[Guide] Fastest economy growth! by Tavarish

There is a measure by me called "increase in IPH per upgrade time", in other words "income acceleration" IA.
By upgrading buildings that have the highest of this measure, your IPH will increase the fastest - PROVIDED there is no waiting for saving up enough.

There is also another measure, the "popular one" and seems to be the only widely known one. It's called "return on investment" or ROI, this is about "income increase per cost", but I won't go into this because it's simply one of the straight up WRONG way to go, and were here to WIN! >:]

If time is your limiting factor*, not money - go after IA. (*i.e. money is not a problem)
If vice versa - go after ROI. (This applies in the very early stages of the game, when you have to save up for anything you want to buy, that's why it doesn't apply to our case.)

I personally go with upgrading the one giving the highest IA - that I can afford!


The formula for IA is: [income increase]/[upg time]
And is derived by dividing (1) by the upg. time getting (2):
(1) (On-Oo)/Tc = (In-Io) = [income increase]
(2) ((On-Oo)/Tc)/Tu = (In-Io)/Tu = [income increase]/[upg time]

Oo = output old (cash)
On = output new (cash)
Io = income old (income per hour)
In = income new (income per hour)
Tc = cycle time (collect cycle in hours)
Tu = upgrade time (hours)

I personally think the below 1h ones are way too tedious!
The faster cycle time a building has, the more you'll lose by not collecting perfectly on time, so they're less efficient. A building that's not collected is equal to idling, it's not producing any money. Because of this they are compensated with a much higher IPH than the longer time buildings, but this is theoretical IPH provided you collect perfectly on time! So your IPH stat becomes very inflated by these buildings, not reflecting you effective/actual IPH.



I have a model for calculating a more* realistic IPH by looking at what happens during a whole day:
(*I'm not going all out on every little detail here, just the few biggest factors)


1hB: Starting with 1 hour buildings. (Until very recently I skipped these too.)
Originating from myself, I'm assuming these will be collected 6 times per day. That is 6 visits to the game that all are more than 60m apart. That equals 6 collections, which equals the building producing 6h out of 24h. So over a day that's 6/24 = 1/4 of it's IPH.
Hence I detract 3/4 or 75% of the 1hB IPH.

0.5hB or 30mB: Also 6 collections, producing 3/24 hours so effective IPH is 1/8.

5mB: With 6 collections, producing 0.5/24 hours, 1/48.


3hB: Next is 3h buildings.
Now, and going forward, assume also sleep of 8-9h.
Worst case scenario is you sleep right before collection, this means 9h of idling.
Best case scenario is you collect right before going to sleep, which means 6h of idling (since the building produces the first 3h into your sleep).
But anything in between can also happen, so I take the average: (6+9)/2=7.5 which divided by 24h is 0.3125
Since you noticed I like to underestimate, say this is 1/3 or 0.33 that I detract from IPH.

6hB:
Worst case: 9h idling.
Best case: 3h idling.
Avg is 6h which is 1/4 of a whole day.

8+hB: Eight hour buildings I don't feel like punishing, same goes for longer cycle buildings.





So now that I've gone through the foundation, here's some more concrete instructions:

0. You will need lots of expansion area, clear it up by selling decorations (completely pointless) and those 1h or less buildings! (Unless you put in several days of upgrade time into it.)
Wait with expanding if you're not in immediate lack of space to save money.
As for layout, I have the buildings sorted after size, in rows, easiest way to not leave gaps, feel free to visit me =) -will post a pic.

1. There's absolutely no excuse to not have two of each money building!
(The vast majority of bases I see in the game, 90%+, have around half of all buildings!!)
Make sure to get 2 of each and every money building FIRST!
This is because IA is the highest when getting a building, and drops off fast as you upgrade (are a couple exceptions).
The 1h or less have lowest priority and are excluded from this rule.
Infact, their priority is below def buildings because of the area.
Also, the 3h buildings have somewhat lower priority.


