Troonval – Economic Building Guide and Tips

This guide will help you figure out how much money you can make from the special buildings in Thronefall.

Invoering

I like finance and spreadsheets. I also enjoy playing Thronefall. Dus, I made some simple “time value of money” calculations to understand how Thronefall’s economy works.

This guide assumes you’ve played the game a bit and know about buildings that can make money daily:

1. Huizen
2. Mijnen
3. Mills & fields
4. Harbours

The guide is not finished yet, but if people like it and want more, I can dive deeper.

Understanding the “Time Value of Money” Basisprincipes

Time value of money (TVM) is about understanding that money has different values in the present and the future. If you like having money now more than later, unless you can make extra money by investing it, you have a positive “required rate of return” (RRR).

In Thronefall, your RRR is high because using your cash to build things like towers, muren, or barracks can help you survive the nights. If you don’t survive, het is spel voorbij. Dus, your RRR in Thronefall is big; you need a good profit if you invest, to give up the advantage of having more DPS or better protection from walls for the next nights.

Ideaal, if you know your RRR, you invest in anything with an internal rate of return (IRR) higher than that number.

But Thronefall is quite complex, so it’s hard to know your RRR at any given time. That’s why the best approach each night for the economy should be:

1. Build the cheapest defenses that keep you alive without damaging your money-making buildings.
2. Find the most profitable buildings to build or upgrade with your remaining cash.
3. ???
4. Winst!

Nu, let’s calculate the IRR of each building and improvement.

Economic Building Investments’ Internal Rate of Return

Here’s a table that calculates the IRR for constructing a building or upgrading it.

Keep in mind two important assumptions:

1. The buildings are assumed to remain intact each night. If they get destroyed, you won’t earn any cash from them, and the IRR drops significantly, especially for mines and harbours.
2. Er zijn 12 nights in a game, although some maps may have a different day count, which doesn’t change the results much. Echter, if the game introduces longer maps with more days, the results will vary.

Here are the key takeaways from this analysis:

• Fields are always a great investment because you not only recover your cash after one night, but you earn money every night thereafter.
• Mines are almost always a good investment due to their frontloaded cash flows (6 munten, Dan 5, Dan 4, enz.).
• Leaving a mill at level 1 is not a good investment; either improve it or don’t build it.
• If you can upgrade a mill from level 2 om te nivelleren 3, it’s a wise move.
• Upgrading a harbour to level 2 is most profitable from an investment perspective when it has already gained the maximum number of boats. Don’t do it if the harbour has fewer than 3 boats because building houses is more profitable.
• Houses make sense when there are no other good investment options available; they aren’t bad investments.
• It’s not very sensible to invest in the last 2-4 dagen, especially in houses and mills.

To assess the profitability of each fully upgraded building (except for the harbour due to its unique x2 boat profits upgrade), you can refer to the table.

Tot slot:

• Mines are excellent investments.
• Niveau 3 Mills, even without the improved plows upgrade, are a great investment as long as you build all their fields because that’s what makes them profitable.

Conclusie

The main drawback of my guide is that it lacks a risk assessment. The best investments in Thronefall are often the riskiest. Mines and mills are typically exposed, and building them without proper protection is a bad move. They are high-risk, high-reward investments. Harbours are even riskier because they are often as exposed as mines and mills, if not more so due to air attacks in Frostee, and they offer mediocre returns, especially considering that your boat count doesn’t increase if they are destroyed during the night.

My assessment also doesn’t consider certain perks that can affect the profitability of some buildings. Daarom, here’s my final piece of advice:

• Look for mines and mills that are easy to protect to maximize your risk-adjusted returns in the early game.
• Expand your realm in a way that makes it easier to protect more mines and mills in the mid-late game.
• Build houses and harbours if you have leftover cash and no easily defensible mines and mills to construct.

I’d like to share a message with the game developers: Naar mijn mening, it would make sense to slightly improve the harbour’s performance in some way other than through a dedicated perk. Perhaps reducing the cost of the level 2 upgrade by a coin or two, making the boat count increase even if it is destroyed during the night, or enhancing the health and ranged defense of the base level 1 gebouw.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask!