Cornerstone tier list

[arjensmit79]

1 is lowest, 5 is highest.
I am currently on prestige 9. When rating, i try to think ahead of what the game will be like on high prestige. but thats a bit speculation of course.
Sorry it reads like ♥♥♥♥.

1 Advanced Fuel I rarely produce fuel. If i do, the value is about 1/3th citizen production
3 Ancient Pact I think this is generally underrated. People act like the knowledge has no value. I think the knowledge is pretty valuable. It may require you to open 1-2 fewer glades during a game, resulting in 30-60 less hostility. It may also reduce problems caused by events and it may enable you to find ruins to restore and plan your blueprint choises around that. The cost is probably 4-5 citizens over a whole game since we don't open small glades anyway.
2 Back to Nature With the rather common Living Matter event, storing food for long term isn't a great strategy anyway. With some micro management you can make sure the downside doesn't bite you too hard. Double production on farms can be worth several citizens production. Still, its not super awesome.
4 Baptism of Fire Over the course of a game, the effect of this will grow from near zero to like 30 hostility per year. Over the total game, it can easilly be worth -100 hostility.
3 Bed and Breakfast 10 gold every time a trader comes in. At low to medium prestige levels gold is pretty plentiful and this is only useful in early game. At higher presige levels gold should become harder to get and this can be more valuable. In total i'm thinking this can be worth about 100 gold during the game.
2 Biscuit Diet. Situational. Can be a 4 if you have biscuit production going anyway.
5 Blight Extractor 3 amber per minute is 30 amber per year. Thats massive. At lower-medium difficulties, you can easilly disable even 2 buildings from being purged and gain 60 amber per year from this. At high difficulties you will have to clear your buildings, but you may still get plenty of amber out of this.
1 Blood Price Contract Losing citizens is not a good plan. I am however tempted to give this a high(er) score because its a mechanic that helps you in dire situations rather than a win-more thing. Maybe on high difficulty i will change my mind on this and other similar cornerstones.
1 Bread Peels Situational, and when its being used, its value is still limited to about 1 citizen of productivity.
4 Burnt to a Crisp Similar to baptism of fire, but 20 coal instead of 10 hostility. If we compare the sell value of that to the traders selling us -50 hostility books, this is worth more, but i don't go out of my way to buy that book on every occasion without a reason. Hostility reduction is king. Baptism of Fire is slightly better. (but i put them in the same tier)
5 Calming the Forest One of my favorites. Opening a glade every year this is worth about -30 Hostility per year to no downside or extra cost.
1 Canibalism See blood Price Contract, but worse.
2 Cheap construction The downside isn't that terrible, there's usually plenty resources, but the upside isn't that great either. Its nice to pick up in late game though just after you opened a bunch of glades and before you start building those expensive service buildings.
2 Chicken or Egg Sure in combination with other stuff it can produce insane things, but even then, insane population comes at a cost. Better keep population under control. In normal circumstances it can provide you with a few extra harpies wich is useful.
3 Clay delivery line 30 clay per year. some 200 clay per game. Thats pretty useful.
2 Copper extractor For your tool production, you either go dew or you go copper. When you go dew, this is absolutely terrible. When you go copper, this is good. Point is, its more more terrible than it can be good, and i go dew much more often than copper. Still, if you already decided to go copper, take it.
1 Cosmetics Spec. I havent even produce 70 cosmetics in all my games together so far.
3 Crowded Caravan. Extra people is nice in the early years.
2 Crowded Houses. I usually get about 20 houses worth of people in a game. Now i can house those in 14 houses, saving building materials for 6. Thats nice, but not too special.
0 Deserted Caravans Whut no trading !?
1 Deye Extractor Situational and not super awesome when it works.
3 Exploration contract Nice bonus that happens basically once a year.
5 Exploraion Expedition Indeed this might be the nr1 cornerstone out there. Its probably be an utter fail at high prestige levels though when storm takes 4 minutes and solving glade events take extra long.
1 Exploration Training Yes it has the potential to be pretty strong, but its involves quite a lot to make it happens only late when it no longer matters.
1 Export Specialization Decent bonus, but i don't usually produce a lot of packs of goods. Maybe on high prestige i will have to do more of it and it will pick up in value, i will have to find out.
1 Extraction Tools I get plenty of artifacts from settling next to the correct modifiers.
2 Family Gratitude Reputation from Resolve happens later in the game. When this happens, i don't need the water skins anymore, but i guess it might be possible to incorporate this into some wine or beer strategy where the first point of rep gets things goin.
3 Fiber Delivery line See Clay Delivery Line
1 Fiery Wrath I never sacrifice anything. Maybe this will change at high prestige.
2 Firekeepers Armore This is not usefull yet at medium prestige levels. It probably will be at high level ones though.
3 Firekeepers Prayer This one is hard to valuate before i get to p20. On low levels the downside is a non factor and the upside is nice, but not super needed.
2 Flame Amulets I don't really care much. I take them off during storm anyway. But it gives you some more flexibility and makes it easier to get reputation trough resolve.
2 Frequent Caravans I dont really use caravans so far. I might have to as my goods are losing half their value in the tradepost with prestige 9 i believe. Either way, it isn't useless, it can be helpful in getting rep tru resolve.
