2022 Forge Bowl Event Guide

10 Jan

UPDATE: For the first day of the event most servers had the wrong version of the event, but this was fixed and everyone that had started during this were rewarded with the missing footballs/rewards they should have had. This guide was and is still based on the updated version, so it should be accurate for all players now :)

Welcome to my 2022 Forge Bowl Event Guide! This is my first written guide on my new website, so please let me know in the comments below what you think! I'd love some feedback on how to improve for future guides :)

Check out my video version of this guide as well:

Table of Contents
Game Mechanics
Reward Buildings
Which Player should you choose?
- Players for Daily Specials
- Players for Grand Prizes (and league progress)
Which Coach should you choose?
What are the best Daily Specials?
Can you get the Fiore Village fully leveled for free?
How many diamonds per Daily Special?
How many diamonds per additional Fiore Village?
How should you play on Diamond Farm worlds?
Interactive Simulation of Event
Comments

Game Mechanics

The minigame for this event is fairly simple. It's a classic "choose 1 of 3" minigame, with some additional complexity with the coaches. That doesn't mean your choices won't matter, in fact your choices will have a big impact on how well you do! So let's first quickly go through how the minigame works, then I'll guide you through all the different choices you can make. So, for info on which players to choose, which coaches to choose, or which daily specials you should go for, check out the sections below!

Players (top)

With each turn or "play" you will be presented with 3 players to choose from. The players are chosen randomly from 12 different players, split into 4 groups. You will only get 1 player from a group for a given turn, so for each turn one player from 3 of the 4 groups will be available. You can find detailed information about each player on the fandom wiki page (players). Each player will give a reward, including a chance of the Daily Special, and it will progress you 4 to 7 yards down the field. You need 80 yards to complete a field, for each field you complete you get a Grand Prize. Additional yards from the previous field will carry over to the next field, so you don't have to worry about which option you choose at the end of a field.

There are different ways to talk about the players, but from now on I'll use "brown", "gray", "blue" and "yellow" to refer to the groups, and the player cost to refer to individual players: 41, 48, 49, 60, 62, 64, 74, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105.

In general, the cheaper players are better for Daily Specials and Grand Prize progression, while the more expensive players often have more exciting other rewards. Again, check out the wiki page linked in the previous paragraph for a complete overview of the players. I'll go over the specific order of which players are best further below.

Coaches (top)

In addition to the players, you also have coaches (top left corner of the playing field). There are 5 available coaches:

Default Coach: Gives a 3% chance to double the reward each play
Progress Coach: Gives +1 yard each play
Special Coach: Gives +5% chance to win Daily Special each play
League Coach: Gives double the points towards the League
Ultimate Coach: All of the above bonuses, but costs 150 Diamonds. (Often called "Diamond Coach") When you select a coach it will be active for 24 hours, before you go back to the Default Coach again. After a coach has been active for 24 hours, it will have a cooldown period of a further 24 hours, meaning you can't choose it again during that time. This cooldown does not apply to the Default Coach or Ultimate Coach.

Leagues (top)

The league returns this year as well! Like with most of these leagues, your position will be determined by how much event currency you spend during the event. For this event the leagues are based on number of yards you progress down the field. This means that if you want the maximum progress towards the league, you want to get as many yards per football as possible (see below for info on which players are best).

There are two coaches that improve your points gain towards the league: The Progress Coach indirectly improves the points gain by increasing the number of yards you progress, and the League Coach will directly improve the league progress by doubling the points. The Diamond Coach will give you both of these at the same time, for maximum points gained.

Event Pass (top)

This year a new premium feature is introduced to this event: the Event Pass (top half of the prizes window in the image below). This is a second set of rewards you unlock for each Grand Prize you complete. To claim these prizes, you need to purchase the one-off event pass for 1800 diamonds. You can purchase the pass whenever you want during the event, you will still get all the prizes. On beta, the prizes included the likes of forge points, goods, boosts, rush kits, etc, as well as these buildings:

Forge Bowl Trophy (decoration): 160 and 2080 yards
Sentinel Outpost Lv1: 960 yards
Sentinel Outpost Upgrade: 1280 yards
Rogue Hideout Shrink Kit: 1440 and 2400 yards
Rogue Hideout: 2720 yards

Rewards loop back to the start after 2800 yards, or 35 complete fields.

