Non-Reselling Casher
Casher
- Note that this guide applies to a cashing strategy that is not strictly contingent upon utilizing the PM
Before we get started, please be sure to check out this New Player Game Guide if you have not already. It will help you to get started on setting up your initial empire.
Cashing 101
For a quick overview of the basic flow of Cashing, please refer to this guide.
Here are some basic facts that can help get you started
Overview
Cashing Races: Gnome, Pirate, Troll
Casher Buildings: Market
Casher Production Tab: "Cash"
Casher Era: Future
Choosing one of these races, building markets, and using the 'Cash" production tab forms the core flow of the non-reselling casher strategy
Races
Gnome
Pros: Suitable for defensive players, players who want to utilize magic, and players that want to embrace a passive (no-attacking) play style.
Cons: Low energy production makes a mage hybrid less-optimal. Weak offense makes gaining land more difficult.
Bonuses: Defense (+10%), Upkeep (+10%), Economy (+20%), Market (+12%).
Weaknesses: Offense (-16%), Industry (-12%), Exploration (-12%), and Energy (-12%)
Pirate
Pros: Suitable for high land accumulation, offensive tactics, and flexibility. Many bonuses.
Cons: Inability to play any other strategies aside from casher. Lower market bonus makes reselling less of a bonus.
Bonuses: Offense (+8%), Building (+4%), Upkeep (+8%), Economy (+12%), Exploration (+8), Market (+16%), Consumption (+4%)
Weaknesses: Defense (-4%), Magic (-12%), Industry (-14%), and Energy (-10%), Agriculture (-14%)
Troll
Pros: Suitable for players that like to troll, offensive clan war environments, and exploring.
Cons: Outclassed in every way by gnome and pirate when it comes to production. No market bonus means no re-selling option.
Bonuses: Offense (+24%), Building (+8%), Economy (+4%), Exploration (+14%).
Weaknesses: Defense (-10%), Magic (-12%), Market (-12%), Energy (-8%), Agriculture (-8%)
Now that you have the starting blocks, let's talk about the goals of a cashing empire in Reborn Promisance, and how we can achieve those goals.
As a cashing empire, the goal is - of course - to generate as much empire income as possible.
Let's take a look at a sample cashing income spread
Money $94,108,651
Est. Income $54,313,508
Est. Expenses $22,257,909
Est. Medical Expenses $561,494
Est. Corruption $0
Loan Payment $0
War Tax $0
Net +$31,494,105
Savings Balance $11,500,000,000 (0.483%)
Loan Balance $0 (1.817%)
The empire connected to this income is an established pure-cashing empire, that is, they have been focusing their runs on trying to earn as much income as possible without selling on the Private Market.
Income/Expenses
The empire's current funds out of bank (Money)
The income that they will receive each time a turn is spent (Est. Income)
The expenses, or cost, of running their empire (Est. Expenses)
The expenses of any troops currently in their hospital (Est. Medical Expenses)
The net gain of all expenses measured against income (Net)
Corruption, Savings and Loan Payments
- Corruption begins when you have 100x of your current net as funds out of your bank.
The above empire, for example, has a nw value of $248,944,338. Once they hold $24,894,433,800 out of bank they will begin to take corruption losses.
- Savings are any funds that you have stored in your bank. The World Bank can hold up to 100x your net value in cash.
This means that at a nw value of $248,944,338, my empire can store up to $24,894,433,800 at a time. If that value changes, such as if I lose net, then the next time I spend a turn those funds will automatically be transferred from my bank storage into my empire.
- Loan Interest APR will be shown on your World Bank tab. It is important to avoid running with loans when possible, as these costs add up quickly.
Why would I ever take a loan? The simple answer is, when you expect to be able to pay it back before using another turn. For example, if you have aid or market sales coming in relatively soon.
With all of this in mind, what can a casher do to excel at their goal of making as much cash as possible?
Minimize Expenses and Maximize Income
Maximizing Income and Minimizing Expenses
Land and Markets
Let's start with the most important aspect. Making as much money as you can possibly make.
The single most effective way to make money as a casher is to gain more land.
Your production is tied directly to the number of markets that you build as a casher. More land = more markets = more money.
