Are banks cost effective for reducing building costs ?
They have a montly maintenance upkeep and you have to employ College graduate there ($20+ per month).
How much of a reduction in building costs do you get, and how much building do you have to do to break even ?

eg. if they give 10% reduction in cost, but cost $100 per month, then you have to be spending $1000 per month every month on construction.
Are they only good near the end game with some of the very expensive constructions ?

How much do they siphon into the Swiss Bank Account ?
Again, there is a cost/benefit trade of. If playing a balanced score where both the SBA and the treasury are scored, then it will only be worth putting bankers into filling the SBA when they are skilled and the treasury is big. Otherwise the score you get for increasing your SBA is outweighed by the loss of the treasury.
But when playing the game when the SBA is the only score it will be worth getting the swiss bankers as soon as possible, as the efficiency is not important only how much money can be transferred.

Are you talking about T1 or T3?

Do not assume that T3 works just as T1 does.

They deffinitly can be cost effective. I analyzed this extensively because I was curious also. I don't remember exact figures but a safe bet is that a fully staffed bank with wages at $20 will cost you about $2000 a year, although I suspect its actually less then that. Each bank can reduce the building cost by 20% each to a maximum of 60%. So with 3 banks you can get 60% cost deduction.

So we are upto $6000 a year in bank expenses.

Now the trick here is to do your building in phases. In between phases you set it to a different mode, if you have tourists then the offshore banking can be quite profitable, like $5k-$6k a year each depending on the skill of the bankers and the amount of tourists. In the building cost mode though it takes a few months for the banks to reach the full 20% reduction so you will want to set them to this mode a short while before you actually want to build something. You can click on each bank and it will tell you what they are presently reducing costs by so just wait till it reaches 20%

At 60% off you can build 1 building that normally costs 10k at $4k instead and you will have paid for all 3 banks for the year. But if you are building in phases then you will likely be saving a lot more then just 6K and so you will probably be paying for the banks running costs for a number of years in a single building phase.

Keep in mind that you are likely to run a number of years at sub-optimal performance while the bankers are getting their education and are filling in the job slots. But once they are fully staffed and have some experience you can fairly quickly recover the expenses incurred during that time period.

Swiss banking
As for swiss banking it seems to me that I did look into that as well and found that it is deffinitly worth it as well. A single $1 in the swissbank account is worth a lot more then a single $1 in your treasury when it comes to the end score. But I don't remember just what the difference is. I think though that the swiss money is on a 1-1 ratio with score, while the treasury money is like 20-1 ratio. So you need much less swiss money for the same score gained.

My experience has been with T1 and I was wondering how it compares with T3.

I found banks were a good source of income from the tourists, but tended to find that a single bank was enough for them.

Keeping 3 fully staffed banks for building reduction is a permanent commitment, as they cannot be expected to all switch to tourist banking when construction is in a low phase.

But I guess in the longer term, when income is at a regular high level, you will always be building enough to offset the bank upkeep cost.
Another factor I had to balance is that the bankers are male college graduates so compete with bishops, generals and doctors. So sometimes I did not have enough male college graduates to fully staff the bank.

Cheat/bug
Another thing I remember from T1 was that the money you got back from cancelling a building before it was built was determined by the current cost of the building and not the cost of the initial construction. So you could set all 3 banks to building_reduction, then build a $10k building for $4k, then set the banks back to tourists, then cancel the building and get your $10k back.
Is this 'feature' still in T3 ?
I used to feel a bit of a cheat when I happened to cancel buildings originally planned when the reduction was in place, when the reduction was not in place.
Have they linked the refund price to the cost price ?

Swiss banking.
In T1 the balanced scoring method was something like money in the SBA was x5 that of the treasury. So my initial question is when does the overhead of using banks (ie maintenance & wages & cannot use the graduates for other jobs) get cancelled out by the x5 score for transferring money into the SBA.
From the example of costing $6000 per year to run the bank they would have to transfer £1200 into the SBA to break even.
Has anyone any experience of how much the bankers can transfer, and is it based on both their banking skill and the total size of treasury ?

For the scoring method where only the SBA is counted, then the efficiency of the bankers is less important, as the money in the treasury does not count at all. So any money into the SBA is a good thing.

Thanks for any input.

(06-10-2010 09:38 AM)OldBoy Wrote:  I found banks were a good source of income from the tourists, but tended to find that a single bank was enough for them.

Keeping 3 fully staffed banks for building reduction is a permanent commitment, as they cannot be expected to all switch to tourist banking when construction is in a low phase.

Well in the particular game that I was analyzing how the banks work I had roughly 300 people from what I remember, and maybe about 50 tourists and I was able to make a profit from all 3 banks when they were in offshore banking mode. I would switch them over to building cost reduction mode maybe once a year or once every two years when I wanted to build a lot. Not sure how this compares to T1 as I haven't played that game in years.

(06-10-2010 09:38 AM)OldBoy Wrote:  Cheat/bug
Another thing I remember from T1 was that the money you got back from cancelling a building before it was built was determined by the current cost of the building and not the cost of the initial construction. So you could set all 3 banks to building_reduction, then build a $10k building for $4k, then set the banks back to tourists, then cancel the building and get your $10k back.
Is this 'feature' still in T3 ?

This would not happen in T3 since the building modes are not even available till the building is fully built. And even then they need to be at least partially staffed before any of the modes will have any effect.

(06-10-2010 09:38 AM)OldBoy Wrote:  Has anyone any experience of how much the bankers can transfer, and is it based on both their banking skill and the total size of treasury ?

