)
This is just not accurate, not by a long shot. Here is a ballpark calculation that can show how off that statement is.

Let's look at Elven planks, and use L6 vs L31 for maximum effect. Let's say we want to produce 1000 planks per 3 hours. We can ignore boost levels as the same boost would apply in both cases, so let's just use base production. L6 planks produce 8/3h, while L31 produce 750/3h. So you'll need 125x L6 planks and only 1.33x L31 planks for the same output. I think you can see where this is going. L6 planks are small - 2 tiles - but 125x of them are 250 tiles right there. We can even ignore all culture and pop requirements here as that won't be necessary.

L31 planks are 25 tiles, so 1.33x of them is about 33.3 tiles. Without doing exact math, this production can be supported by ~1.5 Magic Residences or ~3 regular Residences, for another 30-60 tiles for pop. All these culture requirements can be covered with 2-3 Lava Codexes which is another 8-12 tiles, for grand total of 75-100 tiles all-in. Which is vastly smaller footprint than corresponding L6 setup at 250+ tiles.

Basically, the most recent manufacturies are the most efficient if you have high efficiency pop (e.g. Magic Residences, top culture/pop etc). If you're less efficient there (e.g. regular residences etc) then it is certainly possible for the most efficient manufacturing setup to be a chapter or so behind. But not back all the way to early chapters.

EDIT: And anyone who have seen workshop production increases in chapter 15 won't be skipping that - best upgrade that happened to WS probably ever.
 
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DeletedUser2959

Guest
Not only do higher level manufactories produce more good per square but they require fewer road tiles overall. One of the coolest parts of this game is resource management. You have to make decisions every few hours or so that impact what options you will have later. As long as you only make boosted manufactories (please, please only make boosted... otherwise you'll get frustrated and quit and that'd be sad) upgrading your buildings is a great investment.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
There is the occasional level where you backslide, which can be frustrating, but on average higher level = more efficient. And once you need sentient goods, all the chapter five manufactories in the world aren't going to help, because you need a factory at about level 24 to produce sentient goods.
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
I made a spreadsheet that worked out stuff/square (e.g., population/square for residences) where the square 'cost' of the building included all of the inputs. So a manufactory 'size' includes the size of the workshops to pay for production, the size of the residences to provide the population (for both the manufactory and the workshops), the roads required, and the size of culture buildings needed to provide culture for all of that. I only looked at the 'best' level available in each chapter.

For every chapter, things only get better. Goods show the least improvement, but it's still always better. For Elves, Ch6 Silk (L15) is 147.88 goods per square per day. Ch7 Silk (L19) is 159.72. Workshops go from 834 to 938; Residences go from 46 to 54. [T1 and T3 don't get an upgrade in Faeries, but they get slightly more efficient because the underlying workshops and residences get more efficient.]

I didn't do the numbers for every individual level -- it is entirely possible that an L16 Silk is worse than an L15 Silk, but if you upgrade to the highest level available in each chapter, you are always better off than where you were in the previous chapter.

[I also did this when C15 was the last chapter -- I haven't bothered to key in all of the data for the last chapters.]
 

mucksterme

Oh Wise One
According to this, ALL goods producing buildings and workshops get LESS efficient after Chapter 5 (Dwarves), by production per culture tile.

If this is true why are my 2 Steel factories producing way more than 7 used to?
and while we're at it why do i even still have 2?
all my T1 goods are over 2 million
what am i doing?

ok
you can probably only respond to one of those questions
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Which population/culture per square did you use to make these calcuations ?
For population, I used residences.
For culture, I used a number I made up that seemed typical for event buildings (because the culture for event buildings is almost double standard culture buildings).

At the time, that was generally what I got from events in 'large quantities' and as culture buildings already have to be replaced every chapter, it seemed like a no-brainer. Clearly your choice of event buildings can skew everything, but it is a fair apples-to-apples comparison.

I believe I also assumed 3h productions in both workshops and manufactories and a 700% boost (max but with no MH). Your actual production values may differ, but it should still be relatively the same.

If you want the raw data (as @wtfever hinted at), you can see the spreadsheet here:

[My original goal was to figure out what the true cross-tier trading rate should be -- this was when the trader was still doing 1:4:16.]
 

Deleted User - 4646370

Guest
So it looks like your calculations show that upgrading everything in the chapter is worth... but to see if upgrading factories is worth you need to calcuulate benefits per square of old factories with new residences (not with old).
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Fascinating!

I had never thought to ask that question and I realized that I could get my formulas to work this out by lying about the size/power of my manufactories at higher levels:

E-M 016 015 014 013 012 011 010 009 008 007 006 005 004 003 002 001
L31 540 510
L27 587 560 484 418 372
L23 566 546 484 430 391 351 317 268
L19 506 494 450 413 384 354 325 285 236 222 198
L15 432 425 398 377 357 337 316 288 251 239 217 186 179
L09 290 288 278 272 262 255 244 234 217 210 197 177 171 168 098
L05 183 182 178 176 172 169 163 160 153 149 142 131 127 126 083 075

E-C 016 015 014 013 012 011 010 009 008 007 006 005 004 003 002
L31 373
L27 462 437 348 296
L23 473 452 367 320 288 256 229
L19 441 427 356 320 294 266 242 208 170 159
L15 381 372 320 295 275 254 234 207 174 165 147 124
L10 302 297 266 253 240 228 215 198 174 167 153 132 128 125
L06 205 203 188 182 176 169 162 153 139 135 126 112 108 107 061

E-E 016 015 014 013 012 011 010 009 008 007 006 005 004 003
L27 348 328 218
L23 364 346 230 201 181 160
L19 352 337 229 204 186 167 151 130 107
L15 314 303 215 194 179 163 149 130 109 103 092 077
L08 228 223 173 161 152 142 133 121 106 101 092 079 076
L04 147 145 122 116 111 106 100 093 084 081 074 066 064 063


What appears above is using a given level of Elven Marble, Crystal, and Elixer manufactory with residences/workshops/culture buildings of the given chapter. (It's trivially clear to see that upgrading culture/residences/workshops always makes sense. The six different manufactories for a given level and Tier are very close to each other -- minor differences in yield due to their different sizes -- so I expect their cross-level comparisons to be almost identical.) [Units are goods per square per day assuming 3h production.]

