edeba
Well-Known Member
Unless a wonder is totally useless for your playstyle (e.g. Shrine of Shrewdy Shrooms if you never fight), every Ancient Wonder will give you more benefits than you would need to make up for the minimal increase in costs for building/upgrading one of these Ancient Wonders.
Disclaimer : this is a post from 2019, back when the formula was only used in the Spire and wasn't known. However, AFAIK the formula hadn't changed since then, except the small recent change about expansions, so it should still be valid.
This is very different and much more accurate from what we're told now, which is "every Ancient Wonder will give you more benefits than you would need to make up for the minimal increase in costs for building/upgrading one of these Ancient Wonders." I'd say the actual sentence is "Unless a wonder is not very useful for your playstyle, every Ancient Wonder will give you more benefits than you would need to make up for the minimal increase in costs for building/upgrading one of these Ancient Wonders."
I think the biggest problem here with why this doesn't work and isn't true is that sure, if you look at the benefits of an individual AW it is true that you are better off with it than without, but once you start adding other AWs, well, that benefit goes down because the nature of the formula is that those levels on that second AW cause the benefit on the first AW to go down.
Unfortunately with this formula there is a place where an AW no longer is more beneficial to have than to not have because of the other AWs you have.
So, taking in consideration that they feel that staying at a lower level and working on AW before proceeding is a problem, well, strategically, with the first 3 AW techs I'd go with the Golden Abyss, the needles, and the Martial Monastery. My idea of only including one out of every two AW, and the higher of the two, would still address this issue for these lower chapter players. For the 4th AW tech I'd go for the Watchtower Ruins. To me for the 5th, 6th and 7th AW tech I do like both AW, but the 8th and 9th only one.
I think my idea of just using the higher of the two AW for each tech is actually an excellent way to do deal with the problem, and then, because the AW levels have been diluted, just not count them any more after level 30, or change the AW so they continue to follow the pattern.