Join the new world

Inspired by my own unique combination of confusion and excitement, plus a conversation with DAMINK in the comments of an article earlier in the week, this article is an attempt to describe the various avenues for investing your gold during your early eLife. I've made a good fist of working out the most profitable avenues for you as well. That said, that market prices can change. Taxes can change. And, I'm only human and might have made a boo boo.

So... Do. The. Maths.

There is nothing here that can't be tackled by an average primary school graduate. So, don't be scared! If you get stuck with numbers doing your own calculations, let me know and I'll help you out. I love numbers - there's always a right answer!

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So, where can you invest your hard earned gold during early life? I found a few options:

An upgraded training ground (to Q2)



Cost, 20 gold.

A raw materials company, either food or weapons



Cost, 10 gold (for the fishery/aluminium) or 35 gold (for deer/rubber)

And factories, either a new Q1 or an upgrade to Q2



Each of your investment choices have costs associated with building and/or running them. And, obviously, they all produce income. How much income for how much cost? Well, read on and your bank balance will "soon" be higher than Ben Cousins.

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Training grounds

Training bumps your strength, which is cool. Strength gain aids in earning Super Soldier achievements, which are worth 5 gold for every 250 strength points. This article is already mammoth in size, so we will only look at the free-to-use training ground for the moment. If there are requests, I can look at them in more detail later.

Each level on your training ground gives you +5 strength/day, with an exponential increase for each upgrade. Each upgrade is less efficient than the one previous. Running through the calcs, courtesy of Excel we wind up with:

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Raw materials

Raw materials are a pretty safe investment. You don't have to worry about anything much other than pressing a button daily and putting your product on the market. We do have running costs with raw materials companies, which we'll deduct from our earned profit. These are work tax, currently $0.39, and VAT (GST, if you prefer) on the sale price.

VAT isn't quite simplistic, in that a $100 sale with VAT of 10% gives $10 to the government and $90 to the seller. Rather, it follows the 1/(1+tax) rate. In the above example, it results in $90.91 to the seller and $9.09 to treasury. VAT is currently at 1% for raw materials in Australia.

Lastly, our sale price for raw materials is going to be $0.03, which is pretty consistent day in and day out.

I will save time and tell you to ignore the materials companies that you don't buy in gold. More details on request, like the training grounds.
That gives us a production of 125/day or 250/day (assuming no region bonuses, like right now).

So, adding up our sales and subtracting our costs we wind up with:

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Factories

For brevity, since this article is already mammoth, I am going to tell you up front right now. Don't build or operate a weapons factory. At anything below Q5 it is unprofitable. The only exception is the weapons production mission, which gives 100 Q7 weapons at the end and is worthwhile.

Factories are a step more complex than raw materials companies, as we must also allow for the cost of raw materials. The quantity required is production (100 without regions) multiplied by the factory quality (Q4 therefore needs 400 raw materials). As before, the price of raw materials is $0.03 each. And we allow for taxes (work tax, VAT) in the same manner.

The end result?

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Conclusions?

There are a few things we can come up with from the above analysis.

1. Far and away the best investment for your first 20 gold is a Q2 training ground. This also makes us a stronger nation, strength is important for winning battles.

2. Raw materials companies provide the best return on your investment.

3. Weapons factories are a waste of money, until you get far up the upgrade tree.

4. A "third way" for budding entrepreneurs is to run a factory while producing your own raw materials. Those of you clever enough will work out how to run your own numbers - can't have me do everything for you...

5. eRepublik is a "slow" game. Don't expect nonstop action.

6. Do. The. Maths.


Good luck, and may you be as rich as Croesus one day!