Forge of Empires: Outdated Buildings to Delete and Replace

To improve your city's efficiency in Forge of Empires, delete obsolete Great Buildings and legacy event structures that consume large grid footprints without producing competitive resources. Demolishing underperforming structures reclaims valuable land, removes unnecessary roads, prevents social aid dilution, and frees daily Forge Points (FP) for high-impact investments like The Arc.

Why Keeping Obsolete Buildings Hurts City Progression

City progression in Forge of Empires depends heavily on tile efficiency—the amount of Forge Points, goods, combat bonuses, and population produced per grid square (including connected road tiles). Retaining dated buildings hurts your city in two ways:

• Opportunity cost: A single outdated 6x6 or 6x7 Great Building occupies space that could easily hold two fully leveled event buildings offering military attack percentages, dozens of goods, and high daily FP.
• Aid dilution: Visiting friends, guildmates, and tavern visitors have a limited number of aid actions. Outdated buildings that require motivation to produce small coin rewards or single Forge Points soak up these actions, leaving modern high-yield event buildings unmotivated.

Trap Great Buildings to Demolish

Several Great Buildings provide yields that do not justify their tile requirements at any level. Selling them returns no spent goods or Forge Points, but reclaiming their footprint provides an immediate upgrade in land value.

• Colosseum (Iron Age, 6x7): Yields negligible happiness and medals. Its medal payout is completely outclassed by taking reward slots on a 1.9 contribution thread or finishing event milestones.
• Notre Dame (High Middle Ages, 4x4): Generates happiness and a low amount of daily supplies. Supplies are easily covered by modern event infrastructure and standard progression.
• Space Needle (Tomorrow Era, 6x6): Produces only happiness and coins, both of which are readily available from compact structures in late eras.
• Lotus Temple (Contemporary Era, 6x6): Consumes 36 tiles purely for happiness and coins, offering no offensive, defensive, or strategic value.

Population Great Buildings: When to Sell

Early game strategies once relied on dedicated population Great Buildings to staff military barracks and goods buildings. Modern fully upgraded event buildings now provide substantial passive population as a secondary stat, often leaving active players with massive population surpluses.

• The Habitat and Capitol: Demolish these once your surplus population can absorb their loss. Neither provides secondary stats worth 35 grid tiles.
• Innovation Tower: While it provides daily Forge Points, its massive population addition inflates the happiness requirement needed to maintain 120% productivity (enthusiastic status). If maintained solely for Forge Points, modern event buildings generate higher FP per tile without inflating your required happiness threshold or demanding thousands of FP to level.

Retiring Outclassed Event and Regular City Buildings

Great Buildings are not the only sources of wasted space:

• Shrine of Knowledge (SoK): A 2x2 Shrine yields only 1 FP when motivated. A cluster of five consumes 20 tiles plus road frontage for 5 FP, while also absorbing five aid actions. Store them for trade-ins at the Antiques Dealer or sell them directly.
• Tech Tree Residential and Supply Buildings: Keeping standard houses, cultural decorations, or basic production workshops past the early eras wastes road connections and aid. Transition your coin and supply production entirely to high-efficiency event buildings.

Step-by-Step City Audit

Before removing structures from your grid, follow this sequence to avoid disrupting your production:

1. Verify Population and Happiness Reserves: Open your city overview. Ensure your surplus population exceeds the amount provided by any building you plan to remove, and check that total happiness remains well above the 120% enthusiastic requirement.
2. Target Road-Heavy Footprints: Prioritize selling large buildings (such as 6x7 or 7x5 structures) located along outer edges or deep street branches. Demolishing these often allows you to delete 5 to 10 redundant road segments alongside the building footprint.
3. Liquidate or Store Special Items: Do not use Store Building items on tech tree structures or Great Buildings. Use Store items exclusively on retired special buildings and obsolete event pieces so they can be sold to the Antiques Dealer for trade coins and gemstones.
4. Reallocate Forge Point Investment: Stop spending Forge Points on marginal Great Buildings. Direct your daily collections toward core priorities: leveling The Arc to level 80 for 1.9 thread participation, followed by foundational military buildings like the Statue of Zeus and Castel del Monte.