Overview
This is a generalist guide on the optimal way to purchase additional stores.
Payback period
In capital budgeting, the payback period is the period of time required to recoup the cost of an investment. For example, a $100 shop which returns $10 per hour has a payback period of 10 hours. If it returns $12 per hour then the payback period is 8.3 hours.
The most frequent decision you face in Adventure Capitalist is the number of new shops to buy at any given time. Suppose you are deciding between adding an additional Shrimp Boat or Hockey Team, and you have unlimited funds and the following situation:
- 110 Shrimp Boats earning $1.847 billion per production cycle, which elapses 3 seconds. Each additional shop costs $120.338 billion.
- 95 Hockey Teams earning $6.382 billion per production cycle, which elapses 24 seconds. Each additional shop costs $127.75 billion.
Your intuition probably tells you to buy another Hockey Team. After all, the costs are about the same, we have less Hockey Teams than Shrimp Boats, and the Hockey Team earns a lot more! But no, there is a big difference because the production times are very different. What we really need is to convert the data into the amount of money we earn per unit of time and per shop. This value, which I call the marginal revenue, will inform you the amount of revenue contribution per shop. The addition of one more shop will probably increase the current marginal revenue a tiny bit, but let us assume that this marginal increase is the same for all types of shops so this issue becomes de minimus.
Let us calculate the marginal revenue per second.
- The 110 Shrimp Boats earn $1.847 billion / 3 = $615,666,667 per second. Therefore each Shrimp Boat earns $615,666,667 / 110 = $5,596,970 per second.
- The 95 Hockey Teams earn $6.382 billion / 24 = $265,916,667 per second. Therefore each Hockey Team earns $265,916,667 / 95 = $2,799,124 per second.
At this point, the calculation of the payback period is straightforward.
- The payback period of an additional Shrimp Boat is around $120.338 billion / $5.596 million = 21504 seconds, which is about 5 hours and 58 minutes.
- The payback period of an additional Hockey Team is about $127.75 billion / $2.799 million = 45641 seconds, which is about 12 hours and 40 minutes.
It is apparent that you will get your money back faster by buying one additional Shrimp Boat.
Your turn to earn
It is important to note that these calculations do not require the knowledge of any information about the inner workings of the game.
All you need is a spreadsheet that can help you update the dashboard and calculate the payback period. This methodology should maximize your earnings regardless of the frequency you update your investments.
If you use this methodology, notice that the Best Investment rotates between the shops even for as small increments as 5 additional shops. What this means is, for example, you have been using the payback period to optimize capital expenditures and the Shrimp Boat is currently the #1 best investment (the lowest payback period). But after buying 5 more Shrimp Boats, it may become the 6th best investment (6th lowest payback period). Therefore, the “Buy x10”, “Buy x100”, and “Buy Max” toggles really have little use. They are rather a quick way for you to head toward the wrong direction.
Shout outs to the geniuses out there:
- Programming gurus: Build a tool that can scrape the dashboard, determine the best investment, and even purchase shops for you one at a time! Skynet is one step away!
- Computer Science gurus: Formulate the game into a Markov Decision Process and compare the efficiency of the payback period versus Q-Learning. Autobots, roll out!
- Operations Research gurus: Transform this problem into a linear program and determine the quantity of each shop to purchase per a given budget (diet problem). Simplex to the rescue!
Most of all, have fun!