Maximize commodity production

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    • Maximize commodity production

      A couple of months ago a fellow player taught me about recruiting. Now in a long game, my goal is to recruit 1500 an hour. It seems like a huge advantage to me. I always aim to reach level 5 factories in my core cities. By factories, I mean the buildings that produce commodities. To me it doesn't seem worth it to invest in factories in non-core provinces while it does make sense to build things like high level barracks, airports, secret labs, etc.... in any city with good morale.

      Is their a well known sweet spot for when to invest in commodity factories and when to do something else?

      Thank you.
    • you need to set the expectations on what units will you use, and get the industry up in the provinces that produce that resource. For others you can just get low lvl industry, and abbandon it till lategame, when you have enough resources to get it higher, or build it up again if you are looking at low income. or you want to swap your army balance
    • I'd say upgrade local industry first to Lv.3 it's breakeven is faster.

      Spite_Is_Right wrote:

      After further review, I think because the total resources is equal to the money for all levels and the generation rates are the same for all provinces, the ROI is equivalent for money and resources. ROI, however, will vary based on the output of the province, which can also vary based on morale. If we assume a 1:1 resource ratio, provincial morale is 100 and use 6000 resource production (core, double-resource, urban), we get the following days to breakeven:

      Urban Provinces
      Level 15.33
      Level 24.72
      Level 34.75
      Level 45.07
      Level 55.61



      Using the same assumptions above, but use a 1500 resource rural province and the appropriate rates we get:


      Local Industry
      Level 16.10
      Level 24.36
      Level 33.80



      There are some rural provinces that have other rates, Indianapolis for example in HWW is only 750. Breakeven takes a fair bit longer for those rural provinces:


      Local Industry
      Level 112.19
      Level 28.72
      Level 37.60



      Breakeven for a non-core double is discouragingly long (1500 assumed resource rate):


      Urban Provinces
      Level 121.33
      Level 218.89
      Level 319.00
      Level 420.27
      Level 522.44



      Non-core rural provinces aren't worth bothering with at 1500 normal base (375 actual for non-core) and would be worse for the 750 base provinces:


      Local Industry
      Level 124.38
      Level 217.44
      Level 315.20



      The big takeaways are:
      1. Don't bother with non-core unless you plan to play for another month.
      2. Local industry level 3 has the shortest ROI for 1500 base provinces and level 2 is shorter than the average ROI for urban industry. This indicates to me local industry should be an early priority to get to level 3. Particularly for oil, metal, rare materials.
      3. Diminishing returns start to kick in after level 3. It takes longer to see a return on the resources invested versus previous levels.

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    • Ivan Bukovec wrote:

      Always upgrade industry if you can spare the res. Even if you dont need the res. You can always sell it on the market. Higher levels of ind also increase money.
      This is a good point too few live by.

      Spend your money & resources! The more you hold, the more you are hampering yourself overall. Upgrade industries, factories and build units. As mentioned above, the quick return on local industry is often overlooked and can provide a huge advantage, especially when you are trying to balance economy and military production.

      The ROI for non-core is very low, only valuable if you are in early expansion of Historic 1939 map IMO and expect the game to last more than 4-5 weeks.