Growing Past City 20 is Only a Military Investment - An Essay

[Johnson Boris]

I know I haven’t found the holy grail, this is a somewhat normal piece of knowledge to have if you are interested in econ, but I wanted to provide a somewhat detailed explanation as to why and just tell those that don’t know yet. There is also a notorious lack of newbies in my alliance and my kink is telling people stuff I know as well as writing essays.

 

I’m writing this essay to just try to get more average Politics and War players to be aware of the economic realities of the game. This can also help put a stop to leaders lying about them buying cities with their members’ taxes so that “they can pay for more UP grants”.

 

In essence, cities are not a good investment because they have an absolutely terrible ROI (please read for more details) and you would be better off just trading a little bit with the money. Nevertheless, I still think they are useful militarily, just not financially.

 

You may disagree about the specific city limit. Some could quite convincingly argue that the limit is in c22 or c23. Still, it is certainly not c35, c30 or c25. 

 

Incredibly Long ROI

 

The clearest reason why buying past c20 is not a financial investment is that the ROI (the time it takes to start gaining a return from your investment) is abysmal. I’ll consider 2 different scenarios to show this. 

 

90 day cycles

 

By cycles I am referring to the time it takes between the end of the previous war and the beginning of the next war. 

 

So, what if you are in a more or less normal alliance and have 90 day peace cycles? Also to note is that 90 day cycles are, perhaps, slightly above average. 

 

I will use 2500 infra because, although arguably a bit too much for c21, it is the option that give you the best ROI here out of the reasonable ones. I used a build with: 10 mines, 10 manus, 0 disease build with CRC project, 100% commerce; 0250 mmr. Having more commerce wouldn’t make this specific build better. 

 

So here would be your profit per cycle:

 

 

The value at the top is the total profit you would earn per cycle, taking into account infra costs. The value at the bottom would be how much profit you would earn per cycle taking into account a warchest worth 15 million, which, although arguably low or high, is a decently reasonable amount to do our calculations. I think adding the warchest is customary since the extra city will also mean extra war costs. The same for the infra costs.

 

With this we can conclude that you would gain a profit of roughly 48 million per 90 day cycle. 

 

The cost of city 21, taken that you have AUP, is 186 million. So, it would take 3.875 90 days cycles to reach ROI with this city. This is a total of 348 peace days. Given that you would also go through 3 wars, I will add 52 days to the day count so as to signify those war days and get a nice round number of 400 days. 52/3=17 days per war, which is arguably low, but you would also earn some city income in those days I think it is pretty fair. So, 400 days to achieve ROI for city 21. 

 

If we went through the same process for city 23 (without Metropolitan project), it would be 663 days. 

 

Just to note, the numbers don’t get better at city 30 or so just because you start building 3k infra. 

 

I think this already shows how buying a city past city 20 is not really a financial investment. But I’ll dive a little deeper.

 

What if there is just eternal peace?

 

Oh the eternal desire to sit there and do nothing when you think about pnw econ. 

 

How long would it take to get ROI for city 21? 226 days

 

For city 23? 340 days.

 

For city 25? 476 days

 

I guess that if you are in eternal peace these are not terrible? That said, eternal peace is not REALLY achievable, so I am not really taking it very seriously. I just wanted to mention it because someone would think about it. Cities still become incomprehensible financially if you are in perpetual peace, they just do it a little later.

 

Trade

 

NO, wait a minute, hear me out.

 

The cost of city 21 is 186 million. 

 

What if you got a 1% increase in the value of your deposit per week from trading? This is not much, we are talking 1.8 million profit from trading in the first week. It is the equivalent of buying 186 million worth of things for 3000 ppu and selling them for 3030 ppu. With some understanding of the long term direction of the market you should be able to make much more than this, I would consider this a very charitable amount. Nevermind if you actually do short term trading. Nevermind resource-flipping.

 

After 400 days increasing their depo by 1% every week; someone who decided to trade with the 186 million that would have cost city 21 would have converted those 186 million into 328 million. 

 

This isn’t much, but it is 148 million profit more than someone who bought city 21 would have made since up to day 400 the city 21 buyer would have made 0 money from it up to that point.

