Food the best resource based on profit and profit maximisation?

[Earthless Rock]

Hello I noticed that food base production has 12 instead of 8, which means you can easily double the food production with some bonuses to production. Basically you take all possible traits, to increase the production (symbiosis trait), give second species food production, and strength, make your empire into a kingdom which adds more basic resource production, enslave secondary species for extra production. Asap get market 10% discount at union tree to get a (instead of 0.49 any other resource conversion into 0.64 any other resource conversions). I calculated that for profit maximisation you basically want to build fully food districts, if you are out of districts than, build power districts, and drastically I would say: maybe

never build mining district at all in your game, you can get minerals from space or you can buy them from market

you need 5% market fee or even better 0% to be almost in par with power district profits (you need galactic market exchange, unity tech, and have strategic resource aliens inside your teritory and make a deals with them) so your mining district would be almost as profitable as power districts. I would say that instead of minning districts if no other options left, build city districts. Soon you will know why.

There are more ways to increase food production by increasing stability: get lord houses (noble trait), and make deals with crime lords, and increase amenities (either trough holo theaters or comerce buildings).

And what is more interesting consumer good building and alloys are making you a huge loss at the start of the game, especially alloys are the worst, because your workers are not producing consumer goods, which they consume themselves later. Basically the idea is to get rid of these pesky building and buy off advanced resources from the market instead of producing them yourself. But you will say it is very expensive to pull of something like that. So you would stick to your old strategy and build as much alloys as possible to produce, so you could have largest fleet. But again you start to lack power, mining, consumer goods, all your economy is going downhill and barelly holding itself and you are forced to buy resources from market and make even more loses to your economy, due to market 30% fee... Or even worse start to use exploits, and negatively produce consumer goods and food... but it also reduces your stability and your production. Destability is double more punishing than, stability is rewarding if not more.. Paradox made your economy to suffer and right now your economy is in the worst possible position :). If you don't do anything than riots will start and soon your empire will die...

But did you know your old strategy is only good at 5% market fee. So basically if market fee is 5% than you can do your old strategy to make some profit, but not profit maximisation, which means if other player was maximasing his profits, compared to him you are making loss, and if all players in matchmaking are doing the same, you will lose the game very soon as you won't be keeping up with them... And to decrease to 5% market fee might not even be possible, in your case best case scenario reach 20% market fee is the best you can do with given resources. So what to do?

Answer is: build trade centers instead of consumer goods or maybe even alloys.

Did you know, that at the start of the game alloys and consumer goods production building is twice worse than a trade center?

Why trade center? I calculated that trade centers doesn't matter at which market fee it always produces loss, but there are some hidden factors. Did you know that trade center is 3 buildings in one building? You say what are you talking about? How can it be possible? Well it can produce either only power and amenities; or power, consumer goods and amenities; or power, unity, amenities. If you choose power, consumer goods and amenities trade center, you won;t need other buildings like holo theaters and consumer goods building at all. Crazy right? You are saving building costs and upkeep costs by not building these building in first place - and upkeep costs is what drags your economy into a long term nightmare economy. You just don't make enough profit to make a break even with all the costs you are producing.

And what is more crazy, the more amenities you produce, more people will be happy, colony will be more stable, it would give more production bonus. With just a single trade center.

Idially you build as many trade centers as possible, until you get 100% stability for maximum gains, after that you will start to get deminishing gains (30% production bonus is max possible from 100% stability), but pops will grow soon, so you might consider building a trade center a head, so stability would not decrease from 100%

So to summarize what is the plan?
Build max food districts > Max power districts > Max Cities (for trade centers)
Build trade centers at least until 100% stability (choose consumer trade center) > Build more trade centers or achieve somehow tax fee 5% or even 0% and than maybe start building alloy worlds.

For profit maximisation
Don't ever build and destroy: Holo theater, Consumer good building, Mining districts or mining fully districted worlds (unless you achieve 5% fee or less)

If you need alloys and minerals, buy them from market at 20% market fee after you get unity tech. At the start of the game. But if you critically need minerals before reaching 20% market fee, just try to expand to the systems which have rich minerals or some minerals first. Don't build power, research stations yet too, until your economy will start to boom. Or don;t destroy alloy building yet.

