Game design flaw: Resource economy

This article is about upgrading your in-base resource economy VS fort farming and the balance issue which heavily favor fort farming.

Let us look at some number prove;

The total resource to upgrade say a iron mine to level 15 upgrade is as follow (taken from uranos's guild)

2.8 iron mine
2.81 resources
1. 100/80/30/60 0:03:45
2. 165/135/50/100 0:07:40
3. 280/225/80/165 0:13:55
4. 465/375/140/280 0:24:00
5. 780/620/235/465 0:40:00
6. 1300/1040/390/780 1:05:40
7. 2170/1735/650/1300 1:46:45
8. 3625/2900/1085/2175 2:52:25
9. 6050/4840&1815/3630 4:37:35
10. 10105/8080/3030/6060 7:25:50
11. 16870/13500/5060/10125 11:55:00
12. 28175/22540/8455/16905 19:05:35
13. 47055/37645/14115/28230 30:34:40
14. 78580/62865/23575/47150 48:57:05
15. 131230/104985/39370/78740 78:41:00

If you total up all the resource cost it gives you wood = 362950, stone = 261565, iron = 98080, crop = 198165. Taking 1 wood = 1 stone = 1 iron = 1 crop resource for simplicity sake, we need a total of 882760 resource to build a level 15 iron mine and the total time needed is 208.5 hours.

At level 15 the output is 2695/hour, meaning you will need 328 hours (13.6 days) to recoup the cost. Adding the 208.5 hours needed to upgrade it you will need a total of 22.3 days to BREAK EVEN.

You can argue that you can have level 10 tech to boost the output but that will cost you 1.023 million gold.... I think you can buy A LOT of resource with this money...


Lets take a look at the fort farming side of the story. I will give a very conservative number, assuming you farm 100000 resource a day that is 400000 total resource. (Remember that is no limit to how much you can farm a day...)

So when you farm fort you GAIN 400000 resource a day starting from day zero. If you build your in base economy you will need 22.3 days before you can start earning, even after that u can only earn 64680 (or about 100000 with tech) a day.

Given all the numbers I do not see a need to upgrade resource at all, just farm fort/inactive for your resource. I think this side of the game should be rebalanced. Make upgrading resource building more worth it or make fort farming gain less.

What do you think?

I see where you're coming from, but if you don't upgrade your crop to full when you build troops you automatically need to get oasises and if you are only just starting to build troops then you can't take any oasises so your troops starve and die. Also if you dont have troops to begin with then how can you farm!

I'm sorry to point out the obvious reasons for having to upgrade your resources!

Yah just build enough resource to farm inactive, use the resource from inactive farming to build army until u can farm fort. You would not need anything more than level 5 to achieve that.

Yes you are right the only thing you need to upgrade is farm, wood, iron and stone... I do not see a point.

If you look at all the top rank players they are surrounded by forts. i do not think that is a coincidence.

It's not a conicedence, they moved there!

Precisely my point, the way it is now, there is little to no benefit to upgrade anything other than farm. The emphasis on fort for resource is too high.

you need at least one city with high resources after that i would agree with you up to the point when you run out of people to transport your resources between your cities!

Yah but I am not even talking about those high rank players. Even average players who dont move cities, even if the nearest fort is 10mins away from you, it is still much much more effective to farm fort compare to upgrading buildings. 100k resource a day from fort farming is not a lot.

BTW this is not a rant, it is just my point of view on the imbalance.

Even if it takes 22 or so days to break even, the upgrades are still worth it in the long run. While the gain isn't that great compared to farming, it does give a little extra resource. This is especially useful during the pvp times when players are less active on their main accounts.

I do agree that the output doesn't quite match the effort involved (neither does the coin to output ratio). After all, one hit of a fort usually gains more resources than a 24-hour period from your city resources.

Lol wow, it kinda does make sence in a way but you still cant beat hardcore resource upgrading, typically you attack somone they get peeved and then you have a whole alliance on ur door step attacking you!! LOL

One word: prestige - you can get quite a lot of it from upgrading 3 lvl 15 things at once, and 23 days to break even isn't bad, considering that people play haypi for months, it will eventually benefit, and when im gone for 3-4 days i like coming back to full resources