I've been playing Kapilands, which is by the same people as Molehill Empire.
They're both economy simulation games, but there's a huge difference between the two. Namely, MHE is much more simplistic. You spend a little money on seeds, then you grow your plants and sell the fruits of your labor to NPC and the market. Each plant has a yield of 2-19 per seed planted, so the result is you gain money each time you harvest plants. Beyond the startup costs of purchasing seeds (and weeding, though you can even ignore that), there's really a steady growth of profit. Occasionally you can spend money on research, more gardens, a car, a second shelf, etc, but none of that is necessary to play, or even succeed at the game. It's an idealized version of how economy should work.
Kapilands, on the other hand, is more of a realistic economy. There's nothing so simple as startup costs in this. Materials have to be purchased in order to build factories, building the factories costs more money, then hiring employees to produce goods, and costs to expand the factories to increase production. Where you place your factory determines your cost, production output, research output, sales, etc. Then there's cost in selling your goods because you have to build a store, hire employees, and sometimes there's transport costs involved.
There's also different levels of production. You start with one level of raw materials (example, seeds), then produce a product from it (example, corn), then another product from that (example, cattle), then another product from that (example, leather), and yet another product (example, shoes). Some products, such as cars, require multiple levels of production from multiple sources (have to produce rubber for tires, mine for ore to produce steel for the car body, electronics for the engine, etc) so you have to have mines, wells, chemical factories, plantations, etc.
Then you have to sell it and discover there's a lot of profit in some areas and lousy profit in others. I've been selling food goods in grocery stores and realized the market for it is shit. Only one grocery store can sell my goods for a decent profit. I had been building all my stores in farm areas because of the higher plantation production and lower costs associated with it, but I couldn't even gain back my cost. Turns out the grocery stores had to go in industrial areas, which cost a lot more to build and will take much longer to reap a profit.
And like a real economy, you have to actually find a market for items. Sure, there's a market in the US for coffee ice cream, but that doesn't mean there's a market in game for it. Some things, like raw materials, are always in demand because players are always needing stones, steel, wood, power, water, etc to build new factories and stores and expand existing ones. Other things, like cars and jewelry, are almost solely dependent on sales from the NPC game consumers who purchase from a store (which is regulated by the game itself dealing with supply and demand).
So, this game is exhausting. It takes a lot of work and research. One thing I found is, like real-world business, it's almost impossible to start anything without financing. And by financing, I mean purchasing coins via PayPal and exchanging them for in-game currency. Fortunately, you get 50,000 currency per coin, so you can spend 10 euros and easily build up a handful factories, research, and stores you need to get started. You can start without purchasing coins, but you'd be limited to agribusiness which currently has the shittiest market in the entire game and would take forever to get anywhere.
If anyone wants to play as well, I'm on Realm 2 under the company name LKAT (wouldn't let me use an ampersand). Here's some tips to help you get started:
General info:
1. Quality is counted by an annoying averaging system. If your seeds are quality 14 and your water 0, it averages to a quality level of 4. So you can start with the highest quality seeds available, but by the time you finished cattle production, your quality is low. Research improves this, but I'm not yet sure how.
2. Make sure you research goods. For each level of research into a particular good, it takes longer and longer to finish. Start with researching the first few levels on the goods you produce most and then move on from there.
3. The forums are filled with tons of information, so read up as much as you can. One of the most informative posts is this one, which is a guide on where to build factories for best profit.
If you do not purchase coins:
1. Stick with fruit plantations, cattle-breeding, plantation, and a grocery store.
2. Build your factories (plantation, cattle-breeding, fruit plantation) in green areas for higher production at lower cost.
3. Before you produce anything, hire an additional employee. Preferably, expand to 30m(2) or 40m(2) and have 3-4 employees for production, but it costs money to expand, so make sure your other facilities are built first so you don't run out of money.