Yes, it can be more complicated than that, and expert cashers will want to find ways to squeeze out more money via tax or aid, but I guarantee that if you have more land than your rival cashers, you will make more money than they do.
How do you get more land?
Same as every other strategy, you make use of your attacks. You can refer once more to the guide listed at the outset of this article for tips, but generally you will want to aim your attacks at players with high land and low DR. Doing this, and not failing any attacks, is the key to accumulating the highest land totals.
With this in mind, you may want to take advantage of your era bonus and wield a massive stack of juggernauts. You can also enlist the help of a mage player, or even build wizards yourself, to ensure that you are able to break through any defenses as you amass land.
Ultimately, you will be using this land to build something like 90% markets and 10% mage towers if you are playing a balanced strategy.
Some players like to mix this up, building a few farms or smiths along the way, but you should aim to have at least 90% markets to really get the most use of your land.
99% markets is also a feasible option, as this further optimizes your 25% production bonus when cashing, but it may lead to weaknesses in other areas.
As with all strategies, it is up to the player to decide what is their best path forward.
Tax Rate
While most strategies have very little interaction with the tax rate in Reborn Promisance, cashers can utilize it to optimize their income.
At it's core, the tax rate is a balancing act. What are we balancing?
Income vs. Risk of Death
While perhaps a bit simplified, one must understand the pros and cons of having a high or low tax rate. Let's use a high tax rate as an example.
High Tax-Rate
Pros: Higher income as your peasants are being taxed at higher rates.
Cons: Your empire cannot sustain as high a cap of peasants as one with lower tax rates could.
** This information is currently being revised and may not be accurate
You can likely see where a conflict may arise already. Empires with high tax rates will earn more money from their populace, but will have less populace overall.
Empires with a lower tax rate will have more of a population to tax, but at a lower rate.
Adjusting Tax Rates
While some players opt to stay at at static 35% tax rate, you may also want to add some extra depth to your play.
One option to do so is by changing your tax rates depending on where you are at in a run.
For example, let's assume you were attacked and lost some land after your previous run. You have not yet used any turns, so your population count has not dropped. In this case, you may want to consider setting your tax rate very low, so that your population floor is not as drastic. This will also serve to help rebuild your population faster.
Always change your taxes from the 'Cash' tab rather than the 'Empire Management' tab in order to avoid a potential bug.
When changing your taxrate, you will not be able to change it again depending on the amount that it was changed.
For example, if you are at a 7% tax rate and then change it to 70%, you will not be able to adjust your tax rate again for 63 turns. This only applies to tax changes made on the Cash tab.
An advantage of doing this is that you are able to frontload your population gains. Why would this matter?
Because once you are at a higher population level, you can then adjust your taxrate once more, this time to a higher rate. Tax rates range from 5- 70%, and in promisance it is often best to go with the extreme levels. Setting your tax rate as high as 70% once you have a large population built up means that you can then tax those peasants at the most efficient level.
This is especially effective if you expect to hold the land that you gain during your run, as more turns can be spent at the 70% ratio.
Just be sure to set it back to a lower amount after you lose land, or else you risk losing a majority of your population very quickly, and become vulnerable to massacre kills.
Massacre
The introduction of 'Massacre' attacks makes tax-rate once more a topic of interest, this time not only for casher strategies.
Massacre allows an empire to be killed by reducing its population to 0. This differs from most kills, which require land to reach 0.
Because of this, you will notice that some players opt for lower tax rates even if it means they make less income.
They choose this route because it gives them a higher population cap, which in turn makes them harder to kill using massacre.
Something to note when doing this, however, is that these empires will still lose a large chunk of their population after they lose their land.
As a result, you must be careful how you use turns if you feel that you may be a target for a potential massacre kill. Any turns spent after you lose land will result in large and instantaneous drops to your population total, until it is once again in line with your land count.
Other Tax Considerations
There are also additional costs of having a higher population. If you set your tax rate too low, you will begin to attract a much higher population to your empire. This results in more mouths to feed, and with each of those individuals already paying less in taxes, the expenses can hurt in the long-run. For this reason, empires should try not to keep their tax rates too low if they feel that they are safe from massacre attacks. For example, if the empire has numerous hovercrafts to protect them (cashers are further advantaged by being in future era with defensive air bonuses).
