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Squares per worker (or: Upgrade vs building new houses)

MinioreoMinioreo Posts: 22
edited 10.09.2013 in Tutorials and FAQs
After reading some excellent advice to consider building new houses in lieu of upgrading to lvl 2 or 3 (or even demolishing lvl 3's and building 2 lvl 1's). I decided to crunch some numbers.

I wanted to see the land cost (squares required) for various combinations of houses and decorations. Please note I am not taking into account level requirements, dollar cost, or time investment of any of these permutations.

If you are interested in my methods, I've delineated them here, if not (I don't blame you) feel free to skip to the bottom to see the tl;dr summary.

Data used

Housing
lvl 1 house (hereafter lvl1) - 5x5 or 25 squares, -35 happiness per lvl 1 house built (hap/hlvl1), 10 workers
lvl 2 - 25 sq, -62 hap/hlvl2, 15 wkr
lvl 3 - 25 sq, -91 hap/hlvl3, 20 wkr

Decorations
Flowerbed (hereafter Decor 1 to keep the formatting clean, sorry) 4x4= 16 sq, 12 happiness, 12 happiness/decoration built, 0.75 happiness/square occupied
Ornamental tree (Decor 2) - 16 sq, 13 hap/dec, 0.8125 hap/sq
Vegetable patch (Decor 3) - 20 sq, 17 hap/dec, 0.85 hap/sq
Hay Bale (Decor 4) - 16 sq, 14 hap/dec, 0.875 hap/sq
Fountain (Decor 5) - 16 sq, 18 hap/dec, 1.125 hap/sq
Big Tree (Decor 6) - 16 sq, 21 hap/dec, 1.3125 hap/sq
Ice Cream Truck (Dec 7) - 20 sq, 29 hap/dec, 1.45 hap/sq
Shed (Decor 8 ) - 24 sq, 35 hap/dec, 1.45833 hap/sq
Lake (Decor 9) - 25 sq, 38 hap/dec 1.52 hap/sq


Premise
I want to compare space required to gain workers while maintaining a constant happiness. To do so, I first must find the number of each type of decorations are required to offset each level of housing's happiness cost by dividing each house level's happiness per house (hap/hlvl) by each type of decoration's happiness per decoration (hap/dec). This result is the number of decorations per house of each level (dec/hlvl) needed to keep happiness constant.

I then find the number of squares required to maintain this happiness by multiplying the squares required per decoration by the dec/hlvl and then adding the base house area (25). This gives me a value of squares per house of each level (sq/hlvl). To get my final results, I take that number of squares per house level and divide by the number of workers per house level, and come up with squares required per worker (sq/wkr) for each house level.

One final note before the numbers; this is all theorycraft, obviously you can't build 1 2/3 big trees to offset one house, nor is it likely that anyone would be using entirely one type of decoration to offset housing. Take these numbers for what they are; a quantification of trends.

Maths

Decor | hap |dec/hlvl1 |dec/hlvl2 |dec/hlvl3 |sq/hlvl1 | sq/hlvl2 | sq/hlvl3| sq/wkr1 | sq/wkr2 | sq/wkr3 |

Decor 1 | 12 | 2.91666 | 5.16666 | 7.58333 | 71.6666 | 107.666 | 146.33 | 7.16666 | 7.17777 | 7.31666 |
Decor 2 | 13 | 2.69230 | 4.76923 | 7.00000 | 68.0769 | 101.307 | 137.00 | 6.80769 | 6.75384 | 6.85000 |
Decor 3 | 17 | 2.05883 | 3.64705 | 5.35294 | 66.1764 | 097.941 | 132.05 | 6.61764 | 6.52941 | 6.60294 |
Decor 4 | 14 | 2.50000 | 4.42857 | 6.50000 | 65.0000 | 095.857 | 129.00 | 6.50000 | 6.39047 | 6.45000 |
Decor 5 | 18 | 1.94444 | 3.44444 | 5.05555 | 56.1111 | 080.111 | 105.88 | 5.61111 | 5.34074 | 5.29444 |
Decor 6 | 21 | 1.66666 | 2.95238 | 4.33333 | 51.6666 | 072.238 | 094.33 | 5.16666 | 4.81587 | 4.71666 |
Decor 7 | 29 | 1.20689 | 2.13793 | 3.13793 | 49.1379 | 067.758 | 087.75 | 4.91379 | 4.51724 | 4.38793 |
Decor 8 | 35 | 1.00000 | 1.77142 | 2.60000 | 49.0000 | 067.514 | 087.40 | 4.90000 | 4.50095 | 4.37000 |
Decor 9 | 38 | 0.92105 | 1.63157 | 2.39473 | 48.0263 | 065.789 | 084.86 | 4.80263 | 4.38596 | 4.24342 |

