DeletedUser4844
I'm a little fascinated by the Wishing Well prize and was wondering how it would compare to other things you might build in various ages, and this is what I have come up with. First, here is what Hellstromm said about the benefits of the wishing well:
In this thread: http://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/...tics-regarding-buildings-and-their-production
Note: all values for the various structures aside from the wishing well that are referenced in this post come from Bugs Huntsman's invaluable initial post in that same thread.
Although I am not 100% sure of this, for purposes of the discussion I will assume each of the 6 possible categories of benefits (coins, supplies, goods, etc) is equally likely.
To begin with, the type of benefit you gain is random. Having the choice as to what you gain is always better then having this be random, so that is a cost. Presumably, over time, things will somewhat average out to getting, say, 5 of each benefit every month or so. However, if you really need 10 glass one day, and you really need 2 extra forge points another, then the wishing well is definitely NOT the optimal way to get it.
However, to counterbalance this, the wishing well costs nothing to place (once the basic cost in eggs has been paid) and will automatically level up as you go up in ages. As compared to needing to build new structures each age costing significant coins and supplies, this is a fairly substantial benefit. Especially as, when you enter a new age you never start out with all the tech needed to build buildings (residences, production buildings, goods producing buildings, or what have you) of that age. That comes gradually as you go through the age. Evebn once you get the tech it takes time to build the structures needed. Perhaps this balances the cost of the Wishing wells' day by day randomness.
So let's start with the coins. Buildings which generate coins all take up a 2x2 space, whereas wishing wells take up a 3x3 space, so in order to adjust let's take the highest coin value buildings for each age, divide coin values by 4 to get the coins per unit space, and then multiply by the appropriate amount to get a daily value. Then we divide the wishing well coin value gains by 9, to get the gains per unit space per day for the wishing well.
* Yes, I am ignoring premium residences as I am guessing most players do not have extensive use of diamonds with which to buy them.
** daily coins per space calculated based on 8 hours of continuous collections, this will vary enormously based on circumstances, playstyle, and the individuals involved.
From the table, it appears (based on 8 hours of continuous collections) that the wishing well loses out to Bronze age, Iron Age, and Industrial Age residences, but beats all the other ages. If we simply naively sum the totals over all ages we get the wishing well with 2294 4/9 coins and the residences with 1868. A win for the wishing well, but not a huge win. It seems to me that you spend more time to get through later ages, so it might be reasonable to weight them more heavily. People might want to ignore all ages they have already passed through as well.
There are other factors involved that are not as easy to compare. Residences provide population for other buildings, which is a huge benefit the wishing well clearly does not give. However, the population requires a certain amount of happiness for full production. This is not exactly a cost, as even with 0 happiness the population can still be used, just at half effectiveness, and roads usually provide some amount of happiness by themselves. However, this might somewhat reduce the benefit of the population that residences provide. In my opinion, however, due to the fact that residences provide coins roughly comparable to what the wishing well can provide, and they provide a large benefit in terms of population, the coin gains from the wishing well are not truly worth the space provided, under the given set of assumptions. If, for example, you can only play for about half an hour once or twice per day, then the wishing well, which only requires once click per day, becomes far more attractive.
Next let's compare the supply gains from the wishing well versus the best structures in each age (per unit space per hour) for gaining supplies. We can use a similar chart for comparisons:
* Again, ignoring premium buildings.
** Again, based on 8 hours per day of collecting supplies, this time assuming hourly collections. If collections can be made ever 5 or 15 minutes the amount of supplies that can be collected from production buildings increase enormously.
From the table things appear roughly equivalent in most eras, except the last two where the wishing well produces significantly more, and the Bronze age where the wishing well produces significantly less. The bronze age tends to be short, though, so based purely on the table this appears to be a win for the wishing well. Not by a huge amount, however, given these assumptions. Again, there is another factor that is not as simple to compare. All production buildings require population to run them, but the wishing well doesn't. Based on that, and this table, I would prefer the wishing well over production buildings, generally.
Next I'm going to try to compare the wishing well to goods manufacturing buildings. The wishing well, if it produces goods, simply produces 10 goods from the current age. It is possible to simply have goods manufactured on a daily basis and produce 4 goods per day (20 with goods deposit), from each goods producing building, but it is also possible, if you can use the game every hours, to produce 6 goods per day (30 with goods deposit). For the purposes of comparison with the wishing well I am going to assume a happy medium of 5 goods per day (25 with goods deposit). This will occur if the player can access the game once every hours, but misses a "shift" once every 2 days. It also occurs if the player can access the game every hours but is off by 4 hours total each day in setting up production. Note that once the right provinces have been conquered for each age the player will have goods deposits for 2 of the ages' 5 goods. So average goods production (once this has been achieved) will be 5 per day for 3 goods each, and 25 per day for the other 2 goods each, or 13 per day on average. Based purely on that measure the wishing well loses out with it's 10 goods per day. However, many goods production buildings take up more then the 9 spaces the wishing well takes up. More specifically, there are 11 9-space goods producing buildings (3x3), 2 6-space ones (2x3 or 3x2), 11 12-space ones (3x4 or 4x3), 7 16-space ones (4x4), 2 15-space ones (3x5 or 5x3) and 2 20-space ones (4x5 or 5x4). This averages out to 12 1/7 spaces per building over the 35 different goods-producing buildings. Given the previous assumptions leading us to an average of 13 goods per building per day this gives us an average of about 1 1/14 goods per space per day. The wishing well produces 10 goods for 9 spaces or 1 1/9 goods per space per day. Approximately the same.