Quests & Footballs (top)

As usual, the event currency of Footballs (or eggballs as I like to call them) is gained through the event quests. You can also get a decent amount of footballs through incidents, so you definitely want to pick up those. In total you will get 9710 footballs for free, not including incidents:

Starting amount: 200
Daily Logins: 22*110 = 2420
Rush Quests: 35*80 = 2800
Daily Quests: 21*140 = 2940
Quest Milestones: 350 + ~~800~~1000 = 1350~~1150~~
(Newsletter: 150 on one world)
Total: 9710 footballs (9860 with newsletter)

All the quests, as they appeared on beta, can be found on the fandom wiki page. I strongly recommend checking it out if you want to rush the quests. Some of the quests can be completed immediately if you have the resources, some you have to plan ahead for, so below is my "cheat list" of the quest. This list includes quests you need to prepare productions, antiques dealer, friends tavern, or space for, but you might also be stuck on other quests, so check out the wiki page!

Rush Quests:

Quest 6: Recruit 3 current age OR 4 previous age units AND buy 5 FPs
Quest 7: Build 2 current age OR 3 previous age Culture Buildings
Quest 8: Make people enthusiastic
Quest 9: Finish 4 hour productions 1 to 8 times (depending on age)
Quest 16: Finish 5 minute productions 2 to 12 times
Quest 17: Acquire 1-2 sectors OR Finish 24 hour productions 2 to 12 times
Quest 18: Build 1 current age OR 2 previous age Culture Buildings
Quest 19: Collect 5 incidents OR Finish 10 previous age productions AND gain 230-30,000 happiness
Quest 21: Finish 15 minute productions 3 to 18 times
Quest 24: Finish 1 hour productions 2 to 13 times
Quest 25: Exchange 4 items in Antiques Dealer OR Finish 4 hour productions 2 to 12 times
Quest 26: Build 1 current age OR 2 previous age Production Buildings AND buy 5 FPs
Quest 28: Spend 400 Tavern Silver OR Infiltrate 4 sectors
Quest 29: Finish 5 minute productions 3 to 17 times
Quest 33: Build 2 current age OR 3 previous age Residential Buildings (houses)
Quest 34: Finish 15 current age OR 18 previous age productions in production buildings

Daily Quests:

Quest 36: Exchange 2 items in Antiques Dealer OR Finish 4 hour productions 4 to 24 times
Quest 38: Build 5 current age or 6 previous age Decorations
Quest 39: Finish 1 hour productions 2 to 14 times
Quest 41: Finish 5 minute productions 3 to 18 times
Quest 45: Build 2 current age OR 3 previous age Culture Buildings
Quest 46: Exchange 4 items in Antiques Dealer OR Finish 8 hour productions 3 to 17 times
Quest 48: 8 hour productions 2 to 12 times
Quest 51: Spend 450 Tavern Silver OR Finish 15 minute productions 4 to 22 times
Quest 53: Collect 3 incidents OR Visit 15 Friends Taverns
Quest 55: ??? (changed from beta, don't know to what)
Quest 56: Finish 1 hour productions 2 to 14 times

Reward Buildings (top)

The Main Building is the new Fiore Village. It is a 4x6 residential building with 10 levels. At level 10 it gives:

32 Goods
25 Goods to guild treasury
19 to 30% Coins Boost
19 to 34% Defense for Attacking Army

Interestingly, the new building does not give forge points. This has been a very controversial decision, so I'll let you discuss that below in the comments! Personally, I don't mind, though would have wished the other values were improved a bit to make up for it! You can find a complete list of stats for the new building on the fandom wiki page.

