Terraform Pricing

In February 2017, Dakota published an article on terraform prices. As it has been some time since then, I decided to do a refresh of it. In the previous article, terraforms were broken down into three categories; custom, prospect, and alliance.

Custom terraforms are ones where the buyer can choose the distribution, such as a 7 food / 3 stone distribution. Prospect terraforms are terraforms that use the starting distribution of a race, such as the human's all 5s distribution. Alliance terraforms are terraforms for alliance-mates.

As before, this is for a standard terraform, a rushed terraform will often cost more.

	Custom	Prospect	Alliance
Mean	38.4	31.8	15.6
Median	36.5	36.5	0
Minimum	25	25	0
Maximum	73	36.5	36.5

10 Terraformers were surveyed, and the price of a scrap was taken as being 36.5 mil.

Compared to the last survey, there has been a significant increase in the average price of a custom terraform; from 30.9 mil to 38.4. However, the most common price was 36.5, just 1.5 mil above the previous mode, with 70% of respondents giving a price of 1 scrap. Most prices were given in terms of scraps, with those who didn't give a price in scraps saying that they would take a scrap as payment. This is perhaps the largest change, as in 2017 all prices were given in gold.

A scrap was also the most common price given for prospect terraforms, though there was a bit more divergence with one player offering a 10 million gold rebate for scraps. The shift to scraps has led to a 13.3 million gold increase in the price of prospect terraforms.

Alliance terraforms were by far the cheapest, with an average price of 15.6 million, however this is over three times the average in 2017. Most players either offered them for the same price or for free to alliance-mates. Players often said that prices for alliance-mates would vary based on how long their buyer had been in their alliance, as well as their size.

Author: Eowan

Abandoned city pricing

Following the article on terraforms, I noticed a player selling 'dead' towns for 45 mil piece, I honestly thought to myself 'this can't be a good price'. So I decided to ask several alliance leaders or representatives of alliance leadership what they charge for their 'dead' towns.

Surprisingly I found a split in the market that was far larger than the terraform price split- a general split of 15 milion, right down the middle. The split does not appear to be the result of research or city size differences. I shall list the prices told to me, as stated by the people I interviewed, but their names will of course be blanked out

[15:22] A town with all research done would be 100 mil

[1525] Oh...depends on the pop i'd say 40-60 mil

[15:42] Ah. Well if its one of ours and nobody in the confed is claiming it then we usually just let the first one who asks for it have it

[22:27] If you be my friend usually no charge

[22:27] 20mil to 5 mil

[12:36] we do not charge unless it's necessary

[12:44] not selling any but if its one we don't need willing to talk or give

[13:00] we usually just boot inactive players

[13:53] to be honest we've never chg'd for towns, unless it's for a terra and that is up to the individual who is dealing with the terra

As you can see, there is a large variation in the pricing of dead towns.

Terraform Pricing

EDIT: This article was refreshed in December 2021. To see more recent data, go here: https://illyriadtelegraph.blogspot.com/2021/12/terraform-pricing.html

After seeing someone attempting to sell a 'prospect' terraform for 30 million, stating 35 million was average, I decided to look about to see if it was anywhere close to the truth. I spent the morning searching for terraformers, and I believe I have come up with a decent representation of them. Now please note I do not assume to know all terraformers and their prices, and if anyone has something different than here, I would be more than happy to hear it.

I decided to cut this up into three distinct category's, 'custom' 'prospect' and 'alliance'. Custom terraforms are those that take the request of the buyer into consideration before selling. Prospect terraforms are the ones that dont consider a buyer, simply making an account, and tenaril the original town a week later. Finally we have alliance terraforms, these are purely 'in-house' matters, and wont be accessable to outsiders. otherwise they follow the rules of custom terras.

Please note that this is the information I got off sellers for their base prices, if you try asking for something 'rushed' it will likely go higher...

Unsurprisingly, the price for a custom terraform averaged at 30.9 million, with 35 million being both the highest and most frequent (60%), with 20 mil being the lowest.

The 'prospect' terraforms fared much better, at 18.5 million average, 20 million being the highest and most frequent (80%), with 10 being the lowest.

Finally the 'alliance' terraforms, at a 4.4 million average it is by far the cheapest, the most frequent number here was 0 (66%), with 20 million as the high.

If anyone would like me to place the numbers down at the bottom here, I would be happy to do so.