User blog comment:Rossval91/High Level Stores Market Analysis/@comment-5405954-20121002023345/@comment-5103836-20121002155500

I just wanted to reply to the thought about giving up resource producers too early. If you look at it from a cost per pixel point of view, there is really no time that is too early to give up resource producers.

Up until scooter stores, the most efficient stores for leveling purpose use food as a resource. A food resource producer makes 800 food in 24 hours and the average buy price for food is 83 per 100. At level 4-23 you will be using the 2 or 3 person houses (4 person houses are level 24) so you will need 1 or 2/3 of a house to provide the 2 workers for each food producer. That is 31-34 pixels used to make 664 gold worth of food, or 19-21 gold worth of food per pixel per day.

A playground makes 300 gold every 4 hours and uses 9 pixels. Perfect collection (6 times) would be 1800 gold per day, or 200 gold per pixel per day. Lets use a more realistic 3-4 collection times, you still get 100-130 gold per pixel a day. If you collect gold from playgrounds, and buy food from the market, even with no where near perfect collection, you are still at least 5 times more efficient using a buying strategy, than a production strategy. Even if you only collect once per day, you still get 33 gold per pixel per day, above the food resource producer rate.

So even at low levels, the market wins. Playgrounds aren't even the most efficient gold/pixel producer either, bright steet lamps are 2000 gold per pixel per day, 100 times more efficient than the food producer. This is a different issue than described in my first post, but it is another reason that resource producers fail at all levels.