However, as always, there are other factors which are harder to compare. First, the wishing well does not require population to run it, which goods producing buildings do. An even greater factor is the cost in coins and supplies to produce these goods (5 per day or 25 if you have the goods deposit. This works out to 500 coins and 500 supplies for the bronze age ones, 1000 each for the iron age ones, 2000 each for the early middle age ones, 4000 each for the high middle age ones, 8000 each for the late middle age ones, 16000 each for the colonial ages ones, and 32000 each for the industrial age ones. If we simply average these costs it works out to a little over 9000 in both coins and supplies per day. Vastly more then the wishing well provides in either coins or supplies in any age, and we are getting BOTH. If you need the supplies, and, since they are from the current age, chances are very good that you eventually will need them, and you may well get the opportunity to trade them for supplies you need earlier, the wishing well seems to have standard goods production methods beat all hollow.
Estimating the value of the wishing wells' medal production is difficult. I notice that the number of medals seem to roughly correspond (at least up the Higher Middle Age) with the 4th position on the PvP ladder. Alternatively it can be viewed as roughly 1/8 of first position on the PvP ladder. Since awards for the wishing well are given on a daily basis, and awards for PvP are given on a weekly basis, we should probably divide the PvP ladder value by 7 to get a closer comparison. As I, personally, have not personally participated in donating forge points to great buildings and reaping the medals as rewards therefrom it is impossible for me to make any realistic assessments of the values and difficulties involved. However, it seems that the fact that there is no risk and zero cost after initial placement to the wishing wells' method of gaining medals, and the fact that the wishing well requires no population and has only a 3x3 footprint in your city, causes the wishing well to compare very favorable to standard methods of PvP for gaining medals.
We normally generate 24 forge points per day, the wishing well will generate 2 on any day it generates them. It costs 100 coins to buy the first forge point, and the cost increases by 50 coins for each subsequent forge point. I am not sure how many people buy forge points using coins, but I have bought several (86, actually) and I am about 1/4 of the way through middle age. Based on the fact that ages seem to take longer as you get to higher ones, I would guess that I am maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through the tech tree. Additionally, many people also use forge points for leveling great buildings, especially after they have completed the tech tree. Even if my cost of 4350 coins per forge point is just average, and not somewhat on the low side compared to the whole game, the 2 forge points from the wishing well would be giving me the equivalent of 8750 coins per day. Far more then the wishing well normally produces in actual coin terms. Again, this seems well worth the 9 squares it takes up in the city. Unfortunately this is an extremely subjective comparison. I would welcome any other points of view, or suggestions.
Finally, the wishing well can produce 50 diamonds per day. There are no structures you can normally purchase that produce diamonds. the value of something like this will vary enormously, and will depend on many factors, but I suspect people like me, who do not normally spend any money on games like this, will find this aspect of the wishing well far more valuable then those who do spend money to buy diamonds. One point of comparison might be to look at the dollar value of diamonds. If we take the middle category listed (2000 diamonds for $25.59), we get a rough cost per diamond of about 1 1/4 penny, or about $0.64 for 50 diamonds. If you do spend money on diamonds, and you want to get a set amount every so often, you might view this as a 64 set discount every day that the wishing well produces diamonds.
I hope this ridiculously long post was helpful to some of you in deciding whether or not to use eggs for the wishing well prize. If you have gotten to the end of this, thank you for your patience.
In this thread: http://forum.us.forgeofempires.com/...tics-regarding-buildings-and-their-production
Note: all values for the various structures aside from the wishing well that are referenced in this post come from Bugs Huntsman's invaluable initial post in that same thread.
Although I am not 100% sure of this, for purposes of the discussion I will assume each of the 6 possible categories of benefits (coins, supplies, goods, etc) is equally likely.
To begin with, the type of benefit you gain is random. Having the choice as to what you gain is always better then having this be random, so that is a cost. Presumably, over time, things will somewhat average out to getting, say, 5 of each benefit every month or so. However, if you really need 10 glass one day, and you really need 2 extra forge points another, then the wishing well is definitely NOT the optimal way to get it.