For the scoring method where only the SBA is counted, then the efficiency of the bankers is less important, as the money in the treasury does not count at all. So any money into the SBA is a good thing.

Unfortunately I can't recall just how much money they transfer to the SBA on an annual basis. But, in T3 it only is based on the experience level of the worker, and how many workers are staffed in the bank. It has nothing to do with how much money you have in the treasury. Not sure what happens when your treasury reaches a negative. I would guess it either stops workering entirely or it just continues siphoning money and putting you further into debt just like the maintenance costs do. As far as scoreing goes, both the treasury and the SBA are both always counted, as is population happiness and various other miscellaneous things. There is no scoreing scenarios that just takes one into account and not the other. Perhaps in T1 it worked that way.

Yes they are cost effective and they don't affect the amount to your swiss account when the building permit is enabled. They only cost $312 a year plus wages. Of course if you are not building they are as cost effective as a power plant when you don't have any buildings that require power. Before the most recent patch you could only get 1200 people so at some point you wanted to get rid of banks and extra construction offices because there was no point building anything else and you needed the people for other things. Now I think we can get double that or more (haven't seen anyone post about finding a pop cap since I posted about getting over 2000 people). Now that you can keep building until the island is stuffed (full of stuff or stuffed as in keeps crashing) it becomes more a matter of finding enough jobs for everyone, so you might as well dedicate 3 banks to urban development permanently.

They have removed any shenanigans to do with gaining money by cancelling buildings. No matter what you do, when you cancel a building that has not started construction it gives you back exactly what you paid for it. Try laying down a bunch of structures and pausing construction while the urban development effect is kicking in. Each one will give you back a different amount, that being exactly what you paid for that particular building.

If you are concerned about saving as much money as possible, the biggest tip is to never have more than 50000 in the bank when the year rolls over. If you do you miss out on any foreign aid you might have gotten. Doesn't matter what the balance is the rest of the year but pause in December and build enough to bring it safely below 50000. Build in a margin to cover any expected goods exports or tourist income. Personally I use rum distilleries with the construction paused as a personal bank (highest cost per size available AFAIK). Over a 50 year reign you can get more than 250,000 from foreign aid alone. The Urban Development fund is also good but not as important.

EDIT: HenningVDJ is quite right, I made an order of magnitude error when I wrote that. Just goes to show knowing college level maths doesn't stop you making silly mistakes. Thanks for the correction HenningVDJ, but a couple of hundred k is still not peanuts. I don't think the foreign aid amount depends on how negative your balance is.

How on earth do you get $2.5 Mill in foreign aid over a period of 50 years? That would be $50,000 a year!! I get between $3,000 and $8,000 a year depending on how far below $0 my treasury is. Depending on how many buildings i have the treasury can be as low as -$60,000. Once I stop building the treasury will grow fast and I can get it from a negative $60,000 to a positive $500,000 in 7 years.

Banks? I don't use them until late on. For Swiss.

Slush fund will get you something like $1-2.5k/year, depending on experience. Imo only the Building Permit is more effective than Slush Fund for Swiss.

Early on, I'd rather have doctors or generals.

However, the OP seems to be ignoring the fact that you do not need the bank to be fully staffed to get the full building construction discount, though it will take notably longer to get the entire 20%. Build the somewhat early bank, close every slot but one. That may be more useful than fully staffing it.

I kind of wish there were attributes to make banks more powerful. Financial Genius just doesn't cut it.

Good point IronFist, that makes them even more cost effective. I think I am going to start creating 3 banks with one staff member each once the initial rush of college graduates has passed.

Has anyone tested hiring a full bank staff and then cutting it back to one employee once the discount has reached 20%?

Easy answer, if the cost for the bank is less than 20% of the cost for your annual construction you profit from building banks in order to lower your building cost.

When it comes to tourism, nah they aint profitable. Tourist populations only choose 3-4 different attractions to go to. If they go to the bank some other place loose income.
The game is made in that way.
Tourist attraction is not based on the amount of attractions you have, more on the quiality of them. so it doesnt matter.

(03-11-2010 06:32 PM)HenningVDJ Wrote:  How on earth do you get $2.5 Mill in foreign aid over a period of 50 years? That would be $50,000 a year!! I get between $3,000 and $8,000 a year depending on how far below $0 my treasury is. Depending on how many buildings i have the treasury can be as low as -$60,000. Once I stop building the treasury will grow fast and I can get it from a negative $60,000 to a positive $500,000 in 7 years.

Can you explain a bit more about how the foreign aid scales with treasury balance ?
Is it only important that your treasury is below $50k, or will you get more if it is nearer zero ? Does it matter if the treasury is negative ?

thanks.

(19-11-2010 02:08 PM)OldBoy Wrote:  Can you explain a bit more about how the foreign aid scales with treasury balance ?
Is it only important that your treasury is below $50k, or will you get more if it is nearer zero ? Does it matter if the treasury is negative ?

The super-powers are getting quite angry when your balance is negative and cut the aid down therefore. Nothing else than the relations to the powers is affecting the amount of aid afaik.
So it is indeed important to keep your balance positive.

You know.. ive been trying to figure out how to get an early bank.. But so far my play style just hasnt gotton there yet.


Perhaps if i used oil or mining a bit more.. or re thought my farming strats.. and went with slightly bigger islands, instead of keeping numbers low for the first 10-20 years.

If your bank balance is more than 50k when the year rolls over, you will get no foreign aid. If it is less than 50k you will get aid in proportion to how much the super power likes you. Having a negative bank balance will make them like you less over time so decreases your foreign aid due to that effect. Otherwise having a negative bank balance does not affect the amount of aid you get, nor does anything else.