Summary
The trends for decorations needed to balance housing (dec/hlvl) and squares needed (sq/hlvl) both follow what you would expect; decorations and space needed go down when using decorations of increased quality (and cost). They also go up as the housing level goes up. The final columns get interesting, at lower levels of decoration the space/worker is lower for housing lvl 1, but halfway down the trend reverses; from fountains on, housing level 3 is more space effective.

GGS has done well with balancing housing levels with decorations available. I was quite impressed to see the graduated results conforming so well to the gaming experience.

tl;dr
  • If the majority of your decorations are trees and flower beds, keep level 1 housing.
  • If they're mostly Hay Bales, Vegetable gardens, or Wells, keep level 2 housing.
  • If they're all above that, stick with level 3.
  • GGS devs know what they're doing.
Post edited by Minioreo on
«1

Comments

  • Kat Nip (GB1)Kat Nip (GB1) GB1 Posts: 3,796
    edited 05.05.2013
    Thank you for taking the time to do that for us Minioreo, it makes for interesting reading. :)

    Kat. Kittie_by_otomosc.gif
  • SystemSystem Posts: 106,969
    edited 11.05.2013
    Impressive work!

    And yes GGS do seem to get the balancing mainly right :)
  • Irish30 (US1)Irish30 (US1) Posts: 264
    edited 11.05.2013
    Thank you for your wonderful work with Squares vs. Worker...When I saw the heading on the forum page, I thought finally we Workers can have it out the Suits and Tie guys...but alas...NOT...but very useful information...thanks again.
  • EricaJ (US1)EricaJ (US1) Posts: 202
    edited 29.05.2013
    Great info / analysis, Minioreo! Very pertinent for anyone who is trying to figure out whether to build more houses or upgrade existing ones.

    Thanks for sharing the fruits of your labors.
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 01.06.2013
    Awesome work on the breakdowns, thanks! On main farm, I'm mostly doing level 1 housing, and using my gold to buy houses, when I can (I cannot afford to pay for gold, so I must wait until the rewards build up enough to build a Blue House).

    Unfortunately, the secondary and tertiary farms seem to require level 3 houses from the get-go, so it's been tougher to do things there to reduce production costs, especially with the higher cost to add space to those farms. Handy to have this info to plan it out, though, thanks again! :)
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 11.06.2013
    I've been thinking about this some more, and while the spreadsheet's useful, I like to think of it more like a balance. To balance out ALL the unhappiness of a level 1 regular house, I need to build a shed, so 25 squares (house) is balanced by 24 squares (shed), for 49 squares total.

    For a level 3 house, I would have to build 2 sheds and a big tree to balance out -91 completely, 25 squares (house) is balanced out by 64 squares (for a total of 89 squares), but there's twice as many workers. So, it's equal to 2 level 1 houses (50 squares) with 2 sheds (48 squares) (total 98 squares).

    So I can see that I can offset the level 3 houses and use fewer squares, but only by 9 squares, and so I'd have to have several houses at level 3 before I'd really have any actual saved up room to build anything in.

    Since I started replacing red houses with blue (using only the free gold rewards for logins and achieving some tasks and levels), I believe the balance favors blue houses, as they cost less happiness, and grant more workers per 25 squares. As there's no 25 happiness deco, have to say an ice cream truck plus a big tree (total 36 squares) offsets 2 blue houses (50 squares) (grand total of 86 squares taken up by houses and decos, 3 squares less than a red level 3 house), and those 2 houses get you 24 workers, not just 20, saving even more production costs and space.

    This strategy is useful for anyone who cannot afford to pay real-world money for gold, and requires only the patience and persistence of logging in every day and achieving tasks and gaining levels to get the free gold rewards, which is how I like to play. I do not anticipate being able to upgrade the blue houses, ever, but that's ok with me, since they are saving me space and production costs over the level 3 red houses.

