Labour Camps

[The Supreme Mezz]

Are they worth it? When should I get them?

[Tomis]

When you are past roughly 2500 infra, you can demolish your banks, build labor camps instead, for 10 days do nothing else but pay taxes (which will be actually half of the normal amount), then buy back your banks and collect taxes. You'll make a profit of about 2-3 Mil, but it will grow higher when you do this again at later stages. Of course before you begin each process you have to make sure you have about 10 Mil at hand. (It's called Labor Camp Swap)

Edited February 8, 2008 by Arbaces

[Hassman]

definately worth it mate... :lol:

[Veritas]

Bills w/o LC's 18m with LC's 9m you decide x0.

-Veritas

P.S. Arbaces has the right idea about labor camp swapping listen to him.

[meagermice]

I'm currently doing a camp swap, but I swapped factories instead. From my calculations I'm making $3.27mil more in 10 days of collecting.

With 24,055 citizens going off of original $235 gross income

factory swap=-5happy=-$10 gross

with improvements that's (1.07^5)*(1.01)*(1.05^3)*(1.08^2)=> -$19.13 gross*.28 = -$5.36 per person

one time -250k swap cost over bank

total over 10days=-$1,539,348

bank swap= gross*(.93^5)=> -$71.51 gross*.28 = -$-20.02 per person

total over 10 days= -$4,816,484

just started number crunching a couple of days ago to max my actions. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[johnsweaver]

@meagermice

IMO a nation your size should only have factories when you're buying infra. However, you should only buy infra in chunks of roughly $4M or greater to make the factory swapping profitable. It looks like with factories you're about $5.5M from 2999.

Also, IMO you should never collect taxes (at your size) with either factories or labor camps in possession. You should be paying the bills for several days while owning labor camps, then destroy them for money making improvements, then collect. When you want to buy infra, destroy your cheapest improvements for factories and buy a large chunk.

Some will argue this one, but another thing you can do (if you have the discipline to save) is go straight from labor camps to factories and buy your infra chunk, then collect. Granted you have to save much more money to do this, but you also get to collect several days' taxes at the new infra level while paying bills at the old level.

Just my thoughts.

Weenie

[XRCatD]

I'm currently doing a camp swap, but I swapped factories instead. From my calculations I'm making $3.27mil more in 10 days of collecting.

With 24,055 citizens going off of original $235 gross income

factory swap=-5happy=-$10 gross

with improvements that's (1.07^5)*(1.01)*(1.05^3)*(1.08^2)=> -$19.13 gross*.28 = -$5.36 per person

one time -250k swap cost over bank

total over 10days=-$1,539,348

bank swap= gross*(.93^5)=> -$71.51 gross*.28 = -$-20.02 per person

total over 10 days= -$4,816,484

just started number crunching a couple of days ago to max my actions. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

You probably make more money if you swap cheaper improvements. It doesn't make a big difference how much gross income you lose when comparing diff improvements for swapping because you do not collect taxes while you have labor camps.

How much gross income is lost should be compared to how much money is incinerated in swapping per day, and the money incinerated in swapping per day should be minimized to below the gross income loss. (ex: by making the cycles take more days)

[meagermice]

thanks for the responses Weenie and XRCatD. You both answered a big question of mine. I didn't know if your taxes add up everyday with bonus' how they are or if you get X amount of days worth of taxes for the bonus' when you collect. This information will help me grow much quicker.

[TheDave]

I did LC Swapping so different to everyone else...

Paid 10 days of bills, deleted LC's collected. Built LC's

None of the destroying banks/factories...

But yeah,, LC's well worth it.

[TheBFG]

I did LC Swapping so different to everyone else...

Paid 10 days of bills, deleted LC's collected. Built LC's

None of the destroying banks/factories...

But yeah,, LC's well worth it.

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.

Edited February 9, 2008 by TheBFG

[The Supreme Mezz]

Are the camps worth it if you don't swap?

Do you make more despite the -5 happiness?

[Aeternos Astramora]

Are the camps worth it if you don't swap?

Do you make more despite the -5 happiness?

You never want labor camps unless you swap.

One exception: You lost a lot of infra/population in a war, and so you now have negative improvement slots.

[Scorp]

About swapping, always swap LC with the cheapest other improvements you have.

[Count Rupert]

QUOTE (The Supreme Mezz @ Feb 9 2008, 03:29 PM)

Are the camps worth it if you don't swap?