4. DO NOT build your grocery store in a green area! Build it in red to get the most profit.
5. In the fruit plantation, apples are the best bet for profit. They sell well in the grocery store, but not the market.
6. In the plantation, produce as much corn as you can first. You will need it for cattle breeding.
7. In the cattle-breeding facility, milk, eggs, and chickens are cheap and sell well at the grocery store. Cattle, pigs, and lamb take a ton of corn to produce, so hold off until you have enough in your warehouse.
8. Advertisements are too expensive unless you make a ton of money or buy coins. The cheapest are 285 per advertisement and it takes 40,000 advertisements to reach 100 percent of renown. PER store.
9. Make sure your level of cheap vs expensive goods at the store never goes above 50 out of 100 consumers thinking your product is too expensive or it will take forever to sell.
10. Water and seeds are cheap at market. If you run out, just buy them there and buy at the highest quality level you can (accounting for cheapest price as well).
11. If you fuck up and lose all your money, you can reset the game back to zero.
If you do purchase coins:
1. Raw goods production is the most easily profitable (stones, wood, water, steel, oil).
2. Wells and mines should go in the yellow areas, period.
3. If you produce raw goods for your own use or as a secondary to your main goods, put factories in green areas.
4. If raw goods are your main production, build factories in red areas. The short-term profit is lower, but the long-term will be larger.
5. There is hardly any profit in agribusiness. Not sure why, but best I could do was sell a lot of apples in one store only.
6. I only played with the textile market a little bit, but never made much money from clothing. I did better selling raw wool and cotton to the player market.
7. Advertising helps lower time selling goods in stores, but costs a lot of money to do so. Reserve a certain number of coins just for advertising costs.
This is only scratching the surface of the game. I've only been playing for just a few weeks. I've reset the game twice.I've purchased 150 coins (used 100) to outfit my production and I'm nowhere near profitable right now. I'm still transitioning from my failed agribusiness to raw good stones production. It's taking a lot of time and attention, but it's fun anyway. So if anyone is still interested after all that, good luck!
They're both economy simulation games, but there's a huge difference between the two. Namely, MHE is much more simplistic. You spend a little money on seeds, then you grow your plants and sell the fruits of your labor to NPC and the market. Each plant has a yield of 2-19 per seed planted, so the result is you gain money each time you harvest plants. Beyond the startup costs of purchasing seeds (and weeding, though you can even ignore that), there's really a steady growth of profit. Occasionally you can spend money on research, more gardens, a car, a second shelf, etc, but none of that is necessary to play, or even succeed at the game. It's an idealized version of how economy should work.
Kapilands, on the other hand, is more of a realistic economy. There's nothing so simple as startup costs in this. Materials have to be purchased in order to build factories, building the factories costs more money, then hiring employees to produce goods, and costs to expand the factories to increase production. Where you place your factory determines your cost, production output, research output, sales, etc. Then there's cost in selling your goods because you have to build a store, hire employees, and sometimes there's transport costs involved.
There's also different levels of production. You start with one level of raw materials (example, seeds), then produce a product from it (example, corn), then another product from that (example, cattle), then another product from that (example, leather), and yet another product (example, shoes). Some products, such as cars, require multiple levels of production from multiple sources (have to produce rubber for tires, mine for ore to produce steel for the car body, electronics for the engine, etc) so you have to have mines, wells, chemical factories, plantations, etc.
Then you have to sell it and discover there's a lot of profit in some areas and lousy profit in others. I've been selling food goods in grocery stores and realized the market for it is shit. Only one grocery store can sell my goods for a decent profit. I had been building all my stores in farm areas because of the higher plantation production and lower costs associated with it, but I couldn't even gain back my cost. Turns out the grocery stores had to go in industrial areas, which cost a lot more to build and will take much longer to reap a profit.