There are many good Daily Specials in this event, and as you can see further below you can get A LOT of daily specials! As has become standard, the Daily Special Switch is available for this event, which makes it easier to get the rewards you want! A complete list of daily specials as they appeared on beta can be found here, though be warned that Inno have changed daily specials in the most recent event. With that said, all of these options will be available (not the complete list):

Of the "classic" rewards, many seem to be missing for this event. The Rogue Hideout Shrink Kit, Tactician Tower + Upgrade, Medals, and 6h Mass Supply Rush kit were available, but none of these were available on beta:

One Up Kit
Renovation Kit
Shrine of Knowledge
Wishing Well + Shrink Kit
Rogue Hideout

That does not mean they won't be available, but they probably won't. Because of the Daily Special Switch we should have a good idea of which rewards are available, so check out the fandom wiki page a few days into the event for most up to date info on which Daily Specials are available.

Which Player should you choose? (top)

This depends on what you want to focus on: Grand Prizes or Daily Specials. Which coach you choose will also have an impact, look below for more information on which coach I recommend.

If you have the foehelper extension installed you can use the event helper to get the best option. You want to choose the green "Cost/Step" option if your focus is on Grand Prizes, or the green "Cost/Prize" option if your focus is on Daily Specials

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You can also use this sortable chart on the fandom wiki page to get the best option for your focus.

Players for Daily Specials (top)

If you want to focus on Daily Specials you should pick the option that gives the highest chance per football. Depending on which group a player is in, it will either have a 5% (brown), 8% (gray), 10% (blue), or 12% (yellow) chance to get the Daily Special. That said, you want to look at it in the context of player cost.

The best order of players is as follows:

With Special or Ultimate Coach: 41, 60, 62, 48, 49, 64, 74, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105
Without Special or Ultimate Coach: 74, 60, 76, 62, 78, 64, 41, 101, 104, 105, 48, 49
General Rule with Coach: Cheapest Player (brown > gray > blue > yellow)
General Rule without Coach: blue > gray > yellow > brown

If you don't have tools available and don't want to memorize the order, you can use the general rules. They're not completely accurate, but quite close. You will always get one of the first two groups, so you only have to memorize the first two colours for the general rules. So brown > gray with coach (or simply "cheapest"), or blue > gray without coach.

Players for Grand Prizes (and league progress) (top)

If you want to focus on Grand Prizes (for Fiore Village upgrades and league progress) you should pick the option that gives you the most yards per football. Depending on which group a player is in, it will either move 4 (brown), 5 (gray), 6 (blue) or 7 (yellow) yards, though you want to look at these numbers in context of the player cost. You need a total of 80 yards per Grand Prize.

The best order of players is as follows:

With Progress or Ultimate Coach: 41, 48, 49, 60, 62, 74, 64, 76, 78, 101, 104, 105
Without Progress or Ultimate Coach: 41, 48, 60, 49, 74, 62, 76, 64, 78, 101, 104, 105
General Rule: Cheapest Player (brown > gray > blue > yellow)

If you don't have tools available and you don't want to memorize the order, you can use the general rule of picking the cheapest player. So brown player when available, if not the gray player (you'll always get one of these). This isn't always the optimal choice, but it's quite close to it. If you have the Progress or Ultimate coach this general rule is very good. If you don't have one of those coaches it's not as accurate (still good), but I would not recommend focusing on Grand Prizes without one of those coaches.

Which Coach should you choose? (top)

Again, this depends on what your goal is, but before I go into my recommendation I think it will be helpful to go over some numbers. There are three main things you can try to optimize; Daily Specials, Grand Prizes, or League Progress. There are two main choices you can make to optimize for these options; Coach choice and Player choice.

