Why Earth Is Mathematically Impossible To Complete

[DiMono]

I have 7.331 Sextrigintillion Angel Investors on Earth, with no money spent on the game and no businesses gilded. I did advance my game about a century in increments to get here though - it's impossible to be this far right now with no money spent without cheating. My last reset was about two weeks ago, when Mars launched. In that time, I've gotten to 4400 newspapers, 8000 lemonade stands, and 543 unlocks. And I've made back about 22.4 Quintrigintillion Angel Investors. That's less than a third of a percent after 2 weeks. And remember, Angel Investor growth slows down the more you have - in order to get to 20% Angel Investor gain, I'm looking at over 8 years at my current rate of income (2 weeks x 3.5 x 20 x 3 for inflation over time).

Now, of course, my income will speed up as I get more upgrades. The last one I got was x3 newspaper profit for 8 sexseptuagintillion dollars. It took almost a week to raise that much money. The next one is x3 car wash for 69 sexseptuagintillion. Right now I'm making about 1 Quinseptuagintillion per minute, or 60 per hour, or 1.44 Sexseptuagintillion a day. That means it'll be 48 days before I can buy it. Or I can go up to 4600 car washes, in 5 days - I should have done that before getting the x3 newspaper upgrade, but I was in a hurry and missed it. So it's almost a week to correct that mistake. Then it'll only take 33 days to get the upgrade.

After getting appropriate upgrades and unlocks, it will total up to about 8 years to double my Angel Investors. That number's going to be important later. Now, let's look at how much it costs to get 626 unlocks:

NOTE: The following calculations do not take angel-provided investments into account. Corrected calculations are being added to the bottom of this post, and are originally found in a reply post of mine further down the discussion.

10,000 Lemonade Stands costs 3.68 x 10^295 dollars.
8,000 Lemonade Stands costs 6.28 x 10^236 dollars

That means it will take 10^59 x more to get to 10,000 lemonade stands than it's possible to earn in a hundred years. Continuing from oil rigs and moving backwards, to start on things with lower inflation:

9,750 oil rigs costs 10^298
8,500 banks costs 10^295
7,750 movie studios costs 10^299
7,000 hockey teams costs 10^297
6,500 shrimp boats costs 10^301
6,250 donut shops blows out Open Office, but is about 10^313
5,750 pizza joints blows out Open Office, but is about 10^310
5,500 car washes blows out Open Office, but is about 10^316
5,400 newspaper stands blows out Open Office, but is about 10^330

(note: the way I figured out the costs that blow out Open Office was by noting the difference between 5000 and 5001, and restarting the calculation from that point without the exponent, then adding the exponents together)

Those big numbers wouldn't be that big a problem if upgrades kept up with development - but they don't. I believe classic AdCap went up to 4000 newspaper stands - that's 10^245 dollars. That means, for completion time to be comparable, they would need to have added 10^85 in multipliers to keep up. They added 10^16. That means you need 10^69 x more angels to finish the game. And as previously established, right now, significantly more than 10^59 angels behind, it takes 8 years to double them.

The following is spoilered because it is inaccurate; accurate calculations follow afterwards. I happen to know that it will eventually slow down to the point that it takes thousands of years to double your angels, but let's be generous and suppose for argument's sake that we're magically able to double our angels every year. Let's also be generous and assume that 10^60 more will do the job. Taking 1 and doubling it, it takes about 200 iterations to get to 10^60. So in our magical best-case scenario, we're looking at 300 years to finish the game (100 to get to this point, plus 200 for the resets).

However, that's not reality. In reality, at the point I'm at, it takes 8 years to double my angels, and the duration increases by at least 50% each time I reset. Knowing it requires 200 angel-doubling resets to finish the game from here, it's going to take 10^24 years to still not complete Earth. On the other hand, if you gild all your Earth businesss and spend $100 to drop 65 x3 multipliers on Earth, you can cut that down to a mere 10^21 years.

In my initial calculations, I forgot about the angel newspapers. That reduces the number you have to buy by 600 (550 for other investments), to 4,800. Still being the most expensive to complete, it takes 10^293 to finish. However, having gone over the newspaper unlocks, classic AdCap only went to 3900 of them, which means it required 10^205. So we're still looking at a difference of 10^88. The cost reduction managers are not relevant to the calculations, though, because we're looking at orders of magnitude difference in this case to figure out how many orders of magnitude more angels are required than before. Removing 10^5 from the costs changes it to 10^288 and 10^200, respectively, and the difference is the same.

