User blog comment:Zamphyr/Resource Producer thoughts/@comment-5103836-20121217050201

I don't like to tell people how to spend their crystals, but advanced resource producers are a terrible investment, unless you really, really like how it looks as a decoration. I have one stone producer out, and only because I need it for buying stone from the market. The fact that village resource needs begin to far outpace production ability becomes apparent to everyone at some point on the journey to higher levels. A few months ago I commented on another blog here.

Here is what I wrote then: "This has been brought up before, and unfortunatly things are so far out of wack it would take rather drastic measures to make resource production viable again. Many high level villages will use over 1million resources a day.

For example, the most used resource is stone, and at the rate of production of around 1 stone a minute, it would take around 690 days for 1 resource producer to produce a single days worth of stone. Or, you could use 690 stone resource producers to create your daily stone use, but don't forget the 2070 workers needed to man those stone builders with the 518 houses needed for those workers, and lets also not forget the 1380 rock producers (and the 2760 workers and 690 housing units for them) just to supply the stone makers. That would be around 58000 pixels, a 240x240 area (71x71 is the max current size btw), used just for daily resource production.

I think I gave up on resource producers around level 20ish and never looked back." At this point someone commented that 20 was too low of level to stop using resource producers so I replied with this: "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." Sorry for just regurgitating the numbers, but if you are looking for efficiency, the market is the way to go.  If you would rather play a 'self-sufficient' style of play, making all your own resources, then ignore everything above and have fun playing whatever style suits you.

If you are wondering what -is- a good use of crystals, I would suggest storage, crystal producers, maybe topsy, and to a lesser degree, decorations and habitats that suit your fancy. Hope that helps.