Unlimited Infra/Land Purchase in Cities

[Alex]

Alex here to save the day, preventing you from getting carpal tunnel by reducing clicks!

 

You should be able to buy infrastructure and land in whatever amount that you want, without having to do it in batches of 100/500 respectively. It'll still calculate it as if you were, doing it as optimally as possible, but you can buy it all in one click. This should make everyone's lives easier, but of course, it needs to be tested!

 

To test this feature, you need to be on http://alex.politicsandwar.com NOT test.politicsandwar.com.

 

I need you to get on and test buying and selling to make sure that it works correctly with no errors, and especially no glitches that allow you to exploit for free money (or free infrastructure/land.)

 

Thanks! The more we test, the faster we can kick it live! If you find any bugs, send me a message.

[Infice]

First.

[LordRahl2]

sweet

[KyleisthegreatKyle]

Awesome!

[Shinzo Abe]

Cool!

[Lilac Veritas]

So to clarify, if I buy 378 infra, then its as if I bought 3 lots of 100 and then 78?

[Phiney]

So to clarify, if I buy 378 infra, then its as if I bought 3 lots of 100 and then 78?

He said optimally, so I'd guess 78 then three lots of 100

[Flanderlion]

What is the difference between test.pw and alex.pw? Are they both the same test server, just with different UIs or are there 3 PW's concurrently running?

[Alex]

So to clarify, if I buy 378 infra, then its as if I bought 3 lots of 100 and then 78?

 

Correct.

 

He said optimally, so I'd guess 78 then three lots of 100

 

That wouldn't be optimal - optimal is the way Lilac described it. Your way would cost more.

 

What is the difference between test.pw and alex.pw? Are they both the same test server, just with different UIs or are there 3 PW's concurrently running?

 

alex.politicsandwar.com is the development server. It uses the same database as test.politicsandwar.com

[Kosonome]

Hello all, I think the optimal way is getting to near 100 first, then getting chunks of 100 after that.

 

Using https://politicsandwar.com/tools/infra(unless that tool is somewhat unprecise), we can do the following:

 

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1850 and ending at the amount 1900 is: $1,177,424.50

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1900 and ending at the amount 2000 is: $2,479,630.00

 

Total with first 50 infra buying: $3,657,054.50

 

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1850 and ending at the amount 1950 is: $2,354,849.00

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1950 and ending at the amount 2000 is: $1,303,793.50

 

Total with first 100 infra buying: $3,658,642.50

 

Buying to near 100 is better with my example. Not sure if 1050 to 1200 is gonna happen that too, or others examples, just made one.

[Alex]

Hello all, I think the optimal way is getting to near 100 first, then getting chunks of 100 after that.

 

Using https://politicsandwar.com/tools/infra(unless that tool is somewhat unprecise), we can do the following:

 

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1850 and ending at the amount 1900 is: $1,177,424.50

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1900 and ending at the amount 2000 is: $2,479,630.00

 

Total with first 50 infra buying: $3,657,054.50

 

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1850 and ending at the amount 1950 is: $2,354,849.00

The value of infrastructure purchased, starting from the amount 1950 and ending at the amount 2000 is: $1,303,793.50

 

Total with first 100 infra buying: $3,658,642.50

 

Buying to near 100 is better with my example. Not sure if 1050 to 1200 is gonna happen that too, or others examples, just made one.

 

It's only logical that because the price increases as you buy more infrastructure, you should buy as much of it as cheaply as possible. This is breaking my mind a little bit because of the math behind it, and I'm wondering now if it's due to the exponential nature of the cost function that there is some optimal way to build infrastructure that is neither first build to 100 or bulk it at the lowest price possible.

 

It seems to me that if the price is cheapest at 1850 infra, you should buy as much as you can at that price (in this case, 100), and then buy the smallest amount possible at the higher price (this case, 50). However you are right, it is slightly cheaper to buy it the other way in this instance.

 

Now I'm curious what threshold must be reached in order to make it actually cheaper in the "optimal" way that I've described.

