Urgent request:
Cut down Set Link bonuses!
This will get lengthy and mathy, but I feel the need to elaborate.
Premium buildings and event prizes provide approximately double as much culture per field compared to normal culture buildings of the corresponding chapter. They are simply twice as good, which is OK because they are difficult to obtain. In the simplest case, a 3x3 event prize replaces two 3x3 ordinary culture buildings, effectively providing me with 9 free squares. I like that.
On a lot of event prizes, culture is reduced in favor of population, at a rate of 1 pop instead of 2 culture. This rate is actually a bit more than twice as good as a normal residence, but we're paying a price for that: The event prize produces no money, no ranking points, and replacing it later is trickier. I am OK with that.
On some event prizes, culture is reduced in favor of mana. The mana production per field is NOT twice as good as ordinary mana buildings, but exactly the same. Which makes mana-buildings from events a bit of a disappointment. I do not like that but can live with it.
On some event prizes, culture is reduced in favor of goods production. They received a big boost a few days ago. So let's do some rough math. (I will use numbers from my current progress in Halflings, but the results will be similar for all advanced chapters):
The Techno Tent from Woodelvenstock uses 3x3 squares and has 4800 culture as its only benefit. The Dancing Ground from the same event is also 3x3 with only 2900 culture, so we will assume that 60% of its real estate is used for culture while 40% is used for the rest of its benefits: goods production (and some link bonusses on top which we will ignore for the moment). It used to produce 770 goods every 24 hours, which should be boosted to 1925 now. Which still is no great amount, but it only uses a measly 3.6 squares for that production, so it is doing 535 goods per square per day.
Let's compare that with manufactories. A planks manufactory of level 23 is 6x3 and produces 11.5k a day on a 9h-9h-3h cycle. Looks like 640 per square per day, right? Wrong! The manufactory needs 3317 pop to run, which requires one and a half residences (level 27 provides 2200 pop on 3x5). The manufactory and residences together need 2292 culture. This in turn is four squares worth of the Techno Tent from above (assuming you only have event culture, otherwise more). This adds up to 44 squares, so this manufactory is really only doing 250 per square per day. The event building is about twice as good, so everything is in line.
Almost everything.
Now look at the set buildings of Harvest Festival (as announced by
https://elvengems.com/harvest-festival/set-buildings/ )
Set one: Assume you get each set building once, arranging them with the grand prize in the middle. Every building will have 3 links satisfied, the middle one all four. The result is a 7x6 arrangement (42 squares) with 12980 culture (would need 24 squares of Techno Tents) and a normal production of 7840 (15 squares of 535). That's 39 squares worth of event benefits plus gold and supplies. But now come the link bonusses, they add up another 6 times the normal production (90 squares!). So now it's around 130 squares worth of event benefits or 260 squares worth of normal buildings concentrated on only 42 squares. That is a whooping 216 free squares or 5 times as big as the arrangement providing it! Compare that to normal event prizes or diamond buildings, which only provide their own size as free space.
Set two: For those who complete all event quests and do care about daily prizes, it is VERY likely they receive the second grand prize but not the third one. If you add the two tiny set buildings, you will have a total 2100 pop, 2026 culture and a production of 27k, which equates to over 60 squares worth of event buildings or 120 normal ones, which again provides 6 times as much free squares as its own size of 17.
To top thing off, look separately at the tiny buildings (because you will get the big one anyway): They are only 1x1 each, but together they generate a production of 22500 as a link bonus in the big one. So we could almost trash two full-sized manufactories including their supply chain (residences, workshops, streets and culture). And I have not even mentioned yet that second-tier goods need more squares to produce than first-tier goods, so this is over 120 free squares provided by two ... signposts. HONESTLY!?!?!
Since normal event prizes give us free squares in the range of their own size (by being twice as good as normal buildings), I think sets should never give more than twice their own size as free squares (by being three times as good), otherwise this becomes totally unbalanced and there is no real choice but to take set buildings only.