2 Friendly Relations I like this a tad bit more than Frequent Caravans but still not great.
1 Fungal Guide Has some nice potential, but these effects come in rather slowly and by the time it really gets rolling, the game is over. (and you simply have way more than you can use)
2 Generous Gifts Sure its more and no downside, but nothing too special.
3 Giant Veggies This is a significant increase as your gathering goes from 1 to 3 and farming goes fro 3 to 5.
1 Golden Marrow Situational and when its in effect, it will only give you a trickle of amber.
1 Grain Bags This tends to happen after i have won the game
3 Grain Delivery Line 30 grain per day, thats half a plantations production for free
2 Guild Catalog If its early in the game, you will get offered a hand full of extra cornerstones, but its at the cost of this one and the cost is now, the reward is later. I will choose a tier 3 over this.
2 Hidden Reward Thats a hand full of gold per year.
1 Hunter Gatherers Can be good situationally when you dont get hostility from opening glades and/or faster gathering when you use many of them. But outside that situation, i mostly farm rather than gather.
2 Improvised Tools Thats maybe worth 10 gold per year at the cost of ~2-4 beaver resolve. You take them off during storm so the cost is fine.
2 Leather Gloves Less good than Giant Veggies because i like veggies a lot and rarely produce or gather reed.
1 leftover Crops If you produce herbs, you get packs worth 2 or 3 gold per year. Unimpressive to say the least.
1 Local Taxes 100 frickin Ale, what do you think i am ? Heiniken ?
2 Lost in the Wilds an extra free villager each year. Half as much as crowded caravans. It was nice when we still were naive enough to open small glades. It will be nice again when those are balanced.
4 Lost Supplies I consider Meat a prime resource and 40 is a lot. 40 grain is also pretty nice. Better than Exploration contract.
2 Lumber Tax Handful of gold per year.
2 Meat Specialization Pretty good when meat comes from the forest, otherwise less impressive. Still one of the better +1 per 25s
1 Metallurgic Prof. Only speed, not production numbers. You probably need 1 less worker for your tools production. Not impressive.
3 Mist Piercers Same as Ancient pact except on medium/low difficulties, the downside of this is a non-factor. On high difficulties it might be as costly as ancient pact. Don't know yet.
2 Moldy Grain Seeds Thats ~20 shrooms per year when i have a farm doing grain. It helps.
1 Moss Brocolli Seeds Seriously i dont know. I have never even built a greenhouse.
1 Mushroom Seedlings Is this needed ?
3 Old Feodora Hat I suppose thats worth about 10 extra gold per year. (Or is it also 50% more reputation? in that case this is a 4)
1 Over Diligent Woodwor Free Barrels, probably like 10-15 per year. That might be a little useful, or not at all.
3 Peasant Supplies About 10 gold worth of packs per year
2 Prayer Book 10-30% faster glade event solving is nice. It is however more nice in early game than in late game, and thats when its only 10%. Still with the longer times needed at high prestige this might be a 3.
3 Prosperous Archae Basically about 1 global resolve per year. Good, but not as good as the -hostility ones.
4 Prosperous Settlement This has gained me many easy victories on medium-low prestige where i can get 10 global resolve out of this easilly. Will probably be much, much less impressive at high prestige.
5 Protected Trade Even better than Prosperous settlement as its better to prevent high hostility levels than to try and cure the problems they cause
1 Rain Pumps Who cares, really...
4 Rebelous spirit This rating is based on higher prestige levels where this will much of the time be 4-5 global resolve.
2 Reinforced Tools More goods helps.
1 Religious settlements As often explained to newbies, this game is not simcity. By the time this starts to kick in, the game was long won.
2 Rich Glades It helps but nothing impressive
3 Root Delivery Lines Same same.
4 Rooty Ground +1 wood is frickin awesome. The downside is a bit meh.
4 Safe Haven Lets value this at -15 hostility per year. Sort of similar to Baptism of fire
3 Sahildas cookbook When you are producing Pie, its a 4-5, but you aren't always producing pie.
2 Sharp Sickles See Leather Gloves
5 Silent Looting Thats a -30 hostility per year.
2 Small Distillery I dont think i ever produced Resin. And i need Crystal Dew in vastly different amounts anyway.But ill give it a 2 because dew is such a valuable resource and it just might happen.
2 Small Press If you're producing flour, its usually in decent quantities, so this sorta works and provides some free fuel that can also be used to solve glade events.
4 Smugglers Visit I so love smugglers, gimme the good stuff.
1 Spices Slow, by the time this starts to do something, it wont matter anymore.
2 Steel Pickaxes Its situational, it can turn a stone-poor map into a stone-fine map. In that case its surely a 3.
1 Stormwalker training Eh yay...
2 Surprise Chile See Chicken and Egg
3 Survivor Bonding Its not too much, maybe only a 2, but still speed and global resolve are 2 mighty fine resources even if its only a little.
2 Training Racks See Leather Gloves
4 Trade hub Another one of those key cornerstones for my favorite strategy at low-medium difficulty. Might be much less good on higher level espescially since it has a cost that doesnt go down in value.
2 Trade Logs 25% faster trader is nice.
1 Training ground Another one of those useless post end game bonusses.
2 Urban Planning See crowded houses
2 Value added tax Might be good on high difficulty levels where gold is harder to get.
1 Vineyard Town Another one of those useless post end game bonusses.
1 Well-Rested Workers Another one of those useless post end game bonusses. Yep this one goes right on the same pile as the "70" ones...
3 Without Restrictions I dont use consumption control very much, so this is a nice bonus
4 Woodcutters Prayer I love it
3 Woodcutters Technique similar to the delivery lines
1 Work Safety Guide And yes, also that pile....