Do you make more despite the -5 happiness?

You never want labor camps unless you swap.

One exception: You lost a lot of infra/population in a war, and so you now have negative improvement slots.

This is misleading. There is a point at which maintaining LCs even if you have no intention of swapping them out is profitable and you should do it. The happiness costs you $20.75 if you have all the income modifying improvements which without the SSS means a $5.81 per citizen reduction in income. If you multiply that by your citizen count you get what it is costing you by having them. Look at your infrastructure upkeep bills and compare the savings the LCs are giving you to the what the LCs are costing you. Unless you're buying them very early in the improvement schedule, the LCs are saving you way more than they are costing you. Swapping is one of those things to use if you're devoted to tweaking your nation for every ounce of benefit you can get. The earlier you can start the swap the better, though when admin changed the prices of improvements, this strategy was seriously affected if you were a young nation faced with swapping factories or banks along with the high cost of the LCs themselves. To make it practical it means a young nation has to go long periods without collecting. Meanwhile that means he is forgoing the infrastructure and hence the citizens he could have bought in that same period and the taxes they would have paid. When this strategy was first devised, LC's themselves only cost $250,000 for the five of them verses $750,000 now. Add $500,000 if you're swapping banks and you have a base cost of $1.25 million to made the swap as a break even point. To me, this is a medium and mostly a large sized nation toy at best. Swapping only really comes into its own (and even then it's only going to give you around a 5% boost to income) when you no longer need to swap out some other improvement or are swapping out something like Churches that have a low purchase price while at that the same time your nation has a much higher citizen income.

Edited February 10, 2008 by Count Rupert

[Scorp]

^ Agreed. Maximum growth is daily growth. For a small nation that slight boost in population daily is key. Later on, however, improvement swapping is so profitable that you grow quicker through swapping than through daily growth. However, I might make a stretch and say that a nation with the 5 Bonus Set of trades should not swap labor camps until the 4k infra jump, meaning that this nation should hold onto labor camps until the 4k jump.

[BraveNewWorld]

Are the camps worth it if you don't swap?

Do you make more despite the -5 happiness?

It all depends how often you collect taxes. It costs the same amount to destroy and rebuild your camps, $750K per build, whether you're doing that after 1 day inactive, or 20. But obviously if you're collecting taxes for just a single day, the gains from +5 happiness will be much less than if you're collecting taxes for 20 days.

Lets say you have 20,000 citizens, and your increase per happiness in income is $3.

If you're collecting for 3 days, by destroying your labour camps you'll gain (20,000 people)*($3 per happiness)*(5 happiness) * 28% * 3 days = $252,000

Since $252,000 is less than the $750,000 it will cost you to destroy and rebuild your camps, this isn't a wise choice.

But lets say you're collecting on 10 days income, this time you'll gain (20,000 people)*($3 per happiness)*(5 happiness) * 28% * 10 days = $840,000

Now it's worth it to destroy your labour camps, collect taxes, and then re-build them.

There are lots of other factors too, like whether you're buying income boosters to collect taxes.

I've got a spreadsheet that I use to tell me whether or not a certain improvement swap is profitable or not, so that I don't have to re-do the math everytime. They're pretty easy to make up, and I would highly recommend it.

*Note, I haven't checked the math and did it on the fly with my windows calculator, I in now way guarantee I didn't make a mistake, but the principles should be right!

[myruler]

I think someone used to say 1-1.3 mil in bills should be the start of LC swapping.

[Aeternos Astramora]

Shortened formula for when to begin improvement swapping:

D = (2 * [Total cost of improvements used in improvement swapping] ) / X

X = Total infra upkeep cost without labor camps.

D = Days of saving taxes needed to break even. (If it’s above 19, it’s not worth it.)

[dudluv2]

i started at 1300 infra

[LeVentNoir]

I can make masses of profit every 7-10 days with this but the benefit does increase with Infra, and I am sitting at 5900

[Sebastian]

Are the camps worth it if you don't swap?

Do you make more despite the -5 happiness?

Yes. I for one need to make sure I'm swapping for more than 3 days or it would be uneconomical to destroy the labor camps down in order to collect. This effect comes when you reach the point were you can buy the labor camps without destroying any other improvements. While you still have to destroy 5 improvements to build a labor camp the effect is often much larger. For example, if you have to destroy 5 police headquarters the effect is -15 hapiness instead of -5!