At the end of the this page you can find a simulation I wrote to estimate the number of daily specials and yards you can get with different coach and focus options, I've used that to create these tables (with 9510 starting footballs):

Update: When I originally made this I didn't know one of the milstone rewards was increased from 800 on beta to 1000, so actual amount of footballs for free is 9710, so all numbers here will be slightly higher :)

Focusing on Maximum Daily Specials	Default Coach	Progress Coach	Special Coach	League Coach	Ultimate Coach
Daily Specials	12.8	12.5	20.5	12.5	21.2
Yards / League Points	760 / 760	896 / 896	804 / 804	760 / 1520	984 / 1968
Grand Prizes (probability)	9 (100%)	11 (100%)	9 (16%) / 10 (84%)	9 (100%)	12 (100%)

Focusing on Maximum Yards	Default Coach	Progress Coach	Special Coach	League Coach	Ultimate Coach
Daily Specials	11.6	10.9	20.3	11.3	21.0
Yards / League Points	807 / 807	996 / 996	807 / 807	807 / 1614	996 / 1992
Grand Prizes (probability)	9 (3%) / 10 (97%)	12 (100%)	9 (3%) / 10 (97%)	9 (3%) / 10 (97%)	12 (100%)

As you can see there are significant differences between the different player and coach options. We can quickly eliminate the Default and League coaches as good options. These simply are not worth it. If you aim to go for daily specials, the Special coach heavily outperforms the Default coach. If you want to focus on the league the League coach outperforms the Progress coach, however by going for it you lose 2 (or even 3) Grand Prizes. The additional rewards from the leagues are not worth the Grand Prizes you lose. You might gain a selection kit, but you will lose it again from the Grand Prizes. Though unless you spend diamonds you probably will not reach Silver League, for reference the minimum number of points on beta for silver was 2026 points. So to reach silver you most likely need to spend diamonds, in which case you should go for the Diamond coach over the League coach anyways.

This leaves three good options; Progress, Special and Ultimate coaches. I would argue that most people should go for the Ultimate coach. Even if you do not buy or spend diamonds, unless you have a completely new city you are able to do GE and GBG. You should be able to gain enough diamonds from these to buy the diamond coach once or twice.

So my recommendation is that you save all your event currency for 1 day at the end of the event, or alternatively 2 days, and buy the Ultimate coach that/those day(s):

If your focus is on Grand Prizes, doing so will give you almost 10(!!) additional Daily Specials on average compared to the Progress Coach, and you will have a chance to end in Silver League if you pick up enough footballs from incidents. This is definitely worth 150/300 diamonds.

If your focus is on Daily Specials, you will get at least 1 more Grand Prize and around a 50% chance of an additional Daily Special on average, as well as a chance of placing in Silver League. Admittedly, this is not as big of a difference, so if your focus is on Daily Specials the Special coach is definitely a possible option as well. You could for example save most of your currency for one day and use the Ultimate coach on that, then use the Special coach (or even progress coach if you are close to a Grand Prize) to spend your remaining footballs at the end of the event.

What are the best Daily Specials? (top)

As usual, this depends on what you want to focus on. There are quite a few good daily specials to choose from, so below you can see some of my recommendations for different rewards.

Forge Points

For Forge Points, my recommendation is the Terracotta Vineyard + Lavender Lawn chain buildings. This will give you a lot of forge points, at a relatively efficient rate. If you have a Blue Galaxy I would definitely go for this, as all forge points are added to the Vineyard itself. If you want as many forge points as possible without worrying too much about efficiency you could leave the Terracotta Vineyard at level 1, though for highest efficiency you do want to completely level that as well.

Attack boost for Attacking Army

For Attack boost for Attacking Army, my recommendation is the Winners' Plaza if you are in a high age or plan to get there soon, or the Terracotta Vineyard + Cypress Pass chain buildings if you are in a lower age and plan to stay there. The Winner's Plaza is much more efficient in the later ages, but it gives less in lower ages so at a point the Cypress Pass is better. It's only in PME and above the Winner's Plaza gives more per tile, though because of its two levels it will never give more attack per daily special. In SAV it's close at 7% vs 8% per daily special, so if you're planning on getting to the final ages relatively soon (or if you think very long term), the Winner's Plaza is better. For people like me who are camping in INA or below for higher age units, the Cypress Pass is the better option. You can leave the Terracotta Vineyard at level 1, or if you want some additional FPs, Goods, etc from that you could also level that fully. Tip: If you go for the Winners' Plaza, save a few selection kits and use them on level 1 buildings from the Antiques Dealer!