[Mmm]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

2 Improvised Tools Thats maybe worth 10 gold per year at the cost of ~2-4 beaver resolve. You take them off during storm so the cost is fine.

I think "Improvised Tools" are really good if you get them from the start, just free tools for very manageable downside. You can open all glades now (most of them need easy resources for others use free tools). 3-4.

It sure is not that great lategame when you have economy to produce or buy tools, but that means you already won.

[OverThere]

Originally posted by arjensmit79:

0 Deserted Caravans Whut no trading !?

Some of my most satisfying wins have been based on this cornerstone.

I first selected it in frustration when I wasn't getting what I needed in a run to have much useful trade going. If trade is a dud, I might as well get something for giving it up.

It turns out that being forced to completely ignore trade helps focus all the other aspects of a run. Oh - the +50% extra production just floods your warehouses.

It teaches that, with careful play, trading is unnecessary to get to a huge win. Makes it easy to ignore many subsequent blueprint and cornerstone choices that depend on trade to work.

I wish it would pop up when the Bandit Camp biome modifier is on, the one that blocks trade anyway. However, I've never seen it then. The devs appear to have been clever enough to remove the cornerstone from rotation for that biome modifier.

[Olleus]

Small distillery is amazing on the biome where cutting trees gives you resin with a decently high chance, Royal Forest I think?

Meat specialisation is insane. I've had it build up to give +8 on multiple games when I got it early and had a single trappers camp running through out. That thing can flood you with meat so easily that food production becomes a joke.

Survivor bonding has the advantage of always being useful. It isn't situational, you don't have to adapt to make the most of it. It always works, and it's always good, no matter what blueprints / races / other cornerstones you have. That makes it far more reliable as an early pick than many of the others.

Baptism of fire has been nerfed quite a bit: 15 every 3 is a lot less than 10 every 2. Not being able to sacrifice can be a pain, it's one less thing you can juggle to keep harpies above water during a storm. And, if you have some of the nastier storm effects that trigger at hostility 2 or 3, it can be a killer. Sure, it's great in the long run once it's brought hostility under control for you, but the penalty hurts the most when you're vulnerable.

[Tomruler]

Woodpecker technique is a 5 for me. 1 insect every 2 trees means you can basically ignore food production for several years, not to mention insects being a meat-like ingredient that fits into 3 different complex foods and several recipes.

[Tomruler]

No Quality Control is another good one for a similar reason; +2 wood production and 50 insects every year in exchange for deleting your wood stocks every year is very strong, as you can easily plan around your wood situation. It apparently is bugged and will trigger in the middle of the storm if there are length modifiers though.