    This strategy requires access to higher level decos, and it would be tougher for very low level players to offset level 3 houses, anyway, and more space might have to be devoted to decos of lower quality to offset level 1 houses, but I think the strategy is sound. I did build the pavilion with free gold (signup bonus), which I now regret, but I hope anyone who reads this will be helped by my mistakes.

    I've only been able to make this work on my main farm, gourmet and flower farms have tasks for multiple level 3 houses, so on those 2 farms, I've only made multiple level 1 red houses when I need to get something into production quickly, then I upgrade houses and demolish the extra ones once I've upgraded enough.

    If anyone can show me a flaw in my reasoning, I'd be grateful, or a way to offset the unhappiness of each house using fewer squares, I'd be happy to know. Thank you, and I hope this helps some with getting production costs into the green. :)
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 14.06.2013
    So, to restate more concisely (I hope):
    TWO Blue Level 1 houses
    are better than
    ONE Level 3 Red house:

    ONE Red level 3 house = 25 squares
    -91 happiness
    +20 workers.
    Negate unhappiness for this with:
    TWO Sheds (48 squares, total) +70 happiness, total
    plus a Big Tree (16 squares) +21 happiness.
    Total squares used (house & decors) = 89 squares

    TWO Blue level 1 houses = 50 (25 + 25) squares
    -50 (-25 & -25) happiness
    +24 workers.
    Negate unhappiness for these with:
    one Ice Cream Truck (20 squares) +29 happiness
    plus a Big Tree (16 squares) +21 happiness.
    Total squares used (both houses & decors) = 86 squares

    Three squares less used, plus an extra 4 workers.

    I only considered these decors and those listed above, since I'm saving up my free gold to buy the blue houses.
    Decor | hap | Size
    _Well__ | 18 | 5X4 = 20 |
    PileofGoods | 20 | 3X6 = 18 |
    Wagon | 27 | 3X7 = 21 |
  • MinioreoMinioreo Posts: 22
    edited 17.06.2013
    Eeech... I'm not 100% sure off the cuff, but the last time I looked at the value of the level 1 premium (blue) houses, I thought it was a small loss against level 3 normal ones. Your numbers look decent at first blush, it may come down to level of decor available. Let me crunch some numbers:

    Looking at it in extrema lvl 1 premium houses give 12 people, while normal lvl 3 houses give 20. So 5 Premium blues give 60 people, just as do 3 normal lvl 3 reds.

    5 blues have a base landspace cost of (5 x 25)=125 squares, while only costing (5 x -25)=-125 happiness.

    3 blues have a base landspace cost of (3 x 25)=75 squares, but they cost (3 x -91)= -273 happiness.

    So the question of red vs blue is can you make 50 squares (125-75) give at least (273-125) 148 happiness?

    148/50= 2.96 happ/square, and only by buying the koi pond or some similar event decor will you be able to pull that kind of happiness; and it would be much more gold intensive than the 250g houses.

    Huh, I wonder if GGS has changed things since I last crunched those numbers (possibly) or if I'd simply miscalculated (a much more likely possibility). Thanks for bringing this up McFeisty, I'll look into this further.
  • MinioreoMinioreo Posts: 22
    edited 18.06.2013
    I wonder if there would be a way to quantify which of the farms would benefit most from this and other, less universal space-saving items like Event reward decorations. Perhaps a profit per square average of each farm?
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 27.06.2013
    Minioreo wrote: »
    5 blues have a base landspace cost of (5 x 25)=125 squares, while only costing (5 x -25)=-125 happiness.

    3 blues have a base landspace cost of (3 x 25)=75 squares, but they cost (3 x -91)= -273 happiness.

    So the question of red vs blue is can you make 50 squares (125-75) give at least (273-125) 148 happiness?
    I'm thinking you meant 3 lvl 3 reds = (3 x -91) in that second line...

    I'm also not understanding why you're demanding the 50 squares produce +148 happiness, but since it may help to compare it that way, I'm glad for the input.

    My thinking:
    All the houses (blue or red) cause unhappiness.
    All that unhappiness must be negated to reduce production costs.
    All the decors to negate the unhappiness take up space.

    So, I was figuring all the space taken up by the houses themselves, plus the decor needed to negate their unhappiness, and trying to find the smallest total.