However, to counterbalance this, the wishing well costs nothing to place (once the basic cost in eggs has been paid) and will automatically level up as you go up in ages. As compared to needing to build new structures each age costing significant coins and supplies, this is a fairly substantial benefit. Especially as, when you enter a new age you never start out with all the tech needed to build buildings (residences, production buildings, goods producing buildings, or what have you) of that age. That comes gradually as you go through the age. Evebn once you get the tech it takes time to build the structures needed. Perhaps this balances the cost of the Wishing wells' day by day randomness.
So let's start with the coins. Buildings which generate coins all take up a 2x2 space, whereas wishing wells take up a 3x3 space, so in order to adjust let's take the highest coin value buildings for each age, divide coin values by 4 to get the coins per unit space, and then multiply by the appropriate amount to get a daily value. Then we divide the wishing well coin value gains by 9, to get the gains per unit space per day for the wishing well.
| Age | Wishing well Coins | Wishing well coins/space | Residential* coins | Residential coins/space | Residential coins/space/day** |
| BA | 450 | 50 | 6 per 5 mins | 1.5 per 5 mins | 144 |
| IA | 1080 | 120 | 18 per 15 mins | 4.5 per 15 mins | 144 |
| EMA | 1800 | 200 | 60 per hour | 15 per hour | 120 |
| HMA | 2500 | 277 7/9 | 90 per hour | 22.5 per hour | 180 |
| LMA | 3330 | 370 | 120 per hour | 30 per hour | 240 |
| CA | 4230 | 470 | 180 per hour | 45 per hour | 360 |
| IndA | 6320 | 702 2/9 | 340 per hour | 85 per hour | 680 |
* Yes, I am ignoring premium residences as I am guessing most players do not have extensive use of diamonds with which to buy them.
** daily coins per space calculated based on 8 hours of continuous collections, this will vary enormously based on circumstances, playstyle, and the individuals involved.
From the table, it appears (based on 8 hours of continuous collections) that the wishing well loses out to Bronze age, Iron Age, and Industrial Age residences, but beats all the other ages. If we simply naively sum the totals over all ages we get the wishing well with 2294 4/9 coins and the residences with 1868. A win for the wishing well, but not a huge win. It seems to me that you spend more time to get through later ages, so it might be reasonable to weight them more heavily. People might want to ignore all ages they have already passed through as well.
There are other factors involved that are not as easy to compare. Residences provide population for other buildings, which is a huge benefit the wishing well clearly does not give. However, the population requires a certain amount of happiness for full production. This is not exactly a cost, as even with 0 happiness the population can still be used, just at half effectiveness, and roads usually provide some amount of happiness by themselves. However, this might somewhat reduce the benefit of the population that residences provide. In my opinion, however, due to the fact that residences provide coins roughly comparable to what the wishing well can provide, and they provide a large benefit in terms of population, the coin gains from the wishing well are not truly worth the space provided, under the given set of assumptions. If, for example, you can only play for about half an hour once or twice per day, then the wishing well, which only requires once click per day, becomes far more attractive.
Next let's compare the supply gains from the wishing well versus the best structures in each age (per unit space per hour) for gaining supplies. We can use a similar chart for comparisons:
| Age | Wishing well Supplies | Wishing well supplies/space | Max supplies* coins | Max supplies/space | Max supplies/space/day** |
| BA | 450 | 50 | 32 | 8 | 64 |
| IA | 1080 | 120 | 160 | 13 1/3 | 106 2/3 |
| EMA | 1800 | 200 | 210 | 23 1/3 | 206 2/3 |
| HMA | 2520 | 280 | 730 | 36.5 | 292 |
| LMA | 3330 | 370 | 400 | 44 4/9 | 365 5/9 |
| CA | 5060 | 562 2/9 | 900 | 56 1/4 | 450 |
| IndA | 6320 | 702 2/9 | 980 | 65 1/3 | 522 2/3 |
** Again, based on 8 hours per day of collecting supplies, this time assuming hourly collections. If collections can be made ever 5 or 15 minutes the amount of supplies that can be collected from production buildings increase enormously.
From the table things appear roughly equivalent in most eras, except the last two where the wishing well produces significantly more, and the Bronze age where the wishing well produces significantly less. The bronze age tends to be short, though, so based purely on the table this appears to be a win for the wishing well. Not by a huge amount, however, given these assumptions. Again, there is another factor that is not as simple to compare. All production buildings require population to run them, but the wishing well doesn't. Based on that, and this table, I would prefer the wishing well over production buildings, generally.
