How should our town decide what to build next?

Question

We have an existing question about the optimal construction strategy for Die2Nite, but it is looking for a specific construction order, and is focused on the early game. I'm looking for something more general. At any given point in the lifecycle of a town, what should you be thinking about to decide what is the next most important thing to build?

Answer

In general, you should consider things in this order

1. Necessary defense Your first priority should always be figuring out what you need to build in order to have more defense the attack today and tomorrow. Don't forget to include town upgrades you will vote for when determining how much defense you need. If you don't have the predictor, you should have an idea of what the average and max attack numbers are for a given day. You should make sure that you have a plan for what buildings you would need to build to cover that much defense, and if it is too much to build in one day, build enough today to get it down to one day's worth of construction. In general it is not necessary to build more defensive buildings than that unless you have completed all other options. Once you have determined how much defense you need, consider:

   • Defense per rare material Many defensive buildings require nuts & bolts to construct. Since these are very limited, it is often best to choose your next building based on how much defense points you get per nuts & bolts used. Anything that doesn't require nuts & bolts would obviously come first. After that, you would build something that gives 75 defense for 5 N&B before something that gives 40 defense for 3 N&B. Obviously if you don't have enough N&B to build something, and are unlikely to get enough by the end of the day, you should exclude that building from consideration for the day.

   • Defense per AP When comparing things that are relatively the same in terms of defense per rare material, you should look at the defense gained per AP. So you would build something that gives 50 defense for 40 AP before something that gives 100 defense for 200 AP. Don't forget to consider housing upgrades. They are essentially a defensive building that can be built in many small stages. Each hovel provides 1 defense for the town at the cost of 2 AP and minimal resources. This is better than many of the late game defensive buildings.

2. Time sensitivity There are certain buildings that have an impact each day after they are built. It is important to try to construct these buildings as soon as possible to get maximum impact from them. Some have direct daily impact like the vegetable plot and factory. Others are time sensitive because they need to be upgraded to be effective. This includes search tower and defensive focus. You need to build these 5 days before you are able to have them at max effectiveness. The reverse of this is temporary buildings, which should never be built until you absolutely need them, preferably an hour or less before the attack.

   • Note that all non-upgradable defensive buildings are NOT time-sensitive. It doesn't matter if you build them on day 1 or day 20, they have the same impact, as long as you have enough defense at the end of each day. This is why they should be prioritized below other time-sensitive things.

3. Unlocked buildings Some buildings, like Wall Upgrade v2, can unlock other buildings (though you might need the right blueprints first). When considering what to build next, you should consider everything, even the buildings you haven't unlocked yet. If you then decide that what you want isn't unlocked yet, make the unlocking thing the next priority.

4. Situational buildings These are things that are only useful in very certain circumstances. This includes the butcher, cremato-cue, and possibly the scanner & predictor (since you can always use the web page to get an idea of what tomorrow's attack will be). These should be built only when other things aren't ready or needed.

5. Extra defense As stated before, there's no benefit to building a bunch of defensive buildings earlier than you need them. Make sure you are able to build up to the max attack for the next day, but then look for other options before building more defense.

Special cases

Faucet is very hard to quantify. You need at least a few water pistols to make it worthwhile. It is best in towns where you have a lot of people willing to scavenge, but unable to participate in coordinated expeditions. In general I would consider it a time sensitive construction that is worthwhile to build before you build anything that is not needed for immediate defense.

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