Outstanding Setups! Hardwood Production! (s7)

Hi,

Been wanting to post this setup for a while now but it was Gobbokin's questions that finally made me do it ;)

Wood production is a not very profitable production as it were. And if it's not placed properly then... it's even worse.

Placing the buildings efficiently close to both Storehouses and Tree Deposits is a simple way to ensure you not only have better production - but that you need less buildings. As you can probably guess, those spare licenses can be better used somewhere else.

I don't have the setup I am posting here because I have chosen to have as few Hardwood Forresters and Cutters as much as possible. As such this first picture shows only how the buildings should be placed relative to the Storehouse (look at the roads and the grid they form as guidance):

Here's the version without any buildings. This is the grid you need to have for the setup I will present below.

Okay. Now the diagram of how to place the buildings:

Okay a couple of options here. I haven't tested them so I will explain what I think will work - and what you should do in case you find out it doesn't.

Setup A - 4 CUTTERS
Place 3 Cutters in the ORANGE squares. Place the 4th Cutter on the YELLOW square. Place a 5th Forrester where the LIGHT BLUE square is. Leave it running. If after a few hours (or days) you start seeing that trees are missing, never really being replaced try the next setup.

Setup B - 4 CUTTERS
Place 3 Cutters in the ORANGE squares. Place the 4th Cutter on the LIGHT BLUE square. Place a 5th Forrester where the PURPLE square is. With a Forrester the Hardwood production should be balanced. Even if the Economy Overview may sometimes show the replanting of trees as being negative you should never really be out of trees, as they will be replanted constantly.

Setup C - 5 CUTTERS
Place 3 Cutters in the ORANGE squares. Place the 4th Cutter on the LIGHT BLUE square. Place a 5th Forrester where the PURPLE square is. Place a 5th Cutter on the YELLOW square. Leave it running. If after a few hours (or days) you start seeing that trees are missing, place another Forrester directly below the bottom-most ORANGE square shown on the diagram or right of the right-most GREEN square in line with the Storehouse. Or anywhere else really. Just add another Forrester and you should be fine. ;)

Anyway, with this setup chances are you won't need as many Forresters and Cutters as you are using now. If you still aren't producing enough Hardwood Logs, consider leveling Cutters and Forresters rather than building more.

Leveling up buildings is really one of the keys to save licenses (that can be then used in other things).

Hope this helps!

A Few Tips On GOLD PRODUCTION Part 2

Hi!

So we saw on the previous post that having LEVEL 2 FAST gold mines is really the way to go. If you can't do it now - you should aim for it in the near future IF you want to go down the gold production route.

So now we have level 2 FAST gold mines.

But what should we do? Buff with BADGES? Or BASKETS?

Well, since both yield more or less the same thing we can have 2 deciding factors:
1 - we do not want to spend masses of hwp, marble and gold ore to make Badges.
2 - we want to save as many licenses as possible...

My personal choice is the second one. I have built my hwp and marble prod as much as I reasonably can. I feel I can do more with the extra license that following the Badge strategy will give me.

Let us examine this strategy more closely (in 3 steps):

Step 1
A Badge is a triple buff, right? So that means that TWO gold mines TRIPLE buffed give out the SAME ORE amount than THREE gold mines DOUBLE buffed (minus the gold ore you will use to make the badges themselves...)

So it's mines to build overal. You're saving not only in the resources to build them - but also on licenses. ;)

So that's step 1. Two gold mines BADGE buffed produce the same as 3 gold mines BASKET buffed (give or take).


Step 2
So what about Gold Smelters?!
Funny thing isn't it? The same thing applies... 2 gold smelters triple buffed produced as many gold bars as 3 gold smelters double buffed...
With two great advantages: you save an extra license (if you were to have 3 gold smelters instead of two) - and all those costly upgrades... BUT you also save LOADS of COAL (and buffs...). As you probably know Gold Smelters soak up coal like nobody's business...

