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Analysing the real value of Great Buildings

numbrcrunchr

Master Corporal
I have repeated my survey of popular GBs amongst the elite players. The methodology is outlined in the results of the first survey done at the end of 2015, which can be viewed on page 4 of this thread. Results of the second and third survey are on page 5. I repeat the survey every 6 months or so.

Since the last survey, one new GB has come on to the scene: the Seed Vault.
There hasn’t been as much change in the players from the last survey. Only 4 of the last cohort of 20 from the 3rd survey have been replaced.

Without much ado, here are the latest numbers, from most popular to least popular:

987 Arc
917 Alcatraz
764 CdM
604 AO
561 Cape
516 Zeus
462 CF
458 IT
446 CoA
362 ToR
274 HS
170 LoA
152 Observatory
144 SMB
133 Habitat
116 RFP
108 SBC
98 DC
97 DT
95 RAH
82 Babel
71 Dresden
61 Atomium
22 Gaea
16 seed vault
15 Voyager V1
0 Colosseum
0 Capitol
0 ND
0 SN
0 LT

the biggest advances since the third survey are:
Arctic Orangery: +336, jumping from 9th to 4th.
The Arc: +201, remaining in 1st
CdM: +194, remaining in 3rd
Hagia Sophia: +172, jumping from 16th to 11th

the Seed Vault hasn’t had a good uptake since its release following the last survey.

the biggest decliner is the Atomium, losing 38 points, falling from 17th to 23rd.

at the last survey, no one owned the Colosseum or Space Needle. We now add the Capitol, ND, and Lotus Temple to this group, indicating that the few elite players who had them during previous surveys have now deleted them.

The Hagia Sophia has had an impressive reversal of fortune which was first noted at the last survey and continues. What’s going on? On closer scrutiny, the ownership rate of the Hagia amongst the 20 elites hasn’t changed since the last survey, but owners have been levelling it up at a quick pace. Those who didn’t own the Hagia at the the time of the 3rd survey did not build (or rebuild) it by the time of the 4th survey. All of the 5 GBs that produce fps are currently in the top 11 of the above list.
 
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numbrcrunchr

Master Corporal
I'm inclined to delay the next instalment of the survey on account of a new GB about to be released, the Kraken, which I suspect will get plenty of TLC from high era players and may well make it into the top 10 within 6 months, and possibly top 5 in a year.
 

DeletedUser110610

Thanks for this thread and the time series survey. I'm currently an Industrial Age player in an active fighting guild about to put the Arc in the mud but seriously short on space (looking forward to the Arc medal bonuses) so this has helped me decide how to make room ...
 

vikingraider

Emperor
A great thread. I'm in IndA too and have the top 14 GB's and Babel. I wonder where Oracle of Delphi and The Kraken would place?
 

DeletedUser100832

Talk about going with the crowd - I have 10 of the top 10 GB's in that list, and 13 of the top 14, and only two of the others.
 

numbrcrunchr

Master Corporal
Herewith the latest survey of popular GBs amongst the elites. It's been 8 months since the last one.
We have 2 new GBs on the scene since the last survey: the Kraken and the Atlantis Museum.
Only 1 player of the last cohort of 20 from the 4th survey has been replaced, continuing a trend of stability of the elite leaderboard.

1488 Arc
1211 CdM
1180 Alcatraz
1033 AO
859 Zeus
823 Cape
790 IT
731 CoA
698 Kraken
680 CF
454 ToR
436 HS
202 Observatory
197 LoA
176 SMB
157 Habitat
156 RFP
118 SBC
117 DT
116 RAH
107 DC
88 Babel
66 Dresden
37 seed vault
36 Atomium
31 Atlantis Museum
19 Gaea
0 Voyager V1
0 Colosseum
0 Capitol
0 ND
0 SN
0 LT

The biggest point advances since the fourth survey are:
The Arc: +501, remaining in 1st
CdM: +447, going from 3rd to 2nd
AO: +429, remaining at 4th

As predicted, of the 2 new GBs released in this period, the Kraken entered the top 10 with a bullet.

the biggest decliner continues to be the Atomium, losing 25 points, falling from 23rd to 25th.

at the last survey, none of the elites owned the Colosseum, SN, Capital, ND or LT. We now add the Voyager V1 to this list.

All of the 6 GBs that directly produce fps with their collection are currently in the top 12 of the list.
All of the 5 GBs that help with fighting are in the top 9.
 
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DeletedUser

It's very obvious that the first postings in this thread is before Guild Expeditions existed.
With GE Zeus is a must have!
 

