ECOnomy or Army

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    • It's not that straightforward to choose one or another.
      You have to do both.
      But due to several factors you have to expand first early on which is priority. Then do both in parallel.
      Early expansion is a must not only because of resources but mostly as a security measure to keep your home cities safer.
      Only if you are island nation this is not a thing.

      If are talking about resources then it is only about green thingy. Yes you need some supply and components but not as much as electronics. For example lvl2 arms industry will be enough for a long time if you expand every day (approximately 2 to 3 cities /day, better 3). Except electronics, at least for me it is a must to have lvl4 arm.ind there.

      It's a pity they didn't know what to do with oil. Who needs oil for buildings in RL?

    • Zozo001 wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      use a pile of resources to build AI instead of using those same resources to build units
      Your assumption here is that the pile gets lost forever. Actually it is being re-generated (with substantial payoff gained later), when the ROI time passes after getting invested. So the ArmInd builder can build more units afterwards.
      Note also another, hidden but crucial assumption in your argument: that the amount of extra units mobilizable from the resources saved by not building ArmInd would enable substantially faster expansion, yielding additional cities within a few days. That, ofc, is not guaranteed at all.
      i make neither of those assumptions.

      If readers check what I wrote carefully they'll see that

      1) I explictly mention the time to break-even on an investment in AI in my first reply. After you break-even you're obviously in the black for as long as the AI survives.

      That is similar to being in the black after a captured city produces more than you had to invest in capturing it, and similar to using units that capture cities to continue capturing more cities after they make their initial conquests.

      2) I explicitly wrote that "The expected-value of that increase depends on many slippery influences, but that increase is definitely not zero."

      There my unwritten assumption is that the player does use the units to aggressively expand, but I didn't assume that an aggressive expansion player wouldn't encounter bumps in the road in some games (just like an AI builder will encounter obstacles in some games).

      FYI: I'm writing all of this from the perspective of a public game player who (sadly) spends a lot of time using planes to gobble up one or more NPC country every game day.

      For me, building level 1 AIs, followed by mobilizing SF instead of building more AI is an important part of both creating the first 5 SF that get the expansion snowball rolling, and creating the second 5 SF that pour gasoline onto the expansion fire.

      The post was edited 1 time, last by KFGauss ().

    • often time my bottle neck on expanding is the stupidly low as resources in the first place.

      if you want to have more then three aircraft, you have to upgrade Hq airport, extra airport will consume your resources for the unit unless you want a cope airport.

      if you go for ground unit, you are broke after second roll out.

      if you go for naval, you are broke after 3 corvette.

      my strate for 6 city homeland is often simply
      3 RC or army base for 2 roll of infantry to back up if i got day1 rush.
      Arms industry on HQ then lv2 airport, then SF or EAA
      Arms industry on 2 port then lv2 port then 2 corvette.

      Survive for 2 day and i can comfortably gaining 6 city per day.
      This post was made by Leader of the Church of ROAD

    • Here are some incomplete results I intend to study when I dig deeper into this AI vs Expansion topic. I know the image is big and the text within it tiny - This is a quick-and-diryy preliminary peek.

      To put things into context, I
      • Picked a country that has only 5 cities
      • Picked a country near the map corner
      • Picked a country that has 3 single-national-guard neutral-country neighbors
      • Picked a country that has some semi-densely populated (cities are close together) neighbors
      • Built 5 EAA before starting to build ordinary SF
        • This skews the results a bit, BUT
        • My expansion bottleneck has been needing more NG to babysit captured cities and NOT whether I could defeat the units defending the abandoned cities.
      • Benefited from most of my initial neighbors abandoning their countries and not getting replaced (this is normal (for me) in public games, ant not unusual)
      Things to notice (if you can read them at all) in the images are that
      • I screwed up and didn't write down my starting resource outputs at the start of day 1
      • Near the end of the 7th day (20:00) I've nearly doubled my Resources income
        • Supp 60 --> 140
        • Comp 67 --> 122
        • Fuel 67 --> 105
        • Elec 65 --> 109
        • Rare 40 --> 85
      • After building my initial level 1 AIs, I haven't invested any more into AIs
      • The resources that I didn't put into AIs were used to build units and other buildings (like the level 3 Hospital that's under construction).
        • The units I built will continue defending/conquering
        • In an infinite-sized map, if I continued to be successful, by continuing to conquer cities my units would increase my resource income infinitely
      Pacific_Stats.JPG

      Pacific_Stats.JPG

      The post was edited 1 time, last by KFGauss ().

    • Folks - I don't claim that these spreadsheets give me/you definitive guidance in the Arms-Inds (AIs) vs Units-for-Expansion planning topic - I do think they supply part of the picture.

      The initial resources/hour values are from my current 5-city Pacific Theater country.

      A country with 6 or more cities might have greater AI construction costs. Cities in a different Pacific Theater country or a country in a different map might have a significantly different base production values.

      Please take a look and let me know if
      1. You see a factual mistake, and/or
      2. If what you see steers you in a significantly different direction than the one I usually take.


      I created the calculations to learn the Breakeven times for each AI level. Notice that you start having more resources than you would without an AI only AFTER the breakeven point.

      The Breakeven periods can overlap. That means that if you are building each of several levels immediately after the previous level is built, all of the Breakeven periods will be finished when only the final Breakeven period finishes, not after the sum of all the Breakeven periods finishes.

      My main take-away is that after kicking off building AI Level 1s in my 5 cities, I then prefer to switch to spending Components, Electronics, Manpower, and Cash to build 6 SF instead of building AI levels 2 through 5, and to then use those SF to immediately(ish) capture 2, 3, 4, . . . abandoned/AI countries that will boost my income by 50%, 75%, 100%, . . . (To do that I realize that I'll also need to build a non-trivial number of NG or other units to suppress Insurgents as I capture the abandoned cities).

