Ahoy,

For most, tomorrow will be a nice day to run some profitability reports on every plantation you own. Try to calculate profitability. Then compare to what would you receive instead, if you kept your fleets at their previous routes.

For example, you might be making 500k per day on your plantation, utilizing 10 fleets that would otherwise make 750k. Remember to include profit that these fleets still make (as their one way can still generate profit).

Once you compile your report, please send it at #1 in-game alongside with any other info you consider important.

We will gather all reports to get an idea on how actual profitability worked early on. We expect profitability to be lower than trading right now, due to the expenses related to infrastructure build up.

There are a few parts that we want to improve though and these are mostly related to those choosing to run undeveloped plantations. We want to leave profitability room even for these players. There are some specific scenarios that we want to preserve. I will give you more info for this later.

If you can help out with this, your help will be very important. You can send reports till Monday.

Thank you!

Here is a sample report:

I run 10 fleets that made 75k each before.
Now they make 30k per day.

My plantation made yesterday 300k and 1m in total.
Health is already at 0% and I currently have 500k workers@490 acres.

Important: if you do not sell all crates to port, your sales income will not be accurate for the report I want. At this case use crates produced yesterday * crate value (port price - 1) to get the yesterday income.

One thing to consider though is in some cases we are adding 2000 or more gold bars per day per plantation. Some are more some are less.

That is a direct cost of 5 mill(on average) per day per plantation. I understand that at some point this will go away and some may chose not to invest Gold Bars constantly.

Also acreage rental costs.

Other cost factors consumption,
Operating permissions
Construction permission

Minimizing risk by thinking things through?

Get out of here with that logical nonsense. My plantation will continue to grow, profits be damned.

Yep, Invested almost 40 million so far, still 5 million per day, and only 300k of sales to show for.

The gold bars investment is the least concern for now. I have not received too many reports yet. If you are readin gthis and you have not sent a report yet, consider sending one to me.

I will be online for many hours tomorrow at our chat to discuss details. We have some improvements we have lined up. Here are the considerations:
-Decrease health issues on 0 infrastructure.
-Improve Entertainers efficiency, even on 0 Recreational Infrastructure.
-Make firing workers beneficial to overall plantation condition.
-Make workers death more beneficial for over plantation condition health.
-Generate informative messages for workers condition, especially for hidden stats.

for informative messages, i would like to see something like advisors in civilization 2. as i recall, advisor of specific field had advice on how to improve yourself on that specific thing. so, on plantation, productivity advisor would say - "sir, our workers are well fed, and full of energy. they are able to work for longer days" where as health advisor might say - "sir, the sanitation on plantation is at unacceptable levels, and is a risk to health of workers. consider increasing your investments in baths" these might even be hireable advisors.

as for profits, those are tricky to estimate. there are now many big traders pumping thousands of goldbars into infstracture, and hogging land from the ports of their established party trade routes. for them its likely worth it to produce at no profit, or even at some loss, compared to what it would cost for them to move hundreds of ships on another route. any adjustment to profits on plantations should be made with great caution, so it would be profitable to average joe to start succesfull plantation, but not to allow too much profit.

on my opinion, trading still is, and should remain as the most profitable activity. plantations should be just a tool to ensure that there are goods to trade.

still, considering the cost to start a plantation, i feel in the long run, a fleet dedicated to plantations should make more than fleet dedicated to fishing.

Cutpurse wrote:. any adjustment to profits on plantations should be made with great caution, so it would be profitable to average joe to start succesfull plantation, but not to allow too much profit.

Why? It isn't profitable "to the average joe" to start a goldsmith or a bank. Profitability should be based on effort and investment. If I did not invest a single thing more into plantations it would take me around 30 days just to recoup what I have spent so far. That does not include what I have, or will lose from giving up party trading.

I did my "profit" calculations for CJ this morning and after diffing into a bit more later on it is obvious that to reach a truly " profitable state" will be 2-3 months if you take in all factors.

Operating permissions
Construction permissions
Acreage rental costs
Initial warehouse stock of goods
Warehouse upgrades
Weeks of lost party trading revenue
Gold Bar investment (8-10k gold bars a day right now )


I agree that some pricing matrices may need adjusting. Seaglory for one. Right now it is useless as a plantation port. But with the future advent of plantation port buildings that has been discussed, that may change.

CJ has suggested making plantations part of the nation quests for new players. Possibly granting them a certain amount of acreage and adding rewards for certain plantation achievements.

One thing I will say. You are thinking of plantations and trading as an "either/ or" scenario. Actually, I see plantations enhancing trade and can see them replacing party cards.