TheBFG

[quote name='Count Rupert' date='14 February 2010 - 03:25 PM' timestamp='1266161142' post='2180801'] Again, NOT as a first wonder which was the orginal question. The fact of the matter is economically, the SM WILL outperform the SSS until the point that average gross citizen reaches $300. Only then will the SSS outperform the SM. It's not possible for a nation without any wonders to have an income that high. There are 35 happiness points available from improvements. Income from resource builds maxs out at around $46.50 for the best of them. There is an assortment of other happiness points available if maxed bring another 11 happiness. All this when modified (assuming the nation has all the economic improvements)is going to give you a gross income of around $287.38, meaning the SM is marginally more profitable than the SSS for $10 million less. Simply put economically the SM is THE best first wonder. It's cheaper allowing you to start your wonder clock earlier than the SSS. It will actually even outperform the SSS meaning you lose nothing by buying the SM first and the SSS second and actually make more. Fact is, the SM gives the income necessary in most cases to make the SSS more profitable than buying one of the other +5 happiness wonders as a second wonder which is why guides list the SM first and SSS as the second wonder to buy. [/quote] This is an age old discussion, and Count Rupert has always been correct in these discussions - when he speaks everybody else should just say "thank you", and nothing else :-). This isn't even worthy of a discussion, the SM is THE best first economic wonder. For the unbelievers lets do the math one more time: SSS increases your income by 7.14%, SM increases your gross per-citizen income by $20.76 (including income modifying Improvements, which should all be in place already when somebody is buying a wonder). Simple math shows that the break even point between these is at $290.75 ($20.76/0.0714). If your citizens earn less than this, than the SM simply gives you a higher income increase. Because it is also cheaper it is then a automatic first choice !! Now, if your gross per citizen income is higher than $290.75, then indeed the SSS will increase your income more and further discussion is needed to identify the best choice. As Count Rupert has shown, it actually not even possible for somebody buying their first Wonder to get to under normal circumstances. However, even if for some reason (like some lucky Events) someone manages to get over this threshold, then my calcs in the following old threat still show that for most people the fact that you can buy a SM sooner (since it is cheaper) than a SSS makes enough difference for this still to be the first in line, even in those rare cases: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=13567&view=findpost&p=369101 edit: added a few words to make sentences clearer

My youngest trade is at 466 days. The other 4 are all in the 660-670 range. Got a good circle going for almost 2 years, only 1 replacement needed in that time.

Can't remember the exact moment, but I kept selling until quite late on. I think I decided to stop when the profits were getting quite insignificant compared to my other income (can't remember exactly when I thought that moment had arrived, I guess everybody makes up their mind in a different way)

When it was time for my War Memorial (and phillip110 is right, it should certainly not be on Chintan's agenda at the moment), this is exactly what I did. Just went unalligned for a week, was raided a few times, and came out with 92,713 heroes that I raised a very nice memorial to.

King Irwin is correct. Assuming you have all the improvements that adjust income, then the +$10 in "base income" will have meant an increase in actual per citizen income increase of $20.71. So with a 30% tax rate your income will have increased by $6.21 per citizen, which seems to be what you're reporting - so everything looks to be fine.

First 6 months of my nation were in NADC (Dec 2006 - June 2007). Best start I could have wished for: Great starter guides (ok, they turned out to be stolen), great leader (ok, Charles seems to also have had issues), and great members (ok, Belmont just called himself out... :-) ) Still, I'd do it all again - I think... :-)

Correct, you can use the spreadsheet infra jump calculator from the public Nation Building Guide (http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=843), section V (Infrastructure), subsection C (Infra Jumps) for this as well. You can see the extra net income of every 10 levels of Infra on here. Once that starts to come down at a point where there isn't a infrajump, you know you've reached the optimum amount of Infra for your current circumstances. You would have to have a very poor tradeset (or not enough Wonders/Land), for this to be a long way below 19K infra though, so the OP has some way to go yet :-).

playground bullying or extortion are alternative (and more descriptive) names for it. Don't fall for the propaganda, it is bad.

My goal is to reach the objectives I've set.