And what is interesting, when buildings and districts are supporting each other enough to be self sufficient, you get your 0% market fee :). So basically the less you trade the closer you are to 0% market fee, but due supply restrictions and if you become oversupplyed you are forced to sell your excess goods to the market, offcourse at least don't do a noob choice and pay 30% market fee, and try to get those 20% first, for a better profitability.

I didn;t mention about market flactuations, I kind of need to study this strategy more deeply myself. But I noticed that food prices don't drop if you are producing and selling 100 or more food each month. So market might have a minimum price, which cannot be lower, which is great for a producer :). Offcourse as a alloys buyer you might get into some issues, as alloys can get to 8 power or more price, there might be no maximum price set. But until prices rise that much, you might already have a ecumonopolis with alloys production up and running. Which also means if you start alloys production mid game, you will rip all the benefits too with higher prices, and hopefully with even lower tax fee.

Important: make monthly deals instead of buying/selling resources in chunks, prices will start to flactuate, and you will make extra expanses.

If you can speed up dropping tax fee, just make a huge deals with strategic resource aliens as fast as possible, but remember they have to be inside your empire.


How to calculate profit: simply add all imputs and outputs, subtract them into (make them simpler), convert to default prices 1 Power = 1 Food = 1 Min; Alloys = 4 Power, Consumer Goods = 2 Power. Adjust based on tax rate, and voila you get the profit.

I checked it many times if I am not mistaking with these numbers, remember housing costs resources too don;t forget to put all inputs if you try to check it out. Everything has value and costs and after that tax adjusted.

Biggest cost factors are Consumer goods and Food. You can lower them trough traits, produce these resources yourself, or make species into slaves etc...

Here are some raw profit data, all based on default data, the moment you start the game.

Top 0% tax rate
Bot 30% tax rate

Trade Center Consumer Good (is exception, if you add up hidden costs saved from not building other buildings like holo theaters and consumer good building, profit might be higher than it is presented)
Profit
-1,5
-1,875
-2,25
-2,625
-3
-3,375
-3,75

Electricity (Is good because it doesn't need so much conversion)
Profit
4
3,85
3,7
3,55
3,4
3,25
3,1

Mining (Mining is very bad as you can see, conversion at 30 market fee, is barelly break even)
Profit
4
3,45
2,9
2,35
1,8
1,25
0,7

Food
Profit (Best of the best, you want all worlds to have them fully filled)
8
7,45
6,9
6,35
5,8
5,25
4,7

Alloys (alloys are worst starting building, but necessary for expansion, dispose after market fee 20%, and buy all alloys from market, trough monthly trade, make also militirised economy)
Profit
3,2
1,2
-0,8
-2,8
-4,8
-6,8
-8,8

Consumer Goods (dispose immidiately, it will take time for pops to lower stratum, trade center will produce consumer goods without minerals)
Profit
3,2
1,4
-0,4
-2,2
-4
-5,8
-7,6


I kind of wanted to build a profit maximisation excel spread sheet, but there are some binary problems, which i need to solve. But in profit maximisation, principally you start with highest profit projects, than after that you go to lower ones. So actually it might not be necessery to make one at all. You just know, some rules some principals, some targets, and you will get not ideal but almost ideal profit maximisation. Good luck and have fun.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

1. Unless devs changed it in 2.4, selling food over 100/month (which is trivial to achieve) lowers its default sell price of 0.7. And without market tax reduction it's only 5% more efficient than just producing EC.

2. Lowering matket tax to a noticable amount is a too long-term goal (not to mention, unreliable one). Want profit? Build a fleet and start conquering your neighbours as early as 2215: will give you best production boost there is. By 2240-2250 you can easily have 3-4 neighbouring capital planets with both perfect habitability and past initial unrest stage (read: fully productive), putting you at a ~200 pops.

3. Clerks only work early game, with trifty trait, fanatic xenophile, authoritatian living standards, and 10% trade civic. All that (along with high stability) will make clerks produce ~4 trade each (2EC + 1CG or 4 EC) at a cost of 0.1CG and 1 food.

