Agents Of Empire/Economics

Overview

This page gives costs for the various sorts of units, buildings, and goods available in the game. These are purposely left a little generic; when you buy a unit you're expected to be more specific about what sort of unit it is, and when you find some goods, likewise.

Effects of Character Actions

A suitable character action can be used to relax a single rule around purchasing a unit (eg, remove the need for an explorer's academy when building a rank-3 explorer unit). Character actions can also be used to modify the price when buying, selling, or building a unit as follows:

Skill Rank	Buy/Build Modifier	Sell Modifier
Average (+0)	95%*	105%*
Good (+2)	90%	110%
Great (+4)	80%	120%
Superb (+6)	70%	130%
Fantastic (+8)	60%	140%
Epic (+10) and above	50%	150%

*PCs only; NPCs are 100%

If multiple characters work together (or oppose each other), their modifiers are multiplied together. Prices are rounded down to the nearest mega-credit.

Upgrades, Buying, and Building

Except for resources, prices as listed are for building the unit/building yourself, at the given rank. If you want to upgrade a lower-ranked thing, you can just pay the difference in price. You can also buy things from the Empire instead of building them: the cost is twice what is listed, but all prerequisites are ignored and it is completed immediately (though shipping time may increase the effective time). If you want to sell a thing to the Empire, you can do so at half the listed price.

Houses which are Good in a particular skill buy the corresponding units/buildings for the cost of the next-lower-ranked unit (except when buying the lowest-rank unit). Houses which are Bad in a particular skill buy units for the cost of the next-higher-ranked unit. If your House is Good in a particular skill, it can buy rank-1 things at half price. This is also the effective price for your House to upgrade from a rank-1 thing. If your House is Bad in a particular skill, it buys the most expensive things in the category for 150% of the listed price.

Resources

Type	Buy	Sell	Notes
Raw materials	2	1	Straight from the mine
Processed rank 1	8	4	Made from three units of one type of raw material
Processed rank 2	10	5	Made from two units of one type of raw material, and one unit of another type
Processed rank 3	12	6	Made from three units of raw material of three different types

Refining Regions, when built, are declared as processing a certain type of resource (call this the processor's base type). A processor of rank N can execute a formula (a formula is some mapping of three goods to another good -- for instance, "two crystals and one metal to produce a frequency crystal"), as long as that formula contains at least 4-N of the base type. A processor of rank N can execute N formulas/turn, which can be the same or different.

What this means in practice is that if you have a refinery based around Fluids, then at rank-1 it can process only (Fluid,Fluid,Fluid -> Superfluid), at rank-2 it can also process things like (Fluid,Fluid,Fiber -> Sponge) and (Fluid,Fluid,Rock -> Greasy Rock), and at rank-3 it can process any formula that includes at least one Fluid.

Explorers

Unit	Rank	Cost	Notes
Novice	1	2
Trained	2	5
Professional	3	9	Requires an explorer's academy to build
Elite	4	14	Requires an explorer's academy to build

Military

Unit	Rank	Cost	Notes
Novice	1	3
Trained	2	7
Professional	3	12	Requires an appropriate factory to build
Elite	4	18	Requires an appropriate factory to build
Specialist	5	25	Requires an appropriate factory and an appropriate research institution
Duo-Specialist	6	30	Requires an appropriate factory and two appropriate research institutions

Specialists and duo-specialists are considered rank 4 normally but 6 when their specialty comes into play. Flying military units take twice the cost of the equivalent ground unit to build, and space units take four times the cost.

Politicians and Diplomats

Unit	Rank	Cost	Notes
Novice	1	6
Trained	2	14
Professional	3	24	Requires a palace to build
Elite	4	36	Requires a palace to build

Research Institutions

Type	Rank	Cost	Notes
Basic	1	6
Advanced	2	14
World-class	3	24

Cargo Ships

Type	Rank	Cost	Notes
Basic	1	15	Holds five units, requires a shipyard
Large	2	33	Holds ten units, requires a shipyard
Enormous	3	54	Holds fifteen units, requires a shipyard