      I like that plan better than using the AI to raise my production levels by 10%, 20% . . . 50% over a period of several construction days followed by a long wait to break-even.

      Arms_Ind_ROI.JPG

      Arms_Ind_ROI.JPG

      The post was edited 4 times, last by KFGauss ().

    • Zozo001 wrote:

      kurtvonstein wrote:

      an arm industrie investment pay if after some 20 days.
      In a word: no.
      on what sophisticazed pro and con related argumentation is your profound response based?
      What aspect of my words and thoughts overstinulated your ability for communication?
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.

    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      Zozo001 wrote:

      kurtvonstein wrote:

      an arm industrie investment pay if after some 20 days.
      In a word: no.
      on what sophisticazed pro and con related argumentation is your profound response based?What aspect of my words and thoughts overstinulated your ability for communication?
      That out-of-ballpark number of 20 day ROI.
      This is so much off reality that it makes no basis for rational discussion.
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player

    • Zozo001 wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      A country with 6 or more cities might have greater AI construction costs.
      I've never seen such variation in building costs, ever.
      A country with 6 or more cities might lead to greater construction costs (greater than what's shown in my spreadsheet screenshot) because the country's owner might decide to build AI in 5 or more cities instead of in only 4 cities (building in 4 cities is what I used in my spreadsheet's calculations).

    • KFGauss wrote:

      Here are some incomplete results I intend to study when I dig deeper into this AI vs Expansion topic.
      Kudos for this impressive study, indeed.
      Since the total dataset is going to be somewhat overwhelming, I suggest you make a separate summary on how those production increments of 50,75,100% are achieved from the occupied cities. It would also be useful to track their morale.
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player

    • KFGauss wrote:

      Zozo001 wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      A country with 6 or more cities might have greater AI construction costs.
      I've never seen such variation in building costs, ever.
      A country with 6 or more cities might lead to greater construction costs (greater than what's shown in my spreadsheet screenshot) because the country's owner might decide to build AI in 5 or more cities instead of in only 4 cities (building in 4 cities is what I used in my spreadsheet's calculations).
      Oh, I see what you mean now (sorry for my mistaking it for the per-city cost).
      Note that, similarly, the mobilization expense (with more units mobilized units) may go up as well, and the occupation speed too ofc. Better stick with comparing countries with the same city count, indeed.
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player

    • Zozo001 wrote:

      kurtvonstein wrote:

      Zozo001 wrote:

      kurtvonstein wrote:

      an arm industrie investment pay if after some 20 days.
      In a word: no.
      on what sophisticazed pro and con related argumentation is your profound response based?What aspect of my words and thoughts overstinulated your ability for communication?
      That out-of-ballpark number of 20 day ROI.This is so much off reality that it makes no basis for rational discussion.
      Well you can start a spreadsheet get all the cost per industry. them you calculate a mean market price per reasource for a given day at the game: note first day you get supply for 6 and at day 10 you hardly get supply on market. and then you calczlate the moral and population per city( as they influence production as well) and give them the daily increase as well.

      And if you then find out, that the 10% production surplus in 1 ressources of after a period where the expensiture of all 6 ressources is compensated is repaid by your sophisticates economic market modell.
      you will find out that kurts 20 days was a very good approximation. I might be wrong by 1-2 days but who knows there are so many variables in that equation that a rough estimate based of a simple calculation modell is as accurate.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.

    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      .. calculate a mean market price per reasource for a given day at the game: ...
      ...repaid by your sophisticates economic market modell.
      you will find out that kurts 20 days was a very good approximation.
      That approximation is not good at all, nor have you done any substative argument trying to show it would be.
      It is your model that gets unnecessarily complicated, by bringing in the market supply that should be treated separately.

      My "model" is simply the primitively calculated ROI, which is on the order of a few days for a single resource, and in the low teens for combining several ones.
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player

    • Zozo001 wrote:


      My "model" is simply the primitively calculated ROI, which is on the order of a few days for a single resource, and in the low teens for combining several ones.
      Are you some sort of a forum troll? I give you a simply calculated ROI. You reject by saying its not elaborated enough. So I give you an idea of hiw you can calculate the ROI on a sophiaticated way. But suddenly you reject by telling me its not simple enough.
      its make up your mind time. I am done with this discussion as it seems fruitless to move around in circles with you.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.

    • kurtvonstein wrote:

      I give you a simply calculated ROI.
      No you have not. You merely stated that it is 20. But no reasonable calculation yields that number, which is why I am objecting.

      An actual calculation looks like this. Say we consider Lvl2, where the building costs, daily gains (at 90% morale and population 6), and individual ROIs are as follows:
      BldCostGainROI
      Supplies 4502042.2
      Components 4501752.6
      RareM2751162.4
      Fuel4002042.0
      Electronics 3001452.1



      Now, if one wants a combined development of 5 cities for all different resources (which is hardly ever necessary, alas), than the return time of this bundle is 5 times the largest individual value, i.e. 12.9. By then the Components investment gets paid back for all 5 ArmInd (while the other resources are returned sooner).
      Commander Zozo001 :thumbsup:
      humble player

    • you see that you Roi is roughly 2.2 per day. you have 6 resources you have to pay per arm industry. makes some 13.2 days.
      now take into account that you never really reach 90% happiness and that you population is small at the beginning. lets say you make 900 rares and the ai only grants 90 rares but costs roughly 300 per lvl you would end up with a number higher then 13.2. also construction time gets longer so the bonus kicks in later anyway. I hope you can confirm that 15 days is minimum.
      @Dorado If you Close the Forum and move everything to Discord you will lose my Feedback for sure.