Should You Move Your Factory?

A Simple Break-Even Guide

With new regional bonuses appearing everywhere, and political turmoil removing bonuses many of us assumed were permanent, more players are now asking the same question:

Should I move my factory?

There are already several good tools for analysing companies. My personal favourites are:

• war-era.vercel.app economy

• warerastats.io eco tool

• arcana.warera.wiki company analysis

• warera-empress.app player analyser

They are all useful. However, most of them do not directly answer the question players usually have in mind:

If I switch location, production, or both, how long will it take to recover the cement and steel investment?

That is the break-even point.

The good news is that the calculation is not that complicated. This guide is not meant to give a perfect answer down to the last decimal. It is meant to give you a solid ballpark estimate so you can make a better decision.

Assumptions

During this guide we will make some symplifying assumptions. We will only deal with raw materials. We will assume raw material price at 0.08 (although at the end we do a little exercise on price fluctuation) and we will assume cement/steel price at 1.6. Prices fluctuate and the break even will move as the prices fluctuate, but the idea here is to have a ballpark idea, and thus, assuming those values should give us a a good enough idea.
We will also ignore workers. With current job market, odds are if you have a lot of workers, you are already loosing money, and thus you are not the target audience.

1. The basic rule

Each AE level produces base 24 PP/day before bonuses.

Regional production bonuses multiply this production.

Final PP/day = Base PP/day × (1 + production bonus)

But when deciding if you should move, you do not care about the full bonus.

You care about the difference between your current bonus and the new bonus.

Extra PP/day = Base PP/day × bonus difference

Example A: You lost your bonus and move from 0% to 40%

This is the situation where your region lost its bonus, but you are not changing production.

You are only moving location.

Old region bonus = 0%
New region bonus = 40%
Bonus difference = 40%
Moving cost = 5 cement = 8 coins

For an AE4 factory:

Base PP/day = 4 × 24 = 96
Extra PP/day = 96 × 0.40 = 38.4
Extra coins/day = 38.4 × 0.08 = 3.072
Break-even = 8 ÷ 3.072 = 2.6 days

For an AE7 factory:

Base PP/day = 7 × 24 = 168
Extra PP/day = 168 × 0.40 = 67.2
Extra coins/day = 67.2 × 0.08 = 5.376
Break-even = 8 ÷ 5.376 = 1.5 days

Conclusion:
If your factory lost its bonus and you can move to a 40% region without changing production, the move pays for itself very quickly.

Even at AE1, it takes around 10 days.
At AE4 and above, it only takes a few days.
At AE7, it takes about a day and a half.

Example B: Optimising from 40% to 60% and changing production

This is a different situation.

Here you already have a 40% bonus, but you see an opportunity to move to a 60% region and produce a different raw material.

Because you are changing both location and production, the cost is higher.

Old bonus = 40%
New bonus = 60%
Bonus difference = 20%
Moving cost = 10 cement/steel = 16 coins

For an AE4 factory:

Base PP/day = 4 × 24 = 96
Extra PP/day = 96 × 0.20 = 19.2
Extra coins/day = 19.2 × 0.08 = 1.536
Break-even = 16 ÷ 1.536 = 10.4 days

For an AE7 factory:

Base PP/day = 7 × 24 = 168
Extra PP/day = 168 × 0.20 = 33.6
Extra coins/day = 33.6 × 0.08 = 2.688
Break-even = 16 ÷ 2.688 = 6.0 days

Conclusion:
Moving from 40% to 60% is still profitable, but it is less dramatic than recovering from a lost bonus.

That is because the real gain is only 20%, and if you also change production, your switching cost doubles.

At AE4, it takes about 10 days.
At AE6, about 7 days.
At AE7, about 6 days.

So this kind of optimisation can be worth it, but it is not automatic. You should be specially pay attention how long the bonus will last (a lot of the bonuses are temporary), and take into consideration the political risk (president leaving, territory being conquered, etc).

Quick mental shortcut: product price matters

In the examples above, we assumed:

1 PP = 1 raw material
Raw material price = 0.08 coins

But if the product sells for more, the move pays for itself faster.

Each AE level gives:

24 PP/day

So the value of each AE level before bonuses is:

Then apply only the bonus difference, not the full bonus.

For example, each 10% bonus difference is worth:

Example: AE4 moving from 0% to 40%

This is the “lost all bonuses and move location only” example.

Cost = 5 cement/steel × 1.6 = 8 coins
Bonus difference = 40%

So if limestone or iron is selling at 0.09 instead of 0.08, the AE4 break-even improves from:

2.6 days → 2.3 days

Not a huge difference in this case, because the move is already cheap and the bonus jump is large.

Simple rule of thumb

If the product price increases, your break-even becomes faster in the same proportion.

For example if limestone increases from 0.08 to 0.09
0.08 / 0.09 = 0.8888

10 days at 0.08 price become about 8.9 days at 0.09 price. (10 days * 0.8888)

Higher product prices do not change the formula. They just make the same move pay for itself faster.

I hope this helps guide you to better decisions in the future. I know it has helped me.

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