Advanced Farm and Mine Analysis

I finally got around to running the break even analysis of advanced farms and mines, and found a highly discouraging result. If you upgrade one advanced farm and one advanced mine to level 10, it will take 213 (7 months) days to recover the food cost and 456 days (15 months) to recover the iron costs from upgrading the buildings.

In my opionion, this lengthy payoff period makes these upgrades a very low priority. Given the plethora of other uses for food and iron, I highly recommend that players NOT upgrade farms and mines unless they have no other way to spend their resources. Leveling heroes, troops, and upgrading the Hunter’s Lodge for 5* battle items will have a quicker and more impactful payoff. Upgrading advanced farms and mines should be the lowest priority when you have no other good uses for food and iron.

Addendum: Since many players are strapped for food but have ample iron, it may be worthwhile to upgrade a farm but not a mine. The advanced farm pays for itself in a long but not unreasonable time, whereas the advanced mine takes a ludicrous amount of time to pay for itself.

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Woah!! Thank you!! That’s really not worth it…until you have absolutely nothing else to spend the food/iron on. Appreciate the information!!

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@wharflord Thank you for crunching the numbers. I suspected as much. You saved me from throwing resources at the wrong upgrades.

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Thank you, thank you for the analysis. To be honest, I was a bit confused as to my priorities with upgrading my various buildings.

I know emphatically what I should do now - Not continue upgrading my advanced mine. :wink:

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Good insight but these are what will sustain in the long run. As long as you are planning on playing for some time, it means eventually you will lvl these, so the sooner you do, the more you recoup.

Currently on advanced farm lvl9, mine lvl8.

Poons r necessary to get titan parts. So far, we haven’t really needed higher lvl items vs 12* titans. Maybe once 13/14* but that might be 6 months down the road like heroes academy.
Why stock up 5* items now to just sit in your inventory?

Tbh, I don’t run Tc19 anymore, sometimes run tc1 but it’s all tc11 and tc2.

You can make argument that tc20 isn’t as efficient but many still run it.

The only time I was restricted either in ham or iron was during event pulls and rising where I burned 40 flasks.

Considered advanced house but you get so many recruits during rising that it’s not urgent.

$0.02

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Thanks for the info! (Sheepishly walks away having prioritized his farm and mine to level 9 on each)

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Upgrade cost

The upgrade cost is always the same. If you do it this week or next year.

Example

It will always take 213 days to recover the food cost to upgrade an Advanced Mine.

Delaying mine upgrade

But the longer you delay, the more production is lost.

Example

Every 2.76 days without upgrading, or at least starting the upgrade, of your Advanced mine to level 10, permanently loses you the iron to make 1 Harpoon.

This iron is forever lost.

Iron or Recruits of Food

This is true of Advanced Mine level 10, Advanced House Level 9 and Advanced Farm Level 10. When prioritizing, you must decide which resource you want to lose the least, and which the most.

Hoard

I can hoard recruits, and food, in camps. I can turn theses hoards into Hero XP ( 6200 kits ), or food ( 33 million food) as needed.

Stockpile

Because I have ingredients for 1200 harpoons, I can stockpile harpoons when I have extra iron. But I cannot turn those harpoons back into iron.

Bottleneck

So iron is my bottleneck. As soon as possible, I will be getting Advanced Mine Level 10 ( produces iron ) and Advanced Iron Storage Level 10 ( increases iron from all 8 chests ) so I lose the least amount of iron from delaying these two upgrades.

Math

( 94,600 per harpoon / ( 5045 per hour - 3617 per hour ) ) / 24 hours per day

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So I guess there’s no chance that SG will change the upgrade time on advanced farms & mines? I guess I will find out when everything in my base is level 20. IMO to many people are complaining about this right now not to address it.

What @Gryphonknight says is true.

It is a matter of managing resources.
By not upgrading the mines, you will benefit in the short term since you can use the iron for something else like harpoons. But once the mines are done, you permanently get the extra income from the mine.

Those who complain are usually from the alliances that hit very high tier titans since it takes crap loads of harpoons to get from one tier to another. My alliance is fighting 9*/10* titans and I just use around 2 harpoons per flag as per what I tell my mates since not everyone is able to build harpoons. We just do enough to get to tier 2 on the titan and we stop.

I don’t keep more than 15 harpoons in my inventory each time since it takes time to refresh the flags anyway.

Ability to hoard recruits and food but not iron is something you have to consider about.