DeletedUser113976

Augmenting the Happiness Building Layout

Okay I see a lot of nay-sayers about the Oracle of Delphi and frankly I cannot understand why. I mean THE most important thing in the game is space so whatever gives you the most bang for the space it requires is generally a very good building and the Oracle hands down beats them all -- at least when it comes to happiness -- I think it beats a lot of other buildings when it comes to supplies as well. Further when used in tandem with the Tower of Babel they can increase your population without reducing happiness and without using additional space starting as early as the Bronze Age. That last part in my book is a huge bonus. Still this is mostly an augmentation to the Happiness Layout in the first post so I will be focusing only on that here. The chart below (if I do it right) shows the Best Culture building and the Best decoration for each Age and the 2nd to last column is at what level the Oracle needs to be to beat that value and the O-Rto is the Oracle Happiness per square. The Ratio is basically the Happiness per Square of a Culture Building and the Decor is the Happiness per Square of a Decoration

AgeBuildingHappySizeRatioLengthWidthDecorSizeOracleO-Rto
BATavern280931.1133221133.33
IAPublic Bath5701635.6344261241.11
EMAMarket430947.783331.54353.33
HMAChurch520957.7833351467.78
LMAAcademy9801661.254442.54"**
CATrading Co.9001275.0034521583.33
InAWtr Pmp Sta1,7002085.00456016102.22
PECity Park2,8503095.005665.52"**
MEDrive-In2,80024116.676472.267122.22
PMEPublic Pool2,50020125.005477.548143.33
CnEMall3,65025146.005591.529165.56
TTower Club3,00020150.005410029165.56

This chart stops at Tomorrow as the Wiki only currently goes to Level 12 but as it can be seen at Level 10 the Oracle is the best Happiness producing building from the Bronze Age all the way up into Tomorrow. I have done some extrapolation on the happiness increase I think the Oracle does not fair as well after Tomorrow although it can still hold its own you just have to level pretty high. My extrapolation has it beating The Future at level 15, the Arctic Future at level 43 and the Oceanic Future at level 44 but considering that you can get this building as early as the Bronze Age that's pretty dang impressive.
 
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DeletedUser113976

Agree 100%.
If you get the blueprints for either of these two GBs, build them as soon as you can.
There are a few GBs which I would not build, in some situations:
- Tower of Babel (before High Middle Ages - it's good after that)
- Colosseum (in High Middle Ages or later, it's ok before then)
- Deal Castle (if you already have a lot of PvP medals)
- Royal Albert Hall (if you already have a Lighthouse and are short on space)
- Notre Dame (in Colonial age or later, or if you already have another happy GB; it's ok before then)

Actually I am running a Bronze Age city and I have both the Oracle of Delphi and the Tower of Babel -- these two buildings are allowing me to do much more with the minimal space one has available within the Bronze Age. This same concept then continues to extend forward into the later ages. As for the Colosseum I would never build this one it simply is to space prohibitive and 42 medals/square at level 10 is rather weak I do far better farming GBs and there are far much better GBs to put in its place also Notre Dame if you have the Oracle of Delphi that GB is a waste of space as the Oracle outstrips its production greatly at level 10 Oracle Happy/Square 189 Supplies/Square 777 while Notre Dame at level 10 is Happy/Square 162.5 Supplies/Square 302 and if you have the Oracle of Delphi and the Lighthouse you definitely do not need Notre Dame

Again the most important aspect to this game is Space -- it is by far the most limited item of the game and the hardest to come by -- so anything that maximizes your space usage is far better than most other things.
 

Emberguard

Legend
You're right the oracle is amazing for what it provides. However it's only geared for early game. If you've already got Alcatraz, Hagia Sophia, Dynamic Tower and other GBs then it may simply be unnecessary to use a oracle of Delphi. Why use another 3x3 when it'd provide something you can't use because it's already in excess?

By the time you get to lvl 10 completion the oracle has used 2,780 FPs for that 1,700 happiness. Assuming you use 20 of your recoupable FPs in a 24hr period then you have to wait 139 days to complete your oracle

Hagia Sophia on the other hand gives 1,700 happiness for the first 50 FPs, for lvl 10 you've spent 2,950 FPs for 6,400 happiness. That makes Hagia roughly 3.7x more efficient for happiness then the Oracle on FPs and it also gives back some FPs

Most players use the Alcatraz for happiness because of the troops it produces. That's 2,700 happiness for the first 60 FPs, the closest equivalent FPs spent to the other GBs we've looked at is reached at lvl 8 with 2,520 FPs and 8,750 happiness. By lvl 10 you have 11,300 happiness for 4,090 FPs.

Perhaps the closest comparison to the Oracle would be the Notre Dame that gives both supplies and happiness. It also gives 1,100 happiness in the first 50 FPs

In the end ok the oracle may have a smaller footprint in tile size, but that means almost nothing if the FPs put into it are barely giving anything back as FPs are the determining factor of what value anything in the game has.

