• Dear forum reader,
    To actively participate in our forum discussions or to start your own threads, in addition to your game account, you need a forum account. You can
    REGISTER HERE!
    Please ensure a translation into English is provided if your post is not in English and to respect your fellow players when posting.
  • We are looking for you!
    Always wanted to join our Support or Forum Team? We are looking for enthusiastic moderators!
    Take a look at our recruitment page for more information and how you can apply:
    Apply
  • Forum Contests

    Won't you join us for out latest contest?
    You can check out the newest one here.

Analysing the real value of Great Buildings

DeletedUser100832

I am surprised that the Blue Galaxy is as popular as it is. It seems to me to have rather poor rewards for its size.
 

Agent327

Overlord
I am surprised that the Blue Galaxy is as popular as it is. It seems to me to have rather poor rewards for its size.

It doesn't and certainly not when you can get it up to the higher levels. 2x the proceeds of the Maharaja's palace or a Terrace Farm isn't that bad.
 

DeletedUser96901

45 FP on average at level 67 isn't so bad

only bad thing is that it stop increasing the amount of collects at that level
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Zeratul 2.0

Lieutenant Colonel
Analysis of Great Building value

Hagia Sophia: Very good (requires at least level 4)
The Hagia Sophia is also large (7x6=42 squares), providing happiness and forge points.
At 6400 Happiness, a maxed Hagia Sophia makes the Colosseum look puny. That's the equivalent of 12.3 Churches, or 4.3 (LMA premium) Palaces, but in much less space of course. So like the Colosseum, the space needed to build this GB is well worthwhile. That is, it saves you both space AND multiple happiness building costs. (Read the Castel del Monte section for another interesting comparison).
Note that as discussed in the comparison of happiness GBs, if you build the Hagia Sophia in the Early Middle Ages, you will need to get it up to at least level 3 for it to be Good as a happiness building (i.e. better than other cultural buildings of that Age). You will also need to get your GB improved by one level per age that you progress in research, for it to keep pace. So by the Industrial Age, this GB is only worthwhile (for Happiness) if you can get it to at least level 7.
....
The daily 6 forge points benefit is harder to quantify. Research-wise, you simply end up being held up by unlock costs of technologies. So the main benefit of those forge points is in donation races when contributing to other Great Buildings - it will be significantly easier for you to win first place to get more blueprints and medals that way. Quite simply, the Hagia Sophia allows you to get more GBs (and allows you to get them levelled up faster too). For the altruistic team players, it also allows getting level 0 GBs of other players into production faster, which will be more of a challenge over time.
Note: Subtracting the Statue's of Zeus's 6 spaces from the Castel Del Monte's 25 squares [for same benefits], it seems that 19 squares of the Castel are used for the forge point production. Presumably the Hagia Sophia uses 19 squares for fp production, which means that the 6400 happiness is coming from only 23 squares (vs only 3900 happiness for the Notre Dame's 24 squares).
....
Bottom line: strongly recommended, and much better than the Colosseum, if you have a choice.
With the ongoing Halloween Event, I start to wander about this question:
If I can obtain and upgrade the Graveyard to the most advanced form -- Necropolis, should I demolish the HS, replacing it with the Graveyard?
As commonly known (as well as seemingly pointed out by the OP, whose exmplanation of the FP production part is hard to "stomach") FP production from Hagia is very limited, leaving only the Happiness part at question.
Now, the Necropolis provides 3k Happiness even in HMA, a very early era and it can be polished, and Happiness doubled, i.e. 6k.
The space required is 3x7=21 squares and it requires no FP inventment.
Meanwhile, as pointed out in the original post, survey shows "elite players who had the building before, leveled it up; but no one built the thing from anew." -- I think that also means it is not worth it. The leveling-up could be a measure for damage control, not to waste the points previously invested. In such circumstance the Hagia is worth it only because "any GB is worth it, after you level it up super high."
Conclusion: I think the Graveyard can render Hagia useless. I'm also thinking to change my profile to "please polish my Grave" when and if I demolish Hagia and build a Graveyard in its place.

---- moreover ----
By comparing the Hagia Sophia wikipage and Necropolis wikepage side by side, you can see that a polished Necropolis in Ocean Future (in an end game sense) still produces more happiness (24k) than a Level-100 Hagia which had cost 5k FP investment (20k happiness) (correction: 5k FP for a single level. The total cost is 205.4k FP investment from Level-1 through level-100, manually calculated).

The downside, I'm thinking, is that perhaps you can't obtain so many upgrade kits for the graveyard in only one Halloween event in one year. Perhaps it takes two or more years.