2. Start upgrading buildings by choosing the one with highest IA that you can afford.
You want to avoid having "gaps" in IA (i.e. IA being zero), e.g. plan your timings somewhat to not have an upgrade finish in the middle of sleep.
Some IA is better than none. And waiting a longer time to upgrade a high IA building is basically in all cases worse than by instead using that idle time upgrading a building with slightly lower IA.



Here's my personal spreadsheet...hope this works...
This one includes an adjustment: 1h buildings suffer a 75% output penalty, 3h 33% and 6h a 25% penalty. This is my way of "leveling the playing field". Going by this, you can ignore the 1h and 3h buildings having lower priority...




Tell me what you think!
Ask any questions!
And good luck fellas!

Post your IPH and realistic IPH :D
Mine are as in sig atm: profile 480k, realistic 444k
(faction bonus included)

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

There is a measure by me called "increase in IPH per upgrade time", in other words "income acceleration" IA.

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Income per hour, as calculated by Gree, is a meaningless stat. It doesn't measure the true effective gain you're getting from an investment. Using it to plan your economy is not the most efficient or productive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

There is also another measure, the "popular one" and seems to be the only widely known one. It's called "return on investment" or ROI, this is about "income increase per cost", but I won't go into this because it's simply one of the straight up WRONG way to go, and were here to WIN! >:]

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Agree on this. ROI is useless after the first few days.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

The formula for IA is: [income increase]/[upg time]
And is derived by dividing (1) by the upg. time getting (2):
(1) (On-Oo)/Tc = (In-Io) = [income increase]
(2) ((On-Oo)/Tc)/Tu = (In-Io)/Tu = [income increase]/[upg time]

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There are better ways to measure this. Income Per Day (IPD) per upgrade hour (IPD per hour) is a much better formula since it more accurately reflects the investment. ( Output New - Output Old ) * collections per day / upgrade time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

1hB: Starting with 1 hour buildings. (Until very recently I skipped these too.)
Originating from myself, I'm assuming these will be collected 6 times per day. That is 6 visits to the game that all are more than 60m apart. That equals 6 collections, which equals the building producing 6h out of 24h. So over a day that's 6/24 = 1/4 of it's IPH.
Hence I detract 3/4 or 75% of the 1hB IPH.

0.5hB or 30mB: Also 6 collections, producing 3/24 hours so effective IPH is 1/8.
..etc..

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This is over-complicating things. Just multiply the payout by the collections per day (e.g. 3 for 6 hour, 2.5 for 8 hour).

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

0. You will need lots of expansion area, clear it up by selling decorations (completely pointless) and those 1h or less buildings! (Unless you put in several days of upgrade time into it.)
Wait with expanding if you're not in immediate lack of space to save money.
As for layout, I have the buildings sorted after size, in rows, easiest way to not leave gaps, feel free to visit me =) -will post a pic.

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This isn't necessarily true. In the end game only a few buildings are actually producing meaningful income. Right now those basically boil down to AVs, AMRs, ACs, Oil Rigs, Nanos, Chem Plants, Oil Refineries, and Desals. So, that's really all the space you'll "need".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

1. There's absolutely no excuse to not have two of each money building!
(The vast majority of bases I see in the game, 90%+, have around half of all buildings!!)
Make sure to get 2 of each and every money building FIRST!
This is because IA is the highest when getting a building, and drops off fast as you upgrade (are a couple exceptions).
The 1h or less have lowest priority and are excluded from this rule.
Infact, their priority is below def buildings because of the area.
Also, the 3h buildings have somewhat lower priority.

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See previous point. Many of the buildings become decorations. What you call IA also does not drop off after upgrading. Most buildings have their highest value for growth around levels 3 and 4.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

2. Start upgrading buildings by choosing the one with highest IA that you can afford.
You want to avoid having "gaps" in IA (i.e. IA being zero), e.g. plan your timings somewhat to not have an upgrade finish in the middle of sleep.
Some IA is better than none. And waiting a longer time to upgrade a high IA building is basically in all cases worse than by instead using that idle time upgrading a building with slightly lower IA.