Basically, results in (per pop*):
0.73 CG
1.42 EC
1.6 AM

*including farmers and structures upkeep


In order to run CG factory you'll need about:
3 miners
1.5 farmers
1 technician
2 artisans
1 entertainer

This results in ~1.125CG/pop

Technicans initially sit at ~2.18EC/pop (considering food and CG needs).

Entertainers are at ~3.33/pop

So, while you do get ~30-40% ahead in EC+CG production per pop initially, it only lasts until the first production boosting techs, and goes downhill from there. Also, it only works for authoritarian living standards: worker CG costs skyrocket otherwise, while extra production from slaves (especially slaver guilds) puts clerks at more even footing.

Thing is: you don't need CG, sine authoritarian standards allow you to sustain homeworld pops on base 10 CG, while running 6 foundries. Slaver guilds also makes you independent from mineral-rich systems (although, not everyone is into that).

The only possibility I see here is that clerks might be initially more efficient than foundries (alloys being 5.2EC with 30% tax, putting clerks to ~0.61 alloys/pop), but that's where militarized economy comes into play, making things even. Lowering tax at that point seems less efficient than investing traditions into fleet.

Unless you heavily invest into them, clerks are a filler job you should get rid of the first opportunity you get. If you do invest heavily, they are only good for a couple decades, and mostly for getting something out of those low-habitability worlds.

[Earthless Rock]

You have lots of interesting ideas, i will need some time to confirm them all. It does make lots of sense to start a early war, to get enemy homeworld and jump over competition.

1) First of all I calculated that Food is not 5% better than EC, at least it is 51% better at 30 % tax rate. And latter food districts gets even better at lower Tax Fee up to 100% max. I need to calculate price flactuations, but it might be still better than EC even if food price drops to (0.8 or 0.7), but it is quite hard to tell on estimations.
2) Tax rate, reduction is actually great for your economy, maybe focusing as secondary objective after building huge fleet and having lots resource trading, not only selling food, but also minerals and excess CG
3) Clerks work for all civics, I calculated on default production all these profits, no bonuses were included. With a default living standarts. You can get more profits with lower living standarts, or you can make less profits if you make higher living standarts. Stability isn't very rewarding, so it might be optimal to have a bit higher stability than 50%.

4) Mineral production on planets is totally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, total waste of resources. Especially when you waste civics to get extra 1 mineral production is double ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. EC is at least 3 times better than mines and FOOD is 5 times better then mines (on defaults) with 30% market fee. Just getting space stations is more than enough, you will want soon to sell all your minerals and keep something about more 30 production than consuming, when you have 2-3 k of supply, later you might need a bit higher production with more planets,

5) I didn;t calculate entertainers or scientist profit/loss, but Instantly identified them as a loss. Basically scientists are really good for their price, but entertainers are crap as hell, you waste lots of resources and get almost 0 benefits. In my view it is a total black hole. Union is not a technology, you cannot create better laser beams with union :)

6) Finally I calculate not per pops*, but per buildings*. It's more easier to calculate, due to lower numbers involved (and less mistakes made) and buildings are giving you the profit, not pops - they are input, they cannot produce any profits themselves unless they use buildings. And then you reconvert back *per pops into *buildings profits, back and forward so and so again - which is confusing. It is like comparing apples to oranges, they are similar yet different. I also again didn;t calculate any bonuses at all everything is on default. I was halfly talking about defaults numbers without any civics or bonuses, and before that halfly about authoritarians. Might not have been clear from my side, so I am sorry if I was confusing too ;)

Well I can confirm, that food is really good up to 150 monthly sell, so are the minerals if you have huge production from mining stations. The exact number of monthly sell it is yet unknown, i still need some trial and error, prices might get lower for some days, but they restore back after 30 to initial default price, before a new monthly trade. Unless you do a bulk sell and prices will take lots of time to restore back, it will harm your economy for quite a long time.

