It's such a common misunderstanding, that I even have a boilerplate document set up.
>>> CE_SAD <<<
Campaign for the Eradication of Stone Age Decorations.
The following players still need to eradicate some Stone Age decorations:
* Suzie1
* Suzie2
Nine means the city is very SAD.
The reasons for CE_SAD are threefold:
1. Inexperienced players may not realize that you are cheating them out of a blueprint
2. Fake stars are a nuisance when visitors are hunting for a Cultural Building to polish
3. You can undoubtedly use the space more effectively for supplies and housing
A Colosseum is easily the most important Great Building for the early development of your city.
· A Colosseum generates 9-32 medals every day. Very much to the point, there are 15 expansions that can ONLY be purchased using medals, so medals will actually end up saving you several million coins. While you can get medals from PvP tournaments, Great Buildings are easily the more reliable source.
· While a Colosseum is large, at 6x7, the 1100-4000 happiness bonus will allow you to dramatically reduce the amount of space that you’d otherwise need for decorations and cultural buildings.
As expeditiously as you can manage, you should LOCK IN the Enthusiasm bonus, which adds 20% to the productivity of your supply buildings and housing. You should also include SCP (Supplies, Coins, Polishing) in your city name, to make things simple for your visitors. Once you have several million each of coins and supplies, then you'll want to flip back to depending on polishing, so you can add more manufacturing and military buildings.
The “secret formula” for rapid city growth is:
· Build for 120% Production. NEVER ask for Polishing
· Build long cycle housing that just barely provides enough workers
· Use LARGE supply buildings, on a 4 hour cycle
· Visit/Motivate/Polish everybody you can reach, every day, and then reap the benefits from supply buildings that deliver 240% of their base cycle production, nearly every cycle, because their workers are both Enthusiastic and Motivated.
· You probably have some unusable single rows on the edge of your city, and that’s a perfect location for pairs of Age related decorations. Folks who are shopping for early age blueprints will appreciate your support of their needs, and they will continue to visit your city, and motivate your supply buildings, long after they have found the blueprints that they were seeking.