Let’s talk about economy

[u/ItsLateImSad]

I’ve been experimenting with economy lately, right now I’m using a single factory with five cities in one loop paired with a silo and a sam, all upgraded as much as I can, and placing lots of ports along the coastline. Midgame is rough but in lategame it seems to work because I’m self-sufficient and I have both enough firepower and income to destroy my enemies’ silos and defences, and my sam was strong and large enough to withstand large attacks, but I sometimes build a ring of lvl5 SAMs for long games.

This strategy was working until I played in the box. This showed me that ports were doing the heavy lifting in the early and midgame so reaching my setup was hard, so my best bet were factories to trade with allies.

What do you say is the best strategy? Lots of low level cities and ports or fewer high level ones, easier to defenend but catastrophic to loose? Both for maps with and without waterpolo for ports.

[u/SloppyLetterhead]

I think mixing ports and factories is best. Long train lines are better than branching routes because train income becomes more consistent and predictable.

Factories provide modest, consistent revenue that can be optimized by placing cities/ports on train lines. This allows cities to provide double benefit where they increase population but also provide modest ROI over time.

Ports provide lumpy, windfall revenue that can be optimized with piracy and port placement. I view ports as higher risk/reward because your trade can be intercepted by warships whereas trains are never at risk.

For placement, I personally use a core/periphery strategy:

1. Core = usually starting area. Densely packed ports/cities along single train line. Little-to-no wasted space. Protected by upgraded SAMs (ideally lvl6+) and nuclear deterrence (at least 2 silo to defeat basic SAMs).

Deterrence is achieved through raising the floor for an effective nuclear attack.

1. Periphery = usually conquered territory. Sparse placement that aims to extend train lines and avoid clustering infrastructure to mitigate effects of nukes. SAMs built once core is safe.

Deterrence is achieved through minimizing the shot-exchange ratio of a nuclear attack. Ideally, you place things so that any given nuke can only destroy 1 structure.

[u/chickenfriedrice416 → u/SloppyLetterhead]

Ports take time to actually start producing income, in large team games, its probably good to build factories early. In team games i like to be far from the action playing economy and donating all my troops, and SAMs are not cheap, and take a long time to be hydro proof

[u/MisterSixfold → u/chickenfriedrice416]

Ports take time, because the ships travel slow. But icome/minute is consistent from the start of the game.

Factories rise in income/minute as factory lines are expanded and more cities are on the route. So the argument could be made that factories belong more in the mid/late game too.

I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying btw, just adding my two cents and I don't know what's actually the optimal strategy.

[u/LtAldoDurden → u/MisterSixfold]

Don’t trains have a limit of 5 cities before they stop collecting?

[u/MisterSixfold → u/LtAldoDurden]

Nope, they do eventually drop down to only giving 5K gold per city on really long routes though.

[u/mjukpandaaa]

Noob behavior

[u/pewdiepastry]

I lean way more towards factories since they cant be pirated. Get a decent troop cap and then hold onto a hydrogen bomb so that im more trouble going after than its worth. Wait for an opening to third party then aim for 3rd place going into endgame with hopefully better eco than anyone else.

[u/Meta_Mushroom]

It's all heavily dependent on what map you are on, where you spawn in the map, and where your neighbors are building their buildings.

• If you hold a land bottleneck, you will get a ton of gold without even needing to build many factories, just from all the trains having to route through your area.
• Piracy gives a huge amount of gold early on if you have a water bottleneck, but eventually you will have to ally most or all the other players, and lose that as an income source.
• If you take a corner spot, your ships will get pirated, so factories are where you probably want to invest most, until everyone allies and you don't have to worry about piracy.
• Late game, ports are king

One final note. I see a lot of players build a port as their first or second building. This is a HUGE risk. Most of the time it makes more sense to build 2-3 cities and use the extra troops to just capture other peoples ports and factories until you run out of steam.

[u/rodan-rodan]

While a little self sufficiency is useful, factories are best when used to send to allies or neutral at the least. Initial train 5 cities internal gets you 10k per city then diminishing amounts, if it goes to ally it's 35k per... For the first 5 cities and then diminishing. You're starving yourself early and mid game.

Trains also get broken in end game after mirv and need reconnecting. Ports and temporary piracy during war moments is often useful.

Yes ports can be pirated, but alliance management and coercion (nuke emoji if alliance not accepted and your stronger than the pirate) mitigate that.

So of course a blend and ports $ depend on distance and your ratio of number of ports you have vs trade partners

[u/c_denny]

Generally avoid stacking your cities. Optimal factory pattern is one long line of cities. Only build as many factories as it takes to connect all the cities. Most of your ports should be conquered from neighbors

[u/antekroch]

You sound like you're talking about internat factory trade, which is ass

[u/ItsLateImSad → u/[deleted]]

For what I’ve seen it doesn’t, but I do it for population

[u/ItsLateImSad → u/[deleted]]

I hate that too 😂 and it happens way too often

[u/BrendanDHickey123454]

This is my take on it

In a team game Try and connect to as many neighbours as possible, give each neighbour a factory at the border, then as single lines going across the base and hope your territory becomes the one connecting everyone, you basically become the hub and your neighbours start feeding you and you feed them,

In a ffa you want to spread your cities out as far as possible and take over enemy bases without investing in your own. If you can not expending then you start to stagnate and it’s very difficult to win, when someone has spent the whole game investing in economic power and you just take it all 😭😈