Playing game with Fanatic militarist and authoritarian:
Rushing for an early strong fleet I would do: Build Max Farmer districts, Build 1 trade center with CG, 3 Research Centers, then 1, 2, up to 3 alloys. Destroy not used districts, except for cities. Invest unity in science tree and get that alternative research, and maybe lowering scientists CG costs. Buy several science ships, have 1 in assist research planet. Get a particle scientist, voidcraft scientist if possible, your civics also has to be fanatic militarist, and little bit authoritarian (to get a higher chance of cannon drops) for extra production and make slaves. Get those laser cannons, missiles and gauss cannons, armor, shields etc.. or if lucky even extra hullpoints, and you can skip building destroyers, or until you get destroyers with extra hullpoints research. Trying not to expand too much star systems, only enough to block access. Alloys will thank you for that. Sell 100 food on monthly trade, buy at least 6 alloys (I don't know exact max number for alloys yet, so prices would not start jumping, need some testing, but 6 is safe).

Build 2 full sized fleets with latest tech. If you can get slave army tech, build a invasion fleet with them, it will be your third fleet or cheap meatshields in space battle, use them first to approach the enemy fleet.

I also tried to build as much foundries as possible, but it didn't work well for me, power is negative production, fleet power halves into 2 on critical battle, they get swarmed and soon I lose the game. Overproducing alloys is great for fleet size, but it will bite your economy, unless you are lucky enough to overpower your opponent get that 2nd homeworld.

Offcourse if you lose your fleet, you might want to change your homeworld into a fortress, just to survive the war. And later on peace - rebuild... But it is almost a lost game... Unless you love to strugle...

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Earthless Rock:

Overproducing alloys is great for fleet size, but it will bite your economy, unless you are lucky enough to get that 2nd homeworld from a bit weaker opponent.

But that's the thing: only genocidals (GA+advanced) can stand up to 40-60 corvettes during second decade (unless we talking MP games with some house rules where more balanced approach you described is better).

[Hexagoros]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

1. Unless devs changed it in 2.4, selling food over 100/month (which is trivial to achieve) lowers its default sell price of 0.7. And without market tax reduction it's only 5% more efficient than just producing EC.

2. Lowering matket tax to a noticable amount is a too long-term goal (not to mention, unreliable one). Want profit? Build a fleet and start conquering your neighbours as early as 2215: will give you best production boost there is. By 2240-2250 you can easily have 3-4 neighbouring capital planets with both perfect habitability and past initial unrest stage (read: fully productive), putting you at a ~200 pops.

3. Clerks only work early game, with trifty trait, fanatic xenophile, authoritatian living standards, and 10% trade civic. All that (along with high stability) will make clerks produce ~4 trade each (2EC + 1CG or 4 EC) at a cost of 0.1CG and 1 food.

Basically, results in (per pop*):
0.73 CG
1.42 EC
1.6 AM

*including farmers and structures upkeep


In order to run CG factory you'll need about:
3 miners
1.5 farmers
1 technician
2 artisans
1 entertainer

This results in ~1.125CG/pop

Technicans initially sit at ~2.18EC/pop (considering food and CG needs).

Entertainers are at ~3.33/pop

So, while you do get ~30-40% ahead in EC+CG production per pop initially, it only lasts until the first production boosting techs, and goes downhill from there. Also, it only works for authoritarian living standards: worker CG costs skyrocket otherwise, while extra production from slaves (especially slaver guilds) puts clerks at more even footing.

Thing is: you don't need CG, sine authoritarian standards allow you to sustain homeworld pops on base 10 CG, while running 6 foundries. Slaver guilds also makes you independent from mineral-rich systems (although, not everyone is into that).

The only possibility I see here is that clerks might be initially more efficient than foundries (alloys being 5.2EC with 30% tax, putting clerks to ~0.61 alloys/pop), but that's where militarized economy comes into play, making things even. Lowering tax at that point seems less efficient than investing traditions into fleet.

Unless you heavily invest into them, clerks are a filler job you should get rid of the first opportunity you get. If you do invest heavily, they are only good for a couple decades, and mostly for getting something out of those low-habitability worlds.

