Farm/Factory Maximum Profit Per Month

[Evilmasteryoda]

So in the game there is a little blurb about your farms and industry operating at maximum utilization/workload for profit. Anything less then 60% and you don't make a profit.

So why bother buying some farms/industries unless you want to maximize your profit. I was buying in previous maps all the farms and maximizing their levels so I would never run out of goods but I would never show a profit. I would usually run close to 25% of my freight profit in any typical game…Freight is king

Pre read summary: My test concluded if you do watch your industries each year you can almost match your freight profit. You get on the supply, transportation and manufacturing of the goods and you can make a lot more money faster.

----- STRIKEOUT----- With a catch, shorter era’s I’m thinking you can’t recoup your money in time so only buy to grow and add more freight to match your setup , but (This was wrong, 20 year scenarios you get paid in weeks not months, trains move f aster) -------Strikeout------

In a 100 year setup, getting in on it in the first 30 years will help alot and you pay off almost all investments up to level 3 in under 10 years. Level 4 business are almost impossible to stay 100% profitable. Level 3 business are hard enough to stay profitable. Until you get some mega million population cities in which case you can't stop feeding those cities goods.


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I'm testing this on the South East 100 year map and I'm starting the test around 1845.

I run my farms at 100% workload so that they have 0 stock left in their storage while a train waits at the station for a full load.

I have a level 1 Wheat farm running at 100% making $3,094 profit per month.

I was able to purchase it for $284,458 meaning it will take 7.6 years to start paying for the investment.

Upgrading it to a level 2 wheat farm will cost $510,000 but doing so should increase the amount of Profit per month to $6195 a month. Making my total investment $794,458 but now taking 10.6 years to pay off my investment in full. But hold on...

Now because I run two trains between the wheat farm at full loads only I'm loosing about $700 in fuel right now a month (about $2000/4,000 later era in the 80’s) so I have to deduct that from my profits. So it will take about 12 years to pay off my debt in full from a Level 2 wheat farm.

Now compared to the Corn Farm I bought at auction for $1,043,014. I have this operating at a 100% workload at $7994 a month profit. I have about 8 trains running corn to 4 cities to keep the corn farm workload at full capacity. It will take 10.8 years to pay of the debt from "purchasing" this farm. If I ran the corn to a warehouse I would most likely need 2 just to a warehouse to keep it at max workload. So that would loose some fuel if that happened but by going directly to the city the fuel is coming from the freight line profits (how I do it in my game).



Now my Cattle and Meat Industry has a weird balance issue to get to maximum profit.
Level 2 cattle can produce 4.8 cattle per month or a level 3 can produce 9.6. A level 2 Meat industry can consume 7.2 cattle per month 14.4 a month. You want to feed a level 2 Cattle ranch and a level 3 cattle ranch into 1 city to maximize profits. Getting you to 14.4 Cattle provided a month.

Going to Level 3 is going to cost you another 1.5mil in some cases less but… You tacking on another 5 years to pay off IF you can stay on max profit and IF you already paid off the previous upgrades over the last 11 years (which might be the time to upgrade to level 3… But maxing level 3 can be a tough order.

For the early industries, related to meat, bear, and wood… we are talking about 2-3 warehouses around each city in parallel with 2 large stations all running parallel tracks or smooth double tracks to each destination. Level 3 Industry needs its own distribution warehouse running pretty much constantly with the supplies coming in possibly to a import warehouse. Some industries maxed out easily supply 8 100,000+ population cities. A full fledged chemical plant can supply 12 100,000 population cities with chemicals. More if they have museums. .1 chemical cart load per 10,000 population starting at 100,500 which requires 1 full chemical cart load..

When Level 3 Industrys and beyond have more than 8 carts a month its hard to keep up unless you exporting from at least two stations/warehouses. 16 carts you need 3 or 4 stations, and I have no clue how you keep up on 32 carts of stuff from one industry, 32 carts of meat will feed 16 120,000 population towns.



So the first big tip I've learned to maximize profit per month is to feed a level 3 and level 2 cattle into a level 3 Meat Industry for maximum profit. 4 Trains for level 2, and 8 for level 3.

Also a Level 3 Meat industry produces A LOT of meat 9.8 cars a month. I had to connect 5 cities to it just to even attempt to meet demand for meat. Most cities only wanted .8-1.1 carts a month and I had them capped out in the first few trains. It took many years to get the cities to max capacity level 3 meat industry, so hold off on that level 3 meet industry until late game.

When hauling you may not want the fastest or the most high traction train. Fuel gets expensive later in the game and I found that using the Texan takes 150% more fuel then standard. For short direct hauls of meat or wheat I like the Super Hudson it has a104% consumption and if you're going down hill for supplying your city you really are not losing that much in speed and time. My texan takes 20 weeks, my super hudson takes 21 weeks. To top it off I wait for a full load so they are going to lose a few weeks anyways.