Defense boost for Attacking Army

For Defense boost for Attacking Army, my recommendation is the Sentinel Outpost + Upgrade Kits for most players. It's by far the most efficient defense boost (for attacking army) building in the game, and very easy to place. If you want some additional resources in addition to defense you could go for the Olympic Treasury. It is much less efficient, but will also give you forge points, goods, population, etc. Another alternative is the Terracotta Vineyard + Olive Grove chain buildings. It is less efficient than either of the other options, but it gives a lot more defense per daily special at 8% compared to 2% or 1-2.8% for Sentinels / Olympic Treasury.

Situational

Situational Daily Specials like the Rogue Hideout Shrink Kit or the final upgrade(s) for buildings like the Colossus, Altar Garden or Olympic Treasury (if you're not focusing on it) could also be good options, but I would not focus on them.

Can you get the Fiore Village fully leveled for free? (top)

A common question during events is if you can get the main building fully leveled without spending diamonds. For this event the short answer is yes if you have the surprise box, and most likely if you don't have it, though only if you focus on it.

To get the main building fully leveled you need the level 1 building + 9 upgrades, 10 levels in total. You get the first 3 levels from the milestone rewards, so you need the remaining 7 from Grand Prizes, League rewards and/or the Event Surprise Box. This is where your choices matter, so below I go through the different player focuses and coach choices to see which can get it for free.

Update: The following scenarios have been updated to use the 9710 free footballs (was 9510 originally, I hadn't counted a 200 increase in the 2nd milestone reward :))

Optimizing for Daily Specials or Yards with Special Coach: If you optimize for daily specials or yards with the special coach (mostly the same choices) you will get around 820 yards on average, which is around 11.8 footballs per yard. This is enough to get 5 upgrade kits from the grand prizes, for 8 levels in total. That means you are missing 2 more upgrade kits.

If you have the surprise box, you need around 60 more yards, or just above 700 additional footballs for the next grand prize upgrade kits. This mnight be possible from incidents, but you might also have to spend some diamonds. You can get 150 footballs from newsletter on one world, so with that I'd say you have a decent chance of getting the rest from incidents.
If you do not have the surprise box, you need around 220 more yards, or around 2600 more footballs for the next two grand prize upgrade kits. This is too much from incidents, so you need to spend some diamonds (probably ~4k diamonds for 2400 footballs, with the rest from incidents).

You will most likely not end up in silver league, so you won't get a kit from the leagues.

Optimizing for Daily Specials with Ultimate Coach: If you optimize for daily specials with the ultimate coach, you will get around 1005 yards on average, which is around 9.66 footballs per yard. This is enough to get 6 upgrade kits from the grand prizes, for 9 levels in total. That means you are missing 1 more upgrade kit. This might be enough to end in Silver League on your world, in which case you have enough upgrade kits. If not:

If you have the surprise box you will have enough upgrades
If you do not have the surprise box, you need around 35 more yards, or around 340 additional footballs for the next grand prize upgrade kit. This is definitely possible from incidents, so you probably don't need to spend any diamonds.

You might get enough points to end in Silver League on your world, in which case you can get the last kit from there if don't you have the surprise box.

Optimizing for Yards with Progress or Ultimate Coach: If you optimize for yards with the progress or ultimate coach you will get around 1015 yards on average, which is around 9.55 footballs per yard. This is enough to get 6 upgrade kits from the grand prizes, for 9 levels in total. That means you are missing 2 more upgrade kits.

If you have the surprise box you will have enough upgrades
If you do not have the surprise box, you need a around 25 more yards, or around 240 additional footballs for the next grand prize upgrade kit. This is definitely possible from incidents, so you probably don't need to spend any diamonds.

You might get enough points to end in Silver League on your world if you have the Ultimate Coach, in which case you can get the last kit from there if don't you have the surprise box.