    If you want a one to one 'workers provided' comparison, I can work up those numbers, thanks for the idea. :)

    I will still be basing my numbers on all the space taken up by 5 lvl 1 Blue houses, plus any decors needed to negate their unhappiness, and all the space taken up by 3 lvl 3 Red, plus any decors need to negate their unhappiness, as there seems to be no scenario where one might reasonably expect a player to have houses and no space for ANY decors. I know we all think about things differently, this is just the best way for me to get my mind around the problem.
  • FarmerPJW2FarmerPJW2 Posts: 45
    edited 27.06.2013
    Minioreo wrote: »
    So the question of red vs blue is can you make 50 squares (125-75) give at least (273-125) 148 happiness?

    As you say, not with regular decorations. The best available dollar-purchase decoration is the Lake, which conveniently fits into the available area twice exactly! It only gets you 2x38=+76 happy points.

    Another way of looking at the same problem is to work with a constant amount of land. Take 50 squares: you could build two blue houses, giving 24 workers with net -50 happy points; or you could build (on the same space) a level 3 red house with a Lake, giving 20 workers with net -53 happy points.

    Whichever way you slice it, the answer is clear: a level 1 blue house gives more workers and less unhappiness per square of land used when compared with a level 3 red house.
  • farmerkit2farmerkit2 Posts: 177
    edited 02.07.2013
    I really think that one should make it clear if we are talking about gold buyers or not. If someone doesn't buy gold, he probably never goes above level 1 with blue houses, meaning these give him much less workers per square than a red house level 3.
  • leto4leto4 Posts: 1
    edited 03.07.2013
    Farmerkit2, all these numbers are dealing with level 1 blue houses. When you factor in space for decorations, level 3 red houses take up more space than level 1 blues.

    Again to be more clear:

    A level 1 blue house is superior to level 3 red houses in every way but ease of obtaining currency.


    If you're a gold buyer and can afford level 2 or 3 blue houses, then they are vastly superior. But for those of us that are on a budget, or only using the gold from daily logging in, we want to know what is best to put it towards.

    And level 1 blue housing is near the top of that list.

    (I personally think level 1 water tower tops the list for the main farm, but that's just gut instinct, no numbers attached.)
  • monica79538monica79538 Posts: 1,932
    edited 03.07.2013
    post deleted
  • FarmerPJW2FarmerPJW2 Posts: 45
    edited 03.07.2013
    But Monica, the point is that the level 1 blue houses are superior to the level 3 red houses, so they do help even if you don't plan to upgrade them.
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 06.07.2013
    farmerkit2 wrote: »
    I really think that one should make it clear if we are talking about gold buyers or not. If someone doesn't buy gold, he probably never goes above level 1 with blue houses, meaning these give him much less workers per square than a red house level 3.
    I do not buy gold. I made that very clear, by using the phrase "free gold" - meaning only the gold I've won by logging in every 5 days, or leveling, or some tasks, and there was a signup amount, as well, though I wasted some of that.

    I do not plan to spend gold upgrading blue houses. I should not need to, since I will be using far less decor space, even though the houses themselves take up extra space, but they cause far less unhappiness.

    I found mostly upgraded blue houses in the top ranked players on my server, but I found rank 13 or 14 had only level 3 red houses, and figured he must be running in the red for happiness, based on the houses and the decors I could see. I could run that farm in the green with 5 level 1 blue houses for every 3 level 3 red houses, even if I lost a lake for every extra blue house. See post #9 above, it makes sense to me.

    As for ease of obtaining gold - that merely costs my time and patience, waiting for the free gold to build up by playing every day.

    Once I have as much housing as I need, I may save up for a water tower, but the level 1 blue houses seem like my most prudent gold-spending option, right now.
    Finally did my numbers:
    5 blue houses = 125 unhappiness = 125 squares
    3 ice cream trucks (+87 hap) + a lake (+38 hap) = 85 squares
    total for 5 blue houses plus decor to negate unhappiness = 210 squares
    (zero happiness)

    3 red level 3 houses = 273 unhappiness = 75 squares
    7 lakes (+266 hap) + flower bed (+12 hap) = 191 squares
    total for 3 red houses plus decor to negate unhappiness = 266 squares
    (actually, +5 happiness, not zero)

    So, 56 squares of extra decor to make up for the extra unhappiness. If I could've come out even by just using lakes, the difference would be even more profound.
  • Dolphin (AU1)Dolphin (AU1) AU1 Posts: 117
    edited 06.07.2013
    leto4 wrote: »
    Farmerkit2, all these numbers are dealing with level 1 blue houses. When you factor in space for decorations, level 3 red houses take up more space than level 1 blues.