By the time you get that oracle up the same FPs could have improved your tech tree giving back far more happiness and supplies either through better buildings or more advanced GBs. Even if they take more space it's still more efficient to ignore the oracle and simply reap the benefits of a scaled up economy in higher aged tech/gb's seeing as you also get more space to put stuff in further along

There's also one other factor you haven't considered when you say Oracle is more space efficient. You have very little ways to gather more lvls on the oracle because you can't gather more BPs except through contribution rewards or diamonds. All other options are scalable up with more lvls and would therefore be more efficient in the FPs spent as well as space occupied.


Now after all that if you still don't have any happiness GBs there's always the tavern for getting enthusiastic.
 
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DeletedUser

Actually I am running a Bronze Age city and I have both the Oracle of Delphi and the Tower of Babel -- these two buildings are allowing me to do much more with the minimal space one has available within the Bronze Age. This same concept then continues to extend forward into the later ages. As for the Colosseum I would never build this one it simply is to space prohibitive and 42 medals/square at level 10 is rather weak I do far better farming GBs and there are far much better GBs to put in its place also Notre Dame if you have the Oracle of Delphi that GB is a waste of space as the Oracle outstrips its production greatly at level 10 Oracle Happy/Square 189 Supplies/Square 777 while Notre Dame at level 10 is Happy/Square 162.5 Supplies/Square 302 and if you have the Oracle of Delphi and the Lighthouse you definitely do not need Notre Dame

Again the most important aspect to this game is Space -- it is by far the most limited item of the game and the hardest to come by -- so anything that maximizes your space usage is far better than most other things.

Well, I think in the short run I prefer the Alcatraz to the Oracle for happiness as it gives far more happiness per FP than the Oracle does.
Of course, with unlimited time and/or FP's, the Oracle is better, but since I'm limited with both I would rather have the Alcatraz even though it's HUGE.
Unattached troops also means that I can have a lot of different kinds of troops even if I only have one kind of barrack built at any given time.
 

Emberguard

Legend
yeah the oracle may be small but what's the point of spending a third of the year for what you can achieve in 3 days with another GB and be far further in the tech tree allowing everything else to be scaled up and more efficient for it.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet: Chateau Front. If you can get a chateau and a arc you could hypothetically have a city with nothing else as the Chateau doesn't rely on happiness. It can give you supplies, coins, FPS, goods etc without ever being effected by happiness
 

Agent327

Overlord
Actually I am running a Bronze Age city and I have both the Oracle of Delphi and the Tower of Babel -- these two buildings are allowing me to do much more with the minimal space one has available within the Bronze Age. This same concept then continues to extend forward into the later ages. As for the Colosseum I would never build this one it simply is to space prohibitive and 42 medals/square at level 10 is rather weak I do far better farming GBs and there are far much better GBs to put in its place also Notre Dame if you have the Oracle of Delphi that GB is a waste of space as the Oracle outstrips its production greatly at level 10 Oracle Happy/Square 189 Supplies/Square 777 while Notre Dame at level 10 is Happy/Square 162.5 Supplies/Square 302 and if you have the Oracle of Delphi and the Lighthouse you definitely do not need Notre Dame

Again the most important aspect to this game is Space -- it is by far the most limited item of the game and the hardest to come by -- so anything that maximizes your space usage is far better than most other things.

And since space is the most important aspect of the game, you dump the Oracle and Tower once you are through the early ages. Pretty soon Tower can not give you enough population. Only reason to keep it after that is the goods and there comes an end to that reason as well. You are looking at this as a bronze age player. Follow this path and you are wasting a lot of fp's.
 

DeletedUser113976

Keep in mind folks we are talking most about just the "Happiness" factor not all those items that begin to make it hard to make a solid comparison. Yes every building needs to be analyzed for its effectiveness in what you as a player are aiming at startegically in the short and long run. But as I denoted this was predominately an analyzation of the Happiness factor of the Oracle.

Now I agree if you are already established and have already built various GBs sure going back and picking up a GB is probably not the most effective thing to do but was mostly talking from the get go point of view not for some long time pre-established player you has gotten numerous other GBs already put into play.

Emberguard wrote : "In the end ok the oracle may have a smaller footprint in tile size, but that means almost nothing if the FPs put into it are barely giving anything back as FPs are the determining factor of what value anything in the game has."

Well you and I will have to agree to disagree on this. As FPs (in my book) are very easy to come by and as such are a fairly insignificant matter when determining the overall value of any building. SPACE is THE MOST critical resource by far heck even Diamonds come in as mediocre second when compared to Space. For Space is the only truly limited resource in the game -- you simply eventually run out of it. Which currently makes it the ONLY resource that does that -- period. So when weighing the value of a building Space consideration should be an extreme factor with all the other items being rather tertiary in comparison.

