Optimal number of offices

[kzickas]

I did a bit of experimenting in a sandbox game and it seems like there's a pattern to the optimal number of offices working in the corporate business mode. The optimal is two offices surpass one at 85 workers and one after that you should add one office for every 45 workers. So 3 offices will surpass 2 from 130 workers, 4 will surpass 3 from 175 workers and so on.

Of course having the corporate law work mode active at the court house will make more offices profitable earlier, since the 50 income per office essentially reduces their upkeep by 50. Similarly increasing the offices' efficiency (like with the alternate work mode for hotels) will also make a larger number of offices profitable earlier.

[kzickas]

I did some more testing and it seems like consumer business falls off in the same way. However it should be noted that a family with just one adult seems to be counted as only half a family. If we assume that every adult is a worker that means one office on consumer business for every 90 workers. In reality it will be a bit more than 1 since there are non-working adults (students, retirees). So that's 1 office on consumer business and 2 offices on corporate business for every 90 workers. With 5 workers each that's 15 workers out of every 90, or 1 in 6 workers working in offices.

Of course this is just to get the highest income from offices. It might be that you'd be able to put those workers to more productive work in other industries.

Going to look at how efficiency and courthouse changes the math.

Edit: assuming efficiency is just a percentage boost to income (I haven't tested that) then.
without courthouse you want 1 additional office on corporate business for every:
45 additional workers at 100% efficiency
41 additional workers at 110% efficiency
38 additional workers at 120% efficiency
35 additional workers at 130% efficiency

with a courthouse on business law you want 1 additional office on corporate business for every:
23 additional workers at 100% efficiency
21 additional workers at 110% efficiency
19 additional workers at 120% efficiency
18 additional workers at 130% efficiency

As you can see the courthouse matters a lot more than increasing the efficiency of offices. And with a courthouse you can make a lot of offices profitable. Of course if you stack modifiers like this you can potentially get enough of your work force into offices that you have to start accounting for official business. Since offices are a finance building.

[Kunovega]

Nothing makes more than the default work mode, there's no value to any of the other work modes. You will always have more workers than any other thing it could be checking for to get payments.

[kzickas]

But the amount you get decreases with each office in the same work mode though. At some point adding more of the first work mode will get you less money than adding one of the others, since adding one for the first work mode will decrease the income of all your existing offices.

If you have 200 adults who all are working your first office in the first work mode will earn 400 minus 102 upkeep, 298 profit. One in the second work mode will only earn 200 minus 102 upkeep is 98. But if you add a second office in the first work mode then it goes from 2 per worker to 1.6 per worker for each, so now you earn 2*1.6*200 is 640 minus 204 in upkeep is 436. The first office increased your income by 298, but the second only by 138 (436 - 298). Still more than the second work mode, but not by much. The third office would take it down to 1.33 per worker. At that point they would have an income of 798 minus 306 in upkeep is 492. So your profit would only increase by 56, less than one in the second work mode. So yeah, the first one is the most profitable, but you should sprinkle in a few of the others once you get a big city.

Anyway I checked and the government business income scaling works the same way. However since the income is bigger for the same number of (government) workers, you need fewer government workers for each new office since the upkeep is relatively speaking lower. I got 18 government workers per additional office. Starting with the second one at 34 government workers.

Edit:
Official business without courthouse. Additional office every:
18 workers at 100% efficiency.
16.5 workers at 110% efficiency
15 workers at 120% efficiency
14 workers at 130% efficiency

Official business with courthouse on business law. Additional office every:
9 workers at 100% efficiency
8.5 workers at 110% efficiency
8 workers at 120% efficiency
7 workers at 130% efficiency

[MarkJerue]

Question: is this assuming default budget for all offices, or max/min budget?

[kzickas]

All this was on standard budget. On budget 1 an office has an upkeep of 51 I think. Since a courthouse on business law earns 50 per office it should be impossible for an office on budget 1 to be negative.