--- further analysis --
The Level-100 Hagia produces 60FP/day. It will take 205,422/60 = 3427 days or about 10 years to earn the invested forge points back. Therefore, after all, Graveyard means dead. Hagia on the contrary is like, alive. After 10 years, Hagia produces about the same amount of happiness as Necropolis but the net forge-point production went from negative to positive.
 
Last edited:

Emberguard

Legend
@Bewildered Zeratul It's not quite as simple as that.

If you're only using the Hagia on its own and you're only ever self lvling then yeah, it's not going to fully give back the FPs invested for getting to lvl 100.

However chances are to get it anywhere remotely near lvl 100 you're going to have to do FP swaps - meaning it doesn't actually cost 205.4k FPs. Any contribution rewards you get from swaps are a result of lvl'ing your Hagia and is essentially a refund - bringing down the overall cost of that GB. If you combine it with a lvl 80 arc, you could in effect lvl that Hagia for free or very cheaply. In which case any FPs generated would be pure profit.

Lvl 14 would get you 9 FPs a day and take around 2 years to return its income. The significance of that is if you got shrines of knowledge and tried to fit them in the same area you'd be able to fit 9 of them, not including road connections needed. The graveyard on the other hand takes 3 halloween events to gain the full graveyard - if they keep bringing it back

Personally I don't have the Hagia for either FP or Happiness alone. I have it for both functions. As I also need other GBs for happiness I combine the load between GBs that each have a unique second function. It's cheaper to lvl 2 or 3 happiness GBs between them then to only ever lvl a single GB. The FP output I find to be quite valuable as even if it doesn't return explicitly the amount put into it, those FPs were dead before I invested them. Anything generated from the FP bar has no value unless I put it somewhere


It's one of those things where it can be worth it - but it's the supporting infrastructure and whether it's replacing anything that'll determine it's actual value in your city. If you reach EMA and find you've got a significant amount of space taken up by cultural buildings then it may be worth putting a Hagia just to free up some land. Which should allow you to speed up other areas of the game such as goods production or build more troops. At just lvl 1 the Hagia is worth 4 cultural buildings in EMA - which is about the amount of stuff I abolished when placing the Hagia in two of my cities. If I'm going to stay in that age a while anyway I'm going to need somewhere to place the FPs so they're not wasted - might as well take the Hagia up a couple lvls


Now for you depending on what age you're in and how many event buildings you have there may be no point in bothering with the Hagia. You may find your city would be better off with the Graveyard - or with neither. Just depends on whether they're taking up new space, or replacing something else in your city in a more efficient manner then the current occupier

Of course the higher Era you are the higher FP requirement for events as well, so while the Hagia in itself may appear inefficient it may be the difference between completing an event and missing out on a prize if tearing it down isn't replaced with more FP production
 
Last edited:

dimondus

Captain
If I can obtain and upgrade the Graveyard to the most advanced form -- Necropolis, should I demolish the HS, replacing it with the Graveyard?
Its strange that you seem to be an older player and ask such question.
Motivating Graveyard uses 1 person's motivation action that could be used on SoK or any other coin/supply production building.
Any building with only happiness on it is useless. That is why Inno put supply boost on Haunted tower, though I think the bonus could be higher.
Conclusion: I think the Graveyard can render Hagia useless. I'm also thinking to change my profile to "please polish my Grave" when and if I demolish Hagia and build a Graveyard in its place.
Good luck with that when everyone push Aid button and in couple ages from HMA your Graveyard will never receive polishing.
 
Last edited:

dimondus

Captain
Lvl 14 would get you 9 FPs a day and take around 2 years to return its income. The significance of that is if you got shrines of knowledge and tried to fit them in the same area you'd be able to fit 9 of them, not including road connections needed.
I think you meant 8FP at level 14 - still worth the effort and its dirt cheap to upgrade it to that level.
My OFE city has zero cultural buildings - HS (lvl 10), Traz (lvl 10) and FoD (lvl 8) with other event buildings that have culture as a secondary bonus cover my needs nicely with around 35k extra unused happiness.
In my other IndA city I also have no culture buildings but its much younger and I noticed that I got rid of all culture buildings in HMA after I built HS. :)
 
Last edited:

DeletedUser96901

The Level-100 Hagia produces 60FP/day. It will take 205,422/60 = 3427 days or about 10 years to earn the invested forge points back.
only if an idiot makes 100% of his own hagia
smart people let the places be taken with 190% sponsoring

and smart people stop at level 80

and if you consider those points it would take less than 2 years to be profitable

EDIT:
it needs 23,321 FP to reach level 80 if all places are taken with 190%
/48 = 486 days that are 1.33 years
(without considering collect of the FP after each level up. with that is would be less than 1.25)

and even with only 180% sponsoring (and if you guild doesn't give that to its members you should search a better one) it would need 28,345 that are
28,345 / 48 = 591 days = 1.62 years
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Emberguard