The way to read this is find what chapter you are in along the top and then look down to see what manufactory makes the most sense to use. Looking at the various columns, it is interesting: In fact, after L15, your second best chapter of upgrade is always best.

So yes, the direct efficiency (goods per manufactory square) always increases, but is offset by an increased culture/pop/WS cost that ends up costing more than the increased efficiency -- at least until your culture/pop/WS gets more efficient. It also suggests that if you use magic or event buildings that have a higher efficiency than normal buildings, you may be able to get to the break-even point sooner at which point the higher level manufactory does make sense.

The argument about sentients is irrelevant here: You produce sentients in your sentient boost which is not your normal boost -- When you get to Ch12, you will have to build a L27 sentient manufactory but your normal goods can stay at L23. If you're comparing sentient production, you only look at the L27+ rows but that still suggests that it doesn't make sense to upgrade your sentient T1 to L31 yet.

[I also went in and keyed in the Ch16 data. As far as I can tell, the new T2's absolutely stink -- as you can see by following the top diagonal edge.]
 
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michmarc

Well-Known Member
(Thanks forum for removing all of the spaces from my tables so that things no longer line up nicely. :()
(Fixed it using leading zeroes)
 
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Ashrem

Oh Wise One
(Thanks forum for removing all of the spaces from my tables so that things no longer line up nicely. :()
(Fixed it using leading zeroes)
Not as convenient for such large tables, but you might find the post on using table code handy

The argument about sentients is irrelevant here:
Not very relevant, but not entirely irrelevant. It's expensive, but during a shortage, if you have lots of seeds, you can produce a mising Sentient in your normal factories. Doesn't matter as much as it did a year or two back, since there are a lot more sentient trades, but it got me past a couple of techs during a drought of Moonstone in Elementals. It aalso has some relevance inthe opposite direction (negative) for people who have been running 24 hour productions because they only play once a day. If they take their factories to 24, they will only be able to do nine hour runs, and might lose out substantially.
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Not very relevant, but not entirely irrelevant. It's expensive, but during a shortage, if you have lots of seeds, you can produce a missing Sentient in your normal factories.

Also, someone pointed out that during events, a 3h sentient production "counts" as a 1d normal production. [And 9h for 2d]
 

Deleted User - 3932582

Guest
[I also went in and keyed in the Ch16 data. As far as I can tell, the new T2's absolutely stink -- as you can see by following the top diagonal edge.]
IIRC L31 T2 is comparable to L27 in chapter 16 if all your culture/pop is about 1200 each per tile (e.g. each culture/pop tile is 1200 culture AND 1200 pop on average). Which is impossible, and it's not even close - e.g. VR3s in chapter 16 have efficiency of only half that (~600 of each per tile).
 

Deleted User - 4646370

Guest
I think L31 T2s being that bad may be a consequence of big workshop improvement in chapter 15...
Lookig at @michmarc's chart, we can see that, outside of chapters where T1 has more upgrades than T2, max level T1 produce about 1.4× as much as max level T2.
But, when workshops got a big improvement in production in chapter 15, it increased efficiency of T2 much more than efficiency of T1, as T2 costs 4× as much supplies as T1. So L27 T2 are now proucing much more than 1.4× less than L27 T1.
Then, a L31 T2 producing 1.4× less goods than L31 T1 has to be much worse than a L27 T2. And I can't imagine how terrible L31 T3 will be if Inno thought the upgrade costs this way.

PS : before chapter 15 workshop imbalance this was a well working system... if in chapter 3N-2 (N= 3 or 4) level 4N+7 T1s are producing 1.4× as much as level 4N+7 T2s, three chapters later the ratio is lower as workshops got upgraded, while ratio between level 4N+11 factories T1 vs. T2 is 1.4 too. So in chapter 3N+1, T1 upgrade to max level is more interesting than T2 upgrade to max level. But, when T1 upgrades were unlocked in chapter 3N, they were less interesting than in chapter 3N+1... in fact, as much as T2 upgrades in chapter 3N+1 if it's well balanced. (Interest of upgrades being measured with ratios).
(Note : This being said, in fact the only way to counterbalance ch. 15 workshop improvement would have been a quite big improvement in residence efficiency in chapter 16 so that L31 T1s become more intereresting than L27 T1s that produce only 1.3× as much as L27 T2, allowing to balance L31 T2 so that they produce 1,4× less than L31 T1, and slightly less (between ×0.9 and ×1) than L27 T2s. All of this could be applied with chapter 17 and T2 vs. T3 as well.)
 
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DeletedUser5371

Guest
just remember that factories have to be at an upper level to eventually produce sentient goods and some of the event quests have called for productions from chapter specific upgrades....this trumps all research about efficiency...lol
 

Laochra

Well-Known Member
I have found that at the Fairies chapter, I was producing an excess of supplies in my 10 workshops. I noticed that an advanced member of one of my FS only had 5 workshops, so I asked them if that was enough for where they were in the game. They said they had a surplus of supplies, so I decided that of my 10 workshops, I would only upgrade 5 of them beyond level 15 (to save on space). Of my 3 active cities, two just started Dragons & one is in the middle of WoodElves & I have not run low on supplies.
 
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