    Leto,
    Level 1,2 and 3 blue or red houses take up exactly the same amount of room they are all 5 x 5. Check the information tab on the houses, it will tell you the size of them.
  • montuosmontuos Posts: 1,275
    edited 06.07.2013
    Dolphin6 wrote: »
    Level 1,2 and 3 blue or red houses take up exactly the same amount of room they are all 5 x 5.

    Dolphin, you seem to be ignoring the highly relevant phrase "When you factor in space for decorations". Of course the houses are all the same size regardless of how many workers they provide. The point here is that because the different levels of upgrade provide different levels of (un)happiness, they require different decorations to offset the unhappiness, which take up different amounts of space.
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 07.07.2013
    When I first discovered that the upgrading of a red house to level 2 increased the unhappiness of my farm to nearly double what a level 1 house did, while only adding 5 workers (a 50% increase), I was quite irritated. I spent quite a while with only the level 1 red houses on my main farm until I discovered that the blue houses were (relatively) cheap (i.e., obtainable with 'free gold'), and it looked like they were close in numbers of space taken up versus unhappiness (again, once you've added in all the decors you need to negate their unhappiness).

    Then I did the actual calculations, and discovered that the level 1 blue houses were actually BETTER than level 3 red houses, if one wants to offset the unhappiness and get one's farm operating into the green, lower operating costs.

    I really have difficulty seeing why some people are unable to grasp this, I know we don't all think alike, but I've tried to put it into terms that are meaningful to me, as have a couple others. Maybe it's just the 'I need to get my farm operating in the green, cost-reducing happiness area' which is the blind spot? That's what we're talking about, getting all of our farms to be as happy as possible!
  • monica79538monica79538 Posts: 1,932
    edited 07.07.2013
    post deleted
  • Gwendolen (US1)Gwendolen (US1) Posts: 1,268
    edited 09.07.2013
    A level 1 house gives 10 workers, and minus 35 in happiness. So you can get a lvl 1 house, and a shed = 10 workers and no happiness change.

    A level 3 house is 20 workers, minus 91 in happines, so you'd need 2 sheds and a big tree to compensate.
    2 lvl1 houses is also 20 workers and you'd need 2 sheds to compensate for the lack in happies.

    1 level 3 house, (5x5) 2 sheds of 4x6 and a tree of 4x4 is 89 squares in total.

    2 lvl 1 houses and 2 sheds is 2 times 5x5 and 2 times 6x4 is 98 squares in total. That still is 9 squares more you need, actually :P

    A lvl 1 gold house only gives -25 in happiness. You'd only need an icecream van to have that well covered already ánd a lvl 1 gold house gives 12 workers.
    But with only lvl1 gold houses, I thínk you will get into trouble with the room you will need/use.

    8 lvl1 gold houses uses 8 times 5x5 = 200 squares.
    It also gives a happiness of -200 total. With 6 icecream vans and 1 panda, you'd get 200 happiness. You'd need 140 squares to cover that.
    8 lvl1 golden houses give you 96 workers, so that is 96 naggers and 340 squares.


    5 lvl3 houses give 100 workers. 5 times 5x5 is 125 squares.
    5 lvl 3 houses get you at -455 happiness (WOW)
    For 12 lakes you get 456 happiness. 12 times 5x5 is 300. So you'd need 425 squares for 100 workers.

    In that case, the golden houses win clearly though.

    So I think that the consensus is that lvl1 red houses are not helping you, but taking more room then going to lvl3 houses, but working with lvl1 golden houses dóes actually help.
  • ElizabethKElizabethK Posts: 519
    edited 09.07.2013
    I was not sure how all this math would work for a final farm, so I did my own math.