So now we have 10^88 more money required, with 10^16 taken up by new upgrades. There's also approximately 10^11 in new unlocks, which means we have 10^61 to make up for in Angel Investors. My original calculations failed to take into account that I'm 500 newspapers into the difference already, so the number of resets required is fewer than 200. Being at 4400 newspapers, I've already gotten past 10^31 of the required extra angel investors. So rather than amortizing to get to 60, we're amortizing to get to 30, which happens to take 100 resets. And that means, starting at 8 years to double and increasing by 50%, it will only take 10^18 years to finish the game - or 10^15 if you pay for it. And just to put that in perspective, the Universe is 10^10 years old. So if you pay, it will take 100,000x as long as the Universe has existed in order to finish the game.

That is why it's currently impossible to complete Earth, by the numbers.

[Red]

Earth has always been impossible (at least without spending a decent amount of money or cheating). On the Kongregate version of AdCap (where it was originally posted I think?) I have a few Gold planet multipliers on Earth, and I'm still basically right at the point where my Steam version is at (also keep in mind that the web version of AdCap had last year's Christmas event, where players could get permanent angel % upgrades).

Hopefully more buyable upgrades will be added to Earth soon. Waiting WEEKS to get half of my current angel count on Earth (and the Moon) is getting pretty dull. The only reason I'm checking AdCap right now is to reset on Mars, just because I can (it's been done for a few days now, but I can keep resetting because the angels just keep comin'. . .)

[archmag]

Originally posted by DiMono:

Now, let's look at how much it costs to get 626 unlocks:

10,000 Lemonade Stands costs 3.68 x 10^295 dollars.
8,000 Lemonade Stands costs 6.28 x 10^236 dollars

That means it will take 10^59 x more to get to 10,000 lemonade stands than it's possible to earn in a hundred years. Continuing from oil rigs and moving backwards, to start on things with lower inflation:

9,750 oil rigs costs 10^298
8,500 banks costs 10^295
7,750 movie studios costs 10^299
7,000 hockey teams costs 10^297
6,500 shrimp boats costs 10^301
6,250 donut shops blows out Open Office, but is about 10^313
5,750 pizza joints blows out Open Office, but is about 10^310
5,500 car washes blows out Open Office, but is about 10^316
5,400 newspaper stands blows out Open Office, but is about 10^330

1. There are mistakes in your calculations. You forgot managers that lower cost by 10^5 (if i remember right, don't want to reset right now to check, but it's several powers) and you forgot free businesses that you get from angel upgrades. Those can also lower the cost especially for newspapers where according to wiki (I don't have a better source of information about all available upgrades) you get about 500 free businesses and that lowers cost to max them at least to 10^300 compared to your 10^330.

2. This is already a known fact, even developers made a pinned thread about this and talked about how this happened and what they plan to do about it in the future, so I am not sure of the purpose of this thread.

3. You can use spreadsheets in google docs instead of Open office, they can handle these calculations. This is just an advice.

[DiMono]

1. You're right, I forgot about the angel newspapers. It's been so long since I saw one bigger than 25, I forgot there are large ones early on that are relevant. That reduces the number you have to buy by 600 (550 for other investments), to 4,800. Still being the most expensive to complete, it takes 10^293 to finish. However, having gone over the newspaper unlocks, classic AdCap only went to 3900 of them, which means it required 10^205. So we're still looking at a difference of 10^88. The cost reduction managers are not relevant to the calculations, though, because we're looking at orders of magnitude difference in this case to figure out how many orders of magnitude more angels are required than before. Removing 10^5 from the costs changes it to 10^288 and 10^200, respectively, and the difference is the same.

So now we have 10^88 more money required, with 10^16 taken up by new upgrades. There's also approximately 10^11 in new unlocks, which means we have 10^61 to make up for in Angel Investors. My original calculations failed to take into account that I'm 500 newspapers into the difference already, so the number of resets required is fewer than 200. Being at 4400 newspapers, I've already gotten past 10^31 of the required extra angel investors. So rather than amortizing to get to 60, we're amortizing to get to 30, which happens to take 100 resets. And that means, starting at 8 years to double and increasing by 50%, it will only take 10^18 years to finish the game - or 10^15 if you pay for it. And just to put that in perspective, the Universe is 10^10 years old. So if you pay, it will take 100,000x as long as the Universe has existed in order to finish the game.

2. The developers have yet to acknowledge that Earth is impossible, they've only ever acknowledged that it's slow. Plus I've seen in other threads people debating about whether it's possible to complete Earth, or whether it's just slow going. I figured I'd make a thread to say definitively that it's not possible, and why.

