Welcome to the new era of Great Buildings evolution!

Overview

Tiers, Blueprints, Refinery

Changes to Great Buildings

A few months ago, we unveiled our biggest Great Buildings update yet. Thanks to the discussion that unfolded and your honest feedback, we decided to go back to the drawing board and further polish the design, as well as address concerns you raised.

Today, we’re excited to present the updated Great Buildings Prestige feature!

With Prestige Tiers, we aim to boost and refresh Great Buildings’ effects, bringing them closer to the bar our Event buildings have set, and honoring the investments you’ve already made into them. We also want to replace former unlimited leveling with distinct stages of progression — new milestones to work towards and improve, especially in the end game.

In this announcement, you will find a quick overview of the feature. For a deeper dive into mechanics, we’ve created separate articles. Please find them linked in every section of this announcement.

How Does Prestige Work?

Prestige Tiers create a new system of progressive milestones for Great Buildings that comes in addition to normal leveling. With this update, once a GB reaches a new Tier, it will receive a new, upgradeable building effect on top of the already acquired ones. This effect will, too, grow with every new level until its maximum is reached, creating multiple boosts to apply instead of a single one. 

With Great Buildings, we’ve always aimed to give our players a meaningful long-term goal — to match the monumental nature of GBs themselves. Tiers continue this tradition, so don’t expect quick results, but an extended target that requires a well-planned investment.

In this update, we are introducing three Prestige Tiers:
1. Copper
2. Silver
3. Gold

To move between Tiers and levels within them, you will need Tiered Blueprints of the corresponding type: Copper, Silver, or Gold, as well as other resources.

You can still find the old Blueprints (from now on referred to as Copper Blueprints) in all the usual ways.

For new Blueprints, we created a special Refinery where you can exchange lower-Tier Blueprints for higher ones.

For a more detailed explanation, read Great Buildings Prestige: Tiers, Blueprints, and the Refinery.

Which Great Buildings Are Updated and How?

With the update, Prestige Tiers become an integral part of the Great Buildings system. Thus, all Great Buildings will be migrated to the new system, with a slightly different effect depending on whether they get higher Tiers. 

A limited selection of Great Buildings will already receive new Tiers, along with new building effects. The leveling of remaining GBs will be capped at the first 200 levels, pausing at the Copper Tier until new Tiers can be added.

We’ve made sure the most popularly built and upgraded GBs will receive Silver and Gold Tiers, so you can continue growing them.

In the absolute vast majority of cases, this update will mean either a buff to your GBs or no change. Let us explain the practical effects in detail for each of those two groups: Tiered and Copper.

Tiered Great Buildings

The following Great Buildings will be overhauled with this update:

• Statue of Zeus
• Colosseum
• Cathedral of Aachen
• St. Mark's Basilica
• Castel del Monte
• Deal Castle
• Alcatraz
• Château Frontenac
• Lotus Temple
• The Arc
• Arctic Orangery
• Seed Vault
• The Kraken
• The Blue Galaxy
• Terracotta Army
• Himeji Castle
• The Virgo Project
• Space Carrier
• Observatory

Great Buildings from this group will receive Silver and Gold Tiers in addition to having their first levels changed to the Copper Tier. You can continue leveling those GBs, now within the Tier system, with new perks arriving at levels 101 (Silver Tier starts) and 201 (Gold Tier starts).

One of our main goals with this update design was to minimize the potential loss of all resources Great Building owners have invested into them over the years. In preparation for it, we’ve determined the most commonly built GBs and the highest level players tend to achieve in them. Most GBs from this list were chosen to receive the Silver and Gold Tiers. 

After the migration, these GBs will remain on the same level. If said level is above the max available GB level after the migration (> 200 lvl or > 400 lvl), compensation will apply (see the Notes section).

Meaning, you can immediately take advantage of the new Prestige system and perks from Tiers on any GBs above level 100. Designing the update this way, we wanted to ensure your hard-earned investments are useful in the new system and to faithfully transfer the current competitive landscape into it.

Copper-only Great Buildings

The rest of the Great Buildings will not yet receive the Silver and Gold Tiers. These GBs will remain in the Copper Tier for the time being, which means little to no change for this category.

After the migration, you may notice a different building effect and costs scaling within the Copper Tier, but the final goal will remain exactly the same. The changes on individual levels stems from the overall modernization of formulas behind the building balancing. Simply put, we're preparing all GBs to fit the new system and make space for the potential addition of Tiers. 

Arc Contribution Bonus and Other Notes

In this update, the iconic Arc receives Silver and Gold Tiers. You will notice that those Tiers do not include the Arc's most prominent contribution bonus, so it's evolution ends with the Copper Tier at level 200. This number of levels already allows you to make contributions to your own benefit, and any further leveling would subvert the initial intention of this feature.

Additionally, the Arc's contribution bonus will only apply to the first 200 levels. Meaning, you will receive the Arc contribution bonus only as long as you donate to Great Buildings under level 200. The reason for this change being that the new Tiers employ a slightly different leveling system, meaning they require extra Blueprints, Goods, and overall are supposed to represent a more challenging, long-term goal. We find that expanding the Arc contribution bonus to new Tiers has potential to devalue the feature and unnecessarily accelerate power creep on Great Buildings as well. 

Note: In extremely rare cases, Great Buildings with uncommonly high levels will need to be downgraded. Depending on whether a Great Building receives new Tiers or stays within Copper, the cap level will be different: 200 for Copper, and 400 for GBs with new Tiers. Owners of such GBs will be compensated with Forge Points, Goods, Resources and Blueprints proportional to the number of levels they lost. The compensation will be send directly to Inventory.

We'd like to highlight that this unfortunate, but necessary measure applies to a very low number of players. In preparation for the update, we determined the most popular and commonly upgraded GBs to give them Silver and Gold Tiers, thus encompassing the absolute vast majority of players.

Read the detailed list of newly updated GBs with bonuses, as well as details of the update in Prestige Tiers and Changes to Existing Great Buildings.

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