New Release -- April 13, 2010

[Mr. H]

Originally Posted by Palantir

This is a sea change for the factories, and its not a positive one. let me explain:


When the factories first started up, they encouraged you to grow crops which were not the most profitable for their maturity - i.e. blueberries, onions, tomatoes. This was an excellent future indicator as it provided choices and variety- an increased depth of gameplay.

With the additions to the juice factory, the ice cream factory and the pizza factory, the emphasis is back onto producing pineapples for all three plants to make the most money...and pineapples were already the most profitable crop before the factories existed.

The temporary diverse marketplace dynamic is coming to an end, soon all the maximized farms will be just pineapples cows and the occasional sugar rotation.

Slashkey- I would love to help you with this. I have a master's in economics of competitive simulations and I would enjoy helping out for just portfolio building. I can be contacted via PM's, and I'll send in resumee material within the week as well.

I have all the facilities and I can tell you without question that pineapples are nice but they are not the key to great profits from your facilites.

In fact, if I had to chose one crop from a pure profit prospective it would be grapes. I can grow several cycles of grapes (and I do) in the time it takes to harvest one cycle of pineapples. Four cycles of grapes (16 hours) is more profitable than one cycle of pineapples (60 hours) Processing time in the juice facility isn't relevant now because of neighbors ability to speed the processing time.

Pizza and ice cream both use pineapples, and very profitably, but you are limited by other ingrediants, milk and cheese among them. I can grow all the pineapples I want but it won't do me any good if I can't come up with the other things I need. Cheese is the toughest since it can't be gifted.

Actually, the opposite of what you are suggesting has been happening. Crops that have been ignored for months now are coming back in fashion. I've seen more grapes, wheat and tomatoes growing than I have since I first started playing the game.