Actually, this isn't true - they take place at the exact number. However - for different people it might *look* different due to rounding. Infra is stored to more than the 2 decimal digits you see on the screen, and this rounding can make it look like the change happens at x.01 instead of 0.00 For example: Nation1 has 7,999.992 infra, this is displayed as "7,999.99". When they buy 0.01 they will have 8,000.002 (displayed as 8,000.00) and have gone over 8K and have therefore reached "the jump" at what looks like 8K exactly. Nation2 has 7,999.998 infra, this is displayed as "8,000.00", however in reality they are not over 8K yet so they haven't yet reached the jump. Therefore this nation will not have reached the jump yet, and after they buy another 0.01 they reach it at what looks like 8,000.01. When you reach a jump it is easy to work out in which of the catergories your nation is, just stop at x,999.99, buy 0.01 - if you've reached the jump you're a "nation1"-type. If you haven't jumped then buy another 0.01 and confirm you're a "nation2"-type. You can buy or sell a one-off 0.005 infra to switch between types if you wish.

The Nation Building Guide on the forums has links to a couple of infra calculators: http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=843

I've arrived at 15K, I've done some calcs, and I'm happy to share my data: Upkeep jump is pretty small: it goes to 0.1755 X Infra Level + 20 (notice the factor goes up from .175 to .1755) Purchase price goes to 80 X Infra Level + 500 (up from 70) If anybody else could confirm that would be nice, although I'm pretty sure of my numbers.

I don't understand where the 36K infra comes from?

I don't think there was much whining about never having events. There was discussion that it was unlikely to be 10% in the past, but not many people actually complained about that. Even if you don't collect/pay bills often, the OP is still right that these changes bring far to much luck into the game.

Looking to buy a April & May $20 donation. Can accept a deal for both, or just for the April one. PM me in-game with your price.

The recent issues in the blue sphere have shown that having "defensive spies" is certainly a very good idea (and surprisingly not that wide-spread by various accounts). Like many other things you have to weigh up the investment against other things, but certainly for nations with Nukes it's beyond doubt that you have to have them to protect them from being "spied away".

Nation bonuses happen 1 day late if you created your nation after 12-noon, like you have - so you'll get the bonus tomorrow. The same should have happened (if you think back) with all your previous bonuses as well.

That's normal for larger nations who have enough Improvement slots to have any Improvement they like. If you are limited in the amount of improvements you have, then LC swapping indeed requires to remove LCs in favour of Income generating improvements during tax collecting, and have the LCs during bill paying.

Infrastructure and per-citizen income are unrelated. Infra is directly related to your number of citizens (the factor depends on Improvements that increase your # of citz by a percentage). So if you increase your amount of infra by 10% that means that you'll have 10% extra citizens, but the per-citizen income will remain the same (so total income increases by 10% as well). edit: spelling

Hi, welcome to CN. I'm suspect Echelon will have guides about this to help you with questions like this, but otherwise the CN Wiki is there for this sort of thing http://cybernations.wikia.com/wiki/Religion gives us Voodoo for your religion http://cybernations.wikia.com/wiki/Government gives us Totalitarian State for your Government. Although what it doesn't explicitly tell you is that if you look at the things the different governments gives you, you're best off forgoing the extra bonus of giving your people the Totalitarian government they want, and going for Monarchy (the extras there make up for it).

Bob's guide is almost perfect, but allow me a small point: point 6 needs to take into account the cost of running a Wall, which is likely to be 3K (daily bills for each Improvement when you have all of the useful ones). So it would become: 6. Is your new number more than 3K larger? Regarding the $415, you could also add not to even bother calculating, in case your income is >$415 and you have a perfect Environment, then Walls are not going to do you any good anyway. But I suppose that the few people who that relates to know that anyway. (edit spelling)

which is no way near the +$20.76 gross (after income modifiers) of a Great Temple or the Internet, so for economic benefit the GT or Internet far outstrip the DRA. The only reason to get the DRA before any of the +$10/+5 or +4 happiness Wonders would be because you want to use the extra aid slot. The income bonus is nice, but less than a lot of the other economic Wonders.

As usual, the truth is in the middle ;-). Yes, the IS is very important, but only if you plan on buying a lot of Infra. If you are planning on keeping on buying Infra, like Sayton did, then I'd say it would be 3rd in line, as per Firebolt. Under normal circumstances SM and SSS would come in as nr 1 and 2 (simply because they increase your income by more than the IS gives you a Infra reduction, see loads of other threads for discussion about that). Different circumstances for different nations might alter things, but in general for a nation that plans to get Infra at least up till 8K I'd agree with Firebolt's order (and start getting them at 5K infra).