[Placentica]

This is a great update once it's implemented correctly.  I love this.

[Lilac Veritas]

It's a bit like that..

 

But perhaps an example is better

 

Lets say we want to go from 2000 infra to 2150. (Malone tool auto buys to 100 first, which is annoying so I had to use a spreadsheet)

50/50/50  $         4,311,101.24 100/50  $         4,243,952.89 50/100  $         4,242,370.96

So it seems it is better to buy to a round 100 first, and my previous comment was wrong.

This is due to the cheaper infra being lower, so we want the steps that are closest to the quadratic curve to be lower down. THEN we want the big steps to diverge away from the curve.

To put it a different way, its not about how much infra costs to buy now, its how much it will cost to buy next time. Say we go off the y=0.01x^2 +10 curve, which is pretty similar. At 0 infra, it costs 10, so buying 50 is $500 and 100 is $1000. However at 50 it costs 35 or $3500 for 100, and at 100 it costs 110 or $5500 for 50. In this case 0-50-150 costs $4000 while 0-100-150 costs $6500. 

[Samdoo]

So you are going to replace Maximum infra/land purchase with Recommended to help get new players to more quickly understand optimal quantities.(like infra being rounded to 100, this doesn't  make a difference until 700 infra if I remember right. but cities would more quickly reach this threshold.) 

 

Will this as well work with the city manager tool when implemented where purchasing 500 infra is spread across 5 cities instead of all in one.. Or could players accidentally build 1 city to 2k infra and not build up any other cities? (this may be problematic in terms of the unlimited purchases but it is the optimal way.)

[Placentica]

I wonder if maybe a city manager would be easier that have the option to buy infra that spreads evenly across all cities.  So if you have 15 cities, you just buy in lots of 1500.

[Phiney]

It's only logical that because the price increases as you buy more infrastructure, you should buy as much of it as cheaply as possible. This is breaking my mind a little bit because of the math behind it, and I'm wondering now if it's due to the exponential nature of the cost function that there is some optimal way to build infrastructure that is neither first build to 100 or bulk it at the lowest price possible.

 

It seems to me that if the price is cheapest at 1850 infra, you should buy as much as you can at that price (in this case, 100), and then buy the smallest amount possible at the higher price (this case, 50). However you are right, it is slightly cheaper to buy it the other way in this instance.

 

Now I'm curious what threshold must be reached in order to make it actually cheaper in the "optimal" way that I've described.

I put it this way, you're always buying the packs of 100, but have to do the 78 at some point to round up. It's cheaper to do the rounding up at the beginning than at the end.

 

We worked out this very early on and the bot that used to live In the irc chanel that would tell you the cost of infra from one amount to another was how we did it. Afterwards it would even say, to get this price make sure you buy the odd amount first then in chunks of 100

[Alex]

I put it this way, you're always buying the packs of 100, but have to do the 78 at some point to round up. It's cheaper to do the rounding up at the beginning than at the end.

 

We worked out this very early on and the bot that used to live In the irc chanel that would tell you the cost of infra from one amount to another was how we did it. Afterwards it would even say, to get this price make sure you buy the odd amount first then in chunks of 100

 

This appears correct, unless you're buying an amount that isn't divisible by 100.

[Alex]

I'll give $1,000,000 in-game to anyone who can find a bug with Bulk Infrastructure/Land Purchasing located at http://alex.politicsandwar.com.

 

You do have to be the first to report the bug, though.

[Auctor]

This seems to have encountered a small bug. It's(was?) possible to buy hundreds of thousands of infrastructure for free and then sell it back for a profit.

[Flanderlion]

This seems to have encountered a small bug. It's(was?) possible to buy hundreds of thousands of infrastructure for free and then sell it back for a profit.

Yeah, the test server probably needs a reset or a revert. I only did it on one city (which has now been nuked several times so is back to 2k infra) - look at the infra destroyed on the test server. I wish there was an infra lost leaderboard (if there is one, I can't find it), but the infra destroyed one shows it a lot.