 

What about after 800 days? By then the buy city option would have made 186 million, maybe it would catch up. 

 

The trade option would have converted the 186 million into a total of 578 million, with a 398 million profit. 

 

The buy city option never catches up if you do the most minimal trading with that money. The same thing happens if you give city 21 an artificial ROI of 300 days.

 

Consequently, I think I have demonstrated that, when you take into account the most minimal trade, the buy city option becomes obviously worse. 

 

Military Uses

 

However, It still makes sense for big alliances to invest in city growth past city 20 for military reasons. Money is often plentiful whilst talent isn’t; having a lot of competent high tier members wins wars and gets you allies. I believe it makes sense for big alliances to not only incentivise members to grow past this c20 tier, but to also even outright pay for their members’ cities due to the military importance of the high tier. 

 

I don’t find it necessary to dive deeper into this point right now, all that is important to know is that whales win wars and alliances should want to win wars. 

 

Conclusion

 

This essay by no means argues that it is bad to buy past city 20 for alliances. Not at all. I don't particularly want the current situation to change either. 

 

It is just that cities past that city count should be understood for what they are: extra military units and a way to get better tiering. They are not good financial investments. Their ROI is abysmal and it is better financially to trade or just keep it really. 

 

I hope this increases people’s understanding of what city building past c20 is about and I hope the details given here will help in general.

 

FYI: if your leader tells you that he is buying his 32nd city with the alliance bank money because after being taxed 100% for x amount of months he will be giving the alliance a lot of money for grants, they are either incompetent or blatantly lying to your face. And this also applies to investing in more land. If you want to learn about the land stuff, check this very long essay:  

(I posted it in general game discussion because I had just come back from inactivity and I forgot about how the forum worked. Sorry)

 

FAQs

 

Q. What about projects?

 

A. At 2.5k infra it is 2 cities per project slot. I don’t see how they can outweigh the terrible ROI. 

 

Q. You should take into account the revenue from all 21 cities.

 

A. You are investing in just one city with those 180 million, not on 21. If you didn't invest those 180 million you would still get revenue from 20 of those cities.

 

Q. What age did you use for the city revenue calculation?

 

A. 500 days old, which now that I think about it... it doesn't really make sense... Anyway, if anything it works against me, I don't find it necessary to show even more evidence and I don't feel like chnging the essay now.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Johnson Boris

[The Nomad]

Alright, but hear me out, the higher city count number feels really good to look at

[Johnson Boris]

Just now, The Nomad said:

Alright, but hear me out, the higher city count number feels really good to look at

I get it, just don't treat it as a financial investment. You have entered the realm of buying cities for military purposes

[Asclepius]

Interesting stuff, thanks for crunching the numbers for us lazy people 

[Chad]

Very interesting and you hit the nail on the head with the thesis. In the end no one buys cities for the roi it's so you can get into better tiers to fight more interesting wars. And as should be intuitive most if not all people don't play the game for the econ they play the game for the war. (the game isn't called politics and econ for a reason). A point that could also be made is having higher tiers of  nations in your alliance in the end helps your econ. IE my alliance is better at tiering. We get into a good sphere due to our good tiering. Since we our in a good sphere we our more often on the winning sides of wars and therefore take less damages and fight wars when we wan't. But overall we all play the game for the fun of it and trying to create the most enjoyable in game experiences. 
(sorry if my spelling/grammar is bad)

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

Yes all of you little nations should not build past 20 cities. EVER.

In a more serious note, you talk about ROI, but what you dont take into account is that there is no end date to this game, so as long as you keep playing you will always hit ROI.  Also military strength is important because you take less damage in a winning war than a losing one, and since this is a game, winning is generally more fun than losing (not always but most of the time)
 

Looks like chad beat me to it, so basically what he said.

 

The other thing is what do you do now that you have hit 20 cities?  What is left to do in the game? build a warchest?  Build more land in your cities?  ok so you are at 20 cities, and have 200k of all resources and 8k land in all your cities, what now, pay to build up other people to 20 cities?  Ok cool, your entire alliance is now at 20 cities, in terms of politics people may want you, but realistically 20 cities is too small to really shift the balance of power, unless you have like 100-200 of you.

