QI Update and New Low QS QI plan

What's New in the Update?

Well, nerfs.  Lots and lots of nerfs.  Mostly though it doesn't change too much.

• Goods buildings cost 200 Alloy.  This is the only change that needs to affect your economy progression.  And it only is a big impact near the start.  For the bakery rush plan, the worst case scenario is you spend 95 more shards on 1 more bakery rush to cover.  For my lazy plan, I have an update coming.
• Pillory AP/hr has been taken out back and murdered so that it's no better than the alternatives.  Doctors are now the recommended AP/hr building.  While Pillory and Cartographer are *slightly* higher per square, Doctors are *much* cheaper per square and will likely allow you to convert at least a full collection earlier.  As such it's best to fill most space with Doctors, and reserve Pillories or Cartographers to fill in geometry better in places or use up excess resources.
• Cultural buildings also now provide AP capacity, but since we gained 100k capacity for free recently, this is rather unimportant to worry about for most players.  Cartographers have slightly better capacity/tile than Doctors.  Pillories have none.
• Lunar Coins from encounters have been reduced.

New Low QS plan

This is not entirely a reaction to the nerfs so much as something I'd been thinking over through the first championship.  

• I do not want to start every championship with a 1k diamond infusion so I can do a high QS plan in the first round.
• With the most important reward being the Gold & Silver Bazaar fragments, the motivation to go as hard as possible at earning Lunar Coins is not so high in the long term.  As long as enough Lunar Coins are earned to buyout the bazaar fragments and a little more each round.
• Buying the round end chests for 1500 QS offers some extra Gold & Silver Bazaar fragments.  How many depends on your guild's overall progression.  
• Finally, because of the nerf, city AP is more valuable as settlement AP has been lowered.  It then follows that the more city AP you have the less impact it has to max the settlement as fast as possible.

So in moving away from spending QS on Bakery rushes, the first plan I examined closely was mass Alchemists.  Tier 2 buildings are after all the fastest way to ramp Alloy production.  

While 30+ Alchemists are perfectly capable of providing the kind of Supply production I'm used to without ever touching a Bakery, the journey to get there is very starved on non-Alloy resources.  Compare 1k Alloy of either:

• 5 Alchemists cost 300 Population, 250k Coins, and 300k Supplies.  
• 1 Bakery costs 120 Population, 84k Coins, and 100k Supplies.  

The extra Supplies deprive you of expansions.  The extra Population also slows down how many you can fit because you need more Clapboards first.

So this changes attention to stopping with the T2s at some point and building T3s.  This wasn't entirely satisfying at first either - the Alchemist start still left Supply lagging ; and waiting 10 hours for a Bakery to even come online wasn't exactly helping with that.  It's not like the rush situation where you immediately get 8+ productions out of it and then Supplies are suddenly good.

The solution I settled on was using Shoemakers instead of Alchemists.  The best way to view Shoemakers is that 5 of them have the same production as 2 Bakeries.  This means in building 5 of them you 'waste' 21 squares (5 * 9 - 2 * 12), but save 1k Alloy.  They get along with support Breweries (often temporary ones early on) much better than Alchemists do as Breweries are mainly gaining value from the base production of other Supply buildings.

On City Support Buildings

At first when I was considering this I was looking at the possibility of loading way up on ascended buildings with the idea of using them to power past the first round without spending diamonds; and then in the second round flipping back to a high shard consumption strategy.  

I was prepping my run throughs with higher than normal Supply % and 200 starting Goods to try and overcome the supply shortage compared to Bakery rushes.  But once I'd settled on a plan I was happy with with Shoemakers, I wanted to answer the question: "how much do I really need all that?" and adapted my simulation of the run to only have my normal amount of support (220k starting Coins, 65% Supply boost, 50 starting Goods).  The result was the extra was gaining me about 32 encounters from earlier upgrades.  To put this in comparison, 1x 200 AP/hr building (i.e. Yukitomo Empire/Imperial) is worth about 15 encounters a round and doesn't require constant upkeep.

As such I'm pulling back from the extra event work that "loading up" on temporary buildings would entail.  I do still like having "some" but my 15 core ascensions of 10 Koi Ponds + 5 Nomad Nooks will suffice (+1 permanent Clover Keep Ruin and a few ascended troop providers for the start which are whatever I have handy at the time).  To the extent I want more out of QI from my main city I'll work on additional AP generators.

The Play

The spreadsheet I used to prepare this has not been fully checked yet vs a real run.  There will be updates (pictures, possibly changes if some things are in error), over the next live round (starting Dec 25).  For now, use at your own risk :)

Initial build: 3 QS Expansions, 1 Goods Expansion, all houses : 32 Multistorey + 20 Estate Houses on my starting Coin budget.  Some additional Estate Houses instead of Multistorey are a minor improvement if you have additional starting coins (about half and half is ideal).