I agree with both above, Great Temple (*) for the maximum growth, DRA if aid slots are important. *: Internet gives the same benefits as the GT, and costs the same. The only difference is that with the GT you no longer have to keep on changing your religion, so it has a slight "usability" edge edit: Tela sneaked in before my entry and has a good point. It is remarkably cool to "own" the internet ;-)

Interesting to read some new, well researched thoughts on this - thanks! However, I do still feel I have to disagree with some results. The first argument is purely income related: SSS increases your income by 7.14%, SM increases your gross per-citizen income by $20.76 (including income modifying Improvements). The break even point between these is at $290. If your citizens earn less than this than the SM simply gives you a higher income increase (and because it is also cheaper it is then a automatic first choice). If your gross per citizen income is higher, then indeed the SSS will increase your income more and further discussion is needed to identify the best choice. To set some parameters on the discussion, I think we agree at least that the SSS and SM have to be nr 1 and 2 Wonders. Therefore really what we should look at is only the difference in cost/income for the first 30+ days. After that you will have both, so the fact that the SSS continues to increase in "value" throughout its life (as the rest of your income increases) is not really relevant (when you buy it later, and your income is already higher, it will immediately return more money) This means that the difference in when you can buy either is very important. If your income is higher that $290 and you have the money ready, then the SSS would indeed be the way to do. But if it indeed takes you 8 days more to get a SSS than it does to get a SSS then not only in these 8 days are you loosing income, but 30 days later you again loose 8 days of having both. It would look like: day 1-8 SM vs 0: day 9-30 SM vs SSS: day 31-38 SM+SSS vs SSS day 39+ SM+SSS vs SM+SSS: after day 39 everything is the same since you'll have both. Even if we just look at the first 30 days you're already going to struggle to make up for the loss of the 8 days of extra income if you get the SSS. Rather than getting better after the 30 days it gets even worse, since the SM+SSS combination vs the SSS on its own makes a even larger impact. After day 39 you'll have both wonders so there is no point in comparing any differences after this. (although between days 60 and 68 there will again be a difference as you could have another Wonder helping you out here, again meaning the "SM first" option is getting better and better all the time). If we look closer at this, and just look at the first 30 days (ignoring that it gets even worse for the "SSS first" choice later on), then we can say that if it really takes 8 days longer to get the SSS then you have 22 days to make up for the loss of extra in those 8 days. So the SSS income needs to be 36.4% more than the SM for this to break even (when that is the case the 22 days of SSS bring in as much as the 30 days of SM). We know that at $290 gross income the SM and SSS break even, so the break even point for the "36% more" lies at $395.5. This needs to be your gross income for the SSS to be a better first choice in this scenario. To show this: SSS: income increase 395.5 * .02 = $7.91, over 22 days = $174 (more income per citizen) SM: income increase $5.81, over 30 days = $174 We can turn this around as well, and calculate what the maximum extra time is that we can save for the SSS for that to be more profitable: Say your income is X, then (X-290)/290 is the percentage extra income you'd get from a SSS instead of a SM. If Y is the amount of days you spent saving for the SSS longer than the SM, that means we need the SSS to deliver a percentage of (30/(30-Y))-1 more income to make up for this loss. So to find the break even point we can use (I'll spare the in-between math): Y = 30-(30 / (1+ ((X-290)/290) ) ) This gives you the amount of days (Y) you can spend saving extra for the SSS instead of getting a SM, for a given gross per-citizen income of X. So, for example, if your income is $350 then the break even point for this would be at 5.1 days, so if you can get the SSS in under 5 days of extra saving, then this would be profitable in the first 30 days. My guess is that even this will be a negative outcome for most people, so the SM should bought first. On top of that, a further problem comes after 30 days, since in day 31-38 again the "SM first, then SSS on day 31" scenario delivers a higher performance than the "SSS first option", so in reality we should really just about half the outcome of this equation, making it harder and harder to see how anybody should be buying the SSS first (unless you have the money ready, or can get the money in a couple of days).