My Commercial Ringworld with thousands of Trade Value per section says "hi, you're argument is invalid."

[Earthless Rock]

After galactic market is introduced there are huge game changes. Food production becomes really good, the 150 food limitation gets lifted. If other empires are not producing and selling food, you can take over their limitations for yourself, In my playtrough i sold more than 300 food production (when 150 is about limit for your empire ) and prices didn't fall at all. I was also buying 12 alloys, and prices jumped twice after galactic market was introduced and more, which means that buying 12 alloys to replace 2 alloy factories wasn't feasable, and was more profitable to produce alloys and sell them to the market even at 30% market fee (more profitable, than food too). What was a bit funny, that mineral prices dropped down so you can just buy out all minerals you want to have. Basically if AI and other players are not trading at all, you should try to buy out or sell out their limitations. Selling food, buying or selling alloys, buying minerals. Your CG will be about 0 due to trade center CG, you don't need to worry about CG at all. But if CG prices doubles like alloys, than similar strategy with alloys can be applied, but remember CG factory is a bit more profitable, due to that CG which was produced will be consumed by same pop, which lowers upkeep costs and because of that increases a bit profit. Offcourse I am talking on default values productions, prices, not with bonuses. I also noticed, that if you make one of your species agrarian, homeworld will have more food sectors (Maybe it has higher chance, and not always guaranteed), so maybe even game recommends you to produce food, and maximise its production first.

I am also starting to think about trade wars. Someone gathers huge supply of resources, and then plummets it into huge huge sell, hurting economy of the empire that dependend on high prices of said resource. Or if you have the credit, buy out and make resource even more expensive, if empires are fixed on monthly trade buying, the prices will skyrocket for them and harm their economy, giving very little time to adjust to new price.

I think AI might be very stupid to buy alloys at double or more price at same never changing quantities, you could buy out alloys before galactic market coming into play ("cheapest alloys" will be before galactic opening, even if is higher than default prices). Later you can sell all these alloys after galactic market is opened, making huge huge profit if prices jump twice, but sell it on monthly trade, not chunk trade for even more benefit. Later buy out huge chunks of alloys even at double or triple price - price doesn't matter at all, what matters is prices will start to rise again. Make a very brutal buy spend all your resources on buying, and later do a monthly sell to retrieve your money back, if you are succesfull - prices will be in new heights forever. And later repeat these chunk buy attacks on the market, and see if sky is the limit. If AI is stupid to buy same resource at 4 or 5 times at same quantities, than you will win by bancrupting the galaxy... It might be different with players, but if there are many AI in the game, than trade war strategy could be quite effective... But if you are against players and no one is trading, than you can just buy/sell all their "limits" (limit - prices are not changing until you reach the magic number of monthly trade) after galactic market is introduced and rip benefits on their behalf of not trading.

[Earthless Rock]

Best resource Food for profit maximisation might have even more evidence. I though about the policy "strict rationing", it kind of doesn't make sense, and everybody skips it. So I though I can implement this easily in food profit maximisation. So if you want to have a head start over your competitors, it might be actually not such a bad thing to toggle on this policy and for even greater PROFITS, offcourse growth will be slower, and people will be less happy. But you can wait for 1000 food supply and give a planet those resources for "encourage planetary growth". And for a cheap 1 unity cost get first harmony tradition (-35% food consumption reduction).

I am also trying out game with Utopian Living Standard with profit maximisation. You kind of need to have those CG factories around instead of demolishing them, and demolish science buildings instead. Unless you have enough power just simply to buy out CG from market, until prices will start changing.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Earthless Rock:

I though about the policy "strict rationing", it kind of doesn't make sense, and everybody skips it.

Because no one really wants to do the math. They see a growth penalty and assume it's bad - it's not. By using it you free up 2 pops at the start of the game. With nutritional plentitude you'll need ~10 years to get one extra pop, another ~20 to get even (because at 20 year mark you'll need another farmer). This still leaves you behind at 40 pop-years, which will take another ~30 years to compensate. That's 60 years of a head-start by minimizing upkeep - option most people forget about.