    On one of my final farm plans I would need 307 workers which requires 14 lvl 3 red houses and the farmhouse fully upgraded also or 24 lvl 1 gold house with the farmhouse. The red houses would give -1274 happiness and the gold houses -600. As Gwendolen said WOW. So my calculations are


    Red houses (lvl 3)

    310 workers 14 houses -1274 happiness
    (would need 10 tractors to compensate for the extra -674 happiness or almost 20 lakes)
    GOLD COST 55,000

    Blue houses (lvl 1)
    318 workers 24 houses -600 happiness
    GOLD COST 6,000


    Therefore for the same space you would need a lot more gold to get the same happiness or a lot more space. Conclusion lvl 1 blue houses are better than lvl 3 red. Also, if you have limited gold, spending on the houses are better than spending on the decorations (I always thought the opposite).

    I am definitely thinking of switching to the blue houses at some point (still want to upgrade my water tower to lvl 2 first though).


    Footnote: I am not a gold buyer and don't plan on ever spending real money (sorry ggs). So any gold would be what I earn in the game.
  • monica79538monica79538 Posts: 1,932
    edited 09.07.2013
    post deleted
  • ElizabethKElizabethK Posts: 519
    edited 09.07.2013
    The math can be mind boggling, that's why I tried to do my own because I wasn't getting everyone else's.

    To explain my numbers better, I am not looking at the total happiness on the whole farm, but just trying to compare the happiness of the 2 situations using 24 5x5 spots.


    For 24 5x5 squares you can have either

    24 blue houses which gives -600 happiness -(25 x 24) and 318 workers or

    14 red houses with 10 5x5 decorations which gives -574 happiness with tractors -(14 x 91 - 10 x 70) or - 894 happiness with lakes -(14 x 91 - 10 x 38 ) and 308 workers.

    However, none of this takes into account the event decorations you can win for +74 happiness. These negate the benefits of the blue houses.

    Unfortunately, I am not really sure how else to explain my reasoning :S And all math aside I think that what should be gotten from this is what gives the most bang for the gold. If you have gold to spend buying blue houses is better than buying decorations, unless you want an odd shaped deco to fill an odd spot. But of course I feel the water tower is the best thing to spend gold on. But if you don't have gold to spend than don't worry about it :)


    Now that I have confused you more, happy farming.
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 17.07.2013
    Thanks for explaining it from your POV, Elizabeth, I'm glad to have another way of looking at it. The tractors would make for a happier farm, but cost 55,000 gold for 10 of them, while the blue houses will only cost 6000 for 24 of them, and it seems to me that someone like me who doesn't buy gold would be wiser to use the lower gold cost option.

    I like knowing that 14 level 3 red houses is ultimately the total that will work on a fully expanded and upgraded farm. But I'm nowhere near that far in the game yet, so taking the case of the
    5 5x5 squares of space taken up with:
    5 level 1 blues equals -125 happiness
    or
    3 level 3 reds plus 2 special rewards decos (+74 each) equals -125 happiness
    is a handier way of looking at it, and makes a valid point.
    No one has 10 of those +74 decos yet for their 14 red houses (so far, afaik), though it's ultimately possible. Also, not everyone has access to +74 decos, they are in limited supply. Those who were not able to complete the quests to win the special decos would have missed out on them or had to pay a lot of gold for them. Lower level players don't get them at +74 happiness, either.

    The +74 decos don't negate the benefits of the blue houses, they merely make the 2 scenarios equal in happiness. You also have to take into account the fact that all 5 blue houses will have taken less than an hour to construct, while the 3 level 3 red houses will all have taken hours and hours (9.5 or so per house) to upgrade after the initial construction, so it isn't just about farm dollars.

    This isn't 'theory' - this is adding and subtract solid numbers provided about happiness by the game developers, and consequently 'testing' isn't required. Ultimately, I hope to have 20 or more blue houses on my fully expanded farm (2 level 3 reds with 20 blue houses, to save having to deconstruct some level 3 reds I already have, plus no 'leftover' workers that will never be used, or I might get to 24 blue houses), and will be able to put up a screen capture of my farm as an example.
  • facesnorthfacesnorth Posts: 13
    edited 27.08.2013
    The conclusions in this post which use Lakes as the decorations to make up for L3 Red house unhappiness levels are flawed. Any plans for a final farm should be using +74 happiness large event prizes, together with a spattering of Telescopes and such. Ultimately these are the decorations that will populate a non-gold spender's farms, and they are 2.96 happiness per square, which according to Minioreo's excellent post #9, means L1 Blue houses are exactly even to L3 Red houses in terms of workers + happiness per square used when comparing 5 L1 Blue vs 3 L3 Red.