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This statement is sad & maybe true but how many are willing to see this through. I don’t know time will tell but companies make mistakes also. Who knows they may see a drop off in playing and decide to make necessary adjustments. WISHFUL THINKING.

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I’ve got two reasons not to upgrade my mines.

  1. The payoff time in iron lost for the mine being out of service is very long … I’ll have more iron in the short term.
    NOTE: At SH20, I needed all my iron when I was upgrading buildings … once I maxed my stronghold, I had to work hard to spend my iron … and when I no longer had 4* crafting mats to make tornados and timestops, I couldn’t spend all my iron.
    I expect I’ll need iron badly maxing stronghold 25 over the next year, and hit a surplus after that.
  2. Upgrading mines requires me to spend ham … and the way I’m playing, ham is my critical limiting factor. I’m not going to spend ham on mine upgrades … for iron production I won’t need in the long term … when I can’t run my TCs to feed heroes, feed my troops, spend ham on emblems, and craft mana potions. (I’m currently behind on all those)

Since it only costs iron, I am upgrading my farm.

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This thread got me thinking about ridiculous upgrade costs of the new buildings. Got my mine upgraded to advanced 5 without looking at how much it will increase its production. First of all, that mine is “trapped” for a quite a long period of time (upgrade to adv.lvl.6 takes 4d 8h), but its production per hour increases by miserable 151 iron.
So, my conclusion is that the costs and upgrading time of these new buildings made most of the players “stuck” either with hero or buildings development, not to mention crafting help items, and that leads to fighting lower rank titans (I guess the idea was to introduce 13* and 14* titans, not to take everyone step backwards).

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I like this analogy. Very well applicable in real life. Same with energy saving devices and sources. Even with the light bulbs, from fluorescent to LEDs; airconditioners and refrigerators are currently using inverted technology. That is the very reason why we upgrade things in homes and in the office. It is really cost-efficient in the long run. And we all know this game is not a sprint. It is a marathon. We are not here merely for days or weeks. We are here for years.

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Since mines take away ham rather then iron to upgrade it, i totally use my second builder on that.
As other said, the sooner the better, and this way i still have spare iron for all the other things.

Now that i can recover my iron much sooner that building upgrade end his course, i usually take the 10 sec time to convert other buildings and then restart with my mine. I find it really efficient.

My mine and my iron storage are both in their way to lv 9, and i converted the hunter lodge, a ham storage and a house in the meantime without ever running short of any resources.

I do neglect harpoon production, but for my situation it is totally unnecessary.

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I know this is not the most efficient way to do it, but I basically look at what is up in 2 days time and then figure out what to build next and save the resources, just to keep it all moving. I’ve just been alternating between storages, lodge, research and mines, basically. I love the additional ham and iron coming in from the raid chests now.

The one building I haven’t and won’t touch is the recruits ones, I have so many in tc11 that it’s not worth it.

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True. But if you upgrade food and iron storage, you get more food and iron in chests. And that is forever lost if you delay it also.

And that is accomplished by spending iron, not ham … which in my case, ham is the current (and likely forever) critical shortfall; Iron went from surplus I couldn’t use to something I have to manage while I’m upgrading buildings again.

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My payback time calculation on the farm upgrade to A10 only is a bit more favorable than the farm+mine upgrade:

Iron cost – fixed, but spending iron to upgade buildings is what you do with iron. (12M iron total; one of the cheaper buildings to upgrade)

Ham opportunity cost payback – “only” 93 days after the full upgrade until my farm has produced more ham than it would have if I’d left it alone.

The problem (for me) is spending hams on upgrading the mine. I did do the initial conversion, but further mine upgrades will be in a race with my two unfinished TCs to get upgraded last!

As i am forever iron shy but ham rich i am doing iron store snd mines now

True, but is 1 harpoon every 2.76 days the best use for 15 million food? Using that food to level heroes and troops will increase your win percentage for raids and wars which also give iron. Furthermore, by improving your titan team you may not have to spend as many items to achieve the same damage. While it’s impossible to calculate exact numbers, improving your roster could save more iron on the back end than you would make from the advanced mine while also giving you more fun heroes to play with,

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I have too much food and not enough iron so my advanced mine need 4d 12h to reach lvl 8.
I don’t really care about upgrading hunters lodge now beacuse I don’t have many titan parts.
But anyway, this topic is very helpfull and I’m not going to change my farm(s) into advanced one(s) .

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