How Not To Get Sniped

How Not To Get Sniped

To "snipe", in Forge of Empires, means to claim a slot in a great building by paying less than it's worth. It's a good thing to do to enemies, and a bad thing when it's done to a building you own.

Fair Price

To calculate the fair price, take the amount of FP the slot is listed to return. For example, a level 8 Cathedral of Aachen (CoA) gives 50 FP for slot 1, 25 FP for slot 2, 10 FP for slot 3, 5 FP for slot 4, and 0 FP for slot 5. This can be abbreviated as CoA 5(0) 4(5) 3(10) 2(25) 1(50). To get the 1.9x price, multiply the FP numbers by 1.9, rounding up. In this case, it would give CoA 5(0) 4(10) 3(19) 2(48) 1(95). The FoE Tools website has a Great Building Investment Calculator  (GBIC) that can do this automatically for you, along with a number of other helpful things.

How much is a slot worth?

The Warrior Woodchucks guild, like many others, has a 1.9x thread, "WW 1.9 lock thread", in which every slot in a great building is claimed for 1.9 times the amount of Forge Points (FP) that the investor gets back. This number was chosen because that's how much someone with a level 80 Arc receives. We'll take that as the "fair price" for a slot; it's how much you could receive without any special circumstances, any time. If you'd like to use some other way of calculating a fair price, you'll need to modify the arithmetic accordingly.

Basic Anti-Sniping

Sniping is possible because every Great Building has a limited number of FP that it can accept from investors. The level 8 Cathedral of Aachen that we'll use for our example can take 460 FP; once that number of FP have been invested, the building "flips" to the next level. What we want to do is get the maximum number of FP from other investors, leaving the building owner to put up the rest. If the building owner has to pay any more, then they've been sniped. 

Here's how it can happen: According to the GBIC, the owner should put up a total of 288 FP, and investors should put up the rest. If the owner puts up all 288 right away, that leaves only 172 remaining FP. If a hostile investor notices this, they can "lock" P1 by investing 86 FP, which leaves only 86 FP remaining for investors. The P1 slot is "locked" because no other investor can add more than 86 FP, and so they cannot beat the P1 investment (remember, a tie in investment amounts gives the slot to the earlier investor). Because P1 has been claimed for 86 FP instead of the 1.9x amount of 95, the building owner has lost 9 FP. And it can snowball. With the above example, P2 can now be locked for 43 FP, instead of the 48 FP of the 1.9x price, and the owner loses another 5 FP. At this point, nothing more can be sniped.

The owner can prevent sniping by only adding the right amount of FP at any time. The amount should be enough to allow a lock on the next slot, and no more. This can be calculated by finding the 1.9x price of the highest open slot, doubling it, and subtracting that from the total cost of the building. In our CoA example, the 1.9x cost for P1 is 95, and the total building cost is 460. 460 - (2 * 95) is 460 - 190, which is 270. If the owner adds 270 FP, the remaining amount is 190. Any investor placing less than 95 has not prevented another investor from claiming P1 and is open to counter sniping.

This can also happen if the investor acts out of order. In our CoA example, suppose the owner adds 270 FP, and then the first investor places 95 FP. So far, all is well, no one can be sniped, and there are 95 FP open on the building. However, if the third investor jumps the queue and places their 19 FP next, then the second slot can be sniped. Those 19 FP mean that there are only 76 FP remaining to be added, and if a hostile investor jumps in to add 38 FP, the second slot is now locked against anyone except the third investor.

By carefully placing the "lock amount" of FP, and then advertising only the locked slots, the building owner can safely use the 1.9x thread. For the CoE example, the owner would add 270, locking P1 and P2, then advertise those two slots. Once taken, the owner would add an additional 9 FP, locking P3 and P4, and would then advertise those two slots. Once they're taken, the building has no more FP to give, and it's not suitable for the 1.9x thread any more. However, Warrior Woodchucks has a "WW GBs close to leveling" thread, where buildings are offered for people who want the blueprints that such a slot can give (usually at 1 FP for the slot), and this building's P5 is a good candidate for that.

Counter sniping

If a hostile but careless investor tries to claim a slot for less than the 1.9x price, and fails to lock the slot, it's perfectly all right to pay the 1.9x price and outbid them. Be sure you're locking the slot by doing so, or they may increase their investment and outbid you. If you're doing this as a hostile investor yourself (i.e., you're not bidding on a building owned by someone in our guild or someone you want to keep on good terms with), you only have to lock the slot, even if that's less than the 1.9x price.

This typically results in the hostile but careless investor overpaying for the next slot. That's to the benefit of the building owner--they get extra free FPs--and causes no harm to anyone but the careless investor.

For example, on our CoA example, suppose the owner has put 270 FP on, making it possible to lock P1 for 95 FP. If a hostile investor miscalculates and puts on 85 FP, it would be possible to put on the 95 FP for the 1.9x price and claim P1. The hostile investor has now paid 85 FP for P2, instead of the expected 48 FP. Because of this overpayment, there is only 10 FP left to flip the building. The building owner could advertise P3(7) P4(3), giving a bargain to the two remaining investors and avoiding paying any more FP to flip the building.

Preventing Underwater Sniping

At some levels, the building cost is low enough that there is no owner contribution needed to lock the first slot. Indeed, the slot can sometimes be locked for less than the 1.9x price when the building is first available. This happens when the P1 return is less than half of the building cost.

For example, consider The Arc, at level 36. The total cost of the building is 1890 FP, and the return on the slots is Arc 5(10) 4(48) 3(171) 2(513) 1(1026). The P1 slot can be locked for 945 FP; the owner would lose 81 FP. When a slot can be locked for less than its 1.9x price, it's "under water".

There's no way to make it impossible to snipe an underwater slot, but there are things that can be done to make it unlikely. The key is to leave it snip-able for the least possible amount of time.

The basic remedy is to not make the slot available until someone is ready to claim it at full price. It's easy to find an investor by advertising on a guild thread, since we have quite a few people with level 80 Arcs. Until someone has volunteered for all snip-able slots (there are usually two if there are any, and there are cases with as many as four), the building should remain closed. There are two ways to close a building.

The easiest way is to not open the building. Above level 10, all buildings start closed, and are only opened by deliberately using blueprints to open them. If you simply do not open the building until you have your 1.9x investors lined up, the building cannot be sniped. Once you open it, your investors must act quickly, for now the building can be sniped. But it's very unlikely that the potential sniper will look at the building at just the right time and then be able to act more quickly than an alert 1.9x investor.

The other way is to disconnect the building from the road network. If a building is not connected to a road, then no one (not the owner, not an investor, not a sniper) is able to add FPs to the building. So, if you've accidentally used too many blueprints or can't fill a slot quickly enough, it's time to disconnect the roads to that building. This is easier if you've planned ahead and set things up so there's one key road square to remove. The downside is that you'll also turn off the building's special effects. Once your building is no longer vulnerable to sniping, you can reconnect it.

By Leif