How many diamonds per Daily Special? (top)

This is a relatively simple question to answer, depending on what your focus and coach choices are:

	Focus on Daily Specials	Focus on Yards
Special	771 Diamonds	779 Diamonds
Progress	1265 Diamonds	1450 Diamonds
Ultimate	746 Diamonds	753 Diamonds

As you can see, if you focus on Special or Ultimate coach this is one of the best events to spend diamonds on for Daily Specials. Prices are usually above 1k, for example the cost in the 2021 Winter Event was around 1250 diamonds.

How many diamonds per additional Fiore Village? (top)

This is also a relatively simple question to answer, again depending on what your focus and coach choices are. Because the number of levels you can get for free depends on your playstyle and choices, I will show both the per level and fully leveled (10 levels) costs as "Per Level (Fully Leveled)".

	Focus on Daily Specials	Focus on Yards
Special	3146 (31 460) Diamonds	3135 (31 350) Diamonds
Progress	2823 (28 230) Diamonds	2540 (25 400) Diamonds
Ultimate	2571 (25 710) Diamonds	2540 (25 400) Diamonds

If, for example, you get 11 levels for free, you can use the fully leveled price and subtract the per level price once (or multiply the per level cost by 9). You can also subtract your current progress towards the next upgrade kit. Each level = 2 grand prizes, so if you are only missing 1 grand prize for the next upgrade you can subtract "per level / 2" from the total price.

If you are spending diamonds for an additional Fiore Village you should use the Ultimate coach, in which case you will pretty much be guaranteed to end in the top league (you will spend at least 20k footballs for 4k+ league points, you only needed 3.1k on beta). This means you get 2 kits from there, so you can subtract around 5k diamonds for those. If you have the surprise box that's one more upgrade you can subtract, resulting in around 18 500 diamonds for the second Fiore Village (9*1995 = 17 955 diamonds for footballs should be enough, + whatever you spend on coaches). Add ~2.5k diamonds if you don't have the surprise box. Additional Fiore Villages beyond that will need the full 10 levels from Grand Prizes.

How should you play on Diamond Farms worlds? (top)

This is an interesting event for diamond farms. You can get a lot of daily specials, however on beta there weren't any wishing well related daily specials. This can of course change for the live event, so my first recommendation is to check the fandom wiki page a day or three into the event to check what the daily special switch items are. If the Wishing Well (shrink) is among those, then you can play the event fully and focus on those.

In any case my recommendation for diamond farms is to focus fully on daily specials, and to ignore the Fiore Village. I don't think the main building is worth it for diamond farms, unless you have a lot of free space. So I recommend you go all out for daily specials. That means you can choose to go for diamond coach if you want, but if you don't want to spend diamonds the special coach will be good enough. Your player focus should be on daily specials.

If wishing wells or shrink kits don't appear, I would probably recommend the Terracotta Vineyard with either Olive Grove chain buildings for forge points, or the Cypress Pass chain buildings for attack. If you do GE on your farms, the attack from the Cypress should be very nice. I imagine you're probably in a relatively low age, so the Winners' Plaza won't be very efficient. If you are in a higher age you can by all means go for it! If you want defence boost for attacking army you should probably go for Sentinel Outpost + Upgrade Kits.

Interactive Simulation of the Event! (top)

Finally, I'd like to share my interactive simulation of the event! To use the simulation, simply change out the values to your own values, then click the "Run" button (black triangle) to simulate the event. This will simulate "num_iterations" number of events with the values you have chosen. For example, if your "active_coach" is "Special" and "player_focus" is "Daily", the simulation will always pick the best option (out of 3 randomly chosen players) for daily specials, keeping in mind the +5% bonus. If you set the "starting_balls" and "incidents" to the numbers you are interested in, the simulation will run until it is out of footballs. If you set "num_iterations" to 1000, this will be done 1000 times, with the results from each run saved. You will then get the average daily specials and yards, as well as the probability distributions.

The higher number of iterations the more accurate it will be, but will also take longer to calculate. The simulation runs on your hardware, so that will also impact how long it takes.

If you want to see the code itself, check out the "simulation.py" file in the widget below. I've commented a bit, so hopefully it is clear enough :)

Mooing Cat