Minimizing Expenses
The other side of the coin. This one is a bit harder, as more net worth will always mean more expenses. This is because troops make up the bulk of an empire's net worth, and troops cost money to keep around. So how can we find a way to optimize this aspect?
Troops and Wizards
First, you can keep around troops that cost less in money than others. Footmen and catapults, for example, have lower upkeep costs than air and boat units. On the flip-side, they also have relatively higher food consumption costs, meaning that you may end up spending more on grains either way if you cannot find good deals.
Finding the right balance depends on the conditions of the set, but I find that cashers benefit most from using siege and air units. This is because we tend to stay in the Future era, where siege units have higher offense and air units have higher defense. Keeping these two lines of troops strong means that you will have easier attack phases, and will be harder to take down with standard or surprise attacks.
These troops are also mixed cost when it comes to upkeep and consumption, so you will not be heavily expending one type of income over the other (food, cash).
Wizards are another tough call. As a solo casher, you may need wizards to be able to spy other empires before you attack. As a clanned casher, you may need them to defend yourself from magic spells. Ultimately, the goal should be to have just enough wizards to suit your needs at a given time. Fewer wizards mean less money spent buying grains, but you must always consider the risk of not having as many on hand. One tip that I have used in the past is to go lighter on wizards throughout the month, and then gain them rapidly in the final week of the set. This allows you to save on food costs for most of the set while defending against final day mage spells when they are most likely to occur.
Taxes, Again?
Yes, but just reiterating. Low taxes mean more population means more grain expenses. If you want to reduce your costs, you want to raise your taxes. Pretty simple, but keep in mind the risks that were outlined before.
Hospital
Medical expenses add up against your income, so it is best to reduce your troop losses whenever you can. This is primarily accomplished when attacking, as defending is often outside your control. Try to attack empires that have 'holes', or low amounts of troops in a specific line. Take these empires as an example,
Empire 1:
Cyborgs 1,336,298
Juggernauts 60,170,679
Hovercrafts 2,793,727
Dreadnoughts 27,059
Empire 2:
Infantry 14,680,717
Tanks 14,006,529
Jets 13,300,549
Battleships 8,410,516
Which would you rather attack here? Empire 1, certainly, as they have nearly no dreadnoughts to defend. With such low defenses, your own losses will be minimal as well. Empire 2, on the other hand, has defended all of their lines with many troops. While a break on their foot and siege lines would be possible, is it worth it? These are questions we must keep in mind when judging how to best optimize our attacks and minimize our losses, and likewise our expenses. If Empire 2 has 50,000 land and 0 DR, then surely it would be worth it to attack them, even though your losses may be higher. But if Empires 1 and 2 have similar land and DR, and you have limited attacks, then you should hit Empire 1 to save expenses and troop losses. Remember, medical expenses may be a pain, but losing troops altogether is its own form of expense as well.
Casher Workflow
Beginning Choices
When getting started as a non-reselling casher, you will want to make a few choices immediately. The answers to these will depend on the race that you have chosen, as well as the path that you would like to take for the set. Are you a supportive clan casher, for example, or a ruthless solo casher? Are there a lot of other cashers and indy players around that will be selling troops on the market? Are there many mages that will be buying from the market? Are there many farmers to ensure that players can buy food for each run?
Each of these must be considered before you leave protection if you want to forge a path to victory.
Let's say that you are playing a supportive (or in some cases, supported) clanned casher.
Clanned Casher
A clanned casher is one that opted to join other players for a team effort. These cashers typically can expect to have their grains and troops supplied by allied farmer and indy teammates. This results in the casher being able to do what they do best, make loads of cash.
In this case, there are also more expectations made of the casher. For one, the clan will likely want the casher to build keeps in order to organize a clan economy. While we will not be going over keeps in detail in this article, you can know for now that by building 60% keeps, an empire will see a 60% discount in their Black Market prices. This is especially important for cashers, who already have a chunk of their BM prices slashed due to their racial bonuses (not you, troll).