[Tomruler]

I would also give Mushroom Seedlings a 3, as it gives you a 2 star grain replacement for every farm type, in case you don't want to repeatedly roll for Small Farm for Flour based food builds.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Burnt to Crisp is actually a number 5.
Even if it does not reduce hostily getting free fuel on high prestige levels (currently on 17) is very good. Especially since it is self sufficient. Once you have it you will have allways enough to remove the blight rot and you will make about 11 coal profit. (3 is requied to make a purge weapon for the blight fighter destroying 3 blightrots gets you 20 coal).
Since coal also can be used to mitigate hostility, if you are lucky and have it multiple times you can make it into a self sufficient coal mine. Meaning you will have fuel for nearly every crafting recipe as well.

Also free barrels are always good since pickeled food usuary requires containers.

I would say once you hit prestige 15 or 16, where the game really starts to hurt, you will reeavalute.

[FredDie]

The ranking is lot different for P15-20. Especially p19 modifier shuffels the ranks a lot imo.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by FredDie:

The ranking is lot different for P15-20. Especially p19 modifier shuffels the ranks a lot imo.

Yeah am currently on p17. I have about a 50% chance usually.
In this game i had all the dices stacked against me. No flour producing building came up ever. First 3 (!) traders did not have tools. The maps positive bonus also did not do much since i get a 0.5 reputation if i finish in drizzle a dangerous glade event. (Impossible without the booster, and i already had 2 times 10% to finish boost, but still not enough)
I eventually just lost to impatience before year 9. And i only lost 2 guys due to resolve loss. (Lizard, Human, Harpy)
In hindsight i probably should have made a second ranch earlier to stabilize my food supply earlier, and to allow my guys to create fabric. (I was seriously starved for fabric since i needed fiber to produce food when i did not find any farm tiles)
Since i also had to boost quite often during storm to keep my resolve good the hearth, for me the Burn to Crisp gave a fighting chance.

[ACS36]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by FredDie:

The ranking is lot different for P15-20. Especially p19 modifier shuffels the ranks a lot imo.

Yeah am currently on p17. I have about a 50% chance usually.
In this game i had all the dices stacked against me. No flour producing building came up ever. First 3 (!) traders did not have tools. The maps positive bonus also did not do much since i get a 0.5 reputation if i finish in drizzle a dangerous glade event. (Impossible without the booster, and i already had 2 times 10% to finish boost, but still not enough)
I eventually just lost to impatience before year 9. And i only lost 2 guys due to resolve loss. (Lizard, Human, Harpy)
In hindsight i probably should have made a second ranch earlier to stabilize my food supply earlier, and to allow my guys to create fabric. (I was seriously starved for fabric since i needed fiber to produce food when i did not find any farm tiles)
Since i also had to boost quite often during storm to keep my resolve good the hearth, for me the Burn to Crisp gave a fighting chance.

Ranch is a big mistake on the highest prestige levels. You're wasting your most precious resource blue prints on a building you don't even need. Instead you should just embark with the trappers camp. It's a way stronger play and will give you greater consistency.

Ranch is only good if you want to play really year long games or high population games. It's one of the most over rated buildings but players like it because on lower difficulties you get more blue print options. Ranch is simply a mistake on higher levels of play that will lead you to many loses.

[Narandia]

Originally posted by ACS36:

Ranch is a big mistake on the highest prestige levels. You're wasting your most precious resource blue prints on a building you don't even need. Instead you should just embark with the trappers camp. It's a way stronger play and will give you greater consistency.

Ranch is only good if you want to play really year long games or high population games. It's one of the most over rated buildings but players like it because on lower difficulties you get more blue print options. Ranch is simply a mistake on higher levels of play that will lead you to many loses.

Its certainly situational but the multiplier effect of turning fiber into leather for fabric comes in handy surprisingly often in my experience. And a stable source of meat for jerky and skewers whenever you're not drowning in meat and insect nodes isn't anything to scoff at either. I probably wouldn't pick it for my first 3 blueprint options compared to a farm or gathering camp option, but I'm gladly taking any opportunity to snag one later. I only wish they were movable like farms when I can find one to rebuild.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by ACS36:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Yeah am currently on p17. I have about a 50% chance usually.
In this game i had all the dices stacked against me. No flour producing building came up ever. First 3 (!) traders did not have tools. The maps positive bonus also did not do much since i get a 0.5 reputation if i finish in drizzle a dangerous glade event. (Impossible without the booster, and i already had 2 times 10% to finish boost, but still not enough)
I eventually just lost to impatience before year 9. And i only lost 2 guys due to resolve loss. (Lizard, Human, Harpy)
In hindsight i probably should have made a second ranch earlier to stabilize my food supply earlier, and to allow my guys to create fabric. (I was seriously starved for fabric since i needed fiber to produce food when i did not find any farm tiles)
Since i also had to boost quite often during storm to keep my resolve good the hearth, for me the Burn to Crisp gave a fighting chance.

