How Great Building sniping works in Forge of Empires, what an auto sniper actually checks before it spends a Forge Point, and the one thing a sniping bot must never be able to do.
Every Great Building level pays rewards to the top five contributors when it completes — Forge Points, blueprints, medals. Those rewards are fixed per place, so when a building is close to levelling, a place can sometimes be bought for fewer Forge Points than it pays back. Taking that place on someone else's building is sniping, and it is one of the few ways to grow your Forge Points faster than your city produces them.
The catch is that the good ones do not last. A friend's building sits at 90% for a few minutes before someone else spots it, and checking every open building in your neighbourhood, friends list and guild by hand is exactly the kind of chore people stop doing after a week. FoE auto snipe is software doing that checking for you, and optionally placing the Forge Points too.
A place is only worth taking if it is safe and profitable. Both are arithmetic, which is why this is a job for software rather than instinct.
Safe means nobody can take the place back from you afterwards. There are two ways to get there. The strictly safe one is to close the level: your contribution is what finishes it, so there is nothing left for anyone to answer with. The cheaper one is to lock the place — put in enough that even if a rival spent every remaining Forge Point, they could not overtake you:
“Rival” is whoever would be directly below you once you are in. The + 1 matters: at exactly half, a rival can still draw level with you, and a draw is not a lock.
Profitable means the place pays back more than it costs. If you own an Arc, its bonus multiplies the Forge Points you get back, which turns a lot of marginal places into good ones:
An example. A building needs 100 more Forge Points, the player in 3rd has 20, and 3rd pays 50 FP. Locking 3rd costs floor((100 + 20) / 2) + 1 = 61. With a 90% Arc the reward is worth 50 × 1.9 = 95, so the snipe earns 34 Forge Points — a 56% return. Without an Arc the same place returns 50 for 61 and loses you 11. Same building, opposite answer.
The maths is the easy part. What separates a useful sniper from an expensive one is everything it refuses to do.
Neighbourhood, friends and guild, each switchable. Friends the game already marks as inactive are skipped, and anyone you blacklist is never scanned or targeted.
Out of the box it only takes places where your contribution finishes the level. Locking a place without closing is cheaper and is there if you want it, but closing is the one that cannot go wrong.
A minimum profit as a percentage of what gets spent, so a 2 FP gain on a 300 FP snipe does not count as a win. Your Arc bonus goes in once and every figure uses it.
A limit per building and a limit per scan. When your Forge Points will not cover the next target, it stops and says so instead of working through the list failing each one.
You can run it by hand — scan, look at the table sorted by profit, snipe the rows you like — or switch on Auto-Snipe and a re-scan interval, and it takes what passes your rules as it finds them. Every setting is explained in the docs.
This is the part that matters most, and the part most worth asking any sniping tool about. When the Forge Point bar cannot cover a contribution, the game can make up the difference from FP packages — and when the packages run out, from diamonds. A sniper that tells the game “use whatever it takes” will, sooner or later, buy Forge Points with real money.
SentryFoE's sniper spends only the Forge Points in your bar. Opening packages is a separate switch, off by default, and even then only when the packages were counted recently and comfortably cover the shortfall. If it cannot be sure, it skips the snipe. There is no setting that reaches diamonds, because there is no code path that asks for them.
A sniping calculator only shows you numbers. An auto sniper places the Forge Points for you, and that breaks the Forge of Empires Terms of Service — accounts do get actioned for automation. The honest answer on ban risk is here.
SentryFoE started as a Guild Battlegrounds tool and sniping sits alongside that, together with Guild Expedition. If you are comparing options, here is every FoE bot worth knowing about, or what can be automated in Forge of Empires at all.
FoE auto snipe is software that scans the Great Buildings of your neighbours, friends and guildmates for reward places that pay back more Forge Points than they cost, and places the Forge Points for you when it finds one. A sniping calculator shows you the same numbers but leaves the contribution to you.
Half of what the level still needs plus the Forge Points of the player who would sit directly below you, rounded down, plus one. The extra point matters because at exactly half a rival can still draw level with you. Contributing enough to finish the level is always safe.
Yes, and it changes which snipes are worth taking. The Arc multiplies the Forge Points a place pays back, so enter your Arc's bonus once and every profit figure the sniper works out includes it.
A careless one can: if the Forge Point bar and your packages cannot cover a contribution, the game can take diamonds for the rest. SentryFoE only spends the Forge Points in your bar, opens packages only if you switch that on, and has no way to reach diamonds.
No. Placing Forge Points automatically is automation, which breaks the Forge of Empires Terms of Service, and accounts do get actioned for it. Using a sniping calculator and placing the Forge Points yourself is not automation.