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Nota: versão em português do artigo aqui

In the previous article, we discussed how to optimally distribute your daily hours when you don't want to pay for any boosters.

You can read part 1 of this series of articles here:

Part 1: The free booster distribution.

Part 2 of 4: Multi-day routines & Micromanagement

In part 2, we'll analyze how to use multi-day routines to make better use of your time. Having a multi-day routine means you will not spend your daily hours the same way each day - rather, each day you will have a different hour distribution, and this pattern should repeat after a given number of days.

So, what is the advantage of having a multi-day routine?

There are at least 2 advantages. First, if you have calculated your ideal distribution as described in part 1, you most likely obtained fractional values. Sure, you could round them, but that is not the ideal distribution - having a multi-day routine where you sometimes round values up, and sometimes round them down would be closer to the ideal distribution, and you could do it if you'd like.

Rounding or not, though, the difference is not really important. It's not like you can safely estimate importances anyway, so values are always an approximation.

The greatest advantage of having a multi-day routine, however, is when you decide to use boosters. When using boosters for work, study or train, you pay a fixed amount of gold and receive a bonus proportional to your gain (or production, in case of work) that day - so the best would be to always use boosters when spending 12 hours in the desired activity to boost.

As a simple example, let's suppose a citizen uses the following daily distribution: 8h work, 4h study, 6h train with the 0.19g booster, and 6h rest. Much better would be to have a 2-day routine like the following:

Odd days: 10h work, 8h study, 6h rest.
Even days: 6h work, 12h train with the 0.19g booster, 6h rest.

For every 2 days, you achieve the same thing - 16 hours of work, 8h of study, 12h of boosted train, 12h resting. The difference is that you spent only 0.19g, where a daily routine would cost you 0.38g. Sure, it's not much of a difference, but it all adds up. And well, there is no downside, so why not?

Note how in that setup, you don't train in odd days, and don't study on even days. This study/train alternation has a good and a bad point. The bad point is that you gain less EP per day. The good point is that you lose less wellness per day (maybe you'll be able to afford cheaper food, or maybe it won't make any difference at all). Both are almost irrelevant - but remember, this is an optional feature that you could have in your distribution. If you don't like it, just train/study every day.

Now a little about micromanagement. On what order should you do your activities? The idea is that we should try to perform our activities with the best possible wellness and happiness.

If you decide to go to the Residential District last, as many people probably do, it is likely that your order can be improved. If you just trained before resting, for example, why not rest before, and train with a higher happiness?

So a key concept is that you should rest in-between activities.

Since training and studying takes away only 1 wellness, and working takes Q, where Q is the company quality, if you work in a high quality company you might also want to leave working for last. That way, none of your other activities would be damaged by a big wellness drop. That leaves either training or studying as your first daily activity. This is when your performance should be at its peak, so pick whatever you consider most important - or whatever uses less hours, so the next activity can be done with higher happiness. So a good order might be:

1. Study or train, whatever you consider more important (or whatever takes less time).
2. Study or train, whatever is left.
3. Rest
4. Work.

Either the above or:

1. Study/train (your preference)
2. Rest
3.Study/train
4. Work

Sure, if you're doing a multi-day routine with study/train alternation, then there is only one good option: study/train -> rest -> work.

In the next article of the series, we'll (finally) analyze how to ideally distribute your hours using boosters.