From the pins on discord

Caspian ☁02/03/2018
Hi Folks,

There's some question about Guild/Villager tokens. So let me add something to be stickied. Villager / Guild tokens - or really any token system we have, are designed to spread the financial resources among the members of an organization or settlement, rather than requiring all the costs be eaten by the leaders. Or worse, requiring people to send money over the internet to each other.

As a result, there is nothing that can be acquired through tokens that CANNOT be acquired without. The one exception - as we want to encourage the growth of large communities, we may award secondary benefits for having a large number of tokens from a large number of community members. This isn't a result of the tokens themselves, but a result of us adding motivation to encourage you to grow your settlements and organizations.

So as a general rule, never feel the need to acquire tokens for yourself, nor to acquire tokens on multiple accounts to send to yourself. The number of tokens required for the secondary benefits are tailored toward a range of token counts from the smallest to the largest. So - if you want to grow or customize your package, settlement, or organization - obtain EP for yourself. If you want to grow someone else's settlement or organization, give them tokens until you can't give any more. Then switch to EP gifting.

I believe op is requesting a comparison of gifting ep vs giving village token.

The post above gives a good comparison and to which would be better as a gift.

I haven't been around for a long time, so the following comparison will likely be inadequate:

Village Token ($10ea, 3max including Guild Token): increases the notoriety of the settlement; increases the population of a settlement by 1; and adds 1/5 (rounded down) of a parcel of land ($50/parcel).

Guild Token ($10ea, 3max including Village Token): increases the notoriety of the organization; increases research or resources of the organization; and adds 1/15 (rounded down) of a building/establishment or addon, expanding the existing or at a new location ($150).

EP (scaling cost, no gifted max?): 10ep, resources (~$1); 175ep, add 1 parcel of land (~$16/parcel); various ep, to increase self-sufficiency (population growth rate), infrastructure of all kinds (furnished buildings, fences, towers, roads); Rare and unique items; Schools and academies to greatly invest in future productivity (~$67ea); and cathedrals / shrines to massively increase reputation (~$90ea).

This is worth noting regarding tokens: "we may award secondary benefits for having a large number of tokens from a large number of community members"

I just came upon this:

https://iis-prod.chroniclesofelyria.com/blog/32763/Villager-Tokens

Within I found, "altering the resource abundance in parcels you specify." Which might change my mind. Because, with enough village tokens, one could, for example, change very poor quality farm land into godly quality farm land, or gems or stone, etc etc.

Caspian ☁04/27/2019

1. Tokens are designed as a way to distribute the responsibility of building a settlement to other people. Normally it's the guild leader that bears the financial burden. If you're part of a settlement, sending your mayor tokens is a great way to help out - while also ensuring they're using the "money" you send via tokens toward the settlement, not their own personal inventory.

2. We put a limit of tokens to 3, because distributing the cost of building a settlement to your citizens should be about how many citizens you have, not about how much money each one has. Also, we didn't want mayors to put demands on their citizens. Since they know there's a cap of 3, no citizen can be expected to send more than 3 tokens.

3. If you're a mayor, you don't care whether you get tokens, EP, or gift cards. It's all the same to you, and they can all be used for the same things. The tokens are solely a way for the sender, not the receiver, to contribute to someone in a controlled way. So if you're sending people money so they can then send you tokens, you missed the point of tokens. Keep your money, and just it to buy stuff yourself.

Just some more info on tokens, and the intent behind them in case you were wondering.

Tokens were about having a secure way to contribute to a cause. You give someone EP, and they could run away and buy a boat. You give someone a token, and it's a fixed asset that will go toward the settlement or guild as you intended when you sent it to him.

If the OP wants more info, cool. If you want more info, a'ight. Not really sure why it's getting so warm in here though

Ohhh that is a really good point! Thank you for sharing that. And for pointing out the temperature of my writing. I'll correct it.

Posted By Avastar at 11:37 AM - Sun Nov 17 2019

Ohhh that is a really good point! Thank you for sharing that. And for pointing out the temperature of my writing. I'll correct it.

No worries friend, text is largely tone deaf so I could be imagining the fervor, just wasn't expecting this thread to get revisited :P