5 years ago this would be a really solid plan, but today you are just setting yourself up for failure, assuming you want to eat at the grownups table.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Sweeeeet Ronny D

[Johnson Boris]

32 minutes ago, chad said:

Very interesting and you hit the nail on the head with the thesis. In the end no one buys cities for the roi it's so you can get into better tiers to fight more interesting wars. And as should be intuitive most if not all people don't play the game for the econ they play the game for the war. (the game isn't called politics and econ for a reason). A point that could also be made is having higher tiers of  nations in your alliance in the end helps your econ. IE my alliance is better at tiering. We get into a good sphere due to our good tiering. Since we our in a good sphere we our more often on the winning sides of wars and therefore take less damages and fight wars when we wan't. But overall we all play the game for the fun of it and trying to create the most enjoyable in game experiences. 
(sorry if my spelling/grammar is bad)

 

29 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Yes all of you little nations should not build past 20 cities. EVER.

In a more serious note, you talk about ROI, but what you dont take into account is that there is no end date to this game, so as long as you keep playing you will always hit ROI.  Also military strength is important because you take less damage in a winning war than a losing one, and since this is a game, winning is generally more fun than losing (not always but most of the time)
 

Looks like chad beat me to it, so basically what he said.

I guess this point is connected to the "you will have a better military" point, but I don't think there is a direct correlation between better tiering and better sphere. It helps, but I wouldn't say it determines how good your sphere will be. What I found to clearly not be contentious was that with more cities =>more military=> stronger. To extrapolate this from an alliance level to an sphere level is a bit of a stretch in my opinion, so I didn't include it.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Johnson Boris
Bad example

[Bis]

So what city count would make a better ROI ? 

[Rewan Demontay]

[Johnson Boris]

On 11/10/2022 at 11:27 PM, Bis said:

So what city count would make a better ROI ? 

The lower the city number, the more profitable

Edited November 12, 2022 by Johnson Boris

[Spukey]

Yeah but if you trade then @zigbigadorlou will blockade you

[Micchan]

I'm at city 33 after 2344 days, there are people who played less than 2 years who have more cities than me, why do your calculations only apply to me?

[zigbigadorlou]

On 11/13/2022 at 11:18 AM, Nukey6 said:

Yeah but if you trade then @zigbigadorlou will blockade you

Trading is fine. Its just when you both buy and sell that you are cast into the lake of molten lava where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (aka zig-embargo)

[Mayor]

55 minutes ago, zigbigadorlou said:

Trading is fine. Its just when you both buy and sell that you are cast into the lake of molten lava where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (aka zig-embargo)

[Zed]

MensaHQ literally went galaxy brain years ago, and went wide on cities versus tall on infra. It is why they wrecked noobs.

Glad to see the rest of the game is catching up to the lost forgotten knowledge.

 

Quote

FYI: if your leader tells you that he is buying his 32nd city with the alliance bank money because after being taxed 100% for x amount of months he will be giving the alliance a lot of money for grants, they are either incompetent or blatantly lying to your face. And this also applies to investing in more land. If you want to learn about the land stuff, check this very long essay:  

 

Honestly this is based, and something I will probably do myself.

[Thalmor]

7 hours ago, Zed said:

Honestly this is based, and something I will probably do myself.

Facts. It's something I tried to do with my first alliance in The Evenstar Empire. I know Dwight Schrute did it (and faced no repercussions for it at all). People do it all the time. The only people who get upset over it are the suckers who let themselves get taxed and don't use any vigilance at all, and people who are seething that they can't pull off an embezzling scheme themselves.

[Bollocks]

People play these types of games for a long time, a ROI of 1-2 years is not that long in the grand scheme of things. This is not the CoD franchise where the next iteration comes out in 2 years and everyone moves on to the new thing. Not to mention there is no game mechanic where you can actually destroy someone else’s city.

I can’t remember how long I played CN, but it was close to 8 years, and I’m approaching 8 years here; I’m damn glad I passed the 20 city mark eons ago