And like a real economy, you have to actually find a market for items. Sure, there's a market in the US for coffee ice cream, but that doesn't mean there's a market in game for it. Some things, like raw materials, are always in demand because players are always needing stones, steel, wood, power, water, etc to build new factories and stores and expand existing ones. Other things, like cars and jewelry, are almost solely dependent on sales from the NPC game consumers who purchase from a store (which is regulated by the game itself dealing with supply and demand).
So, this game is exhausting. It takes a lot of work and research. One thing I found is, like real-world business, it's almost impossible to start anything without financing. And by financing, I mean purchasing coins via PayPal and exchanging them for in-game currency. Fortunately, you get 50,000 currency per coin, so you can spend 10 euros and easily build up a handful factories, research, and stores you need to get started. You can start without purchasing coins, but you'd be limited to agribusiness which currently has the shittiest market in the entire game and would take forever to get anywhere.
If anyone wants to play as well, I'm on Realm 2 under the company name LKAT (wouldn't let me use an ampersand). Here's some tips to help you get started:
General info:
1. Quality is counted by an annoying averaging system. If your seeds are quality 14 and your water 0, it averages to a quality level of 4. So you can start with the highest quality seeds available, but by the time you finished cattle production, your quality is low. Research improves this, but I'm not yet sure how.
2. Make sure you research goods. For each level of research into a particular good, it takes longer and longer to finish. Start with researching the first few levels on the goods you produce most and then move on from there.
3. The forums are filled with tons of information, so read up as much as you can. One of the most informative posts is this one, which is a guide on where to build factories for best profit.
If you do not purchase coins:
1. Stick with fruit plantations, cattle-breeding, plantation, and a grocery store.
2. Build your factories (plantation, cattle-breeding, fruit plantation) in green areas for higher production at lower cost.
3. Before you produce anything, hire an additional employee. Preferably, expand to 30m(2) or 40m(2) and have 3-4 employees for production, but it costs money to expand, so make sure your other facilities are built first so you don't run out of money.
4. DO NOT build your grocery store in a green area! Build it in red to get the most profit.
5. In the fruit plantation, apples are the best bet for profit. They sell well in the grocery store, but not the market.
6. In the plantation, produce as much corn as you can first. You will need it for cattle breeding.
7. In the cattle-breeding facility, milk, eggs, and chickens are cheap and sell well at the grocery store. Cattle, pigs, and lamb take a ton of corn to produce, so hold off until you have enough in your warehouse.
8. Advertisements are too expensive unless you make a ton of money or buy coins. The cheapest are 285 per advertisement and it takes 40,000 advertisements to reach 100 percent of renown. PER store.
9. Make sure your level of cheap vs expensive goods at the store never goes above 50 out of 100 consumers thinking your product is too expensive or it will take forever to sell.
10. Water and seeds are cheap at market. If you run out, just buy them there and buy at the highest quality level you can (accounting for cheapest price as well).
11. If you fuck up and lose all your money, you can reset the game back to zero.
If you do purchase coins:
1. Raw goods production is the most easily profitable (stones, wood, water, steel, oil).
2. Wells and mines should go in the yellow areas, period.
3. If you produce raw goods for your own use or as a secondary to your main goods, put factories in green areas.
4. If raw goods are your main production, build factories in red areas. The short-term profit is lower, but the long-term will be larger.
5. There is hardly any profit in agribusiness. Not sure why, but best I could do was sell a lot of apples in one store only.
6. I only played with the textile market a little bit, but never made much money from clothing. I did better selling raw wool and cotton to the player market.
7. Advertising helps lower time selling goods in stores, but costs a lot of money to do so. Reserve a certain number of coins just for advertising costs.
This is only scratching the surface of the game. I've only been playing for just a few weeks. I've reset the game twice.I've purchased 150 coins (used 100) to outfit my production and I'm nowhere near profitable right now. I'm still transitioning from my failed agribusiness to raw good stones production. It's taking a lot of time and attention, but it's fun anyway. So if anyone is still interested after all that, good luck!