Cotton and Textiles are the easy upgrade 1 to 1 industry I found. I simply upgrade the cotton farm at the same time as Textiles and they do not over produce/under produce so long as you have a demand for the textiles (almost always have a Clothing Factory).

You can save fuel on trains by building a clothing factory right in the same town but DON’T DO THIS. (Unless you are out of track space) Its better to transport the silk/cloth to another close town and get the 20,000 bonus per train for doing so. Same goes for Tools/Toys/Cars and gas/cars and lumber/furniture, paper/press… If your running into congestion problem haul your popular goods though warehouses outside the town but still connected.

Buy any industry/farm where you plan on developing if the owners come to you. Its sometimes better to ignore 3/4ths of the map when you knock all the npc’s out of the race so that business goes unprofitable and owners want to sell. I got 50% of the business that way, though avoid auctions because sometimes after you knock a all NPC’s out you can buy it for cheaper then what comes up randomly in auction..

Once you get to the 75-85 years, using Texans only if its really bad and curvy and hilly. Then again if you don’t care about that extra $500-$1000 in fuel for short runs… and $1500 to $2000 in long runs then just stick with texans for all freight and EMD e-units for all passengers and mail. But I find that when my towns are stacked with trains, I need them in and out FAST.






Table A:

Level 1:
Wheat: $3,094 Profit Per Month
Corn : ??? Profit Per Month
Meat Ind: $3094 Profit Per Month
Cotton: $3,997 Profit Per Month
Textile: $3,997 Profit Per Month
Sugar Cane: $4,494 Profit Per Month
Fruit: $4494
Sawmills: $3997
Paper Mills: $3997
Milk: $3997
Dairy Farms(Cheese): $4998
Quarry Coal: 4998
Quarry Ore: 4998
Distilleries: 4998
Chemicals $5250
Steel: $4725
Preserves: $5250
Refineries $5509
Oil Fields: $5509



Level 2
Wheat: $6,195 Profit Per Month
Cattle: $6,195 Profit Per Month
Corn: $7,994 Profit Per Month
Meat Industry: $6195 Profit Per Month
Textile: $7,994 Profit Per Month
Sawmills $7,994
Paper Mills: $9,996
Sugar Cane: $8,995 Profit Per Month
Logs: 3199
Cotton: $7994
Fruit Industry: $8995
Quarry ore: 10,500
Steel: 9450
Refineries $11,018
Oil Fields: $11,018

Level 3
Cattle: $12,397 Profit Per Month
Sugar Cane: $17,997 Profit Per Month
Quarry Ore: 12,000
Quarry Coal: $38,584
Refineries $22,043
Oil Fields: $22,043


Level 4
Cotton: $29,400 Profit per month
Textile Factories: 29,400 per month
Refineries $38,584
Oil Fields: $38,584

Level 5:
Quarry Coal: $55,118
Refineries $55,118
Oil Fields: $55,118

Interesting thing I found out with cattle:


$18,165 full load of Cattle with fridge car.
$17,304 full load of cattle without fridge car

In the end I was making a easy 4.5 mill in 1875 on Freight 2 mill on passengers 2.25 mil on Mail, and 4 mill on Industry. By 1900’s Industry was making about 10% over Freight.

[chaney]

Interesting and thoughtful investigation and report, much thanks!

The big thing that strikes me is how differently you have approached the game from the way I do. (Neither of us is wrong, or maybe I am wrong ;) You've found a nice way to generate good money very late in the game, while I focus on going after the goals ASAP and rarely get that far into the calendar ... so your objectives are very different from my usual set.

One detail point, you mention fuel costs as part of payback on buying the industry. That is perfectly sound, but it may or may not be a marginal cost. If you were going to transport the goods anyway while not owning the industry, you would still incur that cost. Since the game generally upgrades industry slower than a player might, you could incur some added cost due to the increased production, and that will come with added profit if you keep the industry busy - or possible with reduced profit if you don't keep the industry busy! I know this is tangent to your investigation, just exploring the space :)

I mostly played 20 year scenarios, but I think most economics scale to 100 year scenarios. The payback on buying industries is generally along the lines of what you have discussed for 20 years, too, but maybe 5X faster on the game calendar (of course - everything time related gets scaled approximately.) That payback really pales in comparison to pushing maximum transportation.

Tried and true:
1. Have enough money to expand track.
2. Expand track, adding trains to approximately meet all connected demand.
3. Goto 1.

