Border Walls improvement

[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]

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]

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]

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.

Edited March 23, 2008 by Viluin

[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.

[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]

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.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Danish

[Veritas]

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]

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)

[Scorp]

Oh. I wrote it up rather quickly. Thanks for catching those, though.

[ALFERALFER]

If you nation has 49 or less improvements, you have 0 border walls, buy a church or IA.

If you have 50 improvements, the number of borderwalls you need is easy to calculate.

Environment: 3.82

Global Radiation: 0.82

(Env 3.82 ) - 1 - (G R .82) = 2

Buy 2 border walls.

It could not be any easier.

The only outstanding issue with borderwalls after the last change is now there is no way to tell if you have too many borderwalls.

The subject is covered in this thread.

http://forums.cybernations.net/index.php?showtopic=17203

Please post there if you feel it would help your nation to know that you have a boderwall that is costing you 2% population and providing 0 benefits to your environment.

Edited March 24, 2008 by ALFERALFER

[Thorr]

When I was smaller I used 3 but soon I was loosing money and so now I only use 1. The loss of 2 percent of 143k people is larger than the 2 happiness gives now I own a lot of wonders. The wonders boosted my income for each citizen a lot. I do need the 1 to keep my environment clean but once I buy the wonder that cleans environments I won't even need it. Now they don't help with global radiation at all they soon won't help me. There is no way to swap these out to profit from them.

Basically 2 happiness is 2.40 so I have 143753 cits thus 345k approx

2 percent citizen is 2800 citizens but I make 140.62 per which means around 390k

but if my environment is hurting I clean it up I get another 10 citizens and .4 happiness which gives me 75k

Numbers aren't exact but it did give me about 25k extra. And I lost about 45k when I bought my second one which didn't clean the environment.

[yogiebere]

i tried using all the amounts of each

any amount makes me lose money

i am around 7.25k infra and growing

[Stylesjl]

Hmm I found out that two border walls was all I needed when I actually demolished them and checked my income. And all it costed me was 60K for the one I had to buy back when I realized that the money started decreasing