Ranch is a big mistake on the highest prestige levels. You're wasting your most precious resource blue prints on a building you don't even need. Instead you should just embark with the trappers camp. It's a way stronger play and will give you greater consistency.

Ranch is only good if you want to play really year long games or high population games. It's one of the most over rated buildings but players like it because on lower difficulties you get more blue print options. Ranch is simply a mistake on higher levels of play that will lead you to many loses.

I agree to disagree. On P17 you only get 2 starting blueprints. You also need 10 gold to reroll your first blueprint. If you get a forum and a RANCH...well it is quite easy to decide.
Trapper is only good if you have anything to trap out for. On certain maps it is basicly a waste to take it as there is not much meat or insects on it. (Eggs can be done by scavanger so why waste parts? -> Correction no more scavanger camp:) However the small camps and normal camps seem a bit strange. Also this means there is no food type where the beavers will have a boost)
Also if you have a clay pit and a Ranch you are basicly set food wise. While fiber will not be an issue, this way my plan, but i was starved for one thing or another most of the time.

In my last game i had not taken ranch and this time it proved a terrible mistake, as with the first glade having the event where living matter's spawn, and no farm fields, i was utterly devastated food wise. Interestingly even so i nearly got it. But the third time i was not able to come back from the impatiance. (Also the second glade also did not have a farm tons of small glades nearby. I did not check any for farms but did not seem like it)

And by the way it is the VERY same map i failed prior i am doing again. It is a you get much more timed quests map. And i did not go for the timed quests and still failed:)

[Narandia]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Also this means there is no food type where the beavers will have a boost)

Beavers never had a boost on any food gathering. Scavenger camp had no boosts unlike the specialized food camps, it just happened to be the only camp type that could harvest roots, which the game kinda associates with beavers through some order objectives and rewards.
I guess you could say beavers were best suited for gathering roots because it was the only food resource where none of the other races were better at it, but that's not much of a "boost" in my view.

On the contrary, with the Forager camp now harvesting roots rather than insects like the trapper camp, you can now get a double yield chance from harvesting roots (from human workers).
And of course that also means the Trapper camp is much more universally useful, where previously on Coral Forest it kinda sucked since you could use a Forager camp for insects too.

[Serulin]

1 Fungal Guide Has some nice potential, but these effects come in rather slowly and by the time it really gets rolling, the game is over. (and you simply have way more than you can use)

While most cases not worth it. The exception is marsh where the trees are all fungi. With trees alone you can get mushrooms in the thousands from this cornerstone if taken early. Also there is a merchant sold cornerstone that gives insects each time you gain mushrooms so you can get both in the thousands together. If you happen to have mushrooms on your map in a marsh then you can get ridiculous amounts of food from the combo and just spam packs to sell. The one issue I have is that some merchants don't buy raw food so packaging them is a way to get around merchants not buying the raw ingredients, but a decent amount still buy the food.

Sadly the cornerstone granting pigment from bugs doesn't trigger from the cornerstone granting bugs from mushrooms. Of note mushrooms work for flour so you can also use it to package trade goods. If you get oil from flour, then you can also have ludicrous amounts of oil.

The only issue is your woodcutters will be filled with tons of shrooms instead of wood so having a cornerstone like No quality control which increases your wood income helps a ton or another means of creating fuel. Still it is a super fun build and can basically win a game with the 2 and the bugs from mushrooms seems pretty common on marshes from vendors or glade events.

[Judaspriester]

While not playing much on prestige until now, I agree with many of the ratings. Just "Over Diligent Woodworkers" I would value higher. While it's not a thaat big amount of barrels you get out of it per year, I still like it because barrels are somewhat expensive to produce and are needed for some recipies. So I would rate it a 3.

Besides that, I agree with Tomruler on the Woodpecker technique. It gives you alot of free insects that can be easily made into jerky. Whenever I see it early/mid game there isn't much to think about, unless I somehow already managed to get alot of food by other means.

@Serulin, there was already a topic about packs. Iirc the conclusion was, that once you get access to a 1 star recipie, you make a profit on selling packs compared to selling the raw materials needed to make it (not taking into account the worth of the used workforce).