That generates money very very fast. Company value will increase about 4X in a year for 20 year scenarios. By the time you are hitting the break-even point on early bought industries, you could have made more than enough money using 123 to buy the industry later - buying it free and clear - and have money left over. On a pure medium term basis, the opportunity cost of buying most industries early on is high and you're better off getting an absurdly large network and picking up the industries later - they will be more expensive, but you won't care because money will be coming in so fast.

On colocating industries where one feeds the other - you DO give up the potential profit of transport, but you can usually keep stations busy moving other things so you just get the profit from something else while making the production more efficient. In early/mid game transporting for some easy money may be the right call, but not always.

Some caveats:
Sometimes you need to control an industry to meet a goal - the game will upgrade independent and AI owned industries, but a player can push that faster. Sometimes you need to buy the industries to meet goals.
Playing in Trainiac vs. Full Pause can change best tactics/strategy quite a bit.
Playing for end of scenario state is very different from playing to finish goals ASAP.
Many others.

I also have some biases. I play full pause with The Engineer by default. He can expand very fast making that payoff even better (heavy discount on new Engines, free maintenance sheds.)

Again, very nice post - I've learned some new ways of thinking about the game - thank you!
Looking forward to more discussion here :)

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by Evilmasteryoda:

With a catch, shorter era’s I’m thinking you can’t recoup your money in time

In the 20 year length scenarios, the time scaling is different. Assuming that you're running at 100% utilization, virtually every industry will pay itself off in 100 weeks or less, regardless of the upgrade level. In *most* scenarios, the fastest payoff is logging at 62.5 weeks and it's high demand as well.

I have extracted *all* of the goods and factory data from the game itself so I can save you from doing all the manual logging you seem to be doing and just give the data to you.

I haven't had a chance to read this whole post in detail yet but I definitely will when I get the time.
I have been digging along these same lines and discussing it here -
https://steamcommunity.com/app/503940/discussions/0/4158467629236887487/

Edit: Oh, the numbers I stated above, 100 weeks and 62.5 weeks, ignore bonuses and penalties for the various characters and assumes you paid the game's base cost for the production site.

[Dray Prescot]

In the 20 year games, the week is the basic time unit for productions, consumptions, and MOVEMENT OF TRAINS.

In the 100 year games, the month is the basic time unit for production, consumptions and MOVEMENT of TRAINS. So what you did before in a week, now takes a month to do.

[Evilmasteryoda]

I'm going to do some testing with 20 year games. 52x20 = 1040 payouts compared to 1200 pays so I think 100 years is going to come out more profitable. Be interesting to see how the metrics come out.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Originally posted by Evilmasteryoda:

snip

There's a few problems here.

First, your numbers are wrong. In a century long game, a "month" is not actually a month. Every industry pays up every 4 days and this happens exactly 7 times per "month" so a "month" is actually 28 days. This means there is 13.04 "months" per year in in a century long game in railway empire land. Just for reference, in a 20 year game, industries pay up daily and a week is always 7 days.

That being said, assuming that a century long game is actually a century long (I haven't checked!) and a 20 year game is actually 20 years long (I haven't checked that either!), yes, there is 25% more total payouts in a century long game.


The big question though isn't - "Are there more total pay periods in a century long game?"

It's really - "Is the frequency of business payouts scaled in the same way that train movement speed is scaled and if not, then does this favor industry or transportation payouts?"


So what do I mean by that? Let's take two different hypothetical situations -

Let's imagine that if we run the game at normal speed with no pauses and that both the century game and the 20 year game take the same amount of IRL time to finish. In this situation, the game's calendar is sped up by a factor of 5 in a century long game. Lets us also imagine that train mechanics operate at the same speed in both game modes. In this situation, your industries would be paying out 25% more frequently, in IRL time, but freight would still be paying out at exactly the same rate.


Now let's imagine that in a century long game, the calendar is instead sped up by a factor of 4. The century long game would then last 25% longer than a 20 year game in IRL time. If the train mechanics operate at the same speed in both games, both trains an industries would pay out at the same rate in both games.


I haven't checked the time scaling in the century long game as compared to the 20 year game but I honestly, wouldn't be surprised if it actually is sped up by a factor of 4 as in the second hypothetical. The main reason being math is cleaner and it would be easier to code. It may well be that the time scaling is completely different though.

[chaney]

Since scaling is coming up, I'll mention one thing that often gets missed as people form their opinions and preferences and end up thinking "why can't they just ..." It is important to most players (and therefore developers) to have the game be playable, fun/satisfying, and aesthetically reasonable. You can't arbitrarily scale everything and get a good result without keeping that practical constraint in mind.

[albriradios]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

I have extracted *all* of the goods and factory data from the game itself so I can save you from doing all the manual logging you seem to be doing and just give the data to you.

I'd like a copy of these data too, please. is there a way to post it?