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That isn't exactly true. Waiting a period of time to save up for a bigger upgrade may pay off sooner. I'd suggest a quick read up on "GFI" - http://www.funzio.com/forum/archive/...p/t-33363.html which helps explain the model. It's not perfect but it's generally a better model when tweaked than what you're calling IA.

I've ran some scenarios basically looking at NPV using a set discount rate (you can sort of back your way into it by looking at the typical growth (essentially modeling Compound Monthly Growth Rate). Many times saving an extra day or two can save you 10-20 days later because you have that higher growth building sooner.

Also, I tend to upgrade boost buildings or unit building when I have no specific goal in sight, or if I need 3 days to get myself to 33mil to upgrade an oil rig from 4 to 5. Also, even if the upgrade costs an F-load, if you look at the gain yu get, it probably is the largest gain in your options.

mxz, I see some of your points, others I don't agree with.
Think it should be added that this is aimed for everyone, especially early-mid to late-mid game, not only at the top veteran players in the endgame.
I also have to say that the IA numbers are more of a finger pointer than the exact route to take, Ramshutu also says his GFI doesn't cover all cases, and there's much more to think about that is left to common sense of the player, like dealing with overvault upgrades.

Though kinda fun to see the things I thought about have already been said before (just haven't seen them here).


Things I disagree:

IA doesn't have anything to do with individual players' numbers or how GREE measures IPH - it's a relative measure to compare* all the different economy upgrades you can do. Showing which ones grow your economy the fastest.
* Same with IPH vs IPD, which btw is IPH*24.
And the profile IPH is the theoretical maximum given perfect collections, that's why I felt like punishing the low cycle buildings into something realistically comparable to the rest.

Collections per day is a subjective variable, I wanted to post something that could be applied in the general case.
Otherwise I agree, tailoring the calculations to an individual player's habits is one of many steps to increase accuracy for a specific player.

But yeah, I see how GFI can be marginally better in some situations, than the rule I follow.
It is an interesting thought, one that I didn't consider...

About the buildings, Yeah I think it's very tragic these new super imbalanced buildings were introduced making the income from most original buildings negligible!
Which to have is a matter of taste, I can't afford the imba ones, but I have all the rest. Which I intend to upgrade if there's a good gain in doing so, or just leave them sitting there if otherwise.
You forgot space center btw ;)

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Originally Posted by xVeng3anc3

Also, I tend to upgrade boost buildings or unit building when I have no specific goal in sight, or if I need 3 days to get myself to 33mil to upgrade an oil rig from 4 to 5. Also, even if the upgrade costs an F-load, if you look at the gain yu get, it probably is the largest gain in your options.

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Yeah, this is more like how it should be used.
Not upgrading economy doesn't automatically mean a waste of time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

I also have to say that the IA numbers are more of a finger pointer than the exact route to take, Ramshutu also says his GFI doesn't cover all cases, and there's much more to think about that is left to common sense of the player, like dealing with overvault upgrades.

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GFI as formulated by Ram is insufficient for true economists. And, in the beginning its awful, and later becomes a little too skewed on the upper ends of buildings, but is a good place to start before doing higher order analysis. I find by factoring the time to save for a building by 10-15x it usually agrees with simulations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

IA doesn't have anything to do with individual players' numbers or how GREE measures IPH - it's a relative measure to compare* all the different economy upgrades you can do. Showing which ones grow your economy the fastest.
* Same with IPH vs IPD, which btw is IPH*24.
And the profile IPH is the theoretical maximum given perfect collections, that's why I felt like punishing the low cycle buildings into something realistically comparable to the rest.

