First, it goes for any shrines or buildings that produce goods when motivated, then it chooses to either polish or motivate, then it goes from the highest age to the lowest.
I'm sorry, but this is actually incorrect. That is, unless there has been a significant change in some recent update that you can link us to.
Back in the 2015 Easter Event, we used to have to build decorations in our cities for other players to hide Easter Eggs in. (The 2016 Easter event removed this special event game mechanic of hiding eggs in players cities.) During that 2015 event, and like most other players, I built a small field of lower-age decorations in my cities across several worlds, in the hopes that the AID button would not polish these decorations and instead hit my massive fields of HMA Alchemists or Colonial Age Clockmakers. Well that did not happen. All of my Iron Age decorations were always aided
before my Colonial Age Clockmakers.
So at that time, I scoured the forums looking for what method the madness that is the Aid button could possible be using. Theories ranged far-and-wide, so I decided to do some testing in my off-worlds (with the help of other players). And I proved across several cities in several worlds (at that time) that the age of the buildings is NOT a determining factor of what gets aided first.
Below is a copy-and paste of an Article I posted to my Guild Forum to help my guild mates. Everyone is welcome to use this for your own guilds. If you reply to my post and switch to BB Code Editor (right most button after clikcing More Options), you can copy my entire article and use it as-in your guild forum—the formatting will carry over.
Motivating-or-Polishing
The terms “motivating” and “polishing” are separate but equal; polish is limited to buildings that produce happiness, while motivation covers most other buildings that produce all other resources, except: happiness, goods, and units. Both of these terms are collectively referred to by players as: “polishing”, “polivating”, “Mo/Po”, or “M/P”. All of these terms mean exactly the same thing—to motivate or polish a specific building
by-hand, which means performing the following steps manually:
1. Load another player's city.
2. Open the Actions window.
3. Click either “motivate” or “polish”.
4. Locate a specific building that has a white (and sometimes very difficult to spot) star hovering over it, and clicking on that building to either motivate it or polish it.
NOTE: The most effective way to increase your chances of scoring blueprints for a particular great building is to M/P buildings from the same age or era. And despite any claims that anyone makes to the contrary, it does not matter at all which specific building you M/P; the only thing that matters is the age or era of the building that you M/P. The same is true when plundering buildings, which can sometimes yield a blueprint; however, plundering a building has a smaller chance to score a blueprint than motivating or polishing a building does.
Aid
Aiding refers to the semi-automated process of motivating or polishing a building in another player’s city by clicking the Aid button. You can click the Aid button by a player's name listed in your Event History (the other player must have already either Aided your city or manually M/P-ed a building in your city, before they will be listed in your Event History). You can also click the Aid button under a player’s portrait in one of your three player scroll lists located at the bottom of your screen: Neighborhood, Guild, or Friends.
Why we must differentiate between M/P and Aid
There is one very important reason why we must draw a distinction between M/P (manually motivating or polishing a building) and Aid (clicking the Aid button). While all buildings are created equal in terms of M/P, since a player manually selects the target building, the Aid button has a mind of its own as to which building it will target next, and it gives some buildings preferential treatment while scorning others. In the next section, I try to explain what little we know about how the Aid button chooses which building it will target next.
Differentiating between Standard-Value Resource Buildings and Value-Added Resource Buildings
The Aid button will always prioritize all Value-Added Resource Buildings in your city above any Standard-Value Resource Buildings in your city. Now, what the hell did Raven just say again? Never fear, I will (try to) explain in further detail.
Standard-Value Resource Buildings
Most buildings, after they are motivated or polished, will produce double the entire amount (after all bonuses are applied) of a single, primary, standard-value resource the building normally produces. So if a supply building would normally produce 500 supplies, before bonuses it would produce:
[500 supplies + 500 * 20% (enthusiastic) supplies + 500 * (LoA % bonus + RAH % bonus) supplies] * 2 (motivated)
I refer to such buildings as: “standard-value resource buildings” or “SVR buildings” for short. Standard-value resources are most-commonly (but not limited to): coins, supplies, or happiness.
How Aid prioritizes SVR Buildings
Players often believe that the Aid button will target higher-aged buildings before lower-aged buildings; however, this is not the case at all. In fact,
the Aid button does not care what specific age or era any building is from. However, the Aid button does care if a building is a value-added resource building (discussed in a later section) or a SVR building. But assuming for a moment that your entire city is 100% comprised of only SVR buildings, then the Aid button will collectively prioritize all of your SVR buildings in
the reverse order that each SVR building’s construction was completed—this means the most recently constructed SVR buildings are usually prioritized first and the oldest (in terms of when you constructed them) SVR buildings are prioritized last.
Coincidentally, most players usually construct buildings from a higher age or era after buildings from a lower age or era, since that is how we advance through the game; however, this is not always the case. During the annual Easter Event for example, where players must hide Easter Eggs in the decorations of other player’s cities, most players usually construct many decorations from a lower age or era, which are very cheap to build. And despite these decorations being from a much lower age or era, the Aid button will prioritize the newly-constructed decorations before any previously constructed SVR Buildings that are actually from a higher age or era.
Furthermore, the order in which the Aid button prioritizes SVR buildings in your city can get changed slightly each day during your regular collection cycles. Say that another player happens to click the Aid button on your city, while you have both unmotivated SVR buildings that: you just collected, and some SVR buildings that you have not yet collected but are ready to collect. In this scenario, the Aid button will actually target the unmotivated SVR buildings that you recently collected
before the unmotivated SVR buildings that are ready for collection. This anomaly is quite frustrating. You actually need to ask in chat for someone to manually M/P any unmotivated buildings that you are about to collect (or to manually polish any unpolished cultural buildings if your city is not enthusiastic), before you start your collection cycle—you cannot rely on the Aid button to target the correct buildings for you.
