[JimKongIl]

I am having trouble envisioning a scenario where border walls improvement would help me. Does anyone use them in a swapping arrangment where the happiness/environment bonus is not negated by the population decrease?
Am I correct in assuming border walls improvements have no impact on optimal government position answers? (like immigration)
I am particularly interested in the thoughts of nations over 4999 infra but all are welcome.
Thank you.

[GenZod]

Someone will come along and explain it better than me, but basically this is what it boils down to:

The population decrease and happiness increase pretty much cancel each other out. The main effect of border walls is to improve your environment, which by itself increases your happiness levels. Usually 3-5 Border Walls is optimal, depending on income levels, government choice, resources, and global radiation.

[Delta1212]

When you get high enough, the happiness increase will outweight the population hit, however, it takes a little math (or trial and error) to figure out how many Border Walls will yield an increase, as it is not the same for every nation.

[Porkers]

I use 4 border walls to get my optimum income, and if I ever need a bit of a boost for soldiers in war, I sell them off, and can increase the amount of soldiers I can buy relatively substantially which is always nice when fending off rogues.

Other than times of war, I keep four.

[Kung Fu Geeks]

yes, you have to do math to figure it out as it is different for every nation.

A side note, border walls can be used to help prevent anarchy. i.e. you buy max soldiers (80% of population), then buy 5 border walls (-10%) population, and you know have more than 80% soldiers. since reducing your soldier count below 20% is part of anarchying a nation, you give yourself a slight defense.

Of course with the price of border walls, its not really cost effective to swap them back and forth to always achieve this. I've really only done it when i expected an update attack and i couldnt be online to defend myself.

[Sancus]

Kung Fu Geeks, on Mar 22 2008, 12:55 PM, said:

yes, you have to do math to figure it out as it is different for every nation.

A side note, border walls can be used to help prevent anarchy. i.e. you buy max soldiers (80% of population), then buy 5 border walls (-10%) population, and you know have more than 80% soldiers. since reducing your soldier count below 20% is part of anarchying a nation, you give yourself a slight defense.

Of course with the price of border walls, its not really cost effective to swap them back and forth to always achieve this. I've really only done it when i expected an update attack and i couldnt be online to defend myself.

Thanks for that tip, it will be put to good use.

[Aeternos Astramora]

Porkers, on Mar 22 2008, 11:53 AM, said:

I use 4 border walls to get my optimum income, and if I ever need a bit of a boost for soldiers in war, I sell them off, and can increase the amount of soldiers I can buy relatively substantially which is always nice when fending off rogues.

Other than times of war, I keep four.

Same here, except three provides the best bonus for me.

[sayton]

i got 15200 infra.. and its just a matter of buying and selling to see how many increase your most income.. and for me.. 3 border walls are best.. and just leave em up.. ;-D

[kswiss2783]

5 BW brings in the most income for me.

[commander thrawn]

Delta1212, on Mar 22 2008, 04:14 PM, said:

When you get high enough, the happiness increase will outweight the population hit, however, it takes a little math (or trial and error) to figure out how many Border Walls will yield an increase, as it is not the same for every nation.

This^ They are basically there to make up for the environment issues of nukes and resources. You gain slightly once you have enough infra. Though at such a point, it takes some time to get another improvement. I lose 3000 ppls or so every time.

[+Zeke+]

You might wish to check again how many you need.

When Border Walls were updated to not stop GRL anymore, I found that one less BW was needed to get down to 1 + GRL.

I used to need 3 and now 2 gives me the max environmental benefit.

[Viluin]

3 Border Walls is still profitable for me. A fourth is also profitable, but it only gives me $8k more per day or so. I can't be bothered.

It won't be long till I'll only need 2.

This post has been edited by Viluin: 23 March 2008 - 06:06 AM

[Scorp]

I made a little program a while back that resulted in a small margin of better bonus from happiness than keeping the population. It is, however, based on where your nation lies. The happiness isn't as nice a bonus when you don't have all the improvements increasing percent of income, for example.

Basically, what you are looking at is the following:

(Civilians-0.02*#ofBW*Civilians)*(TaxRate/100)*(Gross + 4*BW*1.05^(#ofSchools+FM)*1.07^#ofBanks*1.02^#ofUni) < = > Civilians*(Tax/100)*Gross

So you could manually, or with a script, loop through this, testing each border wall count.

[Kaiser]

2 is profitable for me, though it only provides like 50k more a day.

[Glen MoP]

I found today that no border walls was actually more profitable than even one border wall, making this improvement completely worthless at the moment.

[(DAC)Syzygy]

no wonder, you already have a lot of pop-modifiers, so -2% is a good bunch of citizens for you, also your have oil and coal as natural resources and you do not import uranium, which means you get no environment penalty by default, the penalty for nuclear weapons is nullified by the import of water.

so the borderwalls would only bring you +2hap instead of +2.4 hap. for most other nations that is not the case, because they either import coal, oil or uran, or have no water or have lower pop-modifiers then you have.

[Danish]

Quote

Example:

My Citizens now: 56,450
My Income per person now: 82.86
Total Income per day: $4,677,447

With a Border Wall:
My Citizens now: 55,333
My Income per person now: 85.69
Total Income per day: $4,741,484.70

It gave me an extra 64k. Just thought I'd share that to people if they were wondering about Border Walls.

Just alittle example.

This post has been edited by Danish: 24 March 2008 - 09:24 AM

[Veritas]

sayton, on Mar 22 2008, 09:45 PM, said:

i got 15200 infra.. and its just a matter of buying and selling to see how many increase your most income.. and for me.. 3 border walls are best.. and just leave em up.. ;-D

Or waiting for someone to pm you and say, hey you know you could really benefit from another border wall.

-Veritas

[Brother Kane]

After reading this I had to test it myself. 2 border walls gave me an extra 200k/day, which is nice since it'll pay itself off after day 1

[XRCatD]

Scorp, on Mar 23 2008, 08:19 AM, said:

I made a little program a while back that resulted in a small margin of better bonus from happiness than keeping the population. It is, however, based on where your nation lies. The happiness isn't as nice a bonus when you don't have all the improvements increasing percent of income, for example.

Basically, what you are looking at is the following:

(Civilians-0.02*#ofBW*Civilians)*(TaxRate/100)*(Gross + 4*BW*1.05^(#ofSchools+FM)*1.07^#ofBanks*1.02^#ofUni) < = > Civilians*(Tax/100)*Gross

So you could manually, or with a script, loop through this, testing each border wall count.

That is kinda bugged.

Improvements of the same type stack additively, and
you forgot harbor, and you put the wrong value for the University. (universities increase by 8% each)
Also, civilians cancel out on both sides of it, so you don't need to multiply by civilians. Same with Taxrates.

so basically,check if the following is true:
(1-0.02*#ofBW)*(Gross + 4*#ofBW*(1+0.05*#ofSchools)*(1+0.05*#ofFM)*(1+0.01*#ofHarbor)*(1+0.07*#ofBanks)*
(1+0.08*#ofUni) > Gross


So for people who's got all the improvements in here, it's basically the following inequality:
(1-0.02*#ofBW)*(Gross+8.303715*#ofBW) > Gross

So here are some values that can help:
(Assuming you have max number of schools, banks, and uni, and have a FM and a Harbor)
If your gross income is x or above, get up to y BWs.
The following are a list of (x,y)
($415.19,0 Border Walls)
($406.89,1 Border Wall)
($398.58,2 Border Walls)
($390.28,3 Border Walls)
($381.98,4 Border Walls)
($373.67,5 Border Walls)