What does this mean?!
This means that with just 2 gold smelters triple buffed (placed in good positions) you can actually keep THREE (yes, that's right, 3!) COINAGES going...

That's Step 2. You BADGE Gold Smelters and you can have more COINAGES running!

Step 3
Step 3, of course, is simply: BADGE COINAGES AS WELL!


This is the second part of gold production. If you get to fast gold mines and you have the resources to back them up, you will be able to have a lot more gold ore, gold bars and coins being produced!

To run 3 coinages, 2 gold smelters and 2 FAST gold mines (all you need to keep the 3 coinages running!) you will need PER DAY:

TWO level 2 gold mines
2x 1400 hwp = 2.8k hwp
2x 1400 marble = 2.8k marble
2x 1500 tools + 2x 500 tools = 4k tools

To buff everything: 2x 7 BADGES = 14 Badges
14x 300 hwp = 4.2k hwp
14x 300 marble = 4.2k marble
14x 50 gold ore = 700 gold ore

The Badges will also take some 7h to produce in the Rarity Provision House.

In TOTAL you will need to be producing:
7k hwp
7k marble
4k tools
700 gold ore

EVERYDAY too keep these going smoothly. So, if you're going down this route, make sure you level up buildings, keep them buffed and boost up your various productions accordingly.

NOTE:
Only run gold production when BUFFED! When buffs run out - PAUSE IT! Then re-buff and restart ;)

Hope this helps!

A Few Tips On GOLD PRODUCTION Part 1

Hi,

NOTE!
2014 01 25
I have just updated some prices on my spreadsheet and there have been some changes on gold prod profitability! Please read on as corrections have been made. Gold prod profitability is highly dependant on TO prices and on how efficiently you buff so, however much we may want, these tips will always be an approximation...

So recently (after a good tip from Greystar!) myself and Nedrakus decided to have a new look at gold production taking into account not only the new Geologists abilities (larger gold mines and faster gold mines) but also the fact that we can now build triple buffs on the provision house. Our goal was to figure out what was the optimum usage for the said badges.

If you want the very short version here it is:
Upgrade your Geologists and get BIGGER GOLD MINES upgrades! These will seriously boost your gold production profitability.

Let's breakdown profitability into the 3 main deposits we can have with gold mines (300, 372 and 400 ore, respectively):

NORMAL Gold Mines with 300 ORE
Keep them at LEVEL 1.  Arrange with a guildie, friend or on Trade channel to keep them BASKET buffed as much as possible. If you can't find anyone - either pause them or self buff with Solid Sandwiches and/or Baskets. Collapse before the mine runs out.

NORMAL Gold Mines with 372 ORE (larger gold deposits Geologist upgrade at full whack)

Keep them at LEVEL 1. Arrange with a guildie, friend or on Trade channel to keep them BASKET buffed as much as possible. If you can't find anyone - either pause them or self buff with Solid Sandwiches and/or Baskets. Collapse before the mine runs out.

FAST Gold Mines with 372 ORE (you will need to upgrade your Geologists for this)
Either keep them at LEVEL 1 buffed with BASKETS - or LEVEL 2 buffed with BADGES (from a friend). If you can't find anyone - either pause them or self buff with Solid Sandwiches and/or Baskets. Collapse before the mine runs out. Remember that if you have the mine leveled to 2 and buffed with badges, you are potentially saving one or two licenses.

FAST Gold Mines with 400 ORE (you will need to upgrade your Geologists for this)
LEVEL 2 buffed with BADGES (from a friend). This is the most profitable setup for gold production. You can only get this last Geologist upgrade with LEVEL 50! If you can't find anyone to help you buff - either pause them or self buff with Solid Sandwiches and/or Baskets. Collapse before the mine runs out. Remember that if you have the mine leveled to 2 and buffed with badges, you are potentially saving one or two licenses.



Okay. We all know that leveling up Geologists (and building the books to do so) is not only time consuming but also expensive. However there is profit to be made, especially if you want to go down the gold production route.