While keeps are an essential part of gaining net as a clanned casher, your runs will still be mostly the same. You will attack - build markets - and 'cash' in order to make excess funds. These funds will then be used to support your team by making sure that they can fill their own banks and have plenty of money left over to support their turn usage.
In the meantime, your indy teammate can send you the troops they make. Your farmer teammate can keep you supplied with grains. Your mage teammate can focus on what they do best, hogging all the resources.
Working in tandem with a mage player unlocks both of their potentials even further.
Mage/Casher synergy
Mages and cashers at their core both have the same function, make a ton of money. Mages at their best can even accomplish this more efficiently, though with added effort. Together, a mage and a casher can provide more than enough money to support their entire clan's expenses.
That said, knowing what we do about corruption penalties and the dangers of leaving cash out of bank, what happens when we reach a point of having too much money :tm:?
This is precisely when a casher would decide to skip an attack run, demolish any excess buildings, and rebuild with 60% keeps. The mage can then load up the casher with all of their money, on top of the existing funds a casher has on hand. With these funds, a casher can buy insane amounts of troops for their team. Gnomes, for example, can hit a base price of $280 per foot. When considering that billions are being spent, this adds up compared to the flat $500 BM price available to other races. This is why the mage/casher synergy is legendary in Reborn Promisance, and a crucial engine to gaining networth in a clanned environment.
Solo Casher
Solo cashers play mostly the same as clanned cashers, but with much more flexibility involved. That cash you make? It is all yours to spend as you see fit. That said, you now have to worry about buying troops and grains with those funds which otherwise would have been supplied by your teammates.
Solo cashers gain an additional 5% in production using the isolationist bonus, which when combined with the existing 25% bonus for using the cash button and the income bonus for your race, can really add up.
As a solo casher that is not re-selling their own troops, the primary goal is to find the most efficient ways to gain and use your earned income.
Here are some tips on how I do this (reigning pirate champion)
Solo Casher Tips (Non-Reseller)
- Always go for as much land as you can get. More land = more money. Learning how to attack with 0 failures will set you apart from all other players. Each failed attack results in less productivity for the rest of your immediate run, and in some ways the rest of the month. If you never fail an attack, you will know that you are doing your best to earn the highest production possible.
- Look for PM deals. Camp the market if you have to by taking notice of when an empire finishes attacking, and when their estimated net worth size changes. This indicates that the empire has sold or aided troops either to a clan mate or on the Private Market. You can verify which one by checking the News Center. If there were no aids recently, then you can expect to see new troops on the PM in 6 hours. By buying cheap troops on the market, you not only increase your own net worth, but also remove the option to buy those troops from your rivals.
- Never underestimate intel. As a solo casher, nobody will be providing you CB's of your enemy's stats for free. You either need to keep up with the wizard arms race in order to get them yourself, or find a mage friend that can sell you CB's in exchange for some other value they need. In some cases, you can even offer to sell cheaper troops to solo mages in exchange for information. Intel extends beyond empire stats as well. Periodically check out the News Center to see who is attacking who, and for how much. Knowing the dynamics of a server will allow you to get a better picture of how to navigate your own runs.
- Promisance is a social game. Solo or not, you are never alone in a server. My #1 piece of advice to all players is to acknowledge this. There is very little that you can do in-game that will outweigh a poor strategic mistake. Piss off the wrong player or clan, and your set is over. Make friends with the right allies, and you may find yourself coasting straight to the top. As a solo, take advantage of your position by working closely with other solo players when clans become too strong. Likewise, if a clan needs some extra assistance, try to find a way that you can mutually benefit. Send out some messages to get a feel for the kinds of players that are around you. Can you gain an ally by sending a fun GIF? Can you dissuade an enemy by threatening to attack them all month? The only way to find out is to get out there and involve yourself in the community.
- Step 4, but again. Seriously, as a solo player, you will rarely find a way to win on your own. The best option to do so is when there are massive server-wide wars, and even then these rarely happen without intentional instigation. Be the instigator! Chaos is a ladder. Join the main Discord channel, find a way into clanned discord channels, make your empire profile a statement. Machiavellianism aside, we have some of the most interesting people I have met playing here, each with their own gameplay ideas and history. Some of us have been playing for decades and refining our play styles. So get involved, learn some more, and win the set.