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"Relative" changes, though based on where you are in the game. A more advanced IPH player should be skewing towards bigger needle movers - but expensive doesn't mean better. One upgrade may produce more income per upgrade hour, but if it costs 3 times as much for a 10% higher output then its a bad investment relative to the other.

Also, IPD would never equal IPH*24 unless you play every 5 minutes of the day, which is unrealistic (plus that means 288 collections your 5minute builds). So a simple concept like IPD, which only measures collections each individual makes based on their game play style (I can easily collect 3 times from my 6 hours, twice on 12s, etc..), is a good, easy to understand method. Most people can quickly estimate how many times they collect their buildings very quickly. Sure, you can explain it as a percentage of the collection income divided by the collection time...but why over complicate something very simple?

I collect my 6s three times a day, so output * 3. My 24s once a day. So output * 1. I collect my 48s once every two days. So output * 1/2.

A good rule of thumb is Fischer Price easy when explaining something. Output * collections per day is Fischer Price easy.

We talk about two different incomes per time.
One is the "theoretical" or "GREE one".
The other one is adjusted to be more realistic and applicable to real-world scenarios.
Hope this clears up some:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

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Originally Posted by mxz

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

The formula for IA is: [income increase]/[upg time]
And is derived by dividing (1) by the upg. time getting (2):
(1) (On-Oo)/Tc = (In-Io) = [income increase]
(2) ((On-Oo)/Tc)/Tu = (In-Io)/Tu = [income increase]/[upg time]

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There are better ways to measure this. Income Per Day (IPD) per upgrade hour (IPD per hour) is a much better formula since it more accurately reflects the investment. ( Output New - Output Old ) * collections per day / upgrade time

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* Same with IPH vs IPD, which btw is IPH*24.
And the profile IPH is the theoretical maximum given perfect collections, that's why I felt like punishing the low cycle buildings into something realistically comparable to the rest.

Collections per day is a subjective variable, I wanted to post something that could be applied in the general case.
Otherwise I agree, tailoring the calculations to an individual player's habits is one of many steps to increase accuracy for a specific player.

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What I wrote and what you suggested have the same dimensions, just different units.
Hours vs days is a factor of 24 difference.
By CPD I'm assuming you mean actual player collections per day, right? As in real-world daily income?


About the simplicity, I explain how I derived my model for adjusting short cycle building IPH, don't see anything wrong with that. Like I said, my idea was to make a general model for comparing.
I could have made it very specific to me, but then it would be less useful in this public forum imo.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Товарищ

We talk about two different incomes per time.
One is the "theoretical" or "GREE one".
The other one is adjusted to be more realistic and applicable to real-world scenarios.
Hope this clears up some:

What I wrote and what you suggested have the same dimensions, just different units.
Hours vs days is a factor of 24 difference.
By CPD I'm assuming you mean actual player collections per day, right? As in real-world daily income?


About the simplicity, I explain how I derived my model for adjusting short cycle building IPH, don't see anything wrong with that. Like I said, my idea was to make a general model for comparing.
I could have made it very specific to me, but then it would be less useful in this public forum imo.

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Its not so much that its different than its just overly complicated for what we're talking about.

Ever check out itzkakarot's Base Planner? Very simple and easy to use for noobs, its easily customizable for each player, but also allows players interested in more in-depth analysis to expand on the principles. (Note: his values are a bit off since it was made before we had a good understanding of building growth patterns)

Post links, I'll look at it tomorrow :)
Name sounds familiar...
Are they linked in the stickied FAQ btw?

another great thread Tavarish, this promotes sensible debate about game mechanics.

Please can people report this loser alixohn

One thing nobody mentioned is the Recoup Time:

I invest money in an upgrade, lose income during the upgrade time, gain some extra IPH and then wait for that extra IPH to recoup my investment and lost income... and start to turn a profit.

Some of my upgrades would recoup in over 9 months. So it is a long term investment. I may have upped my IPH stats, but in effect, I am losing money (aka in the red) for 9 months.