    Of course, by upgrading to an L2 Blue, then they clearly become superior. But at L1, they are equal.

    edit: and now I see that the post above mine basically offered the same conclusion and expanded on it a little further.
  • montuosmontuos Posts: 1,275
    edited 27.08.2013
    facesnorth wrote: »
    Any plans for a final farm should be using +74 happiness large event prizes, together with a spattering of Telescopes and such.

    I will point out for the record that neither the large events nor the telescopes existed at the time Minioreo started this thread, so of course the earlier calculations didn't include them.

    It is also worthy of note that winning large event prizes is by no means as quick, inexpensive, or reliable as purchasing a regular decoration. You can purchase and build five or six lakes in a single day if you want — or several limited edition decorations during an event; the thicket (5x5, 1.56), dragon (5x4, 1.6), and enchanted tree (5x4, 1.65) all have better happiness per square than the lake — but so far it takes months to obtain that many +74 event decorations. I regularly see complaints from people who aren't able to put in sufficient time to compete in any given event, plus there have been numerous server problems that have caused players to fail to complete an event, and thus lose the prize. As far as the telescopes go, although they're effectively an outright purchase, it still takes $8-15 million (depending on where your rank falls) to get +74, so very few players are going to get those until they are well advanced in level.

    For these reasons I posit that although the +74 decorations should be considered an ultimate goal, the initial planning should remain based on the regular and limited edition event decorations.

    Another important point in blue 1/red 3 preference is that the blue houses are hands-down best for low-level non-gold-spenders. You can build them starting from level 5, but you can't purchase a lake until level 47, and the +74 decorations are also out of reach for players below level 43. Buying telescopes is now an option here, which will help somewhat, but we still don't know how often this even will come around, and low-level players simply won't have the spare cash it takes to get one much above the 40s for happiness anyway.
  • McFeisty (US1)McFeisty (US1) US1 Posts: 110
    edited 29.08.2013
    I don't plan on putting any of the +74 decorations on my main farm. Why? Because I can use the blue fancy houses there, and it causes no harm, the tasks for houses there had to do with only the number of houses you'd built, no level requirement. The other farms require level 3 houses to complete the house tasks, and I cannot afford to upgrade the blue houses, so I'm forced to use red houses on those farms if I want to complete 'X houses at level 3' tasks, and that's going to force me to use my best event decorations on those farms.

    Perhaps ultimately, I will have the opportunity to swap out blue houses for red houses on the satellite farms, but that is far in the future. Maybe as far in the future as having 30 +74 decorations (10 for each farm).
  • montuosmontuos Posts: 1,275
    edited 31.08.2013
    Actually, there is a main farm task for a level 2 and then a level 3 house early on, as soon as those levels are unlocked. But yes, the main farm does not require multiples of those.

    I admit I hadn't thought that far ahead yet, simply because I didn't start my gourmet farm until forever late, and I'm still concentrating on filling my land with 4x4 decorations for that 46 decorations on farm task, so I've put building other things on hiatus until that's done. My flower farm isn't even that far along yet; it's nothing but the cabin, the shop, three fairy tale towers, and some trees, all on the original four plots. I'll probably do the same on that farm too — building only 4x4 or event decos with no additional production, processing, or houses when I expand — for a while yet.
  • ElizabethKElizabethK Posts: 519
    edited 10.09.2013
    Here is my math for the new house upgrades available


    For the level 4 houses here is the math

    To get 100 workers you need 4 level 4 houses + 1 5x5 space or 5 level 3 houses. Therefore:

    4 level 4 at -120happiness(H) +38H (Lake) = -442H
    5 level 3 at -91H = -445H

    So with level 4 houses it is about the same happiness for the same space only taking into consideration regular decorations. But take into consideration event or gold decorations and it is worth it.


    Level 3 houses give 20 workers for -91 happiness (H).
    Level 5 houses give 30 workers for -145 H

    Therefore for 3 5x5 spots you can have either:


    3 level 3 houses giving 60 workers and -273H

    2 level 5 houses giving 60 workers and -290H + 1 5x5 lake with +38H for a total of -252H

    Makes me happy.


    I have not done the math regarding gold houses in comparison. Someone else can work on that :)
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