First Collection: Euphoria ramp collection with houses.  Sell Churches.  Add 2 Shoemakers.  Rebuild to 23 Multistorey + 26 Estate Houses.  Return 1 hour later to confirm Shoemaker completion.

Second Collection: Euphoria ramp collection with houses.  Transform to add 12 Breweries while maintaining full Euphoria (6 Multistorey, 1 Mansion, 12 Breweries, 2 Shoemakers, 6 Churches).  Collect Shoemakers.  Sell Churches and Breweries.  Build to 6 Shoemakers, 18 Multistorey + 22 Estate Houses.  Return 1 hour later to confirm Shoemaker completion.

Third Collection: Euphoria ramp collection with houses.  Transform to add 6 Breweries (5 Multistorey, 4 Estate Houses, 6 Breweries, 6 Shoemakers, 6 Churches, 1 Palace).  Collect Shoemakers.  Sell Churches, Breweries, and Palace.  Build to 10 Shoemakers, 1 Ropery, 14 Multistorey Houses, and 15 Estate Houses.  Return 1 hour later to confirm Shoemaker completion.

Fourth Collection: Before starting, build 2 expansions with Rope.  Move 8 Estate Houses out there.  Build 3 Churches.  Euphoria ramp collection with houses.  Collect Shoemakers.  Build 1 more Rope expansion.  Sell Churches.  Build to 2 Doctors, 4 Multistoreys, 14 Estate Houses, 8 Breweries, 10 Shoemakers, 1 Ropery.

Fifth Collection: Collect All.  Build 1 more Rope expansion.  Build to 2 Clapboard Houses (instant finish), 16 Estate Houses, 10 Breweries, 10 Shoemakers, 2 Doctors, 1 Ropery.

Sixth Collection: Collect All.  Build 1 more Rope expansion.  Build to 3 Clapboard Houses (instant finish), 3 Doctors, 1 Mansion, 11 Estate Houses, 12 Breweries, 10 Shoemakers, 1 Ropery.

Seventh Collection: Collect All.  Build 1 more Rope expansion.  Sell Ropery.  Build to 4 Clapboard Houses, 2 Bakeries, 3 Doctors, 6 Multistoreys, 6 Estate Houses, 11 Breweries, 10 Shoemakers.

Eighth Collection: Collect All.  Swap 3 Estate Houses for 3 more Clapboard Houses.

Ninth Collection: Collect All.  Sell 5 Shoemakers.  Sell all Multistorey Houses and build to 8 Estate Houses (5 new), 8 Clapboard Houses (1 new), 13 Breweries (2 new), 4 Bakeries (2 new), 1 Beekeeper (new), 5 Shoemakers, 3 Doctors.

Tenth Collection: Collect All.  Build 3 Expansions with Honey.  Sell Beekeeper and last 5 Shoemakers.  Build to 9 Estate Houses (1 new), 17 Breweries (4 new), 8 Bakeries (4 new), 1 Cannon Camp (new), 8 Clapboard Houses, 3 Doctors

Eleventh Collection: Collect All.  Train 300 Cannons.  Sell Cannon Camp and 1 Estate House.  Build to Gunpowder Manufactory (new), 18 Breweries (1 new), 8 Bakeries, 8 Estate Houses, 8 Clapboard Houses

Twelfth Collection: Collect All.  Build last Goods Expansion with Gunpowder.  Sell Gunpowder Manufactory.  Build to 9 Estate Houses (1 new), 2 Cartographers (new), 19 Breweries (1 new), 8 Clapboard Houses, 8 Bakeries, 3 Doctors

Thirteenth Collection: Collect All.

Fourteenth Collection: Collect All.  Sell all Supply Buildings and Estate Houses.  Build to 8 Clapboard Houses, 29 Doctors, 11 Cartographers, 4 Nautical Statues, 11 Gargoyles

Fifteenth Collection: Collect All.

Sixteenth Collection: Collect All.  Sell all Clapboard Houses.  Build to 29 Doctors, 11 Cartographers, 4 Nautical Statues, 43 Gargoyles

The mix listed of Doctors/Cartographers/Statues/Gargoyles is based on what I expect to have for supplies and alloy and how much single-color boost I need.  The precise mix I settle on may be slightly different in the end ; and evolve over time as I get new support from my main city.

If I needed no boost I could convert on collection 13 instead of 14 to 2 Pillories, 38 Doctors, and 4 Cartographers, geometry permitting (that's a very high % of 3x3s - would need to be quite careful about picking expansions; probably need additional impediment removals as such.  the amount of 1x1s I use makes it easier to deal with any geometry while needing boost).  Would probably need additional supply boost from main city to be able to handle additional Pillories or Cartographers in order to be more geometry tolerant.