Overview
Hello fellow monkeysThe Issue: Which upgrade of the Banana Farm has the biggest benefit?I was playing around with a few strategies, and i was trying to figure out how i could optimize my banana farms when doing Banana Economy (primarily focusing on Banana Farms for money, rather than sending Bloons).I was having a hard time finding information online about the farms in this game, and since it is different from the other games, i had to do some testing myself.DISCLAIMER: I consider myself somewhat decent at the game, however i am still new. I would recommend you keep a healthy scepsis while readingDISCLAIMER 2: This guide is currently only looking at the first line of upgrades, e.g. the ones focused on getting more bananas per round. The other upgrade does increase the value of bananas by 50%, but also costs $4000, which is waaay too much for an early game banana economy, but in the future i will look into some late-game Banana Economy strats using thisDISCLAIMER 3: This guide is primarily for Assault Mode
The farm, the upgrades and the costs
The cost is cumulative, meaning it’s the total cost of the farm plus the given upgrade.
Also, keep in mind the Valuable Bananas upgrade is not currently considered in these calculations
The calculations
The calculations used to find the values, is a simple cost-benefit equation:
What does this calculation do? It shows us how much we get per money spent. afterwards, we are also able to calculate how many rounds it take, before the farm has returned its cost.
So, to the calculations:
Already by now we see a very clear picture. The difference between Tier 0 and Tier 1 is pretty big. So it wil always be more benificial to upgrade to Tier 1, rather than having two Tier 0.
However, the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is much smaller.
This means, that the increase from Tier 1 to Tier 2 is small enough to justify building two Tier 1 farms, rather than one Tier 2.
However, there are more factors to think of here. We spent a large a large amount of money right now, to get more money in the long run. However, since this is mostly relevant in rush strats, where you want to win at a certain round, its very important to find out just how many rounds it takes before the tower starts earning you money!
What we just found out, is that a Tier 0 tower takes 20 rounds before it starts earning you money. However, Tier 1 takes you roughly 8 rounds and Tier 2 takes you roughly 7 rounds.
Putting it boldly this means that if you instantly put down a Banana Farm and upgrade it to Tier 1 (More Bananas) it will take 8 rounds before it starts earning you money.
Strategic uses
The objective of this strategy, is to win the game at round 13 by sending alot of the Grouped Rainbow Bloons
Key factors:
- Banana Economy
- Saving as much money up before round 13 (around $5000-$6000)
- Not dying prior to round 13, by only using very few towers
“But what about income?!”
Since this is a Tower Defense game, its only fair to assume that most people would think spamming bloons is the better way to gain money.
But it is not! You need to consider what the Banana Economy is all about.. Bananas.. This is only something you want to use, if you are to save up a lot of money. because sending bloons costs money and only increase your money per round ever so slightly.
An example is the Grouped Blue Bloons(GBB) or Spaced Pink Bloons(SPB) which are the most benificial bloons to send in terms of income. They cost $42 and increase your income by $1.7 and become available at round 2, which is roughly the same round you will be able to afford your first Banana Farm.
This means that you have to send this type of bloons 25 times before it will be worth it. This means spending $1050. Ergo, spending $1050 to earn $42 per round (while Tier 0 farm earns you $60 per round for $1100).
And once again, there are factors that play in here, like are you able to afford sending the max amount of bloons every round and so on.
Now, obviously these two types of bloons are only a $0,1 increase over the other types of bloons, but other types of bloons can give you more income faster but also costs more.
Discussion
Obviously, there are a lot of factors that the calculations don’t account for. You rarely upgrade a Banana Farm right after putting it down, not in the earlier parts of the game anyway. This means that you will gain some money from the Tier 0 before you start earning from the Tier 1. Now, this means that in reality, the Tier 1 starts earning you money faster than the calculations show. This varies on how long you had the Tier 0 however.
We also see that the Facility starts earning you money rather quickly, it is however, primarily used for lategame. In assault you rarely survive onto the later rounds where this would be useful. If you had to rely solely on your banana farms for money, it would take a Tier 3 about 26 rounds to earn you enough money for Tier 4. Obviously there is also income and so on which makes up for a large part of it aswell, but you would still go past round 20-something before you would be able to get it, and at that point you are probably looking to win anyway.
The facility might be more useful in other game modes where its all about lasting as long as possible.
If you have any questions, or if you think anything is missing, feel free to post a comment, that way we can make bananas more efficient, together!
If you liked the guide or found it the least bit helpful, feel free to give it a like and rate it, that way other people might benefit aswell!
To do list
- Add more strategic uses for Banana Economy
- Add calculations for the remaining Banana Farm upgrades (if anyone knows the cost of them, feel free to comment and let me know)
- Add calculations of income gains and compare them to Banana Economy to find out which is more beneficial
- Add calculations for lategame Banana Economics
Update list:
27-09-2016 – Added calculations and updated discussion for Banana Republic and Banana Research Facility thanks to JJpochara!