Now of course trying to figure out how to translate the cost of Space into FPs is rather difficult since Space does not cost FPs -- It does cost Diamonds (something worth more than FPs), it costs Medals (? on par with FPs maybe), and it costs Coins (not worth as much as FPs). So let's say Medals are on par with FPs value wise (could be a wrong assumption) and that the average cost of a square when factoring the costs from BA all the way through OF would be say 5,000 FPs (which I feel could be very conservative estimate) this has the following results.

The Oracle would initially costs 45,000 FPs to put into place while the Hagia Sophia would cost a womping 210,000 FPs to put into place. Now that 3,000 you spend leveling the Oracle up to level 10 becomes rather insignificant when you factor in the cost of the space. Heck if we drop the average cost to only 500 FPs per square we are talking 4,500 FPs for the Oracle making the space value still exceed the leveling value. So as you can see not bringing space into your evaluation of the value of a GB totally skews the results into an completely inaccurate estimation. I do look forward to anyone's feedback on this. Perhaps a better more accurate assessment of what the Average FP Cost would be per Square so that a more accurate evaluation of a buildings worth could actually be assessed.

Emberguard wrote : "By the time you get that oracle up the same FPs could have improved your tech tree giving back far more happiness and supplies either through better buildings or more advanced GBs. Even if they take more space it's still more efficient to ignore the oracle and simply reap the benefits of a scaled up economy in higher aged tech/gb's seeing as you also get more space to put stuff in further along"

I will definitely disagree with this one because I believe many have found out that leveling too fast is not a good thing to do as it makes the city extremely inefficient over the long haul. So while I am sitting in BA working at optimizing my city I am dumping my excess FPs into my GBs. Which for a current starting player you get the Oracle for free and further so far it seems that you get the Babel and Zeus fairly quickly just by Aiding folks -- curious what other GBs can you quickly get within the Bronze Age?? Definitely not the Hagia Sophia nor any of the other GBs you mention. So this concept is another factor that you do not seem to consider when calcuating the worth of a GB and that is how quickly can you actually obtain said building and under what circumstances. Keep in mind not everyone gets the option at early Ages to farm BPs for those buildings you suggest are by far better. I mean seriously the Oracle is absolutely free and you get it almost immediately -- there is absolutely no other GB that can make that claim.

asdfasdf1234 wrote: "I prefer the Alcatraz to the Oracle for happiness as it gives far more happiness per FP than the Oracle does."

Okay but as I have stated FPs are rather insignificant when compared to Space and at Level 10 the Oracle gives 189 Happiness per Square while Alcatraz at Level 10 only gives 169 Happiness per square. Grant you when I get to the point where I can actually put down the Alcatraz I will probably do it but not for the Happiness but for the Units it gives.

Emberguard wrote: "oracle may be small but what's the point of spending a third of the year for what you can achieve in 3 days with another GB"

Okay I am not understanding this statement without clarification it seems merely like exaggerated statistics. So please clarify what you mean by this time comparison that you are making.

Emberguard wrote: "be far further in the tech tree allowing everything else to be scaled up and more efficient"

Yes I concur going up the Tech Tree makes everything more efficient but I partially addressed that by pointing out at what level the Oracle would need to be to be more efficient with Happiness at each Tech Level. I have also stated that Leveling too fast (at least with the folks I have talked to thus far) seems to be universally seen as a bad idea and even if it is not a completely bad idea it is not seen as the best idea. That said while I think taking ones time to go to each new Tech Level is a good thing, it is a different subject than what is being discussed here.

Agent327 wrote: "And since space is the most important aspect of the game, you dump the Oracle and Tower once you are through the early ages. Pretty soon Tower can not give you enough population. Only reason to keep it after that is the goods and there comes an end to that reason as well. You are looking at this as a bronze age player. Follow this path and you are wasting a lot of fp's."

No I am not looking at this as just a Bronze Age player so far Happiness wise (which was what was being discussed here) the Oracle goes all the way through to The Future and is still more effective than any other building or Great Building per square. As for Population this was about Happiness and simply mentioned the benefit of combining it with Babel early on to conserve space. I would have to do a separate analysis (which I have not done) as to see how effective per square the Babel is but again that is a different subject matter. Okay I apologize for my part in bringing in outside elements into this conversion but in my defense I did so to address many of the other outside elements that are being used to diss the basic information I put forth.

Keep in mind everyone -- as I stated in my initial post -- this was to address the Oracle's efficiency when it comes to Happiness not is overall benefit compared to other buildings -- mainly because that not only brings in numerous other hard to quantify elements but it also brings in strategical concerns which run the gambit. The purpose of this information is to help someone decide what is strategically the best path for them by giving them more accurate information to make their comparisons and evaluations on.
 
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