3. I have no experience with Google Docs. Stuck with what I know. I made it work :)

[archmag]

Originally posted by DiMono:

2. The developers have yet to acknowledge that Earth is impossible, they've only ever acknowledged that it's slow. Plus I've seen in other threads people debating about whether it's possible to complete Earth, or whether it's just slow going. I figured I'd make a thread to say definitively that it's not possible, and why.

I think this quote means they acknowledge it, but maybe I am thinking too much:

Originally posted by Hyper Hippo Productions:

So if AdCap doesn't seem achievable at the moment, don’t lose hope. We’re working on adjustments that will hopefully be worth the wait.

There was a thread about a month ago where one person cheated himself into the far future and we discussed current status of his. It did not matter much that he cheated his way there, all that mattered was that he could not gain any new upgrades in a really huge amount of time. Also he could not reset with even a 10% increase of angels in a really huge amount of time (several years waittime for few percent). So it was enough empirical data to say that game can't be completed. This was before Mars patch but still nothing changed on Earth so that "test" is still valid.

Btw, how did you get this number? "They added 10^16." You say that it's amount of upgrades they added to compensate for extra progress you need to make, but I don't know of any people, even cheaters who finished Earth already and know all upgrades (maybe some people reported this on Kong, I don't know).

3. I have no experience with Google Docs. Stuck with what I know. I made it work :)

They are the same as excel, except online. You can share you calculations in read-only mode like this end-mars sheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wrSF5W7dJIMsUQmn9B5ieoGg9eqgeAJNekqQa66CKU4/edit#gid=0
Someone who has a google account can download it and edit it for his own uses or check to correct mistakes.

[DiMono]

Originally posted by archmag:

Btw, how did you get this number? "They added 10^16." You say that it's amount of upgrades they added to compensate for extra progress you need to make, but I don't know of any people, even cheaters who finished Earth already and know all upgrades (maybe some people reported this on Kong, I don't know).

It's on the wiki. All unlocks and upgrades are enumerated there in sequence, so all you have to do is figure out where the last version ended and start scrolling down.

http://adventure-capitalist.wikia.com/wiki/Cash_Upgrades

[Zesty McZest]

Future updates to make Earth progression easier are confirmed, just chill for now. My progression has slowed to practically nothing but I'm not bothered - I'll simply wait for updates and go from there.

[Claymore]

I am not worried because I think they'll likely update the game to make it completable- they said it was their intention to do so earlier.

[Aerius]

Great post. Lots of people jumping into the future to 'test,' but this math is more convincing.

The devs know.. and maybe care. Just have to hope for the best.

[QAOS]

wow. that's really great calculation and post. I hope this thing will be fixed by the devs. I hope...

[Oooska]

Originally posted by Murat:

wow. that's really great calculation and post. I hope this thing will be fixed by the devs. I hope...

The mobile version just got an update today that speeds up the Earth greatly, I suspect the Steam version should be out in a few days.

*Edit: Minutes after posting this, I got all unlocks for Earth after resetting many times over the past few hours.Still cash upgrades and angel upgrades to get though

*Edit 2: After restarting a few more times on the mobile version, I am no longer able to got all unlocks after restarting. I have 99 septentrigintillion angels, but am now having trouble making 10 quintrigintillion angels... mobile version is definitely buggy right now.

[koji]

Originally posted by Red:

Earth has always been impossible (at least without spending a decent amount of money or cheating). On the Kongregate version of AdCap (where it was originally posted I think?) I have a few Gold planet multipliers on Earth, and I'm still basically right at the point where my Steam version is at (also keep in mind that the web version of AdCap had last year's Christmas event, where players could get permanent angel % upgrades).

Hopefully more buyable upgrades will be added to Earth soon. Waiting WEEKS to get half of my current angel count on Earth (and the Moon) is getting pretty dull. The only reason I'm checking AdCap right now is to reset on Mars, just because I can (it's been done for a few days now, but I can keep resetting because the angels just keep comin'. . .)

earth was not impossible i was close to finish it when they decided to go full ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mode adding "new" content to earth moon was impossible when they added it i just spedrun through mars and got couple boosts for earth and moon but i dont see any progress even with boost on earth and moon its like i hit a maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasive steel wall

[StandAlone]

10^18 years to complete de ♥♥♥♥♥ game.... What a kick in the balls.. Lets wait for updates,,

[Kimi]

All of your math is incorrect.

[Jammy]

What in the ♥♥♥♥?

[DiMono]

Originally posted by Politically Correct Master Race:

All of your math is incorrect.

So correct it.