The fact that we can now produce triple buffs has made gold production more profitable than ever - and this is the main reason why so many resource prices went up during the Christmas event - and stayed up.

If you want to see a bit better the net profit associated with each of the various options of gold production (assuming we keep rebuilding mines) please check the chart below:

GOLD MINE 300 ORE	NORMAL w/ basket	NORMAL w/ badge
level 1	34.93	-124.15
level 2	27.85	10.3
level 3	-10.7	11.35
level 4	-84	-44.8
level 5	-296.48	-251.7

GOLD MINE 372 ORE	NORMAL w/ basket	NORMAL w/ badge	FAST w/ basket	FAST w/ badge
level 1	85.2	-122.8	102.8	53.2
level 2	79.7	56.3	87.18	101.18
level 3	50	78.8	54.4	77.6
level 4	-27.6	40.4	-23.2	84.4
level 5	-228.8	-162	-224.4	-118

GOLD MINE 400 ORE	FAST w/ basket	FAST w/ badge
level 1	125.2	86.4
level 2	115.2	195.2
level 3	76	155.2
level 4	-0.8	118
level 5	-200.4	-82

In RED we have the setups you really should NOT go for, as you will actually lose out if you do level gold mines to 5 and then collapse them. In YELLOW setups that already give you some profit. In GREEN are GOOD setups. In BLUE you have VERY GOOD setups. And in DARK BLUE you have the BEST SETUP currently possible.

Even though for FAST mines the usage of baskets gives a slightly higher profit the fact still remains that if you use badges you need to build less mines and thus use less licenses - which means in effect a bigger overall profit, for these spare licenses can be used to generate further profit.

ASSUMPTIONS:

1 - That each gold mine has at least 372 ore deposit (if you keep rebuilding gold mines you should definitely upgrade the Geologist you use for gold mines with this ability).
2 - That every mine is buffed all the time (for maximum profit).
3 - That the mines are at 24 seconds distance from a storehouse (time influences the results substantially so I just did an average distance time to make things easier).
4 - Basket and Badges buff duration is 9h. We assumed a friend will do most of the buffing in this scenario as this is how you should run your gold production anyway. This is especially important when it comes to badges as they are so expensive to produce.

Some more info that went into the making of this post for the curious ones...

BUFF COSTS

Fish Platter 0.12 coins each

Solid Sandwich 1.20 coins each

Aunt Irma's Gift Baskets 4.40 coins each

Employee Of The Month Badge 44 coins each

Here you can see the cost values for each of the buffs.

	Mine Building Costs (in gold coins)
Mine Type	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Collapse Return (in gold coins)
Copper Mine	0.60	2.00	6.00	12.00	20.00	0.14
Iron Mine	28.00	6.00	12.00	20.00	40.00	6.96
Gold Mine	172.00	20.00	40.00	80.00	200.00	43.00
Coal Mine	22.00	12.00	20.00	40.00	80.00	5.48

Here we can see how much it costs to upgrade a mine, level per level. Don't forget that if you are upgrading a mine to 3, it's the level 1 costs + level 2 costs + level 3 costs...

Also note how much coin you get back if you collapse a mine. 43 coins return per gold mine we destroy before it runs out by itself!

MAIN GOLD PRODUCTION TIPS
1 - Keep active gold prod buildings BUFFED as much as possible
2 - Destroy gold mines before they exhaust their deposit completely.
3 - If you have:	gold mine with 300 ore	gold mine with 372 ore	FAST gold mine with 372 ore	FAST gold mines with 400 ore
Level them to:	1	1	1 or 2	2
Buff with:	Basket	Basket	Basket or Badge, respectively	Badge

We hope you have found this info useful - and your gold production will become more efficient!

ONE LAST NOTE:
Gold production requires a lot of materials to run. with FAST gold mines in particular, the mine at level 2 will last less than one day. Which means you are rebuilding fresh mines everyday. This can be compensated by using Badges instead of Baskets but still... you need to be on your toes ;)

More on this in the next post...

Happy Settlering!