Next I'm going to try to compare the wishing well to goods manufacturing buildings. The wishing well, if it produces goods, simply produces 10 goods from the current age. It is possible to simply have goods manufactured on a daily basis and produce 4 goods per day (20 with goods deposit), from each goods producing building, but it is also possible, if you can use the game every hours, to produce 6 goods per day (30 with goods deposit). For the purposes of comparison with the wishing well I am going to assume a happy medium of 5 goods per day (25 with goods deposit). This will occur if the player can access the game once every hours, but misses a "shift" once every 2 days. It also occurs if the player can access the game every hours but is off by 4 hours total each day in setting up production. Note that once the right provinces have been conquered for each age the player will have goods deposits for 2 of the ages' 5 goods. So average goods production (once this has been achieved) will be 5 per day for 3 goods each, and 25 per day for the other 2 goods each, or 13 per day on average. Based purely on that measure the wishing well loses out with it's 10 goods per day. However, many goods production buildings take up more then the 9 spaces the wishing well takes up. More specifically, there are 11 9-space goods producing buildings (3x3), 2 6-space ones (2x3 or 3x2), 11 12-space ones (3x4 or 4x3), 7 16-space ones (4x4), 2 15-space ones (3x5 or 5x3) and 2 20-space ones (4x5 or 5x4). This averages out to 12 1/7 spaces per building over the 35 different goods-producing buildings. Given the previous assumptions leading us to an average of 13 goods per building per day this gives us an average of about 1 1/14 goods per space per day. The wishing well produces 10 goods for 9 spaces or 1 1/9 goods per space per day. Approximately the same.
However, as always, there are other factors which are harder to compare. First, the wishing well does not require population to run it, which goods producing buildings do. An even greater factor is the cost in coins and supplies to produce these goods (5 per day or 25 if you have the goods deposit. This works out to 500 coins and 500 supplies for the bronze age ones, 1000 each for the iron age ones, 2000 each for the early middle age ones, 4000 each for the high middle age ones, 8000 each for the late middle age ones, 16000 each for the colonial ages ones, and 32000 each for the industrial age ones. If we simply average these costs it works out to a little over 9000 in both coins and supplies per day. Vastly more then the wishing well provides in either coins or supplies in any age, and we are getting BOTH. If you need the supplies, and, since they are from the current age, chances are very good that you eventually will need them, and you may well get the opportunity to trade them for supplies you need earlier, the wishing well seems to have standard goods production methods beat all hollow.
Estimating the value of the wishing wells' medal production is difficult. I notice that the number of medals seem to roughly correspond (at least up the Higher Middle Age) with the 4th position on the PvP ladder. Alternatively it can be viewed as roughly 1/8 of first position on the PvP ladder. Since awards for the wishing well are given on a daily basis, and awards for PvP are given on a weekly basis, we should probably divide the PvP ladder value by 7 to get a closer comparison. As I, personally, have not personally participated in donating forge points to great buildings and reaping the medals as rewards therefrom it is impossible for me to make any realistic assessments of the values and difficulties involved. However, it seems that the fact that there is no risk and zero cost after initial placement to the wishing wells' method of gaining medals, and the fact that the wishing well requires no population and has only a 3x3 footprint in your city, causes the wishing well to compare very favorable to standard methods of PvP for gaining medals.
We normally generate 24 forge points per day, the wishing well will generate 2 on any day it generates them. It costs 100 coins to buy the first forge point, and the cost increases by 50 coins for each subsequent forge point. I am not sure how many people buy forge points using coins, but I have bought several (86, actually) and I am about 1/4 of the way through middle age. Based on the fact that ages seem to take longer as you get to higher ones, I would guess that I am maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of the way through the tech tree. Additionally, many people also use forge points for leveling great buildings, especially after they have completed the tech tree. Even if my cost of 4350 coins per forge point is just average, and not somewhat on the low side compared to the whole game, the 2 forge points from the wishing well would be giving me the equivalent of 8750 coins per day. Far more then the wishing well normally produces in actual coin terms. Again, this seems well worth the 9 squares it takes up in the city. Unfortunately this is an extremely subjective comparison. I would welcome any other points of view, or suggestions.
Finally, the wishing well can produce 50 diamonds per day. There are no structures you can normally purchase that produce diamonds. the value of something like this will vary enormously, and will depend on many factors, but I suspect people like me, who do not normally spend any money on games like this, will find this aspect of the wishing well far more valuable then those who do spend money to buy diamonds. One point of comparison might be to look at the dollar value of diamonds. If we take the middle category listed (2000 diamonds for $25.59), we get a rough cost per diamond of about 1 1/4 penny, or about $0.64 for 50 diamonds. If you do spend money on diamonds, and you want to get a set amount every so often, you might view this as a 64 set discount every day that the wishing well produces diamonds.
I hope this ridiculously long post was helpful to some of you in deciding whether or not to use eggs for the wishing well prize. If you have gotten to the end of this, thank you for your patience.
