Prologue
So, here I am, reading through TheJedo and Azircon and all the other amazing land calculations, and every few weeks I feel motivated to see if I actually can make it work. I mean, they're big, I know that, and they make way more resources than I do - but scaling down, it should still work out somehow. Let me write through my process of calculations, and maybe you can help me see if I made a mistake. Or not.
Some data is taken out of Azircons posts, mainly this one: What a Chart
Setting up a plot - primary Investment.
Let's assume I'm just starting out, so in order to produce any resource, I first need grain. So I go for a grain plot - the cheapest one is offered by clayboyn himself, for 30$.
No building yet. So, I have to clear the plot and build the worksite. I have to buy workers - 5 nice and beautiful monsters. Beta Rare card are currently the best for that, even though there are not many available. Around 0,30$ per BCX, so around 35$ per maxed card, $175 in total, plus 50k DEC staked. 5$ for the Energy Crystal, and I'll ignore the grain for the construction for now.
So we're at: $210 spent, $50 staked.
Harvest Math
My total production points, including the 10% bonus because I bought the cards that fit my plot, will be 27,500 PP.
Production Rates Per Production Point Per Hour:
Grain – 0.02
Wood – 0.005
Stone – 0.002
Iron – 0.0005
So, I will be producing 550 Grain per hour - but wait. Small detail, my folks will eat quite a bit of that. And that dang Castle/Keep will want their share, too. My workers eat 0.01 Grain per hour - leaving me with
275 Grain per hour.
Since we're in kind of a medieval setting, the Castle/Keep will not tax what is actually left, but obviously what was produced. Income tax, not profit tax, but the rate is the same.
275 - 55 = 220 Grain per hour
Nice. 220 Grain per hour, that should be worth something, shouldn't it?
Not really.
1.83 DEC per hour. That sounds very, very little at first glance. But let's keep going.
43,92 DEC per day.
16,030 DEC per year.
We spent $210, and have to have $50 staked in order to produce that, so we have a total of 260,000 DEC invested (assuming DEC at peg).
The 16,030 DEC per year are a return of 6,16%.
That's not bad at all. Now, let's go further and see if we can extract more value from it by adding value with - stone.
Let's get stoned.
Don't stone me for that pun, it would be expensive. Stone is momentarily so scarce that Az mentions the scarcity in each and every post about land, and you can read his despair between the lines.
1000 grain = 8.93 DEC today
1000 wood = 32.76 DEC today
1000 stone = 106.47 DEC today
1000 iron = 348.97 DEC today
That's what AZ posted. As you can see, the factors do not align with the PP/resource scale :
Grain - Wood - Stone - Iron
Should be: 1 - 4 - 10 - 40
But in the cost comparison it's
1 - 3.66 - 11.92 - 39,07
Meaning that stone is over peg (please go to Azircons blog for a metric ton of information about that).
So, we want to make the most money, we go for stone. Of course, we knew that from the beginning and sought out a region that has both grain and stone plots for sale, at decent prices. I did not look it up in the region where Clayboyn is selling, but $20 is something we can work with.
We can't do the same amount of workers, as we have to pay the oppressor 10% of our grain harvest, so we get one worker less. Total investment:
$20 (Plot) + $140 (4 cards) + $5 (Crystal) + $40 (Staked DEC) = $205 for 22,000 PP, eating exactly 220 Grain per hour. Coincidence? Barely. Math.
With 22,000 PP, we produce 44 Stone per hour. Of course, that fat leech in the castle wants their 10%, so we're left with 39,6 Stone - but no grain.
Now look at this:
6,57 DEC per hour! That looks better than 1,83 DEC, doesn't it? Now we only have to see how our ROI looks like.
$260 (Plot 1) + $205 (Plot 2) = $465 aka 465,000 DEC
DEC: 6.57 per hour = 157.68 per day = 57,553 per year
ROI: 57,533 / 465,000 = 12,3%
That's better than the S&P500.
What if I buy extra grain for extra stone?
If I want to have my 5th card as well on the stone plot, I'd have to buy 55 grain per hour. Let's say that's 0,6 DEC per hour.
27,500 PP = 55 Stone - 10% (I'm so gonna burn that castle...) = 49,5 Stone = 8.213 DEC - 0.6 DEC = 7,613 DEC/hour = 182,712 DEC/day = 66,690 DEC / year
Investment: $510
ROI: 66,690/510,000 = 13,07%
So, yes, it's a good deal to buy the grain and the extra worker and stake the extra 10k DEC, giving you an extra 0,7% of ROI.
Conclusion
Of course I can make it work. If the big boys are in, there must be something to be made. And yes, you can scale that down - most of the cost is the workers and the staked DEC. There are only 2 fix costs, the plot and the energy crystal, which make up around 15% of the investment in my case. You can use less BCX and staked DEC and still get decent returns. See below for the calculations.
There is the problem of card scarcity, though. Prices have gone up quite a bit due to the recent development on land - but on top, I'm sure that they will only go up from here. After the pre-sale is done, there will be a lot of buying pressure (from me, for example) to get BCX and plots ready.
Also, if everyone goes into stone now, the price will come down as well. But the price of grain might go up as more and more people need it to produce stone. In the end, it's an entire market system. And there is much more to come.
So, yes, I think TheJedo and Azircon and all the others are right to go into land heavily. I will put my future HIVE-rewards into it, too.
Just one more thing...
As comparison, ROI on Wood and Iron with the self-sufficient set-up ($465 investment):
Wood: 99 Wood / hour = 3,15 DEC / hour = 27,600/year = 5,9%
Iron: 9,9 Iron / hour = 3,96 DEC / hour = 34,690/year = 7,46%
Just one more one more thing...
What if you don't want to spend this big? Let's calculate with less cards.
Grain - 2 maxed cards. Total cost: $30 (plot) + $5 (crystal) + $70 (2 cards) + $20 (DEC staked) = $125 --> 11,000 PP = 88 Grain per hour (after harvest/tax).
Stone - 1 maxed card. Total cost: $20 (plot) + $5 (crystal) + $35 (1 card) + $10 (DEC staked) = $70 --> 5,500 PP = 9,9 Stone per hour = 1.661 DEC/hour
Grain left: 33/hour = 0,275 DEC + 1,661 = 1,936/h = 16,960 / year
ROI: 16,960 / 195,000 = 8,7%
It's still okay, and you can re-invest all your earned DEC to make more Grain to make more stone to make more DEC to buy more cards to make more grain....
Thank you very much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it at least as much as I enjoyed writing :-D If you have any comments or feedback - please let me know! And don't forget to leave your own posts for me to curate. Thank you very much!
If you don't play the game yet, you can use my referral: Click here for referral :-)