Which Types of Buildings Are SVR Buildings?
The Aid button treats the following types of buildings as SVR Buildings, and it will prioritize any and all Value-Added Resource Buildings (discussed later) before any of these building types listed below:
1. All regular or premium buildings that are of these types: residential buildings, supply production buildings, cultural buildings, or decorations.
2. All special buildings that produce a single primary resource whose production is doubled by motivation or polish. So any special building that operates exactly like a regular or premium building type listed in 1 above. Below, I’ve listed are a couple of noteworthy examples, but this is by no means a complete list.
A. The Hall of Fame — Despite producing crowns, which to most players would seem to be a value-added resource, the Hall of Fame is actually a SVR building. Why is this so? The answer is because the HoF produces only one primary resource, crowns (or guild power), which is simply doubled when the building is motivated. In other words, the HoF doesn’t produce one type of primary resource and then add to it a different secondary resource of higher value when the building is motivated—it just doubles its primary resource output.
B. The Speakers Corner — Not only is this an SVR building, but it actually seems to fall down the priority list the Aid button uses for all SVR buildings quite quickly. In fact, it almost seems as if the SC always gets the LAST Aid button priority. I have been running tests on my off-worlds (where I’m not in a guild and I get very few daily Aid clicks or hardly any manual M/P). And usually my Speakers Corner is
never motivated in these cities; and this is despite it being one of the newest buildings in my city and despite it being from the same age (or even a higher age) as the rest of the SVR buildings in my city.
3. All special buildings that produce the same base amount (before bonuses) of a secondary standard-value resource as the base amount (before bonuses) of a primary standard-value resource the building normally produces. Currently, I’m only aware of one example of this type of building.
A. The Witch Doctor — When the Witch Doctor is motivated, instead of producing double the amount of supplies, it instead also produces a like amount (base value before bonuses) of coins. The supplies produced are buffed by bonuses from the LoA and/or RAH, but the coins produced (after motivation) will be buffed by the bonus from St. Marks.
Value-Added Resource Buildings
Some buildings, after they are motivated or polished, will produce additional, higher-value resources, over-and-above the primary standard-value resource the building normally produces. I refer to such buildings as: “value-added resource buildings” or “VAR buildings” for short.
How Aid prioritizes VAR Buildings
The Aid button will always prioritize all unmotivated VAR buildings before targeting any SVR buildings. This Aid button priority is true no matter what age or era each VAR building is from, or even how long ago it was constructed. They all get called to the “front-of-the-line” ahead of all SVR buildings in your city. Now, I do not know in which specific order each VAR building is prioritized among all other VAR buildings in the same city. In fact, I have seen the Aid button target an HMA Shrine of Knowledge that has been in my city since the Summer Event long before a Colonial Age Shrine of Knowledge that I just built during the Winter Event. However, the specific priority between different VAR buildings usually doesn’t matter much to us anyway, since most often our cities will have far fewer VAR buildings than SVR buildings in them and the Aid button always prioritizes all of the VAR buildings first, before targeting any SVR buildings at all.
Which Types of Buildings Are VAR Buildings?
The Aid button treats the following special buildings as Value-Added Resource Buildings:
• The Shrine of Knowledge (primary resource = coins, value-added resource = FPs)
• The Shrine of Awe (primary resource = coins, value-added resource = medals)
• The Oasis (primary resource = coins, value-added resource = goods)
• The Caravansary (primary resource = coins, value-added resource = both goods and medals)
NOTE: The above list might not be complete; there could be other VAR buildings that I have failed to notice. But the buildings above are the most common ones we will encounter.
We must compensate for important buildings left behind by the Aid button
So we know that the Aid button distinguishes between SVR buildings and VAR buildings, and that it automatically prioritizes VAR buildings. And we also know that it is possible for important SVR buildings to get left behind by the Aid button, in favor of much less valuable SVR buildings receiving Aid, which is most apparent when your large cultural building goes unpolished and you risk losing your 20% production bonus because your citizens are not enthusiastic.
Knowing all of this, we can try to compensate so that our important buildings are motivated or polished a few ways.
1. Add a preferred M/P sequence abbreviation to your city’s name, such as: “
—PSC”, which is shorthand for: “
Please polish all large cultural buildings (to include very large decorations such as Tree of Love) first, then motivate all supply buildings (largest first) next , before motivating any buildings that produce coins (largest first) last. Thank You!” You can change the order of the three letters: “P”, “S”, and “C”, to suit your preferred wording of the sentence.
2. Spell out any important details in your city profile text. You should put any such M/P preference text at the very top of your profile so that it is easiest to find. It is much more important to you than any: Weekly Swap Group information, plunder warnings, donation prizes, or other notes of interest. You want to make it as easy as possible for other players to help M/P your most important buildings.
3. Get a few M/P partners, where you each agree to manually motivate or polish very important buildings on a daily basis such as your: largest cultural buildings, Speaker’s Corner, or Halls of Fame. Just think of this as arranging a “Daily M/P swap” instead of a “Daily FP Swap”. Be sure to designate 2-3 important SVR buildings as alternates for your M/P partner to hit. Remember, you do not need to worry about VAR buildings, since the Aid button will automatically prioritize all of those buildings first—it is only the SVR buildings you need to pay special attention to.
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