So, upgrading a steel mill may not look worthwile, but it recoups in 3 days, so it is an actual benefit, even though it is chicken feed, while upgrading a Nanotech from Level 9 to Level 10... you do the math, how long you will not see a penny of profit from that investment ;)

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Originally Posted by Ascent

One thing nobody mentioned is the Recoup Time:

I invest money in an upgrade, lose income during the upgrade time, gain some extra IPH and then wait for that extra IPH to recoup my investment and lost income... and start to turn a profit.

Some of my upgrades would recoup in over 9 months. So it is a long term investment. I may have upped my IPH stats, but in effect, I am losing money (aka in the red) for 9 months.

So, upgrading a steel mill may not look worthwile, but it recoups in 3 days, so it is an actual benefit, even though it is chicken feed, while upgrading a Nanotech from Level 9 to Level 10... you do the math, how long you will not see a penny of profit from that investment ;)

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Thats what the term "ROI" has been used (in Gree games) to denote. It's a bad stat, though, as it is only applicable in the early stages of the game. Just because the steel mill breaks even (that's what I call it) sooner doesn't mean it's better - because it may not appreciably add to your economy. If you have an IPH of $2M the extra $50,000 a day does, essentially, nothing for growth. In fact, it hinders you by not allowing you to invest in upgrades that will significantly increase your daily collections until the upgrade cycle is complete.


Edit: link to itzkakarot's spreadsheet. http://www.funzio.com/forum/showthre...gs-Spreadsheet

I'll try to upload mine today since it has more up to date values.

ROI aka Return on Investment is different from what I wrote about.

First, Tovarisch used the ROI term as a ratio of hourly gain to invested amount. Recoup of Investment, as I defined it is simply a time after which the gains recouop the investment.

Second, given enough time every investment will provide returns. However, we do not have infinite time in this game, so it is quite possible that some investments never recoup themselves in meaningful time. And under meaningful time we may mean quitting the game, the game gets closed, or simply (as it is with the situation witht the steel mill) the fact, that by the time an investment recoups itself, the amount gained will be useless uner future circumstances. Other factors might also make an investment non profitable, like for example getting aircraft Carriers... one can either boost the economy to very high IPH where one can eventually afford to buy ACs by the hundreds, but on the other side, it culd happen that by that time AC will not be worth buying anymore for various reasons (new units come out, prize units raise your density to such levels that ACs will not be able to add much to the stats, etc.)

Money is the means not the end. Deciding on a money building investment should take into considerations other factors (i.e..: I need a few hundred B52 bombers before the next event, not six months from now, etc.)

From an economic perspective its the same thing. In the end, its all calculating when an investment breaks even. Not sure what's so hard to understand about that. Whether your equation is a/b and you're sorting high to low or b/a and sorting low to high its the same thing. Calling it ROI or "investment recoupment" doesn't change the fact that its the same math.

Looking only 2 weeks out is not a good plan. By that logic no one should never get the AV/AMR/AC since their break even point / ROI / investment recoupment is 40+ days. That's silly and doesn't pass the sniff test. Some common ¢ents should hit when if you read over that whole 2nd paragraph and realize its a bad argument.

Profitability within a certain period is irrelevant. If you plan on quitting the game in 2 weeks why are you even investing in your economy at all? Just quit now and be done. Only a long term strategy is worth discussing because something 2 weeks away doesn't require any economic or investment strategy...just spending. You wouldn't run an NpV or ROI calculation on how much money you should put into your 401.K based on you buying a hamburger for dinner tonight, would you? So why do that in MW?

If you polled 99 people who planned on staying in the game past the next battle I imagine you'd be the only one who wouldn't take the permanent $2M/day Anniversary Center over 20 consumable aircraft carriers. It doesn't take much math to figure out which investment is better, especially in the context of an economic discussion.

I thought about it some more and you are right :)