Legend
I think you meant 8FP at level 14 - still worth the effort and its dirt cheap to upgrade it to that level.
My OFE city has zero cultural buildings - HS (lvl 10), Traz (lvl 10) and FoD (lvl 8) with other event buildings that have culture as a secondary bonus cover my needs nicely with around 35k extra unused happiness.
In my other IndA city I also have no culture buildings but its much younger and I noticed that I got rid of all culture buildings in HMA after I built HS. :)
Whoops!~ Lvl 15 then :P

For the players that skip ahead in eras I could see an argument for building the Hagia last or avoiding it if there's enough FP production from everything else in their city and there's a different aspect that needs boosting. The alcatraz would provide a lot of Happiness on its own and other buildings such as CDM and Arc would probably be more attractive for the FP factor.

However for me in the city where I'm only building GBs upto the age/era I'm in (Houndsmoor) about half way through Colonial Age I found myself building the Hagia, the F. Dresden and the Tower of Babel. My FP income was enough that it was pretty quick to bring up the Hagia, but low enough that it was clear if I was ever to go up an age events would require another FP source. While I could rely solely on Goods buildings I decided if I wanted to boost my current age goods production it'd be more productive to increase the amount of sources that don't require housing to do so rather then trying to work around squeezing in more goods buildings and housing.

The babel is a bit of a funny thing. Everyone complains how terrible it is but I've come across advanced players in future era or beyond that put a babel down for the first time because they need extra goods and it doesn't take up much space. It's certainly not something worth taking to lvl 10 when you're still in bronze/iron age - but it's not necessarily a GB that should be discounted altogether either. Maybe its value is more in later eras when your income is higher and in cities that just can't seem to find that last Lighthouse BP and want to move onto the next age
 
Last edited:

DeletedUser111866

Good luck with that when everyone push Aid button and in couple ages from HMA your Graveyard will never receive polishing.
Not true regarding not hitting a graveyard. When you aid, the game engine first selects mo/po (50/50) and only then checks if there are targets for selected action. Therefore, if you have a hundred SoKs but 10 culture/deco, your graveyard will get polished on average after 20 aiders, because if aid selects polish and there is something not polished, it will get polished even if you have a priority motivation target (or a hundred of them) unmotivated.
 

DeletedUser96901

When you aid, the game engine first selects mo/po (50/50) ..., if you have a hundred SoKs...
wrong
first it looks if there are buildings with priority

if you have 100 SoK the first 100 aids go to them (if you don't have buildings with even higher priority)

because FP have highest priority(then goods, medals, BP, power)
and if all priority buildings are motivated then and only then it makes the 50/50 between mo/po

it will get polished even if you have a priority motivation target (or a hundred of them) unmotivated.
nope

priority aid is before any polish
 

Emberguard

Legend
@ih8regin that might have been the case at one point, but there was an overhaul of how the aid button works with this update which has since been announced and added to live servers. I haven't seen anything that would indicate a 50/50 at any time as far as since that update goes. In which case if the 50/50 has been removed then the graveyards priority would be pretty low on the list - but self aid kits are always an option.
 

Shad23

Emperor
other option if you want only mo is eliminate deco's from city i practicly have no building to polish in my city my Traz gives me enough hapiness for my city
 

numbrcrunchr

Master Corporal
Without much ado, here is the latest update of my twice yearly survey of the GB ownership and levels amongst the elites. See previous post on page 4 of this thread for methodology. I only include the top 10 active players from 2 worlds. Previous results are in this thread.
Since the last survey, we have a new GB on the scene: the Terracotta Army.


4 players from the last group of 20 from the 5th survey have been replaced.


here are the latest numbers, in descending order:



1757 Arc
1624 Alcatraz
1392 CdM
1266 AO
1187 Cape
1151 Zeus
1090 TA
1060 IT
1055 Kraken
1030 CoA
918 CF
585 The Blue Galaxy
495 HS
458 ToR
442 SMB
354 Observatory
292 LoA
232 RFP
206 SBC
199 Habitat
143 Babel
129 DT
127 DC
120 seed vault
109 RAH
60 Dresden
58 Atlantis Museum
19 Gaea
0 Atomium
0 Voyager V1
0 ND
0 LT
0 SN
0 Capitol
0 Colosseum



the biggest advances since the fourth survey are:

Alcatraz: +254, going from 3rd to 2nd
SMB: +174, but remaining at 15th.
Zeus: +142, from 9th to 6th.

the newly released TA debuts at 7th position, not surprisingly.

The gap between first and second has narrowed, from 242 to 133. Will the Arc lose its prized first position soon?


decliners:
HS: -62, down from 11th to 13th

The Atomium and Voyager V1 now join the ND, LT, SN, Capitol and Colosseum with scores of 0.
 
Last edited:
Top