(of course, I neglected to factor in colonies and productivity hit from happiness, but it's marginal)

[Lady Crimson (RIP)]

I believe it's still 6 compared to 4 (looking at purely bases). for a generic empire.


Food is the better in the beginning, and can be great later on if food on the market is worth more (depending on how the market goes).

Generally however it's not reliable, as if someone is built around selling food for their energy.. the price will eventually go down unless enough people are buying.

The second your food is useless for a number of years.. you'll find yourself with a bunch of food and starved on energy.

Decent conditions is far better than strict rationing in the beginning for what you get, food plentitude might not be worth it until food is no longer worth the money but decent is the superior to strict.

[Earthless Rock]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by Earthless Rock:

I though about the policy "strict rationing", it kind of doesn't make sense, and everybody skips it.

Because no one really wants to do the math. They see a growth penalty and assume it's bad - it's not. By using it you free up 2 pops at the start of the game. With nutritional plentitude you'll need ~10 years to get one extra pop, another ~20 to get even (because at 20 year mark you'll need another farmer). This still leaves you behind at 40 pop-years, which will take another ~30 years to compensate. That's 60 years of a head-start by minimizing upkeep - option most people forget about.

(of course, I neglected to factor in colonies and productivity hit from happiness, but it's marginal)

Wow this is pretty good. I also noticed few more insights about food. Food is easily tradable with other AI, to get increased approval. So basically when empire is expanding, and soon you will start to border another empire, before relationships take a hit, give food for 100+ approval. And later they won't make your rival empire. For some time at least... Later strike consumer good trade deal to improve even more relationships. Later the empire, which has the most consumer trade deal with others will get galactic market free of charge in random planet of yours... I don't know why the option even exist to buy a nomination, when it's so expensive and still it is a chance, while alternative method is almost for free and secured.

I am also constantly updating my excel spreadsheet. And decided not to go trough binary path for optimal calculation as order isn't important, which makes a bit simpler to go trough. I completed, that outputs will become inputs to artificially lower the tax and get more options for a better profit.

I am also trying to figure out price changes in the market. I also made some little mistakes in calculations. I even forgot to check out how pop itself is creating a trading value, so basically all buildings have a bit more profit.


I tried out some optimisation simulations. So basically you want to rush to have at least 20 farming districts (on tax 30%) or 22 farming districts (on tax 5-0%). If you want to sell food I mean, but if you want also stockpile food to use them on planets and trade with other empires you might want then some more (don't know yet exactly yet, but +100 more production might not be so bad). Than after that you maximise all power districts. You might not even need mining districts at all if you have enough mineral: +150 Monthly mineral is all what you need. Sometimes you sell the mineral on monthly basis, sometimes you stockpile it for your buildings.

The spreadsheet is becoming really complicated, first it was linear, now it become non-linear calculation, due to that output becomes input, which means you use global tax (30-5%) and 0% tax at the same time instead of using global tax only (you buy all inputs and sell outputs market, which is a quite inneficient, and a bit misleading for seeking better profits). Offcourse when your empire's global taxe changes, optimal building, district mix also changes somewhat.

[Earthless Rock]

Originally posted by Lady Crimson:

I believe it's still 6 compared to 4 (looking at purely bases). for a generic empire.


Food is the better in the beginning, and can be great later on if food on the market is worth more (depending on how the market goes).

Generally however it's not reliable, as if someone is built around selling food for their energy.. the price will eventually go down unless enough people are buying.

The second your food is useless for a number of years.. you'll find yourself with a bunch of food and starved on energy.

Decent conditions is far better than strict rationing in the beginning for what you get, food plentitude might not be worth it until food is no longer worth the money but decent is the superior to strict.

Yes you are right about food somewhat. Food has it's limits. 22 food districts might be the golden number here, at least for now until I make more insights.

[Earthless Rock]

I discovered a new way of thinking. And i named it "The Golden Equilibrium". I am going to create a new discussion about "The Golden Equilibrium". And later maybe even make a very detailed Walktrough. If you want to join the new discussion you are welcome